DeSantis Book Outsells Books by Trump, Obama in Its First Week
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s new book sold 94,300 copies in its first week — more sales than Donald Trump’s, Hillary Clinton’s, or Barack Obama’s books notched in their respective first weeks, according to NPD BookScan figures obtained by Business Insider.
By comparison, Clinton sold 86,200 copies of her memoir Hard Choices in its first week, while Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope sold 67,500 copies during that time. Trump’s 2015 book, Crippled America, sold just 27,687 copies in its first week.
DeSantis’s book The Courage to Be Free hit No. 1 on Amazon’s top 100 list on its release day, February 28.
The book captured the No. 1 spot on the New York Times best-seller list for print and e-book nonfiction this week. That designation does not take into account bulk purchases. The book was No. 1 on Amazon Charts for the week of March 5, as well.
The massive sales come despite a widely publicized review in the New York Times that suggested the book “reads like a politician’s memoir churned out by ChatGPT.”
The book paints DeSantis, a Yale University and Harvard Law grad, as an everyman who was raised in a working-class home with family ties to steel-country Ohio and Pennsylvania that made him “God-fearing, hard-working and America-loving.” He describes summers spent working at a local electric company to help pay for college and feeling like a working-class outsider at Yale.
DeSantis takes on the media and the GOP establishment in the book and writes about his work in Florida, including pushing back against “draconian” Covid-19 lockdowns and fighting against indoctrination in schools.
The governor kicked off a book tour last week that will take him across the country as he flirts with a 2024 presidential bid.
