US conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly was ousted from his massively watched news show last year after revelations that he paid millions in settlement money to women who accused him of sexual harassment. In one moment, he lost access to nearly 4 million nightly viewers.
Despite the investigations, which show O’Reilly’s settlements now total about $45 million (paywall) across six women, people are still happily buying the O’Reilly brand elsewhere. His latest history book, Killing the SS, out Oct. 9 and co-written with Martin Dugard, has, just like 10 of his other books in the past decade, hit the No. 1 spot on the New York Times nonfiction list.
According to rankings from the New York Times bestsellers list going back to 2008, O’Reilly has had the most books hit the No. 1 spot of any single nonfiction author. Second to O’Reilly is Dugard, his frequent collaborator. The overall list is made up other conservative commentators, like Dinesh D’Souza, author of The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left, and Ann Coulter, author of In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!
Even if you remove those titles with spurious sales, O’Reilly is still the top author. The New York Times marks titles with † to indicate possible bulk sales, a tactic authors and publishers use to create the illusion of genuine public interest. When bulk sales are removed, Coulter and D’Souza fall in their rankings, for example.
O’Reilly’s sheer output is obviously a big contributor to his top status, but the fact remains: In spite of everything, if O’Reilly writes it, they will come.