Paul Farhi: “Not too long ago, books about Donald Trump were the safest bet in publishing. Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff’s tell-all about Trump’s chaotic first year in office, was a monster best seller in 2018, as were his subsequent Trump books in 2019 and 2021. Each volume of Bob Woodward’s three-part chronicle of Trump’s first term (Fear, Rage, and Peril) all reached the top of the New York Times nonfiction list.”
“Insider accounts (such as Unhinged, by Omarosa Manigault Newman, briefly a Trump-administration official), polemics (Triggered, by Donald Trump Jr.), and other journalistic narratives captivated readers, too. All told, during his first term, at least 20 Trump-related books hit the top spot on the Times list.”
“Now the best-seller lists tell a different story: The Trump-book bubble has burst. This is no doubt partly the result of reader fatigue—there are only so many Trump books any one politics junkie can be expected to buy. But the president himself might be personally undermining the value proposition of books about his favorite subject.”

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