TRUMP TRIES TO DISRUPT THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY, RUNS OUT OF BOOKS IN ONE DAY

At the end of November, Politico told us that Donald Trump was about to publish a new book independently, and the world of publishing might never be the same:

Trump allies launch publishing house with an eye on upending the book industry

Allies of former President Donald Trump are trying to rip up the traditional book publishing paradigm in politics by setting up a publishing house of their own. And they have the ex-president helping them do it.

Trump announced last week that he was publishing a coffee table book of photographs from his time in the White House — just ahead of the holiday gift rush — with Winning Team Publishing. The outfit is a new imprint with a decidedly MAGA flavor, run by former Trump campaign aide Sergio Gor and Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr.

The book, titled “Our Journey Together,” was marketed at $74.99, or $229.99 for a signed copy. But despite the high price tag, Gor said they already have exceeded sales of 70,000 copies in the first week of the preorder.

... “Publishers have become stagnant in their ways. We are incorporating the best of business, data, politics and media to reach a wider audience than ever before. We are striving to become the largest conservative publishing house,” said Gor, president of Winning Team Publishing.

Our Jouney Together went on sale yesterday. Newsmax tells us what happened next:

Publisher: High-Demand Trump Book Out of Print Due to Paper Shortage

The publisher of former President Donald Trump's newest book, officially released Tuesday, reports there have been over 130,000 copies sold, but supply chain issues are dogging printing.

Trump's "Our Journey Together" coffee-table, picture book is available at 45books.com, but those who order now will receive a Christmas card from the president in time for Christmas, followed by the book in early January, according to Winning Team Publishing's Sergio Gor.

"President Donald J. Trump has sold more books than any other author in the same week by a wide margin – an incredible success," Gor told Newsmax on Tuesday. "Only in Joe Biden's America have higher gas prices, out of control inflation, and printers running out of paper become the unfortunate norm. We look forward to delivering hundreds of thousands additional copies in the new year."

Actually, supply chain issues in book publishing began in the last year of the Trump administration, as The New York Times reported in August 2020:

The two largest printing companies in the United States, Quad and LSC Communications, have been under intense financial strain, a situation that has grown worse during the pandemic. LSC declared bankruptcy in April.... Quad’s book printing business is also up for sale; this spring, the company had to temporarily shut down its printers at three plants due to the pandemic.

At the same time, there has been a surprising spike in sales for print books, a development that would normally be cause for celebration, but is now forcing publishers to scramble to meet surging demand.

These issues still haven't been resolved -- demand for printing continues to exceed supply -- and now publishers are facing labor shortages at warehouses and distribution centers, as well as difficulties getting coffee-table books, which are mostly printed overseas, out of containers at ports. It's easy to blame Biden for this, but the biggest problem is strong consumer demand, along with a roaring job market that gives workers a lot of options.

Trump's book isn't the only glossy book that's become hard to get at Christmas. If you go to Amazon and try to order Paul McCartney's book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, you'll find that it won't ship until after the holiday; the promised delivery date is December 29 to January 2.

But at least you can still order it. Go to Amazon's page for Trump's book and you can't even place an order. Instead, you get this notice:

The established publishers whose industry Trump wanted to disrupt know that they need to work with Amazon (which sells approximately half the books in America). So they keep Amazon apprised of when books will be available -- and Amazon keeps taking orders. Everybody makes money. Trump, the great business genius, is forgoing that revenue stream.

And while Sergio Gor's claim that "President Donald J. Trump has sold more books than any other author in the same week by a wide margin" is questionable, it's clear that his book was going to be very popular. If his people had been smarter, they'd have printed enough copies to get them through more than one day. They didn't.

Our Journey Together is also out of stock at the Barnes & Noble online store (where the McCartney book is still available).

And no, this has nothing to do with anti-conservative bias -- Amazon will happily sell you a copy of Robert Kennedy Jr.'s The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health (currently #3 on Amazon's bestseller list, even though it's also back-ordered) or Miranda Devine's Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide (currently #25, with a paperback edition at #71).

Trump could have had the #1 book in America this Christmas, but he and his associates were too busy boasting that they know how to publish books better than people who've been doing it for years. Can't wait for his social media site.