Say what you want about Dave Portnoy, but the guy built a media company from a blog in his apartment and now he's got a #1 New York Times best seller to go with it. "Cancel Me If You Can," his memoir chronicling the rise of Barstool Sports and every fight he's picked along the way, officially landed at the top of the list this week.
The official announcement that the book cracked #1 on the NYT best seller list.
The book, published by Gallery Books in late June, has been billed from day one as an instant national bestseller, so the NYT #1 slot is the exclamation point on the rollout. It's also a little rich given Portnoy has never been shy about his contentious relationship with the paper itself, so watching him claim their own list is a plot twist nobody saw coming.
Portnoy didn't waste any time cashing in the moment. He posted from Nantucket showing himself tearing through a stack of copies at Mitchell's Book Corner, signing what he called his first batch of books as an official #1 author.
Portnoy signing stacks of "Cancel Me If You Can" at a Nantucket bookstore, fresh off the #1 news.
Then came the part that's classic Portnoy. Once the replies started rolling in with people correcting his grammar and typos on the announcement post, he didn't apologize or fix a word of it, he leaned all the way in.
Its hilarious seeing the spelling police underneath this post. The pure arrogance of people thinking they have the right to chirp the current #1 NYT best selling author abut grammar. When you are the #1 best selling author you can talk about spelling. Until then don’t embarrass yourself. Everybody knows spelling and memorization are the 2 lowest forms of human intelligence
It's peak Stool Presidente logic: mock the pedants, credential yourself with the sales number, move on. Whether or not you buy his line about spelling and memorization being "the 2 lowest forms of human intelligence," it's hard to argue with the results, a guy who's been written off by media critics for over a decade just out-sold most of the actual media class on their own bestseller list. Expect the book tour, the bookstore drop-ins, and the mentions war to keep going as long as he's sitting at #1.