No matter what happens in the 2024 elections, J.D. Vance will be making money.
The Republican vice presidential nominee and Ohio senator is pulling in massive royalties from the sales of his first memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which returned to the top spot on The New York Times bestseller list after Vance was named Donald Trump’s running mate. Meanwhile, he also has an $8 million deal for a book sequel, which he secured back in 2017, reports Variety.
According to his financial disclosures, Vance made $823,132 in royalties from his first book’s sales in 2020 and 2021, but less than $50,000 in 2023. He’s expected to rake in much more than that in 2024 thanks to his political ascendancy. According to HarperCollins, the book sold 650,000 copies in the first few days after Trump picked Vance.
Vance also got a portion of the $45 million that Netflix paid for the book’s movie rights in 2019. The movie has returned to Netflix’s top 10 in the weeks since Vance returned to the national spotlight.
These revelations shed more light on the incentives Vance had to join Trump’s ticket. Even if Trump loses the election in November, Vance still stands to make money, with another book on the horizon promising more royalties, assuming people would want to read it. Like Vance, Trump is represented by Hollywood talent agency WME, which helped the former president earn more than $400 million from NBC’s The Apprentice, and money from lucrative ad deals.
But unlike Vance, Trump’s old moneymakers aren’t popular these days. His old reality show and its spin-off, Celebrity Apprentice, aren’t available on any streaming platforms. His signature book, The Art of the Deal, was only a bestseller thanks to Trump gaming the system and has since been discredited by its ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz. He’s had to resort to making money off of new schemes, like the $300,000 in royalties he made from hawking Bibles. Will he still be able to rake in money if he loses?
