Another Democratic leader’s book bombs after publisher’s exorbitant payoff

Posted on October 22, 2014October 22, 2014 by Ben Bullard Views: 110



It hasn’t been so very long ago that Hillary Clinton’s “Hard Choices” underperformed after garnering its author a lavish publisher’s advance. Now another high-profile Democrat’s book has tanked in even more spectacular fashion, but only after its author was assured a tidy sum of guaranteed money.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo released “All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success in Politics and Life” last week, and it’s been getting trashed both by reviewers and by non-customers. In its first few days on sale, the book’s only managed to move a reported 945 hardcover copies:
Andrew Cuomo's memoir sold 945 hardcovers in first week on shelves, according to BookScan. That's right, guys, 945 copies.
— Amy Chozick (@amychozick) October 22, 2014
Clinton’s book, a poorly reviewed piece of tepid “insider” talk, has been out since June. It hasn’t been doing so great either — but it still managed to sell 920 copies in the same week that Cuomo’s memoir was released.
Clinton received a reported $14 million advance for “Hard Choices.” Cuomo’s take for “All Things Possible” can’t match that figure, but still assured him a reported $700,000 advance from Harper, its publisher. That’s guaranteed money, regardless of how the book performs.
“For New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), the consequence of an extremely muted memoir release is that the only people reviewing his book on Amazon are the kinds of readers who see it as a paperweight or hamster-cage liner,” The Huffington Post observed Tuesday. “And those are the five-star reviews.”
Ouch.
Cuomo’s been rumored as a possible Democratic presidential candidate for 2016.

http://personalliberty.com/another-d...bitant-payoff/