A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, the tell-all book by former FBI Director James Comey, won’t be released for another month, but it’s already topping Amazon’s bestseller list, and setting up Washington bookstores for another Harry Potter-like (or Fire and Fury-ish) release.
The book soared up the chart last weekend, jumping from 15th to first place in less than a day, before settling in at number two on the Amazon list as of this morning.
Politics & Prose says it’s ordered double the number of copies it would usually get for a new current-events book at both its Connecticut Avenue and Wharf locations. The flagship shop in Northwest DC will have 160 copies (for customers who did not pre-order), while the Wharf store will have 48 copies ready to go out the door. The bookseller is also hosting an event at George Washington University on April 30, featuring Comey himself speaking with Axios’s Mike Allen in the Lisner Auditorium. Expect tickets to go quickly: They go on-sale to Politics & Prose members Tuesday, and the general public on Thursday.
Any book by someone fired impulsively by President Trump would be a hot item, much less one by someone who was the country’s top lawman, but it’s possible Comey’s upcoming memoir got another boost last Friday when Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Comey’s former deputy, Andrew McCabe. Reveling in McCabe’s ouster, the President tweeted an inadvertent juicy book teaser for Comey, saying that compared to him, McCabe looked like “a choirboy.”
Comey responded later in his own tweet, writing that “the American people will hear my story very soon.”
On April 17, you’ll likely see the book front-and-center in bookstore windows. A Higher Loyalty is under heavy embargo—including the use of code names and password-encrypted manuscripts at Comey’s publisher, Flatiron Books—and not a great deal of information is available. But one thing’s for sure, according to Jon Purves, Politics & Prose’s publicity director: “It’s going to be a big Washington publishing moment.”
A Higher Loyalty will also be available at Kramerbooks, Upshur Street Books, Bridge Street Books, Walls of Books, and all locations of Busboys and Poets. So far, no events have been scheduled at these locations, but a midnight release may be possible at Kramerbooks, one employee there said.
While Comey’s book is already a bestseller online, an employee at Amazon’s new brick-and-mortar store in Georgetown could not confirm if that location would offer it.
Mimi Montgomery joined Washingtonian in 2018. She’s written for The Washington Post, Garden & Gun, Outside Magazine, Washington City Paper, DCist, and PoPVille. Originally from North Carolina, she now lives in Del Ray.
