Comey book sales top 600,000 in first week

Former FBI Director James Comey’s new book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” sold more than 600,000 copies in its first week, including print, audio and e-books, according to the book’s publisher, Macmillan’s Flatiron Books. 

By contrast, Hillary Clinton’s memoir from the 2016 presidential campaign, “What Happened?,” sold 300,000 copies in its first week. 

The sales figures come as Comey continues a media blitz that has included stops at ABC’s “20/20” and “The View,” NBC’s “Today,” CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” and CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” among numerous interviews with local and satellite radio stations.

{mosads}His next big national appearance comes on Wednesday: a town hall hosted by CNN and moderated by Anderson Cooper. And on Thursday, he sits down with Fox News “Special Report” anchor Bret Baier.  

An April 15 interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, which attracted 9.8 million viewers, was Comey’s first interview since being fired by Trump last May.

In January, Michael Wolff went on a similar media tour that generated wall-to-wall coverage centered around his book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.” 

Wolff’s offering, despite receiving criticism in some media circles for a lack of verification and fact-checking of some accounts inside the Trump White House, has sold more than 2 million copies to date. 

President Trump has been good for media profits overall. 

The New York Times and Washington Post have seen record subscriptions and revenue increases since Trump took office, while Fox News, CNN and MSNBC have reported advertising revenue growing at a prodigious 25 percent year-over-year.

CNN reported last week that every book to hit No. 1 this year on the Times’s nonfiction best-seller list has been about Trump or Clinton.