"It's an Emotional Business"

By Otto Friedrich

As David Stockman sits and scrawls on his yellow legal pad all his tart recollections of how things really work in the Reagan White House, he is earning about $2,200 an hour. Figuring, that is, that the departing Budget Director is toiling away eight hours every day to produce by his Dec. 1 deadline the blockbuster book for which Harper & Row has just given him a prodigious advance of $2 million plus. A handsome sum indeed, enough to pay about five minutes' worth of the deficit in the Administration's own federal budget for this year. It would have taken Stockman more than 26 years to earn that kind of money at his White House salary of $75,000. But the big question among publishers is: Will Stockman's The Triumph of Politics ever earn a profit on Harper & Row's huge investment, the biggest in its 168-year history?

Yes, says Brooks Thomas, president of Harper & Row. "We think it will be an extremely important book. There are a lot of people out there who are extremely curious about David Stockman. It's going to be very candid because he is very candid."

No, says Morton Janklow, an attorney-agent who has shepherded such high-price talent as Judith Krantz and Sidney Sheldon. "Political figures don't create big books. Elvis creates big books. Stockman is a bookkeeper, and political figures are not famous for their candor. They're busily engaged in rewriting history."

All publishing is to some extent a gamble. If political figures really "don't create big books," a number of publishers are soon going to be surprised, sorrowful and even stricken, because the most notable fad in the book business this season has been the wild-eyed flinging of dollar bills in the general direction of Washington. Bantam has paid "about" $1 million to Geraldine Ferraro for Ferraro: My Story, due in October; Simon & Schuster "more or less" $1 million to Jeane Kirkpatrick for her U.N. memoirs; and Random House $1 million to House Speaker Thomas P. ("Tip") O'Neill.

Though big-name autobiographies have always been reasonably popular, the boom in megabuck success stories--political, financial, sporting and otherwise--started with Bantam's astonishing sales of Iacocca, more than 2 million copies in hardcover and still the No. 2 nonfiction best seller after eight months as No. 1. Indeed, the only hardcover that is selling better is another autobiographical success story from Bantam, Yeager, by Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos.

"We think there is a wide audience for these books," says Linda Grey, Bantam's vice president, publisher and editor in chief. "Ferraro, Yeager, Iacocca all have stories that are unique, and that no one else can tell. Each of these touches on things that many people want to know. In each case, the readership extends beyond the normal book-buying public."

A lot depends on who actually writes such autobiographies. Linda Bird Francke was signed up for the Ferraro story partly because of her success in working on the best-selling memoirs of Rosalynn Carter. The O'Neill project is in the hands of William Novak, who wrote Iacocca. "A publisher would pay a lot for Novak," says one agent. "In a business fraught with insecurity and fear, anything that reduces that fear increases in value."

Harper & Row bought all world rights, both hardcover and paperback, to the Stockman book. How does it estimate their value? Publishers like to guard their financial secrets as closely as the Vatican or the KGB, and every deal is different. The ordinary way to estimate these things is to start by guessing how many hardcover copies will be sold. "A big name sells books," says Michael Korda, editor in chief of Simon & Schuster, "and Stockman is sort of the Bruce Springsteen of the budget." But how many people will pay $20 to hear the Bruce Springsteen of the budget?

"I'd guess maybe 400,000," says one well-informed literary agent not involved in this deal. At $20 a copy, that would theoretically gross $8 million, but discounting eats into profit margins, and retailers take as much as 45%. Paperback rights could probably be sold for several hundred thousand, which publisher and author usually split evenly. Serial rights to magazines, maybe $100,000; foreign sales, maybe $100,000; book clubs, maybe $75,000--all split in various ways with the author. To earn that much, though, the publisher will have to spend heavily in printing costs, advertising and marketing. Another agent estimates that Harper & Row may invest $3.5 million to $4 million before it can start making a profit.

Gambling that much on a political book is risky. Richard Nixon's works have sold well and so have Henry Kissinger's, but the memoirs of Presidents Johnson, Ford and Carter were all disappointing. On the other hand, publishing such prestigious books, even at a loss, does good things for a house's reputation. Even the willingness to risk large advances inspires a certain respect. "Most people think that publishing is a rational business," says Janklow. "It's not. It's an emotional business." Well, maybe, but can't somebody think up a sexier title than The Triumph of Politics? --By Otto Friedrich. Reported by Jeanne McDowell/New York

With reporting by Reported by Jeanne McDowell/New York