Clinton Memoir Poised to Fly Off Shelves
June 21, 2004 -- Media hype, good or bad, is nothing new to former President Bill Clinton, but with Tuesday's release of his 900-page memoir he's being asked for the first time to show a financial return for all his famous gravitas. No one involved with the book is too worried.
Political nonfiction has littered best-seller lists this year, and the literary world is expecting Clinton's memoir, My Life, to jump to the head of that class soon after it hits bookshelves.
Traditionally, political memoirs have been nonstarters in the world of best-seller lists as politicians often find their literary following limited to historians, wonks and political junkies.
But if former first lady Hillary Clinton's Living History is any indication, the reading public remains eager for dirt on the inner-workings of all things Clinton. Hillary's book, which currently has nearly 1.8 million copies in print, is the best-selling political book ever, according to the Association of American Publishers.
Borders, one of the nation's three biggest retail book sellers, sold 25,000 copies of Living History in the first 24 hours of its release last June. The company is anticipating even bigger first-day numbers from My Life, and it's expected the president will quickly become the best-selling author in his own home.
"It's going to be huge," said Jenie Dahlman of Borders. "It will be much bigger than Hillary, but probably smaller than Harry Potter. It will definitely be the book of the summer and probably the book of the fall, too."
The book's publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., is betting on a windfall to the tune of 1.5 million first prints of the book, an enormous vote of confidence for any new title, particularly a political book.
"That's a huge number," said Dahlman, who estimated that an initial printing of 100,000 to 200,000 would normally be considered large for a political nonfiction book.
If sales of the behemoth memoir take off as anticipated, at $35 apiece it shouldn't take too long for Knopf to recoup the up-front costs of such a large initial press run and an advance that reportedly paid Clinton in excess of $10 million.
Knopf has not commented on the number of book sales needed to reach profitability, but any financial concerns were probably erased by steady online sales. A flood of pre-orders placed My Life atop Barnes & Noble's best-seller list last week, and a Barnes & Noble spokesman said the company anticipates it will become the biggest nonfiction seller of the year, and possibly the decade.
Following Hillary's Lead
My Life comes on the heels of Hillary's mega-success and hits the shelves as political wrangling heats up ahead of the fall presidential election.
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the country's military engagement in Iraq have renewed interest in governmental affairs, stoking the market for political books and launching statesmen-turned-authors like former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and former terrorism adviser Richard Clarke into the limelight. Both wrote books critical of the Bush administration that received heavy media attention and became best sellers earlier this year.
"Since the 2000 election, current affairs and politics books have seen extraordinary sales," said, Bob Wietrak, Barnes & Noble's vice president of merchandising, "With the current situation in the world the way it is, all of these things add to everyone's interest."
Reagan Death Piques Interest
Interest in the presidency was also boosted by the weeklong media tributes following former President Ronald Reagan's death earlier this month. Four books on Reagan in were in Barnes & Noble's top 50 titles last week.
Reagan's autobiography, An American Life, rolled onto bookshelves in 1990 and spent time on various nonfiction best-seller lists.
Richard Nixon wrote several memoirs, including one that became a nonfiction best-seller, and Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush have published multiple books since their terms in office.
Summer Blockbuster?
Most dealers don't even categorize the Clinton book with those of his presidential peers. My Life is expected to sell not like historical nonfiction but instead like a summer blockbuster.
"Other presidents have written about their time in office, but this is the most current presidential book we've seen. I don't know of one other particular memoir that encompasses an entire life and the entire time in office. There really is nothing to compare this book to," Wietrak said.
The book is poised to capitalize on the country's heightened political appetite and a whirlwind of promotional press that includes interviews this week on Good Morning America, 60 Minutes and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
But the oversized anticipation may be as much a product of the author as the circumstances.
"There are a variety of reasons for the expectations, and it comes at a really interesting time in history," Borders' Dahlman said. "But mostly, Bill Clinton is an incredibly mesmerizing, charismatic person, and he's got a great story."