Mueller Report Book Editions Shoot to Top of Best-Seller Lists at Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Robert Mueller is now a best-selling author.
Book publishers’ forthcoming editions of the special counsel’s report zoomed to the top of the Amazon’s and Barnes & Noble’s lists of book best-sellers Friday. That comes a day after the report was publicly released, culminating the nearly two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and the involvement of Donald Trump and his associates.
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The redacted 448-page report is available for free as a PDF from the U.S. Department of Justice’s website at at this link. But right now, there’s brisk business to be done in packaging up Mueller’s report in dead-tree format (as well as ebook and audiobook versions, which factor into the rankings) that may include commentary, analysis and additional documents.
As of Friday afternoon, No. 1 on Amazon’s chart is an edition of Mueller’s report from Skyhorse Publishing, which clocks in at 640 pages and includes an introduction by Alan Dershowitz along with supplementary documents. The paperback is available for $9.20 as a pre-order, with an April 30 placeholder publication date, but Skyhorse notes in the listing that it plans to publish the book as soon as possible.
In the No. 2 spot is the Washington Post’s version, published by Scribner. The trade paperback ($10.22 on pre-order) is expected to be published April 30, while the ebook is being released April 19. At 736 pages, the Post edition includes an analysis by the newspaper’s staff, timeline, guide to the individuals involved, and additional documents.
Also on Amazon’s chart was an edition of the Mueller report from publisher Melville House (No. 9), priced at $7.40 for the paperback pre-order. Melville touts its version as including only the text of Mueller’s report “with no positioning or framing apparatus — such as a celebrity introduction — that would give it bias or impede its clarity.”
On Barnes & Noble’s list of best-selling books Friday, Skyhorse’s Mueller report edition also was No. 1, followed by Melville House’s at No. 6 and the Post’s at No. 8.
Mueller’s report described 10 incidents of possible obstruction of justice by Trump, but the report said the investigators did not “draw ultimate conclusions about the president’s conduct.” Instead, the report accepted a DOJ conclusion that a sitting president could not be charged or indicted and suggested that the question of obstruction of justice should be left to Congress.
“The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the president’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law,” the report stated.
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