When Jacques Pauw released The President’s Keepers in October last year, he never expected it to be a best-seller that would send South Africans into a collective tizz.

In a piece he wrote for The Daily Maverick, Pauw said he recently discovered exactly how many copies of the book have been bought.

He had received his six-monthly audited book sales report last week, and the figures are staggering:

According to the audited figures, I had sold 193 895 copies of ‘The President’s Keepers’. Around 26,000 of these were ebooks.

These figures are about six weeks old, and according to the publisher, around 197 000 books have now been sold.

That means that South Africans have spent around R50 million in buying the book.

Sjoe. That’s a whole lotta books and a whole lotta money.

According to CapeTalk, this makes The President’s Keepers the best-selling book in South African history, if its ebooks sales are counted.

It beats out Rhonda Bynre’s The Secret (190 436 copies sold), Tim Noakes’ Real Meal Revolution (174 798 copies sold), and E. L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey (166 149 copies sold).

Hell, it even beats out freakin’ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which has sold a measly 107 131 copies.

But Pauw reckons that he wasn’t entirely sure about just how big his book was going to be:

In September last year, a few weeks before publishing The President’s Keepers, I explained its contents to then Exclusives Books CEO Benjamin Trisk …

He thought the revelations contained in the book were of crucial importance and promised to pull out all the stops to sell it. He said he was convinced that I could sell at least 25 000 copies.

I thought it almost impossible. I had then written five books and none came close to that figure. In South Africa, selling 5 000 print copies and a handful of ebooks of a title is regarded as an excellent seller.

My publishers, Tafelberg, decided on a courageous 20 000 copies for their first print run. I thought it unwise because we couldn’t do any pre-publicity for the book.

In hindsight, I bet Pauw is laughing about his fears now.

He was also aware that once the book was published and copies had been sold, it would have been much more difficult for certain unimpressed parties to remove it from the shelves:

We knew that the SARS (SA Revenue Service) and the SSA (State Security Agency) would react with vehemence against the book, which was a legal minefield. The Official Secrets Act. The Intelligence Act. The Tax Administration Act. Defamation. Libel. Name it – it appeared in abundance page after page.

I accused then President Jacob Zuma of being a tax evader and of breaching the Constitution for receiving a private “salary”, Tom Moyane for destroying the revenue collector in order to protect Zuma and his cronies, spy boss Arthur Fraser of being complicit in fraud, corruption and wastage of a billion rand, and former NPA boss Ngcobo Jiba of being an agent of crime intelligence boss Richard Mdluli.

Spicy content, indeed.

After the book was published, it reportedly took state security four days to respond in the form of a letter in which they demanded that they remove the book, failing which they would bring an urgent court application.

Pauw’s response? “Go to hell.”

Bravo.

The attention from the SSA, as well as SARS commissioner Moyane, propelled The President’s Keepers into the record books, becoming the fastest selling book in South Africa, selling at least 10 000 copies per week.

It also made international headlines in the Financial Times and The Washington Post.

And Pauw had some unlikely promoters:

Sales were helped along by Cyril Ramaphosa saying in Parliament he was reading the book while opposition leader Mmusi Maimane confronted Jacob Zuma with the content of The President’s Keepers while waving it in his hand.

I suspect that people didn’t just buy the book for its juicy content, but saw it as a act of defiance and outrage against the Zuma regime.

That’s thanks to some first-rate PR right there.

Pauw discusses how the publication of the book elevated him to a minor celebrity status, being laid with numerous criminal charges including a defamation charge brought forward by a crooked cop, and receiving various death threats and sabotage attempts on his book launches.

Is he scared?

No, I’m not. I’m not brave but have never had a sleepless night about those vying for my blood. I feel as though millions of South Africans are looking after me.

Brave bugger.

Despite everything that Pauw has gone through, The President’s Keepers is going strong, and it remains poised to keep its title as the biggest best-seller in South Africa.

Hats off to you, Pauw. We’ll be looking out for your next book, if you ever write another one.

Read Pauw’s full piece here.

[sources:dailymaverick&capetalk]