The Business Times Singapore
June 21, 2004 Monday

Clinton’s memoirs creating a media stir;
First print run of 1.5 million copies has sold out in advance

by Christopher Reed In Los Angeles

THE perpetually tardy Bill Clinton is finally publishing his
long-awaited memoirs, My Life, on Tuesday. And although the book is
a year late, it has given rise to much publicity and expectation.

The 957-page, US $35 book is already a best-seller. The first print
run of 1.5 million copies has sold out in advance.

But memoirs of US presidents aren’t known as entertaining reads and it
will be a challenge for publisher Alfred Knopf, part of the Bertelsman
empire, to turn a profit after paying Mr Clinton a reported US$12
million advance.

The only real US presidential best-seller was Ulysses Grant’s
Memoirs, which was published in 1885 and focused on his Civil War
exploits. Presidents Jefferson, Madison and the two Adams (John and
John Quincy) didn’t write any memoirs because in those days it was
considered bad taste to revel in one’s achievements.

Herbert Hoover’s three-volume effort was the dullest, containing such
arcana as statistics on exports to Armenia and totals of US dried
fruit production.

Richard Nixon’s was an unexpected flop, and the wives of Gerald Ford
and Ronald Reagan outdid their husbands’ autobiographies with their
own books.

But Mr Clinton has already out-done his wife Hillary, whose memoirs
were published last year. His advance was US$4 million more than hers,
and her first print run was only one million, although her book has
sold a formidable two million copies so far.

Mr Clinton’s publicity campaign began earlier this month at a book
expo in Chicago, when the queue to hear him speak stretched for
several city blocks.

In publication week, he will appear on every top TV interview show,
and all CBS radio stations will carry an hour-long broadcast of
questions he takes from the public.

Knopf publicity chief Paul Bogaards says: ‘Excitement has been coming
from the four corners of the earth.’

Editor-in-chief Sonny Mehta has said the book will be ‘revelatory’.
And that has caused a stir because most people chiefly want to know
what the former president says about his Oval Office goings-on with
White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

In her book, Mrs Clinton gave a breathless account of how she learned
of her husband’s infidelity – but said she would leave it to him to
fully explain.

So will he now level with the people who twice voted him into office?

Since his White House departure in January 2001, he has shown no
inclination to ‘tell all’. He has said he knows presidential memoirs
are ‘often dull and self-serving’, but has promised his will be
‘interesting and self-serving’. A witticism, or a hint of what is
to come?

Dan Rather, the CBS veteran news personality who is interviewing
Mr Clinton next week, has read the book. Mr Rather told a New York
newspaper: ‘He didn’t totally, absolutely, come clean but he made
an effort.’

Meanwhile, fellow Democrats worry that the flood of publicity will
drown out presidential candidate John Kerry’s muted attempts to gain
public attention. But President George W Bush faces the same threat
as he attempts to prop up his troubled presidency.

Even if Mr Clinton’s book does disappoint, the former president will
soon be off on his next adventure – opening his US$175 million
presidential library in Arkansas a fortnight after the Nov 2
presidential election.

The Republicans are beginning to realise that Mr Clinton is never
going to go away.