“I think it speaks to the
Newt Gingrich’s “Trump’s America” more than 50,000 copies since early June, and Jerome Corsi’s “Killing the Deep State” more than 60,000 since May.
Pirro’s “Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy” reached the top 300 on Amazon.com’s best-seller list three weeks before publication. Jarrett’s book, which Trump called “A MUST READ!” in a May tweet, made the top 300 a month before its release.
“There’s an audience out there, and we’re trying to serve it,” says Rolf Zettersten, founder and publisher of the conservative Center Street imprint, where authors include Gingrich, Lewandowski, Scaramucci and Pirro. Zettersten started the Nashville-based Center Street, part of Hachette Book Group, in 2004 as a publisher for books appealing to the “heartland.” He said that Trump’s election had led to a bigger market for topical works.
“I think it speaks to the sense that we’re more polarized than in years past,” he says.
Publishing usually works inversely to whichever party controls the White House. The presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama brought on a wave of conservative best-sellers and helped lead to the rise of such pundits as Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly. While George W. Bush was in office, liberals responded with publications by Paul Krugman, Michael Moore, David Corn and many others. Al Franken, not yet a politician, wrote the 2003 bestseller “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.” Dozens of anti-Trump works have come out since he took office, and the number grows steadily.
But the upcoming pro-Trump publications reinforce the difference between his presidency and those of his predecessors. As Richard Nixon faced the 1970s Watergate scandal, few books came out in his defense and none compared in impact to “All the President’s Men,” the best-seller by Washington Post investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The most notable pro-Nixon release was “The Personal Nixon: Staying on the Summit,” by presidential supporter Rabbi Baruch M. Korff, who at the time said he had personally financed the 1974 book.
Now, the conservative movement is far more organized, and publishing far quicker. The stakes may also be higher. Presidential historian Michael Beschloss noted that Trump, unlike Nixon, was “not only in a position to run for reelection but also facing a midterm, in which his approval rating will be an important factor.” Elizabeth Drew, the author and longtime political reporter, struggled to cite any pro-Nixon books during his White House years. She called the pro-Trump books a “phenomenon” unique to his presidency.