The charged political environment was a big topic at the BookExpo at the Javits Convention Center this week, with signs that more big books on politics are on the way.
John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, the parent company of Henry Holt, which published Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury,” recalled that he was at a Phoenix sales meeting in January when he first heard that lawyers for President Trump were demanding that the book be halted pre-publication.
“To be honest, my first reaction was: We’re going to sell a lot of books,” said Sargent. He moved up the on-sale date by a week and has sold over 2.2 million copies in all formats so far, he said.
First-time author John Dwyre, with a walker and a Vietnam Veteran cap, approached Sargent after the panel.
“Thanks for having balls,” he said. “What these guys do is just as important as what any man with a gun does,” said Dwyre.
Carolyn Reidy, the CEO of Simon and Schuster, admitted she was still scrambling to find books on the current political climate surrounding Trump’s presidency.
“We hope to have some coming this fall,” she hinted. She is publishing Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Leadership in Turbulent Times” in September — but that’s covering Abraham Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt and LBJ. John Kerry’s “Every Day Is Extra” hits Sept. 4.
“Becoming,” the memoir by former first lady Michelle Obama, will be the mega-book from Penguin Random House this fall. “It hits on Nov. 13, one week after the midterm elections,” said CEO Markus Dohle.
Regarding President Obama’s memoir, he said, “We hope to have that out in 2019.” PRH reportedly paid a record-shattering $65 million for global rights in all formats for both memoirs.
On the opposite side of the political divide, Sean Spicer, the press secretary to Trump in his turbulent first year, also drew a big crowd for his appearance on the downtown stage at Javits to hype his book, “The Briefing: Politics, The Press and The President,” which is being published by Regnery on July 24.