Sarah Palin's book sales

Andrew,

As a published (and HarperCollins) author yourself, I'm surprised you would think that anyone has a clue right now about whether Palin's book will earn out her advance. Of course Harper is touting the sales and printing figures right now, but nearly all those books are going to bookstores. Are they being purchased by people--you bet. But *none* of those numbers include returns, which is why political books normally have sales drop offs like a rock off a cliff.

Whether the advance earns out of not (i.e., whether Harper turns a profit) depends upon whether sales continue to be positive before the end of the next royalty accounting period. In six months, in other words, will Harper be ordering more books from the printer, or will they be telling Borders to remainder those books in-place and offer credits of $20/book so they don't have to take back thousands of unsold copies of the book back in their Scranton warehouse? If Coulter and other recent political books are any indication, you betcha it'll be the latter.

The only two things we can be certain of at this point, is that Palin has made a boatload of money (she keeps that advance even if the book doesn't earn it out) and that Harper will be able to leverage the frontloaded sales of this book to roll the dice on future politi-celebrity books because their efforts make Harper more attractive to those authors.

Your pal,

Fred

Diocese of Scranton, Ctd.

Andrew,

As a follow-up to your note about Rev. Edward Lyman from the Diocese of Scranton, I note that the Rev. Robert Timchak was in court today regarding charges he accessed child pornography, after the Diocese was tipped off about it through an anonymous letter:

http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091104/NEWS/911049983

This is the same Diocese in which the former Bishop (Joseph Martino) resigned due to stress--probably due to his unceasing efforts against gay marriage (including telling a Catholic university it was failing in its Catholic identity by having a gay rights speaker on campus) as well as against Barack Obama's election:

http://www.wnep.com/wnep-speech-goes-on-dispite-bishops-disapproval,0,2547224.story

and

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=14123


But hey--Joe Biden is from here!

Fred