NEW YORK – It took less than a day for the Jan. 6 report to go from public unveiling to the bestseller list on Amazon.com.
By late Friday, three editions of the Congressional probe of the 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump were in the top 30 on Amazon. The editions include one with a foreword by MSNBC anchor Ari Melber, published by Harper Paperbacks; A Celadon Books release with a foreword by New Yorker editor David Remnick and an epilogue by Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and member of the House Select Committee; and a volume by the Hachette Book Group imprint Twelve, published in coordination with The New York Times.
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The 814-page document, released late Thursday, is not copyrighted, can be published by anyone and is otherwise available for free on various government and media web sites. Previous government publications, from the Sept. 11 commission report to Robert Mueller's probe into Trump's ties to Russian officials when he ran for president in 2016, have been bestsellers. The Sept. 11 report was even a finalist in 2004 for the National Book Award.
As with other government releases, publishers have rushed to get their books out quickly to capitalize on public interest. All three bestselling editions will be out within the next two weeks, along with books from Random House and Melville House Books.
The Jan. 6 report culminates an 18-month investigation, which included more than 1,000 witness interviews and more than a million pages of source material. The committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans blamed the insurrection on Trump, finding a “multi-part conspiracy” orchestrated by the president and his closest allies in an effort to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump, a Republican, has already announced his candidacy for 2024.