Most of the year’s best-selling books have been connected to the president in one way or another. (Then there are self-help books but, well, people need help.) Michael Wolff’s juicy insider account of Trump’s first year in office, Fire and Fury, has so far sold more than two and a half million copies in all formats, and Bob Woodward’s Fear sold 1.1 million copies in its first week alone — a record for Simon & Schuster. Fired FBI Director James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty, which took time out from upholding democratic norms to mock Trump’s small hands and orange skin, came in third among the tell-alls, selling a million copies since April.
Trump isn’t the first president who’s been good for the books. After John F. Kennedy told a reporter that he was a fan of James Bond, the spy novels leapt onto the bestseller list, and when Barack Obama included Lush Life on his summer vacation reading list, sales of the Richard Price novel doubled.
Under Trump, sales have grown by double-digits each year — up 32% through November compared to the same period in 2017 — whereas they fell off rapidly in Obama’s second year. The volume of published political books hasn’t grown, but sales have exploded — 4.2 million copies so far this year compared to 2.7 million in 2010. “And the contents are different,” Risbridger added. The big sellers under Obama were Bush’s memoir and Game Change, about the 2008 campaign. This year’s blockbusters were ripped from (and fed) the headlines — and all of them were about you-know-who.
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