GETTING ICE-COLD? Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer received a reported $500,000 advance for his memoir, “Taking Heat,” which was launched last month by William Morrow with an eye-popping press run of 200,000. That’s a lot of dead trees to spin a happy (and, by most accounts, news-free) yarn about the all-around fabulosity of President Bush. Alas, Fleischer’s publisher has just placed a tiny little ad in Publishers Weekly Online announcing “a special price promotion for retailers and wholesalers” – often a buzz phrase in the publishing biz for throwing in the towel, admitting a big overestimation of demand and trying desperately to avoid an avalanche of returns by slashing the price. A William Morrow spokeswoman insisted: “It’s a Mother’s Day and Father’s Day promotion.” But according to Nielsen Bookscan, Fleischer’s volume had sold less than a tenth of the copies in print as of March 3.
NY Daily News
NY Daily News
I may be suffering from a snark brownout, but it confirms that there is still some justice in the world to know that the only reason anyone ever listened to Ari Fleischer was because they had to.
Now that he’s retired, he’s just a third-rate hack that lost any credibility he might have had long ago.
Screw you, Ari. I hope William Morrow uses your unsold books to line their ‘parrot’ cages.
The thing about Ari was that he was at least quick witted and sometimes even clever. He never told the whole truth, even by accident (unlike the current talking asswipe, who is damn near as dumb as his boss).
The book might have sold a couple of copies if he’d put any truth in it . . . (fat chance that) . . . but he’s got the money, so why should he care. And since his whole job was to lie, who expected anything to change ? ? ?
Nice “severance bonus”, though . . .
He should have gone after the Cockney market with:
‘Ari: Pottymouth an’ the Chamberpot o’ Secrets
MR. FLEISCHER: Yes….
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021016-5.html
Ah, another crappy book by a dubya enabler.
Good grief! I could think of a lot of much nicer things to get my Mom for Mother’s Day… even if I were a dumbwitted, brainwashed Repug.
One of the saddest parts of the huge advances for lousy political books, which never earn them back, is that there is no promotion money for good books.
Publishers used to push a couple of big books a season and use the rest of their promotion budget for advances and publicity for the mid-list books — solidly written, perhaps not great literature, but enjoyable, entertaining books that made people of many different outlooks think, as well as genres like poetry (almost guaranteed money losers). Those books are almost non-existent now. Or if they do manage to get published, their authors have to do, and pay for, their own promotion efforts, meaning less time for them to write more readable books.
In today’s business climate, I doubt that Hemingway or Fitzgerald would be published by a mainstream house — both got their start publishing short stories in periodicals, and their first efforts at books had time to build an audience.
#16, if there’s anyone left who hasn’t read it
http://www.buffalobeast.com/50_most_loathsome.htm
Pretty much sums him up.