Posted on 10/24/2008 4:30:40 PM PDT by RDTF
-snip- McCain made his first million the old-fashioned way: he married the daughter of a wealthy businessman. But Barack Obama, the son of an absent African father and a mother who relied on government-issued food stamps to feed her children, became a millionaire in a more modern manner – on the back of a book deal.
It happened circuitously. In 1990, Obama was already enough of a celebrity – the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review – for the New York publishers Simon & Schuster to offer a “six-figure contract” for a proposed autobiography. The only problem was that Obama was too busy finishing law school to write the book, and the contract was eventually cancelled. By the time Obama finished Dreams From My Father – published by Times Books in 1995 – his advance was only $40,000. In 2004, Obama – now a state senator in Illinois and a candidate for the US senate – was chosen to be the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, but his book was long out of print. Yet when he arrived in Washington, the $169,300 senator’s salary was not going to be his mainstay: two weeks before he was sworn in, Crown Books announced a $1.9m three-book contract with the senator-elect.
-snip-
As The Audacity of Hope shot up the bestseller lists, taking a reprint of Dreams From My Father along with it, Obama became a rich man. But like McCain, he had help: before that deal with Crown, he left his longtime book agent for Robert Barnett, a Washington lawyer also responsible for negotiating Tony Blair’s £4.5m contract with Random House a year ago today. It was a move that revealed a streak of ruthless calculation that may help land Obama in the White House. -snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
What this country needs is a retroactive 95% excess profits tax on publications by politicians and former politicians.
Very Important! No wonder Barry HUSSEIN Obama Osama?? (What ever the Heck his real name is!) is cowering in Hawaii looking sicker than a Dog with the Mange! What a Jerk he is! I wouldn’t want him pleading a Parking Ticket for me let alone running for POS! I am sorry, that is not a typo, I refuse to believe the DEMORATS would consider the Worm for the candidacy of Our Highest Office, the Idiot and AntiAmerican who holds his crotch with BOTH HANDS during the playing of OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM! What a total WORM!
Are you one of the undecideds?
Yep! How did you guess? I keep telling that quack, Frank Luntz, that I am and he never lets me be on any of his panels:-(
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