Likelihood of Success

Vanity press

Aug 7, 2008 Gelt, Narcissus Rex, Politics and Poker

Instapundit links to a Drudge report that no one is buying Nancy Pelosi’s book. That’s hardly surprising; most congressional “leaders” are uninspiring and uninspired. The support of their respective caucuses is in fact a counter-indication of originality or boldness, which are just about the only thing anyone reading a book by a politician can hope for. (Unless he’s really skinny, I guess.)

The sad part for Pelosi is that the practice by which publishers bestow massive donations on their favored politicians via utterly unrecoverable publishing “advances” was barred by the House of Representatives. Therefore she could not get even a fraction of the phenomenal sweetheart advance paid to then Senator-elect Hillary Clinton for her various scribblings — which, while they were bought by many, still did not come close to earning out the advance paid by a publishing industry supposedly beset by economic crisis.

That means Pelosi must have really thought people would want to buy her book.

Chilling. That’s what enough time in Congress does to people.

UPDATE: Left-wing “media monitor” Media Matters insists that the Hillary Clinton book did, in fact, earn out its advance — making it the exception that proves the rule, but an exception nonetheless. Here’s how the New York Press article I quoted explains its conclusion that, nonetheless, her book deal was unusually sweet:

Last reports are that Living History sold 1.2 million copies, and bookstores are reporting that sales in the last couple weeks have dropped way off. It seems she could sell a million and a half by year