While we certainly can’t verify for sure that the following is truly the case, one publishing executive has an absolutely hilarious theory that they were kind enough to share with POLITICO, as a possible explanation for why Donald Trump has yet to sign a publishing deal for his presidential memoir.
According to one anonymous publishing executive who spoke to POLITICO, it could be that the one-term, twice-impeached president is avoiding traditional publishing houses for his presidential memoir in an effort to also avoid the humiliation of possibly getting a much smaller cash advance on his tell-all than his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.
Back in June of this year, The Guardian reported that ex-president Trump was already facing somewhat of an uphill battle with traditional publishers, as many of the major publishing houses were rightfully concerned about being associated with a book from Trump that would most likely be chock full of false, unproven claims, conspiracy theories, and outright lies. Of course, this news instantly infuriated Trump, and he was quick to lash out in response to it.
But nevertheless, thus far, all Donald Trump has yet to release is a coffee table-style picture book that features his “greatest hits” in office, that he’s hawking hard just in time for Christmas. All that was actually “written” in this particular book were the captions, many of which are in Trump’s infamous black Sharpie and reek of his notoriously bad attitude.
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The picture book was published by Winning Team Publishing — which, according to Business Insider, is run by Trump’s son Don Jr. and one of his former campaign aides — so it’s certainly plausible that the ex-president is willing to do business with them when it comes to his presidential memoir.
However, as noted by the unnamed publishing executive, it’s certainly a possibility that the former president may just go the self-publishing route altogether, especially given that he recently launched his own media company, the Trump Media and Technology Group, which he, of course, claims will blow all other traditional media outlets out of the water.
The publishing exec, speaking with POLITICO, went on to theorize that Trump’s motivation for publishing his memoir himself may actually be driven by his explosive ego and the fear that his predecessor may inadvertently make a fool out of him for the nth time if his cash advance ends up being less than Obama’s.
“My suspicion is Trump is self-publishing because he doesn’t want the humiliation of getting a smaller advance than he has before or anyone finding out that it is smaller than Obama’s,” the executive theorized.
“I imagine that’s as big a part of it as anything.”
Past reports indicated that former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama secured a cool $60 million advance from Penguin Random House for the rights to publish their memoirs.
Former President Obama’s book quickly broke early sales records for a presidential memoir when it was published in 2020, and Michelle’s memoir was the bestselling book of 2018 in the US, despite the fact that it hit shelves in November.
Of course, Trump himself is no stranger to publishing books, with his name plastered across 19 different books that cover business and real estate, though the majority of them were penned by ghostwriters. However, Trump has long been in a one-sided race against former President Obama, so it certainly would come as no surprise if that grudge turns out to be the driving force behind where and how he ultimately publishes his memoir.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
