Publishers raise ante with celebrity deals

Former president Bill Clinton may not have a quarterback's knack for throwing a football or the box-office draw of a leading man, but the record-setting deal for his memoirs announced this week shows that America's culture of celebrity is increasingly sloshing over into the more artful industry of writing.

Mr. Clinton's deal, reported to be between $10 million and $12 million, has pushed the industry into pricetags usually associated with those who appear on the cover of People magazine.

As the advances keep going up, it is raising questions about how - or even whether - an industry that doesn't have the margins of Hollywood can cope with such platinum numbers, particularly if a book were to flop.

"The real horror show would be if one of these ... tanked horribly," says Jerome Kramer, editor of Book magazine. "Thus far I think the bets have been fairly safe. I can't imagine that you won't see an escalation across the board" in these kinds of deals.

Critics say publishers already offer less marketing and promotion attention to their midlist authors, and industry observers say big-ticket books like Mr. Clinton's will use up even more marketing dollars in an effort to recoup publishers' initial layout.

By one back-of-the-envelope calculation, that will require a sale of upward of 2 million books.

But some book-industry observers say publishing is simply trying to keep up with the rest of society. "We [in America] pay such high amounts for the superstars, that an industry like publishing that has to play in that arena ... suddenly has to ante up much more," says Nora Rawlinson, editor of trade magazine Publishers Weekly.

Almost every president since Ulysses S. Grant has written some type of biography, and more recently, every celebrity from Lee Iaccoca to Lee Ann Rimes has taken pen in hand. What is different about the Clinton deal is the sheer dollar amount.

Previous big book deals - with Pope John Paul II, for example, who reportedly drew $8.5 million for his memoir in 1994 -have been safe plays, say some in the industry. Although others point out that a book can land on the bestseller lists and still not make a profit.

Should the Clinton book, due out in 2003, not prove to be a bestseller, other authors will pay for the failure, says Samuel Freedman, professor at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York and author four books. "If Knopf has to write off $2 [million] or $3 million, that's going to be taken out of the hide of dozens of writers of serious books.... Not that I don't think Clinton's book will be serious."

Indeed, Alfred A. Knopf, the publisher, is known more for its literary cachet than its lust for celebrity. And its president, Sonny Mehta, says that the rest of its catalog will remain unaffected, no matter what the sales of the Clinton book.

And Mr. Kramer points out that sometimes big moneymakers allow publishing houses to finance works by unproven authors. "Whatever [Doubleday] may be paying John Grisham, the upside to it is he's a very successful name in their stable, and his success allows them to take risks or publish other authors."

Still, presidential memoirs are rarely big sellers. And Mr. Clinton's most recent book, "Between Hope and History," ended up lining shelves at discount bookstores. But Mr. Mehta has high expectations for both the literary merit and sales potential of his recent acquisition.

"My gut tells me that people are going to be enormously interested in this book," he says. "This is not a book by a celebrity about celebrityhood," this is a book by one of the most prominent political figures in recent history, he says.

Few political and publishing observers think Mr. Clinton will go into detail about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, but instead will talk about his first year as president and his effect on policy. Robert Barnett, the lawyer who negotiated the deal for Clinton, has said that the former president will deal with the issues of his life in a comprehensive and candid way.

But Professor Freedman says that's not the kind of book that millions of Americans will shell out $30 a pop to read.

"[When you] talk about the kind of mass readership it takes to earn back a $8 million or $10 million advance, you're not talking about an audience that wants to read a serious political book," says Freedman, who was a member of an Author's Guild team that studied the crisis in midlist publishing. "It's sort of crazy for a publisher to acquire a book that plainly isn't going to deliver the one thing a mass audience wants: the tabloid story."

Books by celebrities have become fewer and far between in recent years, says Ms. Rawlinson, but the prices they are bringing are climbing ever higher. Hillary Rodham Clinton was offered a reported $8 million for rights to her book last year, and General Electric CEO Jack Welch reportedly got $7.1 million for his book, scheduled for publication next month.

It's not just politicians and CEOs who are taking wheelbarrows full of publishing money to the bank. For example, popular fiction writer Mary Higgins Clark made a $64 million, five-book deal last year with Simon & Schuster, Rawlinson says, including $4 million for the mistress of suspense's memoir.

Staff writer Yvonne Zipp contributed to this report.