The ‘Trump Bump’ for Books Has Been Significant. Can It Continue?

February 16, 2021 5:45 PM

There’s no doubt that publishers are likely to soon face the end of a very lucrative era. "In sheer volume, Trump books dwarf works released about the previous administration during its first term: There have been more than 1,200 unique titles about Mr. Trump published in the last four years, compared to around 500 books about former President Barack Obama and his administration during his first term, according to an analysis by NPD BookScan."
posted by folklore724 (15 comments total)

1200 books that could have been written about something that your medulla dreams weren't already telling you. That's quite a loss.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 5:54 PM on February 16, 2021 [8 favorites]

I'd believe that number just on the amount of books about Trump I've seen at second hand bookstores. I wonder if more people were obsessively reading as many different books about the president they could, or many didn't bother to read any, but felt buying Comey or Woodward or Mary Trump's books counted as an act of Resistance. Heck, I bought Art of the Deal in Dec of 2016 expecting to learn something, but haven't even read it.
posted by riruro at 6:23 PM on February 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

"Heck, I bought Art of the Deal in Dec of 2016 expecting to learn something, but haven't even read it."

Sounds like you got the most you could out of it.
posted by deadaluspark at 6:53 PM on February 16, 2021 [15 favorites]

You can learn more about The Art Of The Deal by not reading it, really. New Yorker story about its ghostwriter is pretty good reading though.
posted by hippybear at 6:54 PM on February 16, 2021 [8 favorites]

Postmortems and zombification narratives might sustain them for a while, though.
posted by jamjam at 7:36 PM on February 16, 2021

I mean, there's still a lot of other Nazis in the USA to write about...also he's not been convicted yet.
posted by eustatic at 7:43 PM on February 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

I mean, publishers just need to open Houston and Baton Rouge offices, Texas is still in charge of the country.

The main issue is the lack of journalists in the most interesting states.
posted by eustatic at 7:45 PM on February 16, 2021

I read some of it all as library books for the shock factor, but I wouldn't still be bothering now even if I had library access.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:02 PM on February 16, 2021

> I bought Art of the Deal in Dec of 2016 expecting to learn something, but haven't even read it.

Trump didn't really write it, so you not really reading it seems like the most faithful way to consume the work.
posted by Syllepsis at 10:34 PM on February 16, 2021 [9 favorites]

Ratio of valentines to hatched jobs to measured reporting would be interesting. Of course getting people to agree to what constitutes those terms would be a challenge, but still - interesting
posted by BWA at 4:46 AM on February 17, 2021

Having them published doesn't mean they have sold or sold well.

A lot of them are basically listicles: X inspiration quotes from Y, or Z, an unauthorized biography which is basically rewritten Wikipedia article (I actually don't know if those two books exist, I'm just being a bit sarcastic, but I would not be surprised if they do exist)

Most of Trump's own books are probably ghostwritten. He's way too egotistical and too much of a bull****ter to be a good author. IMHO, of course.
posted by kschang at 4:47 AM on February 17, 2021

I think a lot of people feel like they don't need to read more about him.

Aside from skimming the Mary Trump book, I've only read one DT-related book: Team of Vipers. It was kinda odd, the author's POV was twitchy.
posted by ovvl at 6:31 AM on February 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

I've read a looot of Trump books (that is, books about the administration, not ones he 'wrote'). Most of them are not that good, and the most popular ones are seldom the best. The Michael Wolff ones rely heavily on Steve Bannon; the Woodward ones, and the ones focused on Russia (Craig Unger's are probably the best), were outdated before they were even published (probably unavoidable); the accounts by former allies like Omarosa and John Bolton are not all that well-written (Peter Strzok's 'Compromised' isn't terrible though, and Michael Cohen's book has a weird Goodfellas vibe if you're into that); never-Trumpers like Stuart Stevens and Rick Wilson are sometimes entertaining, but they're also often assholes (Max Boot's the pick of the litter in that group).

There are quite a few that I would recommend--Timothy Snyder's 'On Tyranny,' Masha Gessen's 'Surviving Autocracy,' Katy Tur's 'Unbelievable,' Tim Alberta's 'American Carnage,' Michiko Kutakami's 'The Death of Truth,' Jean Guerrero's 'Hatemonger,' James Poniewozek's 'Audience of One,' Michael Lewis' 'The Fifth Risk,' Amanda Carpenter's 'Gaslighting America,' Sarah Kendzior's 'Hiding in Plain Sight,' Talia Lavin's 'Culture Warlords,' Carlos Lozada's 'What Were We Thinking' (a meta-review of Trump books by a literary critic--if you're going to read one, this might be the one), and I'm sure I'm forgetting some, hi Kurt Anderson--but there are a lot more that I would not.
posted by box at 9:18 AM on February 17, 2021 [11 favorites]

^ I feel like you took one for the team, box. Then you took another one, and another.. mind you don't trip over that cape, your heroic work is appreciated!!
posted by elkevelvet at 9:47 AM on February 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

American Carnage was very good and it really serves as a quick primer on how the GOP evolved from Goldwater to Reagan to Gingrich to Bush to Tea Party to Trump.

Not listed in Box's rundown that I thought did a good job was 'A Very Stable Genius' by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig.
posted by mmascolino at 5:02 PM on February 17, 2021