Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” is a pop hit.
In nearly three weeks, the book, about the early days of President Donald Trump’s White House, sold 1.7 million copies, his publisher Henry Holt & Co. said. It’s spent two consecutive weeks at No. 1 so far on the New York Times’ hardcover nonfiction and combined print and e-book nonfiction charts.
To put that into perspective, if “Fire and Fury” was an album, its sales would be in the same league as the latest release from America’s biggest-selling pop star: Taylor Swift’s Reputation. In its first three weeks on the Billboard 200, Reputation sold about 1.5 million copies in the US, according to data from Nielsen Music, becoming the biggest selling album of 2017.
Reputation also had 62,000 equivalent album sales in its first three weeks, which includes on-demand streaming and song sales. There is no parallel in publishing, but plenty of readers got a free “streaming” peek at the book in excerpts published before its release, including a nearly 7,000-word excerpt published by New York magazine that shot to the top of their most-popular list after it was published.
The rights to “Fire and Fury” have been sold in 35 countries, and television rights were purchased by Endeavor Content.