It was a short stay at the top for former first lady Jill Biden.
Her memoir View from the East Wing debuted at #1 on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction bestseller list on June 21.
Three weeks later, it’s suddenly gone. The way it got to the top in the first place: She funneled donor cash from Biden’s campaigns into her own pocketbook.
The book arrived with a small but telling symbol next to its #1 ranking: a dagger (†). The Times uses that mark when it has reason to believe a book’s sales numbers were inflated by bulk purchases by large institutions rather than real Americans going to a bookstore or clicking “buy.” The book slipped to #3 the following week, then dropped off the list entirely.
From #1 to nowhere in two weeks flat.
Even Nate Silver, the Democrat-aligned statistician and former founder of FiveThirtyEight, wasn’t buying it.
“It debuted at #1 on the NYT due to astroturfed bulk orders (not my opinion — it got the infamous † indicating this) and is now completely off the list 2 weeks later,” Silver posted on X. “Very rare for a ‘#1’ to fall that fast. Virtually no one except political reporters are actually reading it.”
The numbers back him up. According to Circana BookScan retail data cited by the New York Post, the book sold just 3,221 print copies in the week ending June 20, and had accumulated a total of 29,539 U.S. print sales — dismal figures for a book that received the kind of blanket media attention most authors can only dream about.
The collapse drew immediate comparisons to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who last year was revealed to have spent $1.5 million of campaign cash to buy his own book and inflate his numbers. The pattern with Jill’s book is very similar.
They’re funneling donor cash into their pockets via book sales.
Meanwhile, someone else is sitting at the top of the Hardcover Nonfiction list without any dagger symbol next to his name.
Vice President JD Vance’s new book Communion is currently #1 — the old-fashioned way.