Will Murdoch Succession Saga Make Michael Wolff’s Fox News Book A Hit?

Michael Wolff’s timing couldn’t be better. The journalist, who wrote several books about the Trump presidency, released a new tome on Tuesday with a particularly of-the-moment subject.

The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty is published just days after Rupert Murdoch stepped down from his board positions at News Corp. and Fox News Channel, designating son Lachlan as his replacement.

Of course, that prompted days of media speculation about whether Rupert is really capable of pulling back and how Lachlan won the Succession-like battle to become his father’s heir.

But for the real story of why the Murdoch saga matters, Wolff is as well-connected and capable of delivering as anyone. He has written a previous book about Fox News, and strong numbers for his past books (though the first Trump saga vastly outsold the others) suggest he could have another bestseller.

How Many Books Will Michael Wolff Sell?

In 2008, Wolff published his first book about Murdoch and Fox News. The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch was published before streaming became mainstream and back when Donald Trump was best known as host of The Apprentice.

It sold 17,045 copies, according to data provided by Circana BookScan tracking total print unit sales from publication through the week ending September 9, 2023.

That’s a decent number, and it outpaces comparable books about cable news published in the 15 years since. Perhaps the highest profile of those, Gabriel Sherman’s much-hyped The Loudest Voice In the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News—And Divided a Country, sold 12,081, per Circana BookScan. It came out in early 2014, more than a year before Trump announced his presidential run and a couple years before the late Ailes’ fall from grace amid sexual harassment accusations.

Former New York Times
NYT
and CNN media reporter Brian Stelter published his own take on Fox News years later. The 2021 book Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth sold 8,426 copies, per Circana BookScan.

A much more recent deep dive into cable news, Kathryn Cramer Brownell’s 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News, which came out in August, has sold 166 copies—but it was published with a small press (Princeton University Press,) without the benefit of a press push from a behemoth like Simon & Schuster (which published Stelter’s book) or Random House (which published Sherman’s and Wolff’s books.)

Trump Books Are Hits For Wolff

Trump was a much more lucrative topic for Wolff, whose “inside the White House” accounts of the ex-reality show host’s presidency generated tons of attention and much higher sales. The first, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, came out in early 2018 and sold an impressive 949,085.

His follow-ups had much lower sales, though still proved popular—2019’s Siege: Trump Under Fire sold 48,724, while 2021’s Landslide: the Final Days of the Trump Presidency perked up to 65,121.

Sales For The Fall Will Benefit From Rupert’s Retirement

Wolff won’t have the latest twist in the Murdoch family drama in his book, since it happened days before publication. But interest in Rupert’s retirement should spark higher sales for the book than if it had come out months before or after the announcement.

Stelter should benefit from that spike in interest, too—his latest book, Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy, will be published in November. He teased changes to it on X (formerly known as Twitter) when news of Rupert’s resignation broke.