11 April 2021: Questions About Governor Cuomo's Book Deal

Literary Notes: Add Andrew Cuomo and his $4 million to the problems list of politicians’ book deals

The Virginia-Pilot's Erica Smith's weekly column on books and literature covers recent criticism of the curiously generous advance awarded to Governor Cuomo for his pandemic "leadership" book deal:

Some politicians’ books sell. Others flop — predictably — yet won a tidy advance from their publisher.

Take the case of New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo. He negotiated a $4 million advance for his second book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the Covid-19 Pandemic,” with Crown. The deal was built partly on his public popularity for his daily briefings and nightly newsletters that offered directness, guts, a bit of hope. Yet “his record was questionable and unfinished when the book appeared,” writes Alex Shephard in The New Republic.

Cuomo now faces calls for impeachment. He’s accused of underreporting the COVID-19 death toll in nursing homes while he was working on the book, and having government aides work on this personal project. (He’s also accused by several women of sexual harassment.)

Shephard asks why publishers pay handsomely for such “contrived bits of marketing” when the public shows little interest in them. (He also cites books by Hillary Clinton and Virginia’s Tim Kaine; Jeb Bush; and last year’s Democratic candidates — vs., say, Barack Obama’s.)

Cuomo’s $4 million, he writes, is “astonishingly high” and would have required sales “in the very high six figures” or higher. “American Crisis” has sold fewer than 50,000 copies, a sales “disaster.” His first book — a “hopelessly dull,” 550-page memoir called “All Things Possible” — sold about 3,000 hardcovers and 13 audiobooks. The advance: $700,000, from HarperCollins.

“Given the serious inequities in publishing — low advances paid to many authors, low salaries for many workers, a lack of diversity at every level — the high advances paid to bland books that rarely sell is particularly galling,” Shephard says.

Do you think the mystery behind why such large advances are paid to politicians and not other authors for their book deals might go away if the publishers behind them start being seen as money launderers for those seeking to buy influence from the politicians or to reward them for services rendered?