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Omid Scobie’s new book Endgame sold just under 6,500 copies in Britain during its first five days on scale despite a blizzard of publicity – and has now plunged to 215 on the Amazon ‘bestsellers’ list. The hatchet job against the Royal Family has been widely pilloried even by normally sympathetic media outlets like the New York Times, which described one chapter as ‘like a press release cooked up by ChatGPT ‘.
Derided as ‘not all that different from what Harry presented in ”Spare”’, most reaction to the book has focused on its Dutch language edition, which named two family members accused by the Duchess of Sussex of ‘unconscious bias’. Yet even this controversy has done little to boost its success, with Nielsen putting British sales figures for the first five days at 6,448. By contrast, Scobie’s first book on the Sussexes, Finding Freedom, sold 31,000 in its first five days while Harry’s autobiography Spare sold 467,183 – making it the fastest selling non-fiction book since records began in 1998.
Endgame has now dropped to 215 in the Amazon bestseller list compared to 174 yesterday. The book is now on the table behind the activity book Things To Do While You Poo On The Loo and children’s titles such as Dormouse Has a Cold, the Beano annual, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Stick Man. It also trails biographies from Britney Spears, Matthew Perry and Chris Kamara; and cookbooks from Mary Berry, Rick Stein, and Tom Kerridge.
In the same Amazon list in the US, Endgame was at 312th today – below How to Catch a Dinosaur and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Amazon says its lists are a ‘good indicator of how well a product is selling overall’ but ‘doesn’t always indicate how well an item is selling in relation to similar items’. The book’s falling performance comes despite a huge amount of media coverage as well as TV interviews conducted by Mr. Scobie for the BBC and ITV in the UK and ABC in the US.
The author has also given interviews to publications including The Times, Evening Standard, Independent, Tatler, People, Elle.com, and Paris March. Meanwhile, the book was not on prominent display at London’s oldest bookshop, Hatchards on Piccadilly – with only one copy put aside on order, reported The Guardian. The newspaper added that about 14 copies were stacked on a table near the entrance of the nearby Waterstones, but there was ‘limited interest there too’. Mr. Scobie has been widely described as Meghan Markle’s mouthpiece – but neither she nor Prince Harry has so far spoken up in defence of the royals over highly damaging accusations of racism.
The Dutch translation of the book has been pulled after it named Charles and Kate as the royals alleged to have asked what colour Prince Archie’s skin might be before he was born. King Charles III is expected to consult Prince William this week to discuss their response to the storm after Buckingham Palace said it is ‘considering all options’ when it comes to a response. The Sussexes have not commented publicly on the race row but a source close to Meghan said ‘it was not leaked to Mr Scobie by anyone in her camp’.
It also emerged yesterday that the Dutch edition of Endgame quoted a source close to the Sussexes who branded William ‘heartless’ – another inflammatory passage that is not in the UK version. Referring to claims that the Prince of Wales secured a flight to Balmoral without Harry when the Queen was dying, the translation cited the source as saying: ‘It was heartless to deny him the chance to go to Scotland to say goodbye to his grandmother.
This was not the time to be petty.’ A ‘family source’ also claims that William ‘purposely ignored’ Harry when the Queen died and ‘didn’t want to help’ him, according to the Dutch edition. It said: ‘He was, and is, still angry because Harry revealed private issues… He thinks that is unforgivable.’ The Dutch version also refers to the King’s ‘cash for honours’ scandal last year, with a ‘source’ saying ‘people inside the institution are concerned that ‘more stories will follow’.’
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