Trump books 'struggling' as public fatigue sets in

03 January

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the announcement of new fuel economy standards, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 3, 2025. REUTERS Brian Snyder

The Atlantic reports a once-reliable moneymaking subgenre of nonfiction is no longer making money.

Books pertaining to “Trump-the-conqueror volumes, designed to appeal to his base,” have “lost its juice,” reports the Atlantic.

“After 10 years of Trump the politician, even readers who were once hungry to learn about the man they’d voted for seem to have had their fill. Newt Gingrich’s Trump’s Triumph lasted only two weeks on the nonfiction chart in June,” writes former Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi. “Despite cable-news attention, The Greatest Comeback Ever, by the Fox News commentator Joe Concha, was a one-week wonder in May. So was the CNN pundit Scott Jennings’s ARevolution of Common Sense, published in November. Eric Trump’s Under Siege: My Family’s Fight to Save Our Nation landed in the top spot in November, but lasted only three weeks on the list. The one certifiable hit has been Melania Trump’s eponymous memoir.”

“These are some really terrific books with important reporting in them, but it just seems like the public is exhausted at the moment,” New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker told Farhi. “They’re inundated with Trump at every hour of the day, and they may want to use their personal reading time for something more escapist.”

Baker and his wife, New Yorker columnist Susan Glasser, co-wrote The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017–2021, which was a top-seller — but that was in 2022.

ABC News journalist and author Jonathan Karl told Farhi that “coming out cold with a Trump book right now would probably be a tougher sell than it was five years ago. The world is not obsessing about Trump’s actions today the way they were during his first term.”

Karl is the author of several best-selling books about Trump’s two terms. Despite heavy investment from the publisher, Karl admitted his most recent volume — Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America — lasted only a week on the Times nonfiction list in November.

“The hot topic in political publishing over the past year seems to have been Trump’s 2024 opponents, not Trump,” said Farhi, as public attention appears to turn instead to Trump’s Democratic enemies.

“Original Sin, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s account of Joe Biden’s physical and cognitive decline, was a best seller for much of the summer,” said Farhi. “Kamala Harris’s memoir about the 2024 election, 107 Days, is still on the chart after three months. No recent book about Trump has approached those numbers.”

Read the Atlantic report at this link.

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