Bob Woodward's account of a dysfunctional Trump White House has already sold more than 750,000 copies, Simon & Schuster (a division of CBS) said Wednesday, a day after the book arrived in stores. "Fear" is virtually assured of joining Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury" as a million-selling takedown of Trump. The pace of sales, which include print, e-books and an audio edition, is among the fastest in memory for a nonfiction work. In 2004, Bill Clinton's memoir "My Life" sold more than 1 million copies within eight days. "Fear" has dominated political headlines since reports about it emerged last week. The book portrays Mr. Trump as an ill-informed and dishonest president and the West Wing staff as trying to minimize the damage. As with "Fire and Fury" and other anti-Trump books, the president has condemned "Fear" as false, variously calling it "a joke," "fiction," and "a scam." Some former White House officials who spoke with Woodward have tried to distance themselves from the book. The president's son Eric Trump appeared on "Fox & Friends" on Wednesday to denounce the book and was lambasted by critics for his choice of language. "You can write a sensational nonsense book. CNN will definitely have you on there because they love to trash the president," Eric Trump said. "It'll mean you sell three extra books, you make three extra shekels." The reference to "three extra shekels" drew criticism from people who believed it had anti-Semitic undertones. Woodward is not Jewish. In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Woodward said that Americans "better wake up to what's going on." "You look at the operation of this White House and you have to say, 'Let's hope to God we don't have a crisis,'" Woodward said. Woodward, since becoming famous in the 1970s for his Watergate reporting, has written several best-sellers about sitting presidents. "Fear" had more preorders than any other book in Simon & Schuster's history, according to the publisher, which has previously released such best-sellers as Hillary Clinton's "Living History" and Walter Isaacson's "Steve Jobs."<doc-sep>WASHINGTON – After standing in line at midnight at her local bookstore Monday, Carol Baume was one of the first readers to pick up a copy of Bob Woodward's explosive new book on President Donald Trump. She also became an international news star. There were nearly as many reporters as customers as "Fear: Trump in the White House" went on sale Tuesday at Karmerbooks & Afterwards, about a mile from the White House. And most of the camera crews were from other countries. "Do you think this will be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency?" a Finnish reporter asked Baume. Reporters from Germany, Japan and the Czech Republic took their turns with repetitive questions. Bob Woodward on Donald Trump and 'Fear':Is it time to feel afraid? Why did she come to the bookstore in the middle of the night? She's a night owl so she was up anyway. Is she going to read the book right away? She'll at least look through it. Does she think it will change anything? She hopes it will push people to vote in the midterm elections. In between foreign interviews, Baume told USA TODAY that while she had expected the book's release to be a local story, she was taken aback by the international attention. But David Mirejovsky, a reporter for a Czech Republic public television, seemed surprised that anyone would be surprised at the level of interest. "Bob Woodward," he said, "is very well known in the Czech Republic."<doc-sep>Americans have found a book they just can’t put down — any book, as long as it’s about President Donald Trump. Bob Woodward’s “Fear,” Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury,” James Comey’s “A Higher Loyalty,” and Omarosa Manigault Newman’s “Unhinged” have all topped the nonfiction best-seller charts this year — with Woodward's title selling 750,000 copies through the end of its first day on sale, publisher Simon & Schuster reported. Copies of the book "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" by author Michael Wolff at the Book Culture book store in New York on Jan. 5, 2018. Shannon Stapleton / Reuters file "We haven’t seen an adult title sell this quickly in over three years," said Liz Harwell, senior director of merchandising, trade books at Barnes & Noble, noting that the White House exposé has had the "fastest sales for an adult title since Harper Lee’s 'Go Set a Watchman' was released in July 2015." The soaring market in political titles is a stark contrast to 2008, the year President Barack Obama was elected, when the year's best-sellers on Amazon included Eckhart Tolle’s self-help book, “A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose” and David Zinczenko's latest volume of "Eat This, Not That." The pre-orders for Woodward's book were "off the charts," Jonathan Karp, president and publisher at Simon & Schuster, told NBC News. "The book is going to be No. 1 in the U.K., Canada, Australia and even India. We are reprinting in all these countries, it’s going to be a global phenomenon." “This is a hinge in American history and a lot of readers and voters are trying to figure out how to turn the country in the direction they think it should go,” he said. But it isn’t just books by critics of the Trump administration that are hot. Some titles defending the president have also been big sellers. “Liars, Leakers, and Liberals,” by Fox News Channel personality Jeanine Pirro, hit the No. 1 slot on Amazon when it was released in July. “The Russia Hoax,” by Gregg Jarrett, a former Fox News Channel anchor and current contributor, hit No. 1 in early August. While the overall book market is projected to rise 2 percent this year, the political book category is already up 25 percent, according to NPD Bookscan, which tracks print books. The data analytics firm reported that 6.9 million copies of political books were sold from Jan. 1 until the first week of September, versus 5.5 million at this point last year. And print books are only part of the story: Audiobook sales are also soaring, up 20 percent in the first eight months of 2018, according to the Association of American Publishers. E-book sales — down 8 percent during the first quarter — saw sales of political e-books rocket by 106 percent, largely due to “Fire and Fury,” which was released in January. Unsurprisingly, there's a flood of new political books on the horizon, including “Mr. Trump’s Wild Ride,” from CBS News chief White House correspondent Major Garrett; “Them,” by Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., which comes out next month; and "Where We Go From Here," by Sen. Bernie Sanders. I-Vt., which will hit the shelves one week after the midterm elections. Adam Bellow, editorial director of All Points Books, the political imprint at St. Martin's Press, told NBC News: “Ever since Hurricane Trump made landfall in 2016, it’s been an unusually exciting time to be in political publishing. Both parties are in total disarray. Political identities are shifting. Familiar ideas are being challenged and many people are rethinking their assumptions. So even with increased competition from other media, interest in books is exploding.” Trump has said that his presidency has been good for the economy, and “with regard to books, Trump's claim is accurate,” said Simon & Schuster's Karp.<doc-sep>
Bob Woodward's in-depth and unflattering look at President Donald Trump's White House just broke a 94-year sales record. The celebrated Watergate reporter's new book, "Fear: Trump in the White House," boasted higher pre-order sales than any other title in the history of its publisher, Simon & Schuster, the company said Wednesday. The tell-all book, released Sept. 11, sold more than 750,000 copies in its first day on sale, according to a press release from the company. That figure combines sales of print copies, ebooks and audiobooks. Simon & Schuster, a New York City-based publisher founded in 1924, added that it ordered a ninth printing of the book on the same day it was released, sending the total number of hardcover copies in print surging past 1.15 million. "Based on immense pre-publication and ongoing interest, the reading public clearly has an enormous appetite for what we believe, as Woodward says, is 'a pivot point in history,'" the company's president, Jonathan Karp, said in the release. The book is based on "deep background" sources whose identities are concealed to allow for less guarded interviews. Woodward's reporting paints a picture of Trump as politically ignorant, mercurial and antagonistic to his staff, who in turn vent rage against him and, at times, undermine his own agenda. The president has attacked Woodward and his book repeatedly since excerpts were first published in The Washington Post, where Woodward works, earlier in September. Trump's salvos, most of which were launched from his Twitter account, assailed the book as an "already discredited" fabrication intended to help Democrats. Woodward stands by his reporting. Woodward's book is far from the first attempt to document the internal workings of the Trump administration. Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," published in January, made incendiary claims about Trump and his administration, and broke sales records for its publisher, Henry Holt. Former administration officials, including senior advisor Omarosa Manigault-Newman and press secretary Sean Spicer, recently published their own books documenting their experiences working for Trump.