For a couple supposedly desperate for privacy, Meghan and Harry have an interesting definition of what it means to escape the spotlight. This time, however, they don’t have themselves entirely to thank. Journalist and royal obsessive Omid Scobie has reopened the wounds of the regal family scandal after releasing his new biography Endgame, risking the wrath of the royals. While Scobie insists the couple were not involved in the book, it’s not gone unnoticed that neither Meghan nor Harry have condemned any of the stories in it criticizing their family members.
The book has attracted plenty of publicity but it’s not gone quite as well for Scobie as he might have hoped. After denying he intentionally named the “racist royals” as King Charles and Princess Kate, the biographer looks set to face a legal battle of his own. And, even more depressingly for the attention-hungry journalist, it appears his new book has flopped.
Royal correspondent Valentine Low mocked Scobie on social media, announcing: “Congratulations to Omid Scobie, whose book Endgame sold 6,448 copies in the UK in its first week. That is almost as many as my book Courtiers, which sold 6,520 in its first week.” Ouch.
And after Cockburn did some digging, he discovered Scobie’s sales figures are rather underwhelming. in Tom Bower’s Revenge, on the Sussexes, sold 31,000 copies in its first month — about 7,750 a week. Scobie’s first book, coauthored with Carolyn Durand, even did better — selling 31,000 copies in five days. And Prince Harry’s Spare racked up sales of more than 3 million in its first week. Well, who wouldn’t prefer the real deal over a knock-off?
Sounds like copies of Scobie’s book are going Spare…
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
