Attempts by President Donald Trump’s lawyers to squash the publication of a controversial book about his administration have only fanned the flames.
The book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” was available first thing today after the publisher moved up the release date amid the heightened attention.
Excerpts from the book were released Wednesday, prompting scathing responses from Trump and the White House, and cease-and-desist letters from Trump’s lawyers to author Michael Wolff and publisher Henry Holt & Co.
The letters didn’t stop the book, however.
A well-known independent bookstore in Washington, D.C., Kramerbooks, which is just a mile away from the White House, had a crowd lined up at midnight.
The bookstore is always open until 1 a.m. on weekdays, but today’s midnight crowd, which reportedly included a number of journalists, was apparently bigger than usual. The bookstore sold out of “Fire and Fury,” a source told ABC News.
One Twitter user likened the lines at Kramerbooks to “Harry Potter-like queues.”
The popularity extended online as well, with the book’s becoming the No. 1 bestseller on Amazon.
The bookstore line and full Amazon carts came after the publisher decided to move up the publication date from Jan. 9, citing “unprecedented demand.”
The book’s publisher, Henry Holt & Co., was not deterred by the cease-and-desist letter.
“Henry Holt confirms that we received a cease-and-desist letter from an attorney for President Trump,” the company said in a statement to ABC News. “We see ‘Fire and Fury’ as an extraordinary contribution to our national discourse, and are proceeding with the publication of the book.”
The publisher declined to release sales figures, noting that it is a privately held company, but a spokesman told ABC News it has had “several trips back to press.”
