Ivanka Trump’s Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success is out May 2, but the author won’t be touring to promote her latest title.
Plus, citing ethical concerns, she’ll be donating the proceeds from the book to the National Urban League and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.
Due to her role as an unpaid advisor to her father, the president of the United States, financial gain from her personal business would conflict with her governmental duties. President Obama, for example, only collected royalties from his first two books while in office; the third book, Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters, was written during his time in the White House, so the proceeds were donated to charity.
There’s further precedent for president-adjacent authors forgoing profit from their books; both Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton did just that. If anything, Ivanka Trump’s choice to donate these earnings solidifies the official professional relationship between her and her father, Bloomberg reports.
While she’s skipping out on an official promotional book tour, Trump will, however, visit Berlin on her first official international trip, where she’ll be on a panel closely related to the topic of her forthcoming title: women and empowerment in the workplace.
Still, the move to donate rather than directly profit from the platform afforded by governmental appointment is more ethically sound than previous decisions made by the Trump administration.
Last summer, HuffPost’s Christina Wilkie reported that President Donald Trump said the proceeds of his book, Crippled America, would go to charity, but the then-candidate later disclosed that he earned between $1 and $5 million from the project. And, last October, HuffPost reported that Trump was using small donors’ money to purchase copies of his own book The Art of the Deal, resulting in personal royalties from the sales.
Ultimately, if Ivanka Trump’s donations do make it to the charities she’s named, the move is in keeping with the established principles for books published by first family members.
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