The Memoir Index: Voting at the bookstore

Barack Obama has had a fundraising edge over Hillary Clinton–and it’s not just because of his string of victories since Super Tuesday. In January, he raised $28 million to her $19 million.

But campaign donations aren’t the way voters are showing their confidence in Obama. There’s another pecuniary indicator of his popularity. It’s what I’ll call the Memoir Index, and Obama’s is twice as high as Hillary’s.

According to the NYTimes, Obama’s memoirs, “Dreams From My Father” and “Audacity of Hope” have spent a cumulative 117 weeks on the best-seller list (both paperbacks are still listed), while Hillary’s “Living History” and “It Takes a Village” spent only 63 weeks on the list.

Not to mention Obama won a Grammy in the spoken word category for the book as well.

[I added the following on Feb 27:]

A glance at the Amazon.com sales ranks reveals that the paperback of “Dreams From My Father” is at #12(!), the hardcover is at #107 and “Audacity of Hope” is at #840. Meanwhile, Hillary’s books are doing worse than her biographies (as well as bios of Barack). “Living History” is ranked #18,015, “It Takes a Village” is at #32,747 and “An Invitation to the White House: At Home With History” (which looks like a coffee table book) is # 297,076. Carl Bernstein’s “A Woman In Charge” is ranked #2757.

Just for comparison’s sake, John McCain’s “Faith of My Fathers” is at #7326 in paperback and #2086 in hardcover.