The Mueller Report is a bestseller online, with brick and mortar bookstores rushing to stock copies. Shakespeare & Co. and Harvard Book Store had book machines printing copies within hours of its release; publishers Skyhorse Publishing, Melville House and Scribner have released their own editions.
It’s been less than a week since the release of the Mueller Report, the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U. S. presidential election by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, and already commercial print editions have became bestsellers at online retailer Amazon. This occurred despite the fact that the 448-page report is also available for free online via the U. S Department of Justice, and follows the 2018 trend reagarding the popularity of political books. Brick and mortar bookstores have also been eagerly stocking the paperback, two within hours of its publication online on April 18.
Dana Vettel, Director of Communications & Events at New York’s Shakespeare & Co, said in an interview, “We were able to offer copies almost immediately. Our Espresso Book Machine (EBM) produces paperbacks identical to bookstore quality in just minutes. Because the Mueller report is the work of the federal government and therefore—by definition—in the public domain, we simply downloaded it and made it print-ready on our machines at Shakespeare as well as other bookstores that have our EBM machines, including the Harvard Bookstore and the American Book Center in Amsterdam.” Vettel said demand “has been high,” but did not reveal sales figures.
Alex W. Meriwether, General Manager of Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, noted that by one p.m., two hours after the release of the report, the store was printing copies on its machine, named Paige M. Gutenberg. They had created a “Printed at Harvard Book Store” cover earlier in the week. Reaction from the public and press was immediate. “Initially, we were seeing a lot of double takes. ‘Didn’t this just get released? How is this a book already?’ Within five hours every local TV news station had come by to take a look,” said Meriwether in an interview. “They filmed the machine in action and interviewed customers as they purchased copies. Customers thanked us for making the report available as a book, and many were awed and delighted by our ability to do so, and to do so quickly.”
Other bookstores were promoting their incoming stock the day the Mueller Report was released. Joni Saxon-Giusti, owner of The Book Lady Bookstore in Savannah, Georgia, which Tweeted on April 18 about the book’s impending availability, said in an interview that making the book available as soon as possible was part of the store’s duty to its customers. “Even if we did not live in a blue county in a red state, or in a city whose population includes many community and political activists (which we do on both counts), or even if our customers weren’t engaged with current events and frequent buyers of current political books (which they are), we would still choose to make the full Mueller report available for sale,” said Saxon-Giusti. “It is ingrained in us as booksellers to help our customers stay informed, and there is no adequate substitute for reading a primary source to understand facts and meaning, regardless of your political leanings.”
Harvard Book Store’s Meriwether told me that demand for the print edition of the Mueller Report has been “absolutely mind-boggling.” The bookstore was founded in 1932; Meriwether observed that the interest in this title has been unprecedented. “We don’t know of any other event in our history that has generated this level of public interest.” Between in-store and online sales, Meriwether expects the store to sell nearly 1,000 copies by the end of this week. Asked why there’s been such demand for it, Meriwether said, “The Mueller report consists of 450 dense pages of text. Comments from our customers were along the lines of ‘I’m tired of looking at my screen all day!’ The print edition made a historic moment tangible. To hold the report and examine it personally, after hearing about this investigation for the last many months, is not an insignificant act for people.”
Vettel of Shakespeare & Co explained that part of the appeal has been simply the paper format. “People like to hold and read things physically,” explained Vettel. “This is something that is often overlooked, but when it comes to books, consumer demand is markedly higher for print over electronic. At an industry level, printed books represent roughly 80% of all book sales.”
Following just behind these near-instant printings, publishers Melville House, Skyhorse Publishing and Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, have each released their own versions of the Mueller Report. The Melville House edition is identical to the official government report, while Skyhorse’s includes an introduction by attorney Alan Dershowitz, and Scribner’s features analysis by staff of The Washington Post, with an introduction and analysis by reporters Rosalind S. Helderman and Matt Zapatosky.
Tony Lyons, President and Publisher of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., said in an interview that by late fall of 2018, they knew they would publish their own version of the report. “Alan Dershowitz got on board right away. We decided to publish it because the issues raised and investigated have been at the very center of the American consciousness since the 2016 election. There has never been a more intense investigation.
