The Trump Bump
Few would have predicted that Donald Trump’s presidency would give a boost to book sales. Even fewer would have predicted that it would bring back into vogue several classic titles.
There have been many news stories on the phenomenon, as we reported earlier, after several older books, including George Orwell’s 65-year-old title, 1984 began rising on Amazon’s sales rankings, Today, the USA Today best seller list confirms that these books are selling well across all outlets, and Orwell’s dystopian novel is #1.
A spokesman for mass market publisher Signet puts that into perspective, telling USA Today, “we have printed in one week more copies of 1984 than we sell in a typical year.”
Several other titles are also getting boosts. At #25 is Hannah Arendt’s 1951 examination of the rise of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
On the other hand, somewhat further down the list at #38 is Trump’s own book, Trump: The Art of the Deal, (PRH/Ballantine).
Last night, Trump helped to fuel sales of the upcoming Dangerous by Milo Yiannopoulos (S&S/Threshold, March), currently at #5 on Amazon’s rankings, by jumping into the controversy that surrounds that book. The author, a senior editor at the right wing site Breitbart, who has been accused of hate speech, was set to speak at at UC Berkeley, but that appearance was cancelled due to violent protests. Trump tweeted the threat, “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view – NO FEDERAL FUNDS?”