Topline
Viral blog posts about her alleged affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., splashy profiles and a shiny new position at Vanity Fair weren’t enough to turn buzz into sales for Olivia Nuzzi’s “American Canto,” new data shows.
Reporter Olivia Nuzzi on Feb. 16, 2022 in Miami, Florida.
Getty Images for Vox Media
Key Facts
The book, possibly the year’s most-hyped release, that drove gossip columns but was pilloried by critics upon release, sold just 1,200 print copies in its first week, according to data from Circana (formerly known as BookScan).
“American Canto” also failed to make the New York Times bestseller list and ranked No. 30 in the political science category last week, Circana reported, a surprisingly low rank for a book that was rolled out with excerpts and articles in some of the world’s most respected publications.
Nuzzi’s book compares in first week sales to those like John Fetterman’s “Unfettered” (2,600 copies in its first week) and Michael Wolff’s “All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America” (3,000 copies), both of which were largely considered busts.
Experts theorized “Canto” was an example of the disconnect between media elites and consumers, and that scandal-filled headlines preceding its release exhausted the public interest before the book even hit the shelves.
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Key Background
Nuzzi, who wrote several cover stories in her stint as a reporter at New York magazine, was pushed into the public eye in September of 2024 after media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote Nuzzi had an inappropriate relationship with a former reporting subject. The alleged affair partner was later revealed to be Kennedy, who is married to actress Cheryl Hines and has denied all allegations of an affair. Shortly after the Kennedy scandal broke, Nuzzi accused her ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza, a former Politico reporter, of leaking her personal information. In recent months, scandalous details about the alleged affair have made headlines and Lizza has published a series of much-buzzed-about posts on his blog, including a raunchy poem purportedly written by Kennedy about Nuzzi. Despite the details circulating media discourse, none are directly addressed in Nuzzi’s book, nor were they discussed by Nuzzi in press interviews. In the days before “American Canto” was released, critics slammed the book as forgettable and “impressively and aggressively awful.”
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