Has Controversy Boosted Or Blunted Lindy West’s Memoir Sales?

Reaction to Lindy West’s memoir, Adult Braces, has dominated book talk across the Internet since it was released in March. That response is largely due to the fact that the former Jezebel writer shares how her marriage went from metaphorically ajar—she and her husband, Ahamefule J. Oluo, agreed to an open relationship before their wedding, but didn’t necessarily have a determined plan of action—to wide open after she discovered Oluo was seeing another woman without telling her.

After much travail, West’s union would eventually become a trio that now incorporates Oluo’s girlfriend.

West's complicated polyamory journey has kicked off a flurry of intense responses that have ranged from deeply thoughtful interrogations into the complications of memoir writing itself to worryingly overblown cultural proclamations that frame West’s polyamory pivot as the death of millennial feminism.

Her husband's post-release conduct—they sent a nasty email to the Canadian writer of a profile they didn't like—has only stirred the pot.

But discourse is cheap.

In the world of publishing, it’s sales that authors fall back on and according to New York magazine’s publishing newsletter, Book Gossip, West’s memoir isn’t generating them as easily as it generated think pieces.

Citing data from a U.S. industry sales data tracker called Bookscan, the newsletter says Adult Braces has sold around 3,000 print copies since its March 10 release. (The book is currently on neither the New York Times nor Globe and Mail bestsellers list; placement on the latter usually means a book has sold a few thousand copies in Canada.) The New York mag newsletter contrasts those sales with that of another recent memoir, Belle Burden’s divorce memoir, Strangers, which is both a New York Times and Globe and Mail bestseller and no. 1 on Amazon charts this week.

Is it fair to compare a book about polyamory from a beloved-but-niche feminist author to a juicy cis-het divorce story from a blond, bona fide heiress who’s been singled out by none other than Oprah and Heather Reisman for special attention? (Burden’s interview with Oprah has three million views on YouTube.)

Maybe not.

According to a representative for the Canadian book retailer Indigo, West’s book is selling according to “expectations.”

While it’s not clear what those expectations are—the rep declined to elaborate, citing “proprietary” concerns—they were determined prior to the book’s release, which means discourse be damned, the big booksellers already have some idea of how a book will play in-store and position it accordingly.

“Any controversy around a book generally shows up closer to or after its release but our sales plans are set much earlier in the process,” said Brandon Forsyth, a category manager at Indigo.  

By contrast, those early expectations may have been a substantial help to Burden.

“Indigo has been a champion of Belle Burden’s Strangers from the beginning—a Heather’s Pick from the first weekend of release, it has been steadily growing in sales since January as word of mouth spreads.”

Recent news about Strangers being optioned by Gwyneth Paltrow, who is set to star and executive produce the film adaptation, has been a boon, too.

“The past two weeks have seen extreme growth as news about the movie adaptation hit and the author made several media appearances,” says Forsyth.

Just what pushes a book into the stratosphere or plunges it into the discount bin is likely the point where expectations meet publicity and platform (and that's discounting the mainstream appeal of Belle Burden and how seamlessly Gwyneth Paltrow may portray her). Hype comes in many forms—some more powerful than others—and the factors that determine good sales versus bad sales may be trickier to unpack than West's memoir.