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Friday, Mar 13, 2009 7:30 PM UTC

Is this the end for Ann Coulter?

The conservative juggernaut's still selling a lot of books, but not nearly as many as she did at her peak.

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Topics: Ann Coulter, War Room,

For a little while now, it’s seemed like Ann Coulter’s career has been on a downswing. Maybe it was inevitable: At some point, there’s only so much shock value one person can produce, only so far they can go in continually one-upping themselves. (For a reminder of how this can work, see The Onion classic “Marilyn Manson Now Going Door-To-Door Trying To Shock People.“) And lately, her stunts have seemed more desperate than usual, and less interesting.

Now, seemingly, we have some real evidence that her appeal is indeed beginning to fade. Portfolio reports that, according to Nielsen Bookscan, Coulter’s latest tome, “Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America,” has sold only 100,500 copies. Now, that’s actually quite a lot by the standards of the vast majority of authors, but stacked up against Coulter’s previous sales figures, it’s pretty bad. Her last two books sold 279,100 and 396,600 copies, respectively.

To be fair, everyone’s hurting at least a little during the current economic crisis, especially in the publishing industry, and that’s almost certainly a factor in the drop-off in Coulter’s book sales. But this big a fall from someone whose books had sold so consistently before? There’s probably something other than just the economy at work.

Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon. More Alex Koppelman.

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