Suggested Title "Tom Thumb"
Other captions?
Posted on 08/05/2002 11:20:50 AM PDT by meandog
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has sold CROWN PUBLISHERS a memoir of the 107th Congress, a project that may say as much about his presidential ambitions as about how he became the Democrats' most powerful voice of opposition to President Bush.
NYT reported Monday: The book, "scheduled for release in late 2003, is to be Daschle's account of two turbulent years in politics that began with the contested presidential election of 2000 and the Florida recount," and follows through the switch of control that "made Daschle the most powerful Democrat in Washington and one with a story to tell."
The book's publication date "brings the possibility of a high-publicity tour just in time for the 2004 primary season." Those familiar with the bidding said Daschle "drew an advance of more than $500,000 in an auction that lasted four days last week and involved almost a dozen publishers."
Potential Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore and Joe Lieberman are both working on books with their wives, the TIMES adds.
Suggested Title "Tom Thumb"
Other captions?
Dan
Given that the DNC will probably purchase the lion's share of the press run (at $26.95 a copy) the publisher should be able to recoup that advance. Strictly using gross sales numbers, $500,000 divided by $26.95 equals only 18,553 copies. It should be no trick at all to find 18,000 Democrats nationwide who would want to read this piece of tripe.
What's amusing to me is that twelve publishers were bidding on this - and the winning bid was a paltry 500G's. I'd LOVE to know what some of the losing bids were. "$1,000, Mr. Tommy." "We'll go $5,000. Terry said he'd buy 100."
Michael
I think he got paid for books that were never delivered--or something.
Seems as though I remember the Jim Wright deal involved a company buying huge numbers of the book in order to launder money they were paying him for favors. Instead of just paying Eyebrow Jim the money, they bought a ton of copies of his book, so Jim got the money instead from his publisher.
Michael
Jim Wright's book was a money-laundering scheme launched after the House had changed its rules to prevent Members from accepting honoraria. Wright was apparently addicted to honoraria and, as Speaker, got as many of them as he wanted, so he looked for a way around the ban.
His "book," titled Reflections of a Public Man, was a cut-and-paste job of old speeches and op-ed pieces assembled by an aide. Wright may have contributed an original preface and other bits and pieces (probably staff written), but most of the book was a clip job. The "book" was then self-published and went straight to the warehouse, with NO attempt to market it. Then, whenever Wright was invited to give a speech, he agreed to come provided the group he was addressing would buy bulk copies. It was a fairly transparent fraud, but the dems never forgave Newt for blowing the whistle on it.
Gingrich's book was also embarassingly bad -- obviously an off-the-top-of-the-head job in the first months of his Speakership. He clearly didn't have time in early '95 to do any outside work and should have shelved the project. That said, however, his book was competitively bid and the advance was perfectly legitimate. The dems raised a hue and cry, Newt gave back the advance (a mistake no democrat would ever have made), and the House subsequently changed its rules to ban advances. The Senate, however, did NOT change its rules (Senators being higher and nobler than Representatives, at least in their own estimation), so Daschle is legally in the clear.
Yes the size of the object behind me is scaled to life size...er, any more questions?
Humor? How to?
How Not to?
And I thought they were all elected to do the people's work.
It's surely going to be a banner year for science fiction with the debut of dual editions of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton's co-presidency memoirs.
And, things are looking up for a great year for horror novels when Tom Daschle's reveals his secrets of management in his upcoming book.
Heard to on the grapevine that the Gores, Al and Tipper, are co-authoring a book which they hope will really increase global warming.
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