Great Job, Internet!: A Melania-based erotic horror parody book is cleaning up on the Amazon charts

This is per 404 Media, which notes that the rise of the 120-page novel—in which the First Lady is “surrounded by young, strapping Secret Service agents and pursued by the cunning and handsome FBI director James Comey”—is very much not a natural phenomenon, and has been organized by protestors on Reddit as a way to counterprogram Ratner’s film. (Notably, searching “Melania” on Amazon now pops up an ad for the movie, Trump’s own book about herself, and then, immediately after, cover art of her as a sort of sexually vampiric torso.) 404‘s Matthew Gault went so far as to track down author J.D. Boehninger—also, obviously, the author of Forbidden Loveseat: A JD Vance & Usha Novel—about being approached by protestors looking to game the site’s algorithm and spread a little mockery in the film’s direction.

“They explained their reasoning, basically said they were going to try to pull this off, and why my book was the right choice. I loved the idea, so I made the book free,” noted Boehninger, who says he originally wrote the novel as an experiment in trying to game Amazon’s algorithm himself. “My friend told me that three things did well back then: monster fiction, erotica, and stuff about Trump…so I figured I could write the book for the Kindle store: a combo monster fiction/ erotica/ Trump book. I thought it would blow up…but, sadly, it didn’t really perform back then. So glad to see people finding it now!”

Boehninger notes that the stunt isn’t actually making him much money, for obvious reasons: “Giving Amazon money would probably defeat the point of this protest.” To be fair, though, he is building up much better reviews for his work than Ratner is at the moment. (He’s also expressed his appreciation to people clicking over to Forbidden Loveseat, which is—this probably goes without saying—a novel about Usha Vance using magic to transform herself into a couch in an effort to re-seduce her husband.)