Disgraced political journalist Olivia Nuzzi’s much-hyped book about her sordid sexting affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. couldn’t even sell 1,200 copies in its first week on the shelves.
Despite dominating gossip headlines ahead of its release Dec. 2, Nuzzi’s debut literary effort — “American Canto” — sold a mere 1,165 hard editions, according to Circana BookScan data.
The grim sales figures match the scathing reviews from critics and readers alike of the 32-year-old’s tome.
“American Canto” had been pegged as Nuzzi’s splashy return to journalism after her promising career at New York magazine was derailed by news of her dalliance with RFK Jr., now secretary of health and human services.
Given the hype surrounding the part-memoir, part-meditation on America in the age of Donald Trump — with Nuzzi given a soft-focus profile by the New York Times and excerpts of “American Canto” running in Vanity Fair, which had scooped her up as “West Coast editor” — publishing industry experts had predicted sales of at least 5,000 hardcover copies in the first seven days of availability, Politico reported.
“I think there’s a broad understanding her credibility has been shredded and the idea of her as a reliable narrator in telling any story, even hers, not many readers are going to believe that,” a publishing insider told the outlet.
“Heads should roll over the disaster, whether it’s crisis PR consultants involved or editors,” they added. “It’s a disaster from start to finish.”
In the book, Nuzzi only referred to Kennedy, 71, as “the politician” while describing how their fling gained traction during his abortive 2024 presidential campaign after she penned an article about him for New York in the fall of 2023.
Nuzzi insists the two never physically consummated their relationship but acknowledged the unlikely lovebirds still exchanged “I love yous” — with Kennedy apparently saying it first.
Some reviewers have accused Nuzzi of not being properly forthcoming about her relationship with RFK Jr., instead describing him in digressive passages like: “He was not quite mad the way they thought, but I loved the private ways that he was mad. I loved that he was insatiable in all ways, as if he would swallow up the whole world just to know it better if he could.”
Meanwhile, Nuzzi’s ex-fiance, onetime Politico scribe Ryan Lizza, has undercut her story by claiming in a series of posts on his Telos News substack that Nuzzi flouted journalism ethics by acting as a “political operative” to Kennedy — even scheming ways to get ahead of unflattering stories.
Lizza has also accused Nuzzi of having an affair with former South Carolina GOP Gov. Mark Sanford after writing a story on him during the 2020 presidential campaign, which Lizza cast as a preview of her actions with Kennedy.
On Dec. 5, Vanity Fair’s parent company, Conde Nast, said in a statement that Nuzzi and the magazine had “mutually agreed, in the best interest of the magazine, to let her contract expire at the end of the year.”
