The F.B.I. director saw sales of his book about the government’s “deep state” rise by nearly 800 percent after Mayor Eric Adams lavished praise on it.
As mayor of New York City, Eric Adams faces uncertain re-election prospects this year. Should all not go according to plan, he may want to try his hand as a book promoter.
Hours after the federal corruption charges against him were formally dropped this month, the mayor ended a celebratory news conference by plugging a book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth and the Battle for Our Democracy,” by Kash Patel, the director of the F.B.I.
Mr. Adams urged all New Yorkers to pick up a copy. And then he repeated that message at least three more times within 24 hours, including on a popular podcast.
Readers appear to have listened.
In the week encompassing Mr. Adams’s brief, pro bono promotional tour, U.S. print sales for “Government Gangsters” skyrocketed nearly 800 percent, from 228 to 2,019, according to Circana BookScan.
More copies of Mr. Patel’s book sold between March 30 and April 5 than during the week of his Senate confirmation hearing in January, when 745 print copies changed hands. It is also the most print copies of the book sold in a week since October 2023, after it was first published.
For the first time since it was published that September, the book appeared this week on Amazon’s “most sold” nonfiction list, debuting at No. 11. The list includes books sold and preordered through Amazon and Audible. The book also made it to No. 14 on The New York Times’s nonfiction best-seller list, its first appearance there.
