Publisher plans massive ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ reprints to meet demand for VP candidate JD Vance’s book

Posted July 25, 2024 9:44 am

By HILLEL ITALIE

NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate has led to a surge in sales for “Hillbilly Elegy,” his bestselling memoir that came out in 2016.

A spokesperson for HarperCollins told The Associated Press that more than 600,000 copies have been sold since Trump's announcement on July 15. The total includes physical books, audio books and e-books.

The publisher of “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” by J.D. Vance is planning a massive reprint to keep up with demand. Courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers

“We are printing hundreds of thousands of copies to fill the demand at our retail partners,” the publisher announced Thursday.

Vance’s book already was a million seller before Trump chose him for the Republican ticket. “Hillbilly Elegy,” which Ron Howard adapted into a feature film released in 2020, tells of Vance’s childhood in Ohio and his family’s roots in rural Kentucky. After Trump’s stunning victory in 2016, the book was widely cited as essential reading for Trump opponents trying to understand his appeal to working-class whites, even as some critics faulted it as a narrow and misleading portrait of Appalachia and of poverty in the U.S.

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