3 April 2021: Governor Cuomo's $4 Million Book Deal

The author and the offer: Cuomo shouldn’t have taken any advance on his book

The editors of the New York Daily News aren't happy with Governor Cuomo's book deal. Here's their short editorial in full:

It may be hard to recall at the moment, but one praiseworthy facet of Gov. Cuomo’s daily briefings on COVID in March, April and May 2020 was his rare performance of humility. Unlike the now-former occupant of the White House, Cuomo routinely admitted back then that the virus was a huge, scary problem — one he couldn’t immediately or personally solve.

Which is one reason why it seemed such a strange act of hubris when he announced in summer 2020, after the first COVID wave had crested in New York, that he’d be writing a book about lessons he learned from managing the pandemic. “Where’d he find the time?” we wondered then. We should have added, “Isn’t writing a book a bit premature, since scientists like Drs. Fauci and Birx are saying we’re not near the end of the pandemic’s devastation?”

Last summer, we didn’t yet know how large an advance the governor was getting to pen the book, but we objected to the fact that he was taking any lump sum at all upfront. Elected officials ought not pocket outside income from private interests, and while the writing of books is a frequent exception for people in perches of power, large payments from big companies complicate matters. Far better for someone on the public payroll to skip the advance and be paid a share of book sales.

Besides, book advances are supposed to give authors money to live on while they write; Cuomo earns $225,000 a year and lives in a state-subsidized mansion.

Our objections in principle are magnified now that we’ve learned more about his deal: Cuomo reportedly got offered more than $4 million for his tome, and was negotiating the sum even as his staff was stonewalling the release of the full facts about COVID nursing home deaths.

And though his spokesman calls the book an “outside project,” Cuomo got help from staffers on said project — all volunteer labor, he says, donated on their free time. Right.

The editors are people who work in publishing. They have a good understanding of how the industry works and how much effort is required to publish a book-length publication. Governor Cuomo's book deal is abnormal on many levels.

Separately, we had previously estimated Governor Cuomo's earnings from his pandemic leadership book at nearly $3.0 million. That figure was based on actual sales and a really generous cut of $65 per book sold for Governor Cuomo. If the publisher paid Cuomo an advance of $4 million, they're still $1 million in the hole for a book they've been forced to stop promoting by Governor Cuomo's scandals.