Donald Trump’s memoir would be a cash cow and a moral dilemma – how publishers will deal with a score-settling book to follow those by Barack Obama, Mary Trump and John Bolton

Nov 27 , 2020

Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump holds a copy of his book, The Art of the Deal in June 2015. Publishing industry staff are conflicted over the possibility that he will publish a memoir after leaving The White House. Photo: Reuters

Donald Jr, Sean Hannity and Sarah Huckabee Sanders have already sold their stories in tell-all tomes and a presidential memoir on top would be a gold mine for publishers – but will their left-leaning workers walk out, like they did at Hachette over Woody Allen’s recent autobiography?

A presidential memoir has the US publishing industry abuzz, and it’s not former president Barack Obama’s hefty new tome.

The Washington Post has reported that President Donald Trump is exploring writing a “score-settling memoir” once he departs office, following the typical post-presidential route of selling an extremely well-compensated book.

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A poster of the cover of then-presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s 2015 book seen during the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland. Photo: AFP

There’s certainly precedent for books in the Trump pantheon; he’s already had his name on a suite of books, and the marketplace for Trump tell-alls and “inner circle” books has been booming. His son, Donald Trump Jr, topped the bestseller list (with some caveats) with his 2019 book Triggered, published by conservative Hachette imprint Center Street. He self-published his most recent book, Liberal Privilege.

Presidential memoirs are often a huge boon for publishers, and the “Big Five” major houses – Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster (soon to be “Big Four” with the last just bought by Penguin Random House) – snap them up. To acquire one is often a career high for publishers and editors, according to Publishers Weekly. Obama’s memoir just broke first-day-sales records, selling 890,000 copies. He and wife Michelle struck a joint book deal in 2017 for US$65 million.

The historically New York-centric publishing business is full of workers who lean left politically, but the “best-kept secret in publishing is that so much of the industry is supported by conservative authors”, an editor at a major publishing house told Business Insider.

And while Trump could decide to self-publish, as his son recently did, precedent suggests one of the “Big Four” will bag a deal with him, putting them on a collision course with their New York-based, left-leaning staff.

Business Insider spoke with 10 publishing workers and industry veterans about the brewing tensions over Trump’s potential memoir. All the lower-level workers spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fears over retribution in a competitive and low-paid industry. The White House declined a request to comment.