With Britney Spears' memoir The Woman In Me becoming one of the biggest selling books in history, critics are deeming Jada Pinkett-Smith's memoir Worthy a flop after it failed to chart high on multiple best seller lists.
via: Daily Mail
The 52-year-old actress released the book on October 17, and it managed to nab the number three spot on Amazon's charts for the week of October 22, which lists the 'Top 20 most sold & most read books of the week.'
She finished just behind Britney Spears' even buzzier memoir The Woman In Me and David Grann's Killers Of The Flower Moon, which returned to the top of the charts thanks to interest in Martin Scorsese's Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro–starring film of the same name.
But on Amazon's main bestsellers list, Worthy had plummeted to just number 81 as of Tuesday, according to Newsweek.
By Wednesday evening it had dropped three more spots to number 84.
Notably, the main bestsellers chart only tracks sales, whereas Jada's book placed in the top three on the online retailers charts that track both sales and the number of Kindle readers and Audible listeners working through the book, suggesting that more people were interested in her memoir than were willing to shell out for a copy they could own.
The Matrix star's book also struggled to get readers to leave a review on Amazon.
The store's listing shows as of Wednesday that only 148 people have left a rating on her book, compared to the 1,043 people who have rated Britney Spears' memoir, which was only released on Tuesday.
Worthy was completely missing from Amazon's list of its 100 top-selling Kindle books.
However, it did top specialty list of 'Women's Biographies.'
It was also absent from Publishers Weekly's top 25 overall bestsellers, and it didn't make the top 10 on its nonfiction bestsellers list either.
Barnes & Noble's bestseller list was similarly missing an entry for Worthy in its top 100, but John Stamos — whose book was released after Jada's — scored a spot in the 30s with his memoir.
However, another celebrity memoir — Britney's — graced the number one spot, while Killers Of The Flower Moon — which is six years old — also nabbed a spot in the top 10.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's new memoir and self-help book, Be Useful: Seven Tools For Life, also top several lists or placed high up, indicating that readers weren't opposed to all celebrity-penned books.
However, Jada may not have to worry too much about her book's sales, as it still placed prominently on what is widely considered the most prestigious of all bestseller charts: the New York Times' list.
The times has Worthy at number four on its list of combined print and e-book bestsellers, and she had the third-most popular nonfiction book when only looking at physical hardcover sales.
The Times' list isn't a purely objective ranking of sales, as it also attempts to exclude books that may try to game the system through bulk purchases.
I know there are some people crying racism as the reason why Britney's book is now the biggest selling memoir in history, while Jada's book is allegedly underselling. I don't see it as racism, and people need to stop quickly using that as an answer.
I think the reason why people gravitated towards The Woman In Me over Worthy is because for so long Britney has been silenced from telling her story. Jada on the other hand has been spilling all her family tea for years via her Red Table Talk, so by the time she was on the press tour promoting her book people felt she revealed so much about her personal life there's no need to read about it.
Plus there are a lot of people out here who believe the way Jada carries herself she's spent the bulk of her marriage emasculating her husband Will, who has been perceived as the "nice, safe negro" for mainstream audiences.
I personally do not believe it's fair to put all the blame on Jada. Will is a grown man who should have the backbone to speak up for himself if Jada as a alpha female was "emasculating" her husband.