Archives for June 2004

Clinton Bookscan: Over 600K Nielsen Bookscan reports that they have tracked sales of approximately 606,000 copies of MY LIFE through last Saturday. The book was No. 1 in all 99 regional markets broken out within the tracking system. Given the percentage of the market that they cover, and the likelihood of big sales at nonreporting outlets such as Wal-Mart, Bookscan says they believe their tracked number is consistent with marketwide estimates provided by Knopf. Bremer’s Ready for Josephson Money Ambassador L. Paul Bremer 3rd is looking to make a quick transition to the private sector, having retained ICM’s Marvin Josephson […]

MY LIFE Nears A Million, and More Books of the Moment Knopf estimated that MY LIFE had sold 935,000 copies through Sunday. Following the fashion of TBR, the Washington Post Book World has posted in advance their forthcoming Sunday review of MY LIFE by Walter Isaacson. As for other books on the landscape, I neglected to note yesterday that IMPERIAL HUBRIS was No. 2 at Amazon (now it’s No. 5). St. Martin’s is circulating a letter to booksellers from Patrick Buchanan with a warning of his own in advance of the pre-convention publication of WHERE THE RIGHT WENT WRONG. Buchanan […]

Hubris Gets Heat In the midst of Clinton madness I missed the building buzz over the next inside the Beltway book aimed for headlines and bestseller lists: Brassey’s forthcoming IMPERIAL HUBRIS: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terrorism, set for release on July 4. Promoted as by an “anonymous member of the U.S. intelligence community,” the NYT says the author is a “22-year veteran of the C.I.A. who is still serving in a senior counterterrorism post at the agency and headed the bin Laden station from 1996 to 1999.” He criticizes the Iraq invasion as “an avaricious, premeditated […]

Lagardere Confirms Interest in Hodder French media conglomerate Lagardere officially confirmed yesterday their interest in adding Hodder Headline to their Hachette unit (which includes Orion and Octopus in the UK). Dow Jones Newswires puts a higher estimate on the potential value of Hodder than we’ve seen elsewhere (by a matter of another $12 million to $25 million). DJN The Big Price Tag on Penguin UK’s Warehouse Troubles The cost of the warehouse mess at Penguin UK is now estimated at $35 million to $55 million, according to PN (and it still is not resolved yet). Managing director Tom Weldon has […]

Apologies Once Again On selected days we’ve still been accidentally sending some of you both a Deluxe Lunch and a traditional flavor one. I know it can be annoying, and I’m sorry. Without boring you with the technical details, it’s fairly complex to deliver two different mails to two separate chunks of our mailing list, and we’ve had a combination of technical issues and human error (that would be me) in mastering the new protocol. If you can hang in there, I should have this perfected soon. Here’s what makes it trickier. Some of you are receiving Lunches at a […]

Pension Problem Sidelines Smith Deal; Hodder Will Be Sold to Soothe Shareholders WH Smith “Has suspended discussions with Permira pending clarification of the level of any possible offer,” based on the expectation that the company’s massively underfunded pension makes Permira’s original bid of $1.7 billion unsustainable. A Permira spokesperson says they are still talking to pension fund officials and “We intend to revert to the company in due course.” But now disillusioned shareholders — who had bid the stock up when the offer was first made (it fell another 6.5 percent after yesterday’s announcement) — need to be satisfied, and […]