JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy Skyrockets to the Top of the NY Times Bestseller List

(AP Photo/Jeff Dean)

Following former President Donald Trump naming Senator JD Vance (R-OH) as his running mate, the lawmaker’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy has skyrocketed to the top of the New York Times and Amazon bestseller lists.

The new surge comes after a period of modest sales, with the trade paperback edition selling just under 10,000 copies in the first half of the year, according to publishing market data tracker Circana BookScan .

The Republican National Convention, however, has proved to be a game-changer. In the week ending July 20, Publisher’s Weekly reported that Hillbilly Elegy sold over 197,000 copies, dominating the bestseller charts by a margin of 136,000 units. The memoir also became the focus of bizarre curiosity last week after debunked allegations went viral online claiming that the book contained an admission from Vance that he had had sex with a couch.

First published in 2016, Hillbilly Elegy quickly became essential reading after the convention for those seeking to understand Trump’s attempt to appeal to swing state voters in selecting Vance, who wrote about the challenges of growing up in Ohio through to his time at Yale law school.

The memoir’s initial success saw over 414,000 copies sold that year and a 2020 Netflix adaptation, propelling Vance into the public spotlight.