While Donald Trump is shilling his first post-presidential book, a picture book, for $74.99 (or $229.99 for a signed copy), he and his allies are planning to publish the tome through a new publishing house, Winning Team Publishing, run by a campaign aide and his son, Junior.
According to Politico, Trump has not yet signed an expected eight-figure deal with established publishers, even though Barack and Michelle Obama signed a joint $65 million deal with Penguin and George W. Bush got a $7 million deal with Crown Publishing. Trump’s opponent in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, signed an $8 million deal with Simon & Schuster, while her husband got $21 million from Knopf for his memoir.
The Big Five publishers–Penguin/Random House, Hachette, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, and MacMillan–have shied away from courting Trump even as some of them contracted with members of Trump’s administration like Jared Kushner and Kellyanne Conway.
The publishers wish to avoid connections with Trump, who cheered on domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol on January 6th. Trump left office with the lowest approval rating in the modern era, and he never breached 50% job approval while in office.
By not working with Trump, the major publishing houses also avoid the potential backlash from having to fact check a manuscript written on Trump’s behalf–even if Trump himself didn’t write it. With a reputation for avoiding inconvenient facts, Trump’s draft memoir would likely require a reputable publisher to edit or omit false information in the book, which would likely draw the ire of Trump and his followers. Forgoing a Trump book also means these publishers can avoid sullying their reputations in the inevitable flood of defamation suits a Trump book would spur.
Just as he has attempted to do with social media platforms that have blacklisted him, Trump is circumventing traditional outlets and opting to create an option that he controls. His social media platform, Truth Social, has yet to launch, and his first attempt at a social media site turned out to be a blog. He abandoned the effort to start Gettr, which was led by his former staffer, Jason Miller.