Meghan Markle recently took to YouTube to help promote her book with parents and children. A day later, she may be regretting the decision as the video has received a decisively negative response. From a plethora of thumbs down YouTube votes, parents calling her out for calling herself the Duchess of Sussex to the laughter of Australian news hosts, she’s become the butt of jokes and not the celebrated children’s author she likely anticipated.

“The Bench” began as a personal and private poem to Prince Harry after the birth of their son, Archie. Of course, Meghan needs to publicize nearly everything she does and turned it into a book for the public. But, as it turns out, the people aren’t that interested in Meghan’s hypocritical tale of fatherhood. When you and your husband are estranged from your own fathers and you’ve only been parents for a little over two years, people are rather skeptical.

To increase slow sales, the former actress did a book reading on her one of her publisher’s YouTube pages called, Brightly Storytime. It hasn’t done well.

The video currently has 188,000 views, which is respectable, but it has 9,000 thumbs down votes vs. 6,000 thumbs up vote. That’s about 60/40 in terms of popularity.

Granted, some people went to the video just to put in their vote, but that the SussexSquad can’t balance out of the votes or pull it in a positive direction shows that Meghan remains one of the most disliked women in pop culture.

If the comments were turned on the situation would have been far worse, which is part of the reason why they wisely remained off.

The publisher’s response to the video would be interesting to know. It’s doubtful that many children’s books get such a negative response. The average amount of time some people spent watching would also be interesting to know. How many people clicked on the link but couldn’t bring themselves to listen to the whole thing?

Probably a fair amount.

The decision to release the audio version of her “book” publicly also demonstrates that the book isn’t selling. Why give something away for free when you can charge for it? Well, because they can’t get anyone to buy it.

In addition to the poor reception, parents are also calling out Meghan for continuing to refer to herself as the Duchess of Sussex, which means nothing to a child. 

As Twitter user Debbie succinctly put it, “Who introduces themselves as Duchess to kids—like they care?”

A children’s book won’t sell because a “duchess” wrote it as they simply don’t care, unless it’s actually a good and engaging book for a child. It isn’t. They might be interested in princesses, but does the title of duchess mean much? Probably not.

Meghan also talked about how the artist used watercolors at her request, going through some of the behind the scenes details that would go over a child’s head.

Sadly, a woman who wrote a children’s book clearly doesn’t seem to know much about children.

It’s not just the public that’s poking fun of Meghan, as Australian news casters couldn’t quite contain their laughter after hearing the former actress’ book dedication to her husband and child, which says, “For the man and the boy who make my heart go pump-pump.”

The utterly sappy line led to fits of laughter and a spontaneous rendition of “Pump Up the Jam” by Technotronic amoung the newscasters.

Today morning show in Australia Co-host Allison Langon said, “Why was it difficult to keep a straight face Alex, it’s a lovely story.”

Her sports presenter Alex Cullen responded, “It is a lovely story, it’s fascinating, fulfilling me in many ways.”

“As we always say, pump pump,” cohost Karl Stefanovic quipped.

This is probably not the reception that Meghan, nor her publisher, expected. Again, she gets plenty of publicity, but few follow through with purchasing. 

Regardless of Meghan’s publicity footprint, businesses are all about converting people into paying customers. If Meghan Markle can’t sell books, her publication deal is in jeopardy, or at the very least every idea will be heavily scrutinized from here on out for salability. She may be the Duchess of Sussex, but she hasn’t proved herself as an author.

At least, not yet. But Meghan is a hustler, she’ll keep trying.