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.
