leftovers

Left wing media seems to be a hard sell these days. The Air America radio network has lost a third of its marketshare in New York City in the past 12 months and 'Crashing The Gate,' a book written by Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas has sold only 3,600 copies in four weeks.

From Drudge:

"NIELSEN claims only 2,062 copies of 'Gate' have been purchased at the retail level; the rest coming through 'discount' outlets."

Taking a look at Daily Kos, Moulitsas strikes back:

"What's a poor partisan hack like Drudge to do with his idols running the country and Iraq into the ground? Aha! Claim that some book isn't doing so hot."

Kos claims that Bookscan 'just surveys a sampling of big box retailers,' the implication being that Drudge's figures are misleading.

More from Kos:

"So let's see. The book has been out three weeks. It has sold 5,100 copies of the special edition and 3,630 according to Drudge (if he can be trusted) in a sampling of the big box bookstores.

That's 8,730 right there. Now throw in the indy bookstores (we've probably sold close to 1,000 just in the book signing events I've attended), and we're getting close to 10,000.

Then there's the online retailers. Currently, CTG is ranked #25 on Amazon.com, and is ranked #5 in the politics category. Through the links at the top of the this page alone I've sold 700 copies of CTG."

From my perspective it seems that 10,000 books sold is a mighty small number given the popularity of Daily Kos, America's number one political blog. The guy gets tens of millions of hits a week, they've been promoting the heck out of this book and the best they can do is this anemic number?

Which fellow has more credibility?