Sales of the book are hardly spectacular: the revealer of his niece, Mary Trump, had sold 950,000 copies the day it went on sale. But Mr. Trump’s picture book costs a lot more. Signed copies cost $229.99 and sold out quickly.
Sergio Gor, co-founder of Winning Team Publishing with Donald Trump Jr., called the book a success and said it was “in talks” to acquire the rights to the former president’s next one.
Winning Team Publishing announced its second author this week: Charlie Kirk, the leader of Turning Point USA, a group of young curators holding their winter gala at Mar-a-Lago. Tax records from the most recent year available show the group spent nearly $280,000 on food and drink there.
Mr Trump’s for-profit store, meanwhile, has added a ‘MAGA collection’ and sells items like a $95 Mar-a-Lago Christmas decoration, which it markets to 2020 campaign supporters. from Mr. Trump via mailing lists leased to the Trump Political Operation and maintained by Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager.
Donald Trump Jr., for his part, operates another online store, selling proudly provocative clothing, like shirts that say “Guns don’t kill people / Alec Baldwin kills people” – a reference to the filming of the actor’s film last year. After the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who shot and killed two people during the unrest in Kenosha, Wis., the store briefly promoted a new sweatshirt: “In a World Full of Alecs , Be a Kyle”.
Collectibles and ‘high tea’
Mrs. Trump has also found ways to monetize her ties to Mr. Trump, including through a series of online sales. In January, she auctioned off a digital portrait of herself by a French artist, a copy of the portrait, and a white hat she once wore at the White House when she met the president of France.
His plan to maximize the sale price by only accepting cryptocurrency payments, however, appears to have backfired: January’s cryptocurrency price crash reduced the expected opening price by 250 $000 to around $170,000 on the last day of the auction.