Trump says he’s written “the book of all books”. Publishers are skeptical.
Alas, Trump news: the former president, in a . . . well . . . Trumpian statement, has announced out of nowhere that he is writing “the book of all books” and he is “writing like crazy.” Journalist Maggie Haberman posits that this statement was fueled by Trump’s jealousy of his former vice president Mike Pence’s lucrative book deal with Simon & Schuster.
Trump’s statement claims he has turned down two book deals from “the most unlikely of publishers” because he “do[es] not want to do such a deal right now.” Well, who? Politico has reported that sources at the “Big Five” publishers—Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster—all said they hadn’t heard about potential Trump book offers, and most said they would never consider publishing Trump, simply for fact-checking reasons.
“It doesn’t matter what the upside on a Trump book deal is, the headaches the project would bring would far outweigh the potential in the eyes of a major publisher,” said Keith Urbahn, president of literary and creative agency Javelin, to Politico. “Any editor bold enough to acquire the Trump memoir is looking at a fact-checking nightmare, an exodus of other authors, and a staff uprising in the unlikely event they strike a deal with the former president.”
When Trump’s “book of all books” is finished, it’s more likely that he’ll publish with an explicitly conservative imprint, like Threshold at S&S or Broadside Books at HarperCollins. In a statement, a spokesperson for conservative imprint Regnery said, “We are happy to speak with President Trump when he is ready to publish his book.” Or perhaps he’ll publish with newly announced publishing company All Seasons Press, launched “to publish the best writers, politicians, and pundits in the conservative movement,” who have refused to disclose their backers to the Wall Street Journal. We’ll see!
