Publishing a book is a rite of passage for almost everyone who aspires to the White House. So how do the presidential candidates stack up based on their book sales?
On Tuesday, Nielsen released the print sales figures for books by the Republican and Democratic candidates, including Donald Trump’s business best seller “Trump: The Art of the Deal” and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s memoir “Hard Choices,” and the results were surprising.
Ben Carson, who ended his campaign last week, may have a viable fallback career in publishing: His books have collectively sold about 1.7 million copies in print, according to Nielsen.
Like political forecasting, measuring success in publishing isn’t a precise science. Nielsen’s data is incomplete. The company tracks sales only going back to 2001, so its figures don’t reflect total sales figures for Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” which was published in 1987, or Carson’s best-selling memoir “Gifted Hands,” which came out in 1990. The figures also don’t reflect e-book sales, and they capture only about 85 percent of print sales.
But the numbers do offer a glimpse of how the candidates’ respective messages are resonating — or not — with readers. Sen. Marco Rubio’s “American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone” has sold just 13,200 print copies since it came out in January 2015.
Nielsen will be updating sales data on these titles every other week on its new political site, Election Central, which goes live next week.
Here is a sampling of prose from this campaign season’s presidential aspirants:
Ben Carson, “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story”
“I’m a good neurosurgeon. That’s not a boast but a way of acknowledging the innate ability God has given to me. Beginning with determination and using my gifted hands, I went on for training and sharpening of my skills.”
Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Living History”
“Take criticism seriously, but not personally. If there is truth or merit in the criticism, try to learn from it. Otherwise, let it roll right off you.”
Donald Trump, “Trump: The Art of the Deal”
“One of the problems when you become successful is that jealousy and envy inevitably follow. There are people — I categorize them as life’s losers — who get their sense of accomplishment and achievement from trying to stop others. As far as I’m concerned, if they had any real ability they wouldn’t be fighting me, they’d be doing something constructive themselves.”
Marco Rubio, “American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone”
“I don’t buy into the dystopian scenarios of self-aware robots enslaving mankind, but you don’t have to be a sci-fi conspiracy theorist to acknowledge that plenty of good, well-paying jobs are being taken over by machines.”
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