Hillary Vs. Gingrich

Dec 19 01:57 UTC 2000

So, Hillary Clinton has signeda bookdeal wherein she gets an 8 million advance
for a book due in 2 years.

How is this different from Newt Gingrich taking a 4 million advance for his
book deal?

Personally, I feel both deserve to keep any deal they make, but the liberals
saw what Newt got as "selling influence".  They raised holy hell until he
retracrted the deal and went purely on the commission basis.  Ar they gonna
do the same to Hillary, or is she gonna skate because of the liberal "double
standard"?

response 2 of 53:

Dec 19 03:52 UTC 2000

  I'm not sure whether I'm a "liberal" or not [although I'm fairly sure I
  qualify as one according to the standards of people who say things like
  "the liberals <do this>" and "the liberals <say that>"] but I'll go on
  record as saying that while it's no doubt hard to resist a financial
  windfall like that, a public official interested in being perceived as
  unbiased should seriously consider what their actions say when they agree
  to receive large book advances, low interest "loans", etc..  No matter 
  whether other politicians have taken advantage of such deals, it's still
  not a good idea.

response 4 of 53:

Dec 19 16:26 UTC 2000

And the publisher for Newt did the same.  Remember, at that time he was
probably the most powerful republican in the nation.  He had a lot of star
drawing power at that time.

response 6 of 53:

Dec 19 16:40 UTC 2000

Not to mention that any money she made from selling any of the books she has
written has gone to charity - as will a portion of the advance she is
receiving.  I have decided - if I don't get HRC's book on the White House -
I am getting it myself - I was looking at it in Border's and it looks great.

response 8 of 53:

Dec 19 17:08 UTC 2000

I've missed something. What is unethical about writing a book and being
paid for it? One distinction is between authors that author for their
livelihood and authors that are professionals in some field and author
about that. But either way, authoring is *expected* of them. What's
different about Hillary (or Newt)? 

response 10 of 53:

Dec 19 20:14 UTC 2000

I guess what I find a bit unethical is the huge advance for a book not expected
to be published for two years. Also, the amount of money strikes me as
excessive. I don't know how much her first book made, if anything, but she
would have to sell an awful lot of books to make back $4 million.

response 12 of 53:

Dec 19 21:45 UTC 2000

It's a business contract.  Both she & the publisher have bet that
they'll make money on the deal.  I don't see anything illegal, or even
particularly noteworthy of comment.

response 14 of 53:

Dec 20 01:35 UTC 2000

Despite the fact that Mr. Gingrich may or may not have treated his ex-wife
as a toad, what he did (write a *fictional* book, albeit a rather boring one,
and sell it for a large advance) is analogous to what Ms. Clinton is doing
(writing a non-fictional memoir and selling it for a large advance) -- and
if it was wrong for him to do it, why is it not wrong for her to do it?
Personal preferences aside, there should be one standard of conduct for all
elected officials, should there not?

response 16 of 53:

Dec 20 02:34 UTC 2000

Re #13 re #12, book contracts are not like car contracts.  Cars are, by
and large, mass market consumer goods - lots of people have them, lots
of people sell 'em, and, cars being mass produced, they are more alike
than different, if there's some special feature or style that makes a
particular car attractive to a particular buyer, there are generally
lots of other cars that also have that special feature or style.  That
means it's easy to attach a price to a car simply by studying past sales
records for similar cars, and that price is likely to be quite stable
and predictable.

Books are quite different.  The words in a book are the results of a
unique creative process that cannot be easily duplicated.  Only a few
people have mastered the necessary skills to write an interesting book,
and nobody has ever managed to reduce those skills to a mechanical
formula.  Worse yet, the book market demands novel creative works, which
is quite different from the automobile world, where most consumers happy
buy essentially the same thing over & over again (perhaps with slight
cosmetic changes or more rarely actual technological improvements...)
Some books do much better than other books, and even within that rare
breed of human who can write a good book, only a select few have
demonstrated the ability to write a book that sells more than once.
This means that in the book world, names mean a lot.

