The first six months of Donald Trump’s second term have been defined by moves many of the president’s critics describe as dystopian: draconian cuts to federal agencies, the rollback of rights to reproductive and gender-affirming care, crackdowns on free speech and immigration, and more. While sales of such seemingly prescient novels as 1984 by George Orwell (1949) and Parable of the Sower by Olivia Butler (1993) surged following the November 2024 election, backlist nonfiction titles that explore and explain authoritarianism and fascism are also drawing readers to their local independent bookstores, despite a general downturn in nonfiction book sales this year.
Foremost among those titles is Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Numerous indie stores across the country are reporting that the spike in sales of the slim volume in the first six months of this year shows little signs of abating. Some say it’s their stores’ current top seller, though other backlist titles about the political climate are spiking as well.
Crown released On Tyranny as a trade paperback original in February 2017, one month after Trump’s first inauguration, and put out a hardcover edition this spring “in response to consumer demand,” according to a Crown spokeswoman. The title, she adds, has been “a consistent bestseller” since its release, and “has had many notable sales spikes over the years connected to domestic and global events.” More than 1.4 million copies of On Tyranny have sold in all formats since 2017, per Crown parent company Penguin Random House, 250,000 of which sold in the first half of this year. The book is on its 47th printing following four new print runs since the 2024 election.
“We’ve had multiple customers buy On Tyranny in bulk, with the intention of handing it out to friends or at protests,” notes Praveen Madan, CEO of Kepler’s Bookstore in Menlo Park, Calif., adding that his store “sold a lot of copies just before the recent No Kings Day”—the series of nationwide protests decrying Trump and his policies held on June 14. “Our customers are trying to understand what’s going on in our country since the election.”
Kepler’s sold close to 200 copies of On Tyranny in the first six months of the year, Madan says. Other topical backlist nonfiction titles that have sold well at the store this year include Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc. (2024); He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters by Schuyler Bailar (2024); and Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein (2021).
At Broadway Books in Portland, Ore., sales of On Tyranny jumped to 378 copies in the first six months of 2025, compared to 49 in the same period in 2024. Like Kepler’s, Broadway has seen a number of its customers buy multiple copies, owner Kim Bissell says, with one longtime customer buying 100 copies to pass out at protests. Other hot backlist political titles at the store in the first half of the year include How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley (2018) and various editions of the U.S. Constitution.
Last spring, Bissell notes, Broadway’s history and current events section’s biggest backlist titles included such history-focused evergreens as David Grann’s Killers of The Flower Moon and Erik Larson’s The Demon of Unrest. This year, customers have pivoted toward such titles as The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (2017) and Surviving Autocracy (2020), both by journalist Masha Gessen. The store’s top 10 sellers in its history section, Bissell says, “are almost all politically motivated.”
Broadway isn’t the only Oregon indie reporting a sales surge for Snyder. Across the Willamette River, Powell’s Books, reportedly the largest indie bookstore in the world, has sold more than 2,000 copies of On Tyranny in 2025 so far—nearly quadruple the 561 copies it sold during all of 2024 and almost half the number of copies it sold the year the book was released. To date, Powell’s says it has pushed more than 13,000 copies of the title.
In Seattle, Robert Sindelar of Third Place Books reports that On Tyranny “began selling like crazy again in January: we’ve sold about 100 copies a month since the beginning of the year.” Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) by Dean Spade (2020) is also selling well at the store, helped along, Sindelar says, by “active promoting” from staff.
Anton Bogomazov, a book buyer at Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., says his store has sold 450 copies of On Tyranny in 2025 to date, suggesting that “might be due to its price point” as well as its relevance. Other backlist nonfiction titles selling well at the store include Gessen’s Surviving Autocracy and How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (2019), as well as “an older title that we hadn’t sold in quite a while before this year,” Bogomazov says: The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton (2005). How Fascism Works and two other titles by Stanley have also been popular: How Propaganda Works (2015) and Erasing History (2024).
Cathy Fiebach, owner of Main Point Books in Wayne, Pa., says sales of books trying to make sense of the election have surged at her store as well, “although maybe not to the extent that we saw in 2016.” As at other stores, On Tyranny is Main Point’s top seller in the current events category, with 150 copies sold since the election, and 50 in the past three months. The Truth About Immigration by Zeke Hernandez (2024) is also a bestseller, with 54 copies sold in 2025 to date, following an event held with Hernandez at the store in March. Fiebach says “turnout was phenomenal, with several hundred people showing up, which wouldn’t have happened last year.”
At Charis Books & More in Decatur, Ga., owner Sara Luce Look says nonfiction always does well, but notes that the 81 copies of On Tyranny the store has sold since the election qualifies, to her mind, as a “Trump bump.” That bump, she adds, has not really extended to other political nonfiction, with one minor exception in the children’s category: When a Bully Is President: Truth and Creativity for Oppressive Times by Maya Gonzalez (Jan. 2025) has sold 25 copies at the store to date.
According to Mike Wysock, the manager of the Book Stall at Chestnut Court in Winnetka, Ill., while sales of On Tyranny peaked at the store in 2017, 83 copies have sold in 2025 to date, compared to 25 total in 2024—“and that does not include sales of the graphic novel version or the recent hardcover edition.” The store is now shelving On Tyranny near the register, “which may account for more sales—but this decision was made in reaction to customer demand. It’s also a very front-counter-friendly size and design.” Wysock also notes “an uptick” in sales over the past six months of various editions of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, especially the 2020 editions published by Smithsonian Books, each of which is priced at $9.95.
Bozbay Books in Bloomington, Ill., has also seen a spike in sales of On Tyranny, with owner Elizabeth Aspbury noting that the store has sold approximately 50 new copies since the beginning of the year. “We don’t track our used book sales, just the new books,” she adds. “I know we’ve had a lot of used copies flow through too. I have a bit more energy to continue when things are dark if these types of titles are selling. I am glad folks are staying engaged in the world—it makes my despair slightly less.”
