Despite being lampooned for soft sales in the United States, demand for Kim Kardashian's infamous book of selfies - titled Selfish - was three times stronger here than in the United States
The 352-page vanity project, named Kim Kardashian West: Selfish, was released in May and features nothing but private photos of the 34-year-old reality television star.
Nielsen Bookscan figures published by Radar Online on Monday showed only 32,000 copies of the book sold in the United States in the last three months, with the website dubbing it a "flop".
But figures obtained by Fairfax show Selfish had a much better reception among Australian audiences and featured on local bestseller lists with sales comparable to classics like George Orwell's 1984.
According to Nielsen, Australians have to date purchased 7,200 copies of Kardashian's adult picture book. Per capita, the demand for Selfish was three times stronger in Australian than in the United States.
The book's Australian publishers, Hardie Grant, said sales exceeded their expectation and claimed it was difficult to keep up with demand.
"We sold out of our initial print run in Australia almost immediately, driven by her profile, the book publicity both here and abroad and her amazing social media presence," a Hardie Grant spokeswoman said.
Kardashian has 41 million Instagram followers.
"In the first week of release, Kim Kardashian Selfish appeared in Nielsen Bookscan's top 20 titles in Australia, was number 3 in Dymocks overall and their number 1 biography title."
Selfish also appeared on Dymocks' top 10 best-sellers list for the entire month of may, featuring alongside titles like George Orwell's 1984 and this year's runaway hit The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.
"We had to reorder immediately due to demand," a Dymocks publicist said.
The book was also a best-seller in the United States, sitting on USA Today's Best-Selling Books list for two weeks at 32nd spot.
Selfish was originally meant to be a private gift to Kardashian's husband Kanye West, and features many intimate and revealing photos of the reality star.
The book was rubbished by critics on Amazon, with some users calling it a waste of paper.
"A poor tree died for this," wrote one critic.
