After Michael Wolff’s tell-all “Fire and Fury” released Friday ahead of schedule, the book fast became a bestseller and is now seemingly helping another book’s sales too.
Author and historian based in Canada, Randell Hansen, tweeted Friday that the unprecedented sales for Wolff’s book had led to an increase in sales of his own book, whose name also had the words “Fire and Fury,” in it. This is can possibly be attributed to searches with the words “Fire and Fury” for buying Wolff’s book and also coming across Hansen’s book in the search results.
Incredibly, sales of my https://t.co/8VeAA9DCFT have increased. Will I owe a larger royalty cheque to Bannon & Trump? If so, the irony will know no limits. #FireAndFury
— Randall Hansen (@ProfRAHansen) January 6, 2018
His book, “Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-45” was originally published in 2008 and the sales figures of the book up until the release of Wolff’s book were not clear. Randall in his Twitter post said the increase in sales was incredible and wondered if he owed royalty cheques to Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. “If so, the irony will know no limits,” Hansen wrote.
According to Goodreads, the book looks at the American and British bombing campaigns against Germany during World War II from the perspective of the military and civilian command in America, Britain, and Germany, the aircrews who carried out their orders, and civilians on the ground. The hardcover version of the book was priced at $15 on Amazon and the paperback was priced $3.74-$15. Hansen did not reveal the exact percentage of increase in the sales of the book or if the increase was across all platforms.
Hansen is the interim director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Full Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, Canada and the Global Migration Research Institute. Apart from “Fire and Fury: the Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-1945,” he authored two more books, “Citizenship and Immigration in Postwar Britain” (2000) and “Disobeying Hitler: German Resistance after Valkyrie” (2013).
Meanwhile, Wolff’s book recorded unprecedented sales online, and shot to the top of Amazon’s booklist. The Kindle and audio versions of the book were respectively No. 2 and No. 3 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Barnes & Noble lists the book as being “temporarily out of stock” on its website.
The popularity of the book comes despite fierce backlash from the president and the White House, with the press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying the book was “filled with false and misleading accounts from individuals who have no access or influence with the White House.”
Trump himself launched several rounds of attacks against Wolff and wrote on Twitter that he gave author Michael Wolff “zero access” to the White House while Wolff was writing it.
Trump’s attorney, Charles Harder, sent cease and desist letters to Wolff, Steve Rubin, the president of the book’s publisher, Henry Holt and Co., as well as Steve Bannon, alleging that the book contained libelous and defamatory information against his client.
He even threatened Bannon with legal action and demanded in the letter that Bannon “cease and desist from any and all further disclosure of Confidential Information, disparagement of Mr. Trump, his family members, his or their companies, and/or the Company, and communication with the media, including but not limited to Mr. Wolff and any and all other journalists, reports, authors and bloggers.”
The book’s publisher released the book four days earlier than planned because of the interest surrounding the book despite the cease-and-desist letter.
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