I'm not sure any political book in recent memory has gotten more free publicity than "Original Sin."

Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson have been everywhere. They are so ubiquitous that one day, aliens in Alpha Centauri will think the two are major celebrities or demigods who somehow acquired worshippers at an explosive rate. 

Ordinary human beings, unlike journalists who like to stroke each other's egos, aren't flocking to buy what they are selling. 

#JakeTapper Tapped Out: Anti-#Biden Book First Week Sales A Bust After Non Stop CNN Shilling https://t.co/3jx7uloEzQ via @Showbiz411

— Showbiz 411 (@showbiz411) May 29, 2025

Most people don't know this, but it doesn't take that many sales for a book to reach the bestseller list. Sales can be as low as $5,000-$10,000 per week, which strikes me as incredibly low and doesn't speak well to how many books people read. 

Of course, that is only in a week, and cumulative sales are what matter. On the other hand, as with movies, success for a well-promoted book will peak early and slide quickly. There are very few that hang around at the top of the charts for weeks or months. Those who truly want to see or read them will act promptly. 

Well, Tapper's book is looking more like Snow White and less like Top Gun 2, with sales topping 50,000--not horrible, but not great. 

Jake Tapper has been yapping about Joe Biden for two solid weeks.

CNN has allowed him to excoriate Biden 24/7, carrying on incessantly with few quoted sources that Biden was incompetent during his presidency.

Biden’s book, “Original Sin,” with Alex Thompson has had more publicity than any book of recent memory thanks to CNN’s collaboration.

But now come the disappointing sales.

53,737 print units sold, per Circana BookScan for the first week.

That’s not good news. That’s about 1/10th of the people who watch Tapper’s nightly show.

On Amazon, the book has held on to the number 3 spot. But today it’s starting to drop.

By comparison: Bob Woodward’s book “Fear: Trump in the White House” sold 1.1 million copies in its first week.

Showbiz 411 seems to think that Tapper is getting punished for being too mean to poor Joe Biden, but I think the answers are much simpler than that: people don't want to think about Joe Biden anymore, and people are pretty disgusted with Jake Tapper's dancing around the fact that he was part of the conspiracy to cover up Joe Biden's incapacity. 

I had assumed that Tapper's book would be closer to the Bob Woodward success than the countless books on the remainder pile. A Bob Woodward book can sell over a million copies, and people even shelled out to read Hillary Clinton's take on the 2016 election (shudder!). Both of those books, though, prominently featured Donald Trump, and people want to read about him. 

"Original Sin" has turned out to be the opposite of a boon to Tapper, whose ratings have plummeted despite massive publicity for his book. He has had to hire a crisis communicator to deal with the blowback, and now his book is not selling well at all. 

By no means does any of this signal the death knell for Tapper. He still has a show that, for CNN at least, pulls in enough viewers to keep him on the air until the network dies a slow, ignominious death, and no doubt he will be fine. 

But it's hard to imagine that Tapper didn't see himself elevated to superstar status as the brave truth-teller of our age. 

Instead he is coming out looking like a putz.