Johannesburg - Reeva Steenkamp’s shooting has done nothing for the sale of athlete and boyfriend Oscar Pistorius’s biography.
Instead, one response was that it should be “chucked into the bin next to Lance Armstrong’s”.
Articles on what could have happened on that fateful morning when Pistorius shot dead his girlfriend, have gripped the nation and the newspapers daily.
Enquiries at bookshops in Joburg indicate that while newspapers publishing articles on Pistorius are flying off the shelves and selling well, all the attention on the Blade Runner has failed to have an effect on the sale of his book, released in August.
Kalahari.net has been advertising it at a discounted price on the sites running articles on Pistorius’s court case.
A woman who identified herself as Ashley, a manager at one of the Books Galore branches, said they did have the book in stock but people who had been to the store and seen it had shown no interest in buying it.
According to her, “Someone even suggested that we put it in the bin, next to Lance Armstrong’s books.”
A sales assistant at Exclusive Books at OR Tambo International Airport said the book was a hit last year after the Paralympic Games, but that it had not been selling well lately.
“People do come here and enquire about it, but they are not buying it,” said a sales assistant, who did not want to be identified.
Others said they were not serving the market interested in the athlete, and that stores in Pretoria might have the book.
However, at Exclusive Books in Brooklyn Mall, Pretoria, the response was much the same, even though they had the book in stock and were not far from the police station where the athlete was held after his arrest and before being released on bail.
Christo Kellermann said: “Maybe people are waiting until this is over before they buy it.”
Another bookstore manager, who declined to be named, said there had been “no explosion in the sales of the book or a rush of customers placing orders for it”.
Sales assistants for CNA and Exclusive Books in Sandton City and Bedford Centre said while their customers were not interested in the book, the publishers of Sarie and GQ magazines - whose covers featured Pistorius - had ordered that their magazines be taken off the shelves the day after Steenkamp was shot dead.
The Star