Why Isn't Walmart Selling God's Memoir?

That's a question recently posed by New York Magazine.

From the piece...

This week, Simon & Schuster published the parody The Last Testament: A Memoir, in which God himself (or Himself) spills his life story to David Javerbaum, the former executive producer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Not everyone is excited about the humor book: Several large retailers have declined to carry it, and Simon & Schuster’s U.K. imprint bought the rights but refused to publish it after seeing the final copy. Javerbaum isn’t a stranger to can’t-take-a-joke book blackballing: Walmart refused to sell the 2004 bestseller The Daily Show's America: The Book, because its pages contained what were obviously fake nude photographs of Supreme Court justices. Javerbaum spoke to Vulture about the limits of funny free speech.

I’d have thought that with the holidays approaching, a memoir from a big-name author would be a hot item at major retailers, especially since names don’t get much bigger than God’s. But that’s not the case, is it?

No, it’s not. The Last Testament will not be on sale at Walmart, Target, or any of the other “big box” chains. My editor at Simon & Schuster and Jon Karp, the publisher, were surprised, but I suspected that if they wouldn’t stock America: The Book, they wouldn’t stock this one, either. Although these stores seem to have no qualms about selling piles of God’s two previous works.

It seems odd that a place like Costco would carry Keith Richards’s memoir but not God’s.

I’m not sure why they’d sell Keith Richards’s memoir but not God’s, especially since they’re contemporaries.