J6 Hearings May Kill Trump Book Bump

By J. Max Robins, July 14, 2022

During the four years Donald Trump occupied the White House, his scandal-ridden presidency was disastrous for democracy—but great for the business, as one-too-many smug TV executives noted. Of course, it wasn’t only the TV news business that got a Trump Bump. Publishing, an industry that had long been in the doldrums, got a turbocharged boost through the countless chronicles of Trump’s reign.

Books such as Fear, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costas, as well as Too Much is Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, by The Donald’s niece Mary L. Trump, among many other tomes that topped bestseller lists. Books eviscerating Trump were hardly alone in racking up sales. Plenty of titles that lionized the twice-impeached POTUS, including All Out War: The Plot to Destroy Trump, by Edward Klein and The Russian Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump, by Gregg Jarrett were also hits.

Publishers, Kiss Your Money Good-Bye

However, that was all before the “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol” was televised. If I were a publisher who had doled out a high-six-figure advance for an as-yet-unpublished inside look at the Trump administration, I’d be kissing that money goodbye. The initial seven installments of Jan. 6 committee’s brilliantly produced episodes have been so horrifically compelling that each episode should be emblazoned with a “spoiler alert” for anybody who has pre-ordered such a book set for release this fall…along with a rating reading, “Warning: This program contains smoking guns.”

I have to wonder if publishers watching the hearings have already cut back press runs on high-profile Trump-related titles due this fall, such as Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, by New York Times scribe Maggie Haberman or The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 by the Times’s Peter Baker and The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser. As for the August release of Jared Kushner’s Breaking History: A White House Memoir, as we say here in Brooklyn, ‘fuggedaboutit!”

After the Jan. 6 committee wraps up its drama-filled run, will there really be that much to read about that we haven’t learned already? None of these vaunted journalists – not Haberman nor Woodward, Baker nor Glasser – were able to give us the scoop of a Trump attempted coup, with such detail, for example, as when he demanded his Secret Service detail drive his limousine to lead the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. And really, haven’t we had enough Trump-related drama in book form for a lifetime? [According to an NPD BookScan analysis, there were 1,200 Trump-related titles published during his time in office, compared to 400 during Obama’s first term.]

The golden orange sales glow from Trump titles already had begun to fade last spring, when a bunch of books by ex-Trump insiders tanked. Among the losers: The Chief’s Chief, by Mark Meadows; Here’s the Deal: A Memoir, by Kellyanne Conway and I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the White House by Stephanie Grisham. The headline of a recent Politico article succinctly summed it up: “Book Bombs: Trump Aide Tell-alls Fail to Sell.” Compare that headline to one from last August about the cash windfall being enjoyed by the publishing industry thanks to Donald Trump: “Trump Books Keep Coming and Readers Can’t Stop Buying.”

Souring on Trump

The impact of the Jan. 6 committee hearings have already had a negative impact on Donald Trump’s standing. Not that long ago, he was a heavy odds-on 2024 favorite, but a recent New York Times poll found that more than 50 percent of Republican voters hoped that someone other than Trump would make a White House run. In a related vein, I believe, when the Jan. 6 committee wraps up its stellar Emmy-worthy summer run, the legions of Trump book buyers will have had enough 2020 Loser-in-Chief-related drama. There may be a couple of outliers that make the bestseller lists. A major publishing house might shell out for Cassidy Hutchinson’s memoir, should the committee’s breakout star get the itch. Still, like Trump’s prospects for a return White House engagement, the unprecedented ka-ching for Trump-related books is likely a thing of the past. With a couple of episodes still to go, the Jan. 6 committee has likely driven a stake through the heart of the Trump Bump book bonanza.

J. Max Robins (@jmaxrobins) is  executive director of the Center for Communication. The former editor-in-chief of Broadcasting & Cable, he has contributed to publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Columbia Journalism Review and Forbes. Read more from J. Max Robins at www.jmaxrobins.com

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