Miley the Sexed-Up Minor Boosts 'Vanity Fair' Sales

Annnie Leibovitz's outrage-baiting didn't do much for Vogue, but it helped give Vanity Fair its best-selling issue of the year.

The June issue of the Condé Nast-owned glossy, featuring a controversially sexy photoshoot with Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus, sold 435,000 newsstand copies, according to ABC Rapid Report. (Condé Nast also owns Portfolio.) That's hardly a blockbuster for Vanity Fair -- its September 2005 issue, with Jennifer Aniston on the cover, sold 740,000 copies -- but it's still the strongest seller since last November. Not bad for an issue whose cover image was a 40-year-old photo of Robert F. Kennedy. The story elicited a record number of letters from Vanity Fair readers, according to WWD.

Leibovitz, who said her photo of the 15-year-old Cyrus in a suggestive pose -- seemingly topless, amid disheveled bed sheets -- was "misinterpreted," also photographed the April issue of Vogue, with NBA star LeBron James and model Gisele Bundchen. Critics accused Leibovitz of modeling her composition on an old poster of a rampaging gorilla. As I reported last week, that issue sold poorly on newsstands.