Comey Book Lands

The year of the political book continues, and, it looks like Macmillan has another #1 bestseller on their hands.

James Comey’s long-anticipated autobiography, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, arrived in bookstores this week. The author gave a series of major media interviews and attracted headlines as well as tweets from President Donald Trump, who fired Comey from his post as FBI director last May. In publishing circles, at least, the attention and the (mostly) positive reviews for Comey came second to the question, “Is this another Fire & Fury – the million-selling inside account of the Trump White House by Michael Wolff that first appeared in January?”

“The year of the political book continues, and, it looks like Macmillan has another #1 bestseller on their hands. What a strong year I has been for them and it is only April! Macmillan had already published Michael Wolff’s Fire & Fury, as well as Hans Rosling’s Factfulness, which was #3 on last week’s bestseller list,” reports Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly senior writer.

“But it’s fair to say that Comey has long way to go to catch Michael Wolff—and I’m not sure he can,” he tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “What we’re seeing with Comey is that we have a warehouse full of books and a normal rollout—and a book whose news narrative relies on the author himself. I’m not sure that’s going to cut it.”

Every Friday, CCC’s “Beyond the Book” speaks with the editors and reporters of “Publishers Weekly” for an early look at the news that publishers, editors, authors, agents and librarians will be talking about when they return to work on Monday.