Penguin Random House to take king-sized bath on “book” “written” by disgraced governor
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There is no violin in the world small enough to serenade this:
Last summer, publishers really wanted to buy Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s book.
At the time, it seemed like a guaranteed best seller. Sales of political books were surging, and Mr. Cuomo had become a cable news fixture with a rising national profile as the man who steered New York through the first devastating surge of the coronavirus pandemic. When the manuscript began circulating, several major publishing companies vied for it in a frenzied auction, with bids soaring into the seven figures.
Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House, beat out competitors with an offer of more than $5 million. It was a gamble on an author whose previous memoir sold fewer than 4,000 hardcover copies. And it backfired spectacularly.
On Tuesday, the governor — facing sexual harassment scandals and multiple investigations, including some related to how his book was drafted — said that he was resigning from office.
“It’s like a publisher’s worst nightmare,” said Matt Latimer, whose literary agency, Javelin, represents many politicians. “It can sometimes be very risky to work on a book that responds to what’s in the zeitgeist at the moment. But I can’t imagine any publisher would have foreseen such a catastrophic ending.”
$5 million! So a governor who in fact did a shitty job with the pandemic but became celebrated in media circles that only cover states with Acela stops or Disney theme parks because you can apparently get a lot of traction by Performing Masculinity at press conferences while bad things are happening in New York City got a huge advance to congratulate himself by having his frequently harassed aides write something for him. Ain’t America grand?
And yes:
Keep them so we know to shame you for the rest of your life? https://t.co/2eB5wHS3m6— Isaac Chotiner (@IChotiner) August 10, 2021
“Sounding more coherent than Donald Trump at press conferences” is really not the bar by which political leaders should be judged.