One concept that’s been in place for the past 40 years or so in Washington, DC, is that if you write a book about a president, it’s going to sell a lot of copies. That’s true even if people don’t read the book. This year is different, however. Publishers are dropping book contracts with writers because it turns out that no one is interested in reading about Joe Biden.
Bob Woodward, for example, has published a book every two years for the last 30 years or so. Fourteen of them have been bestsellers. He broke with that tradition last year, however, by not writing a book about Joe Biden’s first two years in office. It’s been three years since his last book about Donald Trump was published, and there’s no indication that he’s been working on a Biden book for next year.
Alex Thompson, a former Politico reporter who now works for Axios Washington, has had a book about Joe Biden in the works since 2021. It was supposed to be a comprehensive book on Biden, “filled with fresh reporting and informed by his work covering the president and the White House transition.”
Simon & Schuster just withdrew its contract with Thompson, though. Politico says it is “a further reflection of the soft market for books about [Biden].” In 2022, Politico declared Joe Biden to be “bookstore poison” because none of the titles that came out about him were selling any copies.
Books about Donald Trump and Barack Obama sold like hotcakes, whether they were positive or negative. There were a lot of books written about both of them. The public just isn’t interested in reading about Mr. LOL-81-million, however. Maybe things would be different if Joe Biden were a real president, but he’s not. You have to win an election to be considered one of those, and Joe Biden has never done that.
