Booksellers in Santa Fe and beyond have no ‘Fear’
Copies of Woodward book on Trump White House hard to find; readers advised to reserve theirs before new shipment
At Collected Works Bookstore, the red-hued tome didn’t even hit the shelves before it was gone.
Owners of the Santa Fe-based independent bookseller ordered 40 copies of Fear: Trump in the White House, by Bob Woodward, ahead of its release Sept. 11, “which is a lot for a bookstore,” said Kaya Learnard, an employee in the shop on Galisteo Street, near the Plaza.
By the night of Sept. 10, all copies were spoken for, thanks to early orders. It was “very abnormal,” Learnard said.
“People have been coming in every day since and calling and asking if we have them,” she added.
In independent Santa Fe bookstores — and in shops big and small from coast to coast — Woodward’s controversial exposé is flying off shelves at speeds that shock even seasoned sellers.
Simon & Schuster, the book’s New York-based publisher, reported preorder and first-day sales of 750,000 copies. Preorder sales topped those of any Simon & Schuster title in company history, according to a news release.
Fear is billed as an intimate look at the leader of a chaotic, unhinged White House. Woodward drew on hundreds of hours of interviews with inside sources, according to the publisher.
It is the top-selling book on Amazon.com, where it also is sold out. The site lists an estimated delivery date between Oct. 2 and Oct. 15. The audiobook and e-reader versions are
available for purchase.
This past week, the publisher ordered a ninth printing, which will up the total hardcover copies in print to 1.15 million.
It is that ninth printing that Santa Fe book hawkers await.
Fifty-two copies will ship to Collected Works within the month. Of those, 17 already are reserved, Learnard said. At Garcia Street Books, owner Jean Devine said 24 of the 25 or so books she has on order already are reserved.
“Every day we get more people, and I just say, ‘You’d better put your name on the list,’ ” Devine said.
The flurry of volumes promising insider looks at the Trump administration — Fear, Michael Wolff ’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House and A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, by James Comey, among others — have proved a boon to independent booksellers, said Phil Geronimo, a salesman at op.cit. books Santa Fe.
“It means a lot of money on one day,” he said. At op.cit., in the DeVargas Center, the few copies of Fear that made it to bookshelves sold “in, like, an hour,” he said. “It does generate revenue and … it gets people into the store that wouldn’t normally come.”