Posted on 06/13/2004 5:16:58 PM PDT by Liz
Bill Clinton’s memoirs are to become the bestselling political book in American publishing history. The 1.5 million copies of the first edition of My Life, which will be published on June 22, have already been accounted for in advance orders, and Clinton’s publishers are racing to print a second impression.
The former president’s memoirs will eclipse the 1.8 million copies that his wife Hillary sold of her own memoir, Living History, last year.
Clinton began a marathon publicity tour last week, addressing a booksellers’ convention in Chicago. He promised his audience that "If the book’s no good, it’s all my fault".
The public has already delivered its verdict, however, as the memoirs are the bestselling book on the amazon.com bestseller list. Only JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series has had pre-publication sales to compare with Clinton.
The memoirs, which were completed last month, have been the subject of intense speculation in Washington DC, and the exact content of the book remains a mystery. However, it is known that the book is essentially divided into two halves: one focusing on Clinton’s life before he became President in 1992; the other dealing with his eight years in office.
Although he said "I don’t settle a lot of old scores" in the book, the former president, who received a $10m (£5.5m) advance, has revealed that he had to pause while writing chapters concerning former special prosecutor Ken Starr, whose hounding of the President and his associates still fills him with rage.
"When I was a young man, getting out of law school, I said one of the goals I had in life was to write a great book," he explained in Chicago. "I have no earthly idea if it’s a great book. But it’s a pretty good story.
"A lot of presidential memoirs, they say, are dull and self-serving. I hope mine is interesting and self-serving. I don’t spare myself in this book," he said. "I take on a lot of water for not just the personal ... but the political errors I made and how they came to be."
Unusually for a political memoir, serialisation rights have not been sold, despite an offer of $500,000 (£275,000) by one media organisation. Instead a strict embargo has been in place ahead of publication. Clinton will ratchet up the hype by appearing on a series of television programmes, such as CBS’s Sixty Minutes and Larry King Live on CNN.
"We’ve had a lot of offers and we haven’t accepted any of them," said Paul Bogaards, director of publicity for Clinton’s publisher Knopf, referring to possible serialisation rights. "People are going to have to come to the book.
"You go down the road of serialisation when you’re trying to maximise exposure for an author," Bogaards argued. "In this instance, we are controlling the exposure for Clinton."
Clinton has called writing the book a "therapeutic" experience, but last month he admitted in New York that it had also been a difficult, stressful experience. "I feel like an inmate in a prison, who just got out on parole," Clinton said.
"The world is waiting with anticipation that Clinton will discuss everything he did right," said Donna Brazile, who managed former vice president Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign. "But I am looking forward to reading what he would have done differently."
Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News, said: "For a guy who talked on and on, on the national stage, for more than eight years, we’ve actually rarely heard him talk about how he felt about the events of his presidency. If he gives us an insight into what he was thinking at the time, or his true views, not just of his political opponents but of his own actions, that would, in fact, be what we call ‘new news’."
It had been thought that the book would not be published until the autumn. However, that would have clashed with the presidential election in November, overshadowing Senator John Kerry’s efforts to win the White House back for the Democratic party.
Some observers feel that Clinton ought to have postponed publication until next year to avoid stealing the limelight from Kerry.
"He is the ultimate narcissist: deprived of a mirror, he can’t function. Without the adoring masses, he hasn’t the inner self-image to carry him through the day," argued Clinton’s former pollster and strategist Dick Morris, who has since become a stern critic of the Clintons.
Morris believes that "by sucking up the oxygen in the room during July, Clinton cripples Kerry and forces him to compete for attention with a charismatic former president". He predicts that the Massachusetts senator "will look a decided second-best to Bill Clinton".
Clinton dismissed such concerns last month, saying: "I think it will not detract in any way [from Kerry’s campaign]."
New lows of vote-pandering (gag).
Yuck.....depicts an individual suffused with self-absorption.
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