Mod: Why would anyone spend $35 bucks on a book Trump wrote when you can easily get all the same crap for free on Fox News? Trump insists he’s writing ‘book of all books’ but big publishers unlikely to touch it (The Guardianlink): Donald Trump has insisted he is writing “the book of all books” – even though major figures in US publishing said on Tuesday that no big house is likely to touch a memoir by the 45th president because it might stoke “a staff uprising” and it would be “too hard to get a book that was factually accurate”.
When
Trump left the
White House in January, the
Washington Post said he made
30,573 false or misleading claims while in power. The comments by publishing insiders were reported by
Politico.
Former presidents traditionally turn to their memoirs when they leave office after two terms, like Barack Obama, or are kicked out of it after one, like Trump. Ever since the Guardian broke news of Michael Wolff’s first White House tell-all, Fire and Fury, in January 2018, books about Trump and his presidency have proved a goldmine.
In a statement last week,
Trump, 75, said he “turned down two book deals, from the most unlikely of publishers”, which he did not name.
“I do not want a deal right now,” he said. “I’m writing like crazy anyway, however, and when the time comes, you’ll see the book of all books.”
The New York Times reported that a two-book, seven-figure deal with
Simon & Schuster won by
Mike Pence was “grating” on
Trump. A
Trump spokesman denied that. But the former vice-president’s deal also caused problems for
Simon & Schuster, when staff members said the company should not promote bigotry.
Book deals by other rightwingers have run into problems in relation to the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, in service of Trump’s lie about electoral fraud and attempt to overturn his election defeat.
Simon & Schuster dropped a book on antitrust by the
Missouri senator
Josh Hawley, who encouraged rioters and objected to electoral college results in
Arizona and
Pennsylvania. But
The Tyranny of Big Tech was picked up by
Regnery, a rightwing publisher – and distributed by
Simon & Schuster.
A
Trump memoir could similarly be published outside the mainstream. After all, he has had bestsellers before – if with the help of ghost writers.
Tony Schwartz, who wrote
Trump’s 1987 hit
The Art of the Deal, now says the book should have been called
The Sociopath.
On Tuesday, Politico reported that senior figures at Penguin Random House, Hachette, Harper Collins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster said they would not touch a Trump book.
“It would be too hard to get a book that was factually accurate, actually,” one was quoted as saying. “That would be the problem. If he can’t even admit that he lost the election, then how do you publish that?”
Mod: More at the link.
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