It's Official: Nobody Wants to Read About President Zero

It's an election year, and that means another juicy inside-the-White-House book from Axios... or does it?

Roughly every other year for the last 30 years or so, Washington-based journalist Bob Woodward puts out another juicy insider look at the current President and the White House. He's such an institution that there are plenty of copycats.

I'm not sure how many people ever actually read any of these White House books. It's always been my impression that for the most part, people purchase them for two reasons. The first is to look good on the bookshelf. The second is so Beltway types can check the index to see how many times their names are mentioned.

And yet the books always sell. Woodward alone has had 14 bestsellers. I've read a few of Woodward's books, but I couldn't tell you for sure which ones I read all the way through. Many of the election-year tomes are little more than rushed copy-and-paste jobs from campaign reporters who compile their field reports into "books" that hit the shelves while Election Day passions are still hot.

In my mind, it would take a genuine masochist to want to relive a presidential campaign right after the dang thing happened, and yet these things always sell. 

I don't know what, if anything, Woodward is working on for publication this year — but it has been three years since his last real book, "Peril." 

Axios Washington correspondent Alex Thompson, late of Politico, has had a Biden White House book in progress for some time now, but it's impossible to say when it will be out because his publisher just dropped it. 

"Two people familiar with the matter" told Politico's Daniel Lippman on Wednesday that publisher Simon and Schuster has "withdrawn its contract" with Thompson. As far as Simon and Schuster is concerned, Thompson's Biden White House book won't generate enough interest even to make it to the remainder bin.

The proposed book was originally scheduled to be published early this year. Playbook reported in February 2021, when the deal was first inked, that it would be “a comprehensive book on Biden’s presidency” and “filled with fresh reporting and informed by his work covering the president and the White House transition.” Thompson, a former POLITICO reporter known for his deep coverage of Biden’s administration, declined to comment, as did a Simon and Schuster spokesperson.

Politico called it "a further reflection of the soft market for books about [the] President." Biden had been in office just under two years when Politico had already pronounced that he was "bookstore poison." 

Books about Barack Obama and Donald Trump — whether they were filled with praise or venom — sold like crazy. There were many of them to choose from, too. But nobody wants to read about President Zero because everybody knows there isn't much there-there left. 

Thompson's Muck Rack page still indicates that he's "writing a book on Biden," but right now, it looks like he'll have to self-publish for it to see the light of day. 

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