Donald Trump Saves the Publishing Industry!

If you want to write a bestseller, he’s your topic.

In the last couple years, Donald Trump has sold a lot of books.  I mean, he hasn’t written the books, but he’s the star of them.  After all, you can’t have a bestselling Donald Trump book without Donald Trump.

It seems that every anti-Donald Trump book becomes a bestseller.  Fear by Bob Woodward has sold more copies in its first week  than any other book in Simon & Schuster history, and it’s already on its tenth printing.     Before that, a reality star wrote a book about Trump, and it became a bestseller even though everybody hates the reality star.  A former FBI director wrote a book about Trump, and it became a bestseller, even though people who hate Trump blame the former FBI director for helping Trump win.  A porn star is writing a book about her experiences with Trump, and that will become a bestseller because she’s a porn star and the stories just have to be awesome.

I mean, you know the world will be disappointed if the porn star says that Trump just wanted to cuddle.

Donald Trump might get blamed for stuff that’s not his fault, but he also can take credit for stuff he didn’t necessarily cause.  That’s the trade-off when you become a politician.  In this case, Trump can boast that he’s saved the book industry.  Book publishers have been complaining about stagnant sales over the last few years.  Barnes & Noble is struggling.  Streaming services are putting out so much content that people don’t have time to read.  But now if a book company needs to spike sales, they can just publish a bunch of hit pieces on Donald Trump.

Unfortunately, this is one of those times when I wonder if my brain works differently from everybody else’s.  I don’t understand why people who hate Donald Trump want to buy books about Donald Trump.

Don’t get me wrong, I have issues with Donald Trump, just like everybody else, but I don’t need to buy a book to find out bad stuff about him.  I can just turn on any news channel or the radio or get on the internet and find out bad stuff about Donald Trump.  I’m a cheapskate.  I don’t want to spend $25 on a hardback book just to get something I can hear for free.

Besides, I can’t live my life being outraged by politicians, especially today.  I see too many people consumed by outrage over today’s current events (which won’t stay current for very long).  Each outrage against Trump is devoured the next day by the next day’s outrage, so every outrage is outdated the next day.

The same holds true for anti-Trump books.  Each anti-Trump book gets outdated by the next one.  It must be exhausting being somebody who is outraged at Trump all the time.  Plus, it gets pretty expensive if you’re buying all the books.

These book sales have to tick off any political writer who is trying to write serious analysis about the Trump administration.  Trump spends most of the day with business leaders or world leaders or rallies or golf courses, and all anybody talks about are rumors and tweets.  There’s serious stuff going on with the tariffs and the Chinese and the North Koreans and NAFTA and it’s all connected, but the journalists who want us to rely on them for information are focused on stuff that is not necessarily serious.

Maybe Trump should open his own book store but not tell anybody he owns it (that’s probably illegal, but since when has that stopped politicians?).  He could hire a bunch of authors to write nasty books about him, put them in his bookstore, and then pocket the profits.  It’s a win-win.  He gets his political opponents to spend all their money… on him.  Most politicians have to use the IRS or the tax code to get that done.

Plus, this could help Trump compete against Jeff Bezos in their quests for world domination.  Jeff Bezos has the Washington Post.  Donald Trump could start the Trump Post.  It sounds like the word compost, so late night comedians could make fun of it.  But it would still make a lot of money.  It would be so pro-Trump that even FOX News might get mad at it.

I don’t like writing about politics, but I have to sometimes because it affects books and publishing.  Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post (which is very political) and Amazon (which sells a lot of books, including mine), so it’s impossible for a book blogger to ignore it.  Again, let me be clear about this.  Even though I don’t like politics, I pay attention.  I have my opinions.  I vote.  I’m aware of most of what’s going on, but I don’t get much/any of my Trump information from political books.

But don’t let me stop anyone from buying anti-Trump books (I don’t have that kind of influence anyway).  If these books end up saving the publishing industry, then I’m all for them!