Last week, The Australian Financial Review put forward a novel idea — that the main problem with Scott Morrison’s prime ministership wasn’t the issues with honesty or the erosion of standards of governance, but that he wasn’t charming enough to journalists.
He just cared too little about what those beltway types thought: “In an interview Monday evening on Sky News, Morrison sounded cheerily fatalistic about his legacy. He had no interest in writing a memoir, he said, or correcting the daily record.”
Which raised the question: would publishers want a Morrison memoir anyway? One senior publishing figure told Crikey they didn’t like Morrison’s chances:
I think the queen might have overtaken Morrison. The bestsellers are groaning with QEII books already. News Ltd published Howard and made it a bestseller. I can’t imagine anyone else lining up to take [a Morrison book] on except perhaps Penguin — they published Belle Gibson, after all. Morrison would sell less than Rudd which was around 5000. Abbott wasn’t much more.
Further, it’s probably best for Morrison to avoid the competition that the rest of the year holds, which might be particularly dispiriting for him. Our tipster is picking Grace Tame’s The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner: A Memoir (which they aren’t publishing, we hasten to add) to do huge numbers:
[It] may have the biggest pre-sales for an autobiography ever. Rumour is the first printing is well in excess of 100,000 copies and the retail demand is massive. Expect it to be the book of the year.”
Tame illustrated the cover herself (apparently “with a cheapo $1.00 pen she bought from Woolies”) reminding us of how we found out she could draw on account of the fact that she’s kind of buddies with John Cleese from way back.
Would you buy Scott Morrison’s memoir? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
