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  • 2018-11-27 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Michelle Obama's Book Sell More Copies in One Week Than Donald Trump's Did in 32 Years? (en)
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  • An image graphic comparing the book sales of Michelle Obama's autobiographical memoir Becoming and Donald Trump's business tome Trump: The Art of the Deal was widely shared on social media in November 2018. The bragging point it offered was that the former first lady's book had sold considerably more copies in one week than the current president's book had in over three decades: However, we have to note from the beginning that accurate book sales figures are often difficult to determine, especially given the wide variety of retail outlets and publishing formats that comprise today's literary marketplace. Moreover, as Electric Literature noted, sales figures can refer to any one of several metrics: That said, the numbers presented here were at least taken from reasonably credible sources. On 21 November 2018, Crown Publishing reported to the Associated Press that Michelle Obama's memoir had sold 1.4 million copies since it had been released a week earlier: The Art of the Deal was also a hit when it was first published in 1987, spending 13 weeks at the top of the New York Times best-seller list. Just how many copies it has sold over the last thirty-plus years is difficult to determine, however, especially since its publication antedated the adoption of the Nielsen BookScan sales tracking system. According to the 2005 book TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, Trump's first publishing effort had an initial print run of 150,000 copies, and an additional 170,000 copies have been sold since Nielsen Bookscan started keeping track of sales in 2001, which leaves a considerable gap of time unmeasured. The figure cited in this graphic likely stems from a 2016 CBS News report report that quoted a source familiar with the book's sales stating that 1.1 million copies of Art of the Deal had been sold since its initial publication. The New Yorker magazine reported a similar figure in a tell-all article centered on the book's ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz: Regardless of the exact sales numbers, this meme doesn't really offer an apt comparison of the popularity of these two very different political figures, for a number of reasons: (en)
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