The two Penang-born politicians had matched their wits in Parliament but in the bookstores, a book on Tun Abdullah Badawi’s administration is flying off the shelves faster than DAP leader Karpal Singh’s biography.
The book Awakening: The Abdullah Badawi Years in Malaysia is fast selling out with a two-week head start over Karpal Singh: The Tiger of Jelutong which is steadily gaining ground.
The Malaysian Insider checked three top bookstores in Kuala Lumpur and was told that the Abdullah administration book has been raking in sales since it became available in bookstores in early August.
Karpal is nevertheless proving to be a strong challenger as his book is out of stock in the MPH outlet in his home state Penang.
Representatives of all three bookstores attributed the success of Abdullah’s book to media reports on excerpts from the book.
“Abdullah’s book hit the bookstores about two weeks earlier than Karpal’s and the online media were quick to publicise the book by highlighting ‘juicy’ excerpts from the pages. This made the book popular,” an MPH staff told The Malaysian Insider.
A staff member at Kinokuniya bookstore said the academic book has been as popular as Lee Kuan Yew’s book One Man’s View of the World.
MPH staff said the bookstore chain had in stock more than 1,000 copies of each book. However, they could not say how many copies had been ordered.
Kinokuniya had ordered 200 copies of Karpal’s biography and has only 59 copies left with 123 copies of Abdullah’s book in stock, out of the 500 ordered.
Borders Bookstore had stocked about 300 copies of Karpal’s book and 500 of Abdullah’s spread over its outlets.
A Borders spokeswoman said Abdullah’s book has received good response from its patrons.
The Abdullah book, edited by academics Dr Bridget Welsh and Dr James Chin, is a compilation of “multiple views, many of them quite critical of the period of his tenure”, to quote the writers.
“We have contributors from all sides of the political divide and academic observers.
“We worked to have a balanced collection and part of the balancing was to give space to Pak Lah himself to put himself on record on his tenure,” the authors said after media reports on several sections of the book quoting Abdullah caused a frenzy.
Welsh and Chin, in a letter to The Malaysian Insider in early August, said they had not expected such media response and despite efforts to stress to the media early on that the book was to be a serious
reflective collection by scholars and practitioners, the focus was on sensationalising parts of the book, especially the former premier’s interview.
“We reached out to a wide variety of individuals in bringing together over 30 authors. This is a serious collection aiming for a reflective discussion of the premiership of Malaysia’s fourth prime minister,” they said.
Karpal’s book is authored by New Zealand-based veteran journalist Tim Donoghue, who had first met Karpal in 1986.
The book chronicles Karpal’s personal life and illustrious political and legal career, which has earned him accolades and admiration as a prominent criminal and constitutional lawyer in the country.
The Tiger of Jelutong hit the bookstores in August, two weeks before its scheduled launch on September 7 and by the first week of September the book was already on the number two spot of the Mid Valley MPH’s bestsellers list for non-fiction. – September 19, 2013.
