No One is Buying Jada Pinkett Smith’s Memoir

No One is Buying Jada Pinkett Smith’s Memoir

The controversial wife of Will Smith’s new book isn’t making the money she hoped.

Britney Spears isn’t the only celeb with a new memoir on the shelf, but she is the only one making good money on it. Last week Jada Pinkett Smith released her own memoir Worthy, but it doesn’t seem like anyone really wants to read it.

Jada had tried to drum up some hype for the book a few weeks back by revealing that she considered murdered rapper Tupac Shakur her “soul mate,” but it didn’t exactly get people interested in reading the book. So far the memoir is way down on the Amazon bestseller list at number 81, and hasn’t even cracked the top 100 on the Barnes & Noble list. It sits well behind books from seemingly less popular celebs like John Stamos.

But over here at Hollywire, we have to admit that the poor response to the book isn’t exactly a big surprise. Jada isn’t really the star many treat her to be, in fact she’s really the least well-known person in her own family. If Willow wrote a memoir it would probably be a hit. There are quite a few reasons for all of this.

Jada already shares everything.

It’s been years now that Jada has used her platform to share literally every detail of her personal life. She often attempts to frame it as “honesty” and “setting an example,” but many simply feel it’s violating the privacy of those around her. She often crosses a line into humiliating them.

As a result there’s not much left to “reveal” in her book. She’s been on record saying way too much way too often, and people are more frustrated by it at this point than they are compelled to go buy a book version of it.

Her career isn’t that interesting.

Let’s face it, Jada Pinkett isn’t really in the headlines very often for any actual work she is doing. Her acting career seemingly ended a while ago, and she isn’t really that good of a television host that she’s going to be a regular on The View or something.

A lot of her fandom really only stems from her associations, whether her immediate family or her previous relationship with Tupac. But let’s face it, fans are pretty tired of hearing about Tupac. Which brings us to our final reason.

People feel bad for Will Smith.

Will Smith lost a significant amount of good will when he slapped Chris Rock during the Oscars a couple years ago. People saw it as an example of unchecked celebrity privilege, and a strange normalization of violence on a mainstream stage, especially after he thereafter won his Oscar.

Will of course later apologized, but he hasn’t really been welcomed back into the mainstream world with open arms at this point. But now people are beginning to feel more bad for him than anything. It was revealed he and Jada haven’t been “together” in nearly 7 years, and the more we learn, the more we feel like Jada has essentially tormented him for a long time. Her continued obsession with Tupac is only the latest evidence of that.

All in all the only real reason to expect Jada’s book to do well is that she’s very famous. However a brief look behind the veneer and it’s not too shocking she’s not selling books like hot cakes.