Disgraced political journalist Olivia Nuzzi’s much-hyped ebook about her sordid sexting affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. couldn’t even promote 1,200 copies in its first week at the cabinets.
In spite of dominating gossip headlines forward of its unlock Dec. 2, Nuzzi’s debut literary effort — “American Canto” — offered an insignificant 1,165 onerous editions, in keeping with Circana BookScan knowledge.
The bleak gross sales figures fit the scathing evaluations from critics and readers alike of the 32-year-old’s tome.
“American Canto” were pegged as Nuzzi’s splashy go back to journalism after her promising profession at New York mag used to be derailed via information of her dalliance with RFK Jr., now secretary of well being and human products and services.
Given the hype surrounding the part-memoir, part-meditation on The us within the age of Donald Trump — with Nuzzi given a soft-focus profile via the New York Occasions and excerpts of “American Canto” working in Self-importance Honest, which had scooped her up as “West Coast editor” — publishing trade mavens had predicted gross sales of no less than 5,000 hardcover copies within the first seven days of availability, Politico reported.
“I believe there’s a vast working out her credibility has been shredded and the theory of her as a competent narrator in telling any tale, even hers, no longer many readers are going to consider that,” a publishing insider advised the opening.
“Heads will have to roll over the crisis, whether or not it’s disaster PR experts concerned or editors,” they added. “It’s a crisis from begin to end.”
Within the ebook, Nuzzi best referred to Kennedy, 71, as “the flesh presser” whilst describing how their fling received traction all the way through his abortive 2024 presidential marketing campaign after she penned an editorial about him for New York within the fall of 2023.
Nuzzi insists the 2 by no means bodily consummated their courting however said the not likely lovebirds nonetheless exchanged “I really like yous” — with Kennedy it appears announcing it first.
Some reviewers have accused Nuzzi of no longer being correctly coming near near about her courting with RFK Jr., as an alternative describing him in digressive passages like: “He used to be no longer somewhat mad the way in which they concept, however I cherished the personal ways in which he used to be mad. I cherished that he used to be insatiable in all techniques, as though he would swallow up the entire international simply to realize it higher if he may.”
In the meantime, Nuzzi’s ex-fiance, onetime Politico scribe Ryan Lizza, has undercut her tale via claiming in a sequence of posts on his Telos Information substack that Nuzzi flouted journalism ethics via appearing as a “political operative” to Kennedy — even scheming techniques to get forward of unflattering tales.
Lizza has additionally accused Nuzzi of getting an affair with former South Carolina GOP Gov. Mark Sanford after writing a tale on him all the way through the 2020 presidential marketing campaign, which Lizza forged as a preview of her movements with Kennedy.
On Dec. 5, Self-importance Honest’s mother or father corporate, Conde Nast, stated in a observation that Nuzzi and the mag had “mutually agreed, in the most productive hobby of the mag, to let her contract expire on the finish of the 12 months.”
