Simon & Schuster saw its biggest pre-order in history and sold more than 900,000 copies on release day for Fear: Trump in the White House—the latest political title to bolster nonfiction sales
As we go to press, Simon & Schuster reports that Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward has sold more than 1.1 million copies in its first week, combining all formats and pre-orders as well as still-unfulfilled orders. The publisher has ordered a tenth printing less than a week after the September 11 release.
And did you hear that the book sold 750,000 copies in all formats plus pre-orders on the first day? Wrong. A revised figure has just been publicized by S&S: 900,000. As Simon & Schuster’s president and publisher puts it, the word for the Woodward book is huge. Barnes & Noble told Alex Green of Publishers Weekly that the demand was the biggest since the release of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman in the summer of 2014 from HarperCollins. Simon & Schuster relayed to Publishing Perspectives that Woodward launched with foreign rights sales in 11 territories and/or languages. Less than a week later, that figure had jumped to 24 territories.
All this dovetails with NPD BookScan reports citing 2 percent growth in adult nonfiction titles for the first half of the year: religious titles, cookbooks, and political releases. The bestselling title so far in 2018: Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, which was the first big political book about Trump, released in January by Macmillan.
You’re not alone if you notice that our bookseller-in-chief is helping fuel book sales, especially sales of books by those he criticizes on Twitter. James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty is at number three on the year’s list of bestselling titles. And James Patterson and Bill Clinton’s The President Is Missing is at number nine. A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, the overtly political title about Mike Pence’s male rabbit falling in love with another male bunny, is at number six.
NPD reports adult fiction sales are still on the decline—by 4 percent in the first half of the year. The two main areas of downturn are romance and religious fiction, even as religious nonfiction climbs. Maybe escapism should be expected to sell these days: science fiction (up 18 percent) and mystery-detective titles (up 5 percent) are the bright spots.
Many more political books are in the pipeline. Strong entries include Republican strategist Rick Wilson’s Everything Trump Touches Dies (Simon & Schuster/Free Press), GOP commentator Ann Coulter’s Resistance Is Futile! (Penguin Sentinel), and CNN analyst April Ryan’s Under Fire (Rowman & Littlefield) about reporting from the Trump White House.
Busting the Barricades (Macmillan) by Fox News’ Laura Ingraham and The Corrosion of Conservatism by Washington Post columnist Max Boot (Norton) are both due out October 9. And there are five or 10 more titles on top of those in the works, all angling for some of the sales action in political nonfiction. Not to be outdone, Knopf has announced that it’s the publisher to capture Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel’s The Nation City: Why Mayors Run the World for release in spring 2020—on the run-up to you-know-what elections.
Bottom line: During its presentation at BookExpo this year, NPD said that print sales of political titles following the 2016 election are nearly double those following the 2012 election. They’re also doing well in digital format—up 22 percent compared to a decline of 5 percent for all ebooks tracked. In June, they noted that more political books aren’t in fact being published, but that existing titles are selling better. That may change if more publishers and authors rush to the market with new titles—possibly some not as well-conceived or as well-edited as the Woodward book.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