A first time book author can generally not count on a whole lot in terms
of money, because the publisher is taking a big gamble on an unknown
author.  An author who had written several books that have sold modestly
well can generally ask for, and receive an advance on the sale of their
book.  The size of that advance generally depends on how well the
publisher expects the book to sell.  Celebrities who are famous for
non-book reasons can also write books, and because they already have an
established name, the first book can generally be counted on to sell
well, even if it's utter crap.  The size of the advance on a *2nd* book,
of course, may not be so great.  Advances are, in essence, "borrowing"
against money the book would otherwise make in the long run for the
author.  A book author might want to get the money up front to fund a
capital purchase (such as a house or a car), or because they're old
enough that they wouldn't otherwise be able to get all the money the
book is worth in their lifetime.  Since books are creative works for the
entertainment business, the contracts are not so unlike contracts for
movie stars or sports stars, except that the amount of money paid for
the average book is typically a lot smaller.  Only a very few book
authors actually manage to make a full-time living off of writing, and
book authors almost never manage the sort of opulent living that the
average movie star or football player seem to achieve.

The average politician does all sorts of things that I think are much
more horrible than Ms. Clinton's book contracts.  Most politicians, for
instance, will gleefully speak for a fee.  Former president Ford, for
instance, will almost certainly come and speak at your private executive
business luncheon, for a fee.  You, as a fat cat industrialist, will
cheerfully pay such a fee for the privilege of looking like you're
well-connected to the rich and powerful.  Minor politicians can
generally be induced to speak for much less money, or sometimes even for
free, and that is because they still need to achieve the kind of name
recognition that will at least enable the average voter to remember
their name in the voter booth.  We have here such a politician, Larry
Kestenbaum, who I suspect may be willing to give a speech in a good
cause for as little as the cost of a good meal.  Speachifying at a
private dinner is one thing, but it gets worse.  Politicians, as well as
ex-army folks, are in hot demand as consultants and board members.  A
politician who was, for instance, the former head of the EPA, is often
assumed to have special knowlege of how the EPA functions, as well as
the names and telephone numbers and sometimes even the friendship of
important permament higher-ups at the EPA.  If you're looking to put a
tall black smoke-stack somewhere unpleasant, you might well pay big
bucks for just such a politician.  If you, Mr. big fat industrialist,
establish a track record of employing former EPA functionaries as
consultants, you may even be able to induce the *present* head of the
EPA to act in your favour, even *before* you hire them on as a
consultant.  Washington lobbies are also keen on employing former
politicians, army brass, bureaucrats, and anyone else they think might
have an insider's knowledge on where the skeletons are buried.

At least, with Ms. Clinton's book, we can *see* the results of that $5M,
and judge for ourselves whether the publisher or Ms. Clinton got the
best end of that book contract.  Considering the prices other people in
the entertainment business seem to be able to command, her book contract
even starts to sound half-way reasonable.  I'm sorry, but on a scale of
1-10 for evilness, I think Ms. Clinton's book barely commands a 1.

response 18 of 53:

Dec 20 05:04 UTC 2000

(Time Magazine estimates the new book would have to sell 1.5 million
hardcover copies for Simon & Schuster to break even.)

(also, House ethics rules don't apply to senators.)

response 20 of 53:

Dec 20 07:22 UTC 2000

(uh, *I* didn't forget about paperback editions.)  ;)

(actually, I've been trying to find sales figures to see how well
previous books by Hillary have done.  all I've found so far are figures
for how well the book sold on Amazon.com.)

response 22 of 53:

Dec 20 20:59 UTC 2000

She's not.  Jesus Christ.  I don't think anyone here is arguing that it IS
any different (with the exception of me who things that Newt screwed over his
ex-wife a few weeks prior, probably knowing that he was going to get a huge
advance)

response 24 of 53:

Dec 20 22:12 UTC 2000

As I recall, Newt did not get his deal as the result of a bidding war (as
Hillary did), but as part of a direct deal with Rupert Murdoch. No other
publishing house had any confidence that "To Renew America" would sell
sufficient copies to justify the enormous advance. As it turned out, it did
not.