Lewinsky gets the cold shoulder

“I’m as big a whore as anyone, but I’d rather die first,” the executive said. Another voiced revulsion at the Lewinsky affair. “The more I read about her, the less I like her.”

Reports of the publishing world’s lack of interest in Lewinsky’s book may be a bargaining ploy to drive down the price. Lewinsky is reportedly seeking $6 million, as big as the advance received by General Colin Powell. While Lewinsky maynot get what she is seeking, it seems inevitable that a book by her will appear. Publishers did not allow their distaste for O. J. Simpson to prevent them from bidding for I Want to Tell You, which became a No. 1 bestseller.

While Lewinsky is peddling her tale, the Starr report has become an instant best-seller with 1 million copies out this week. By early October, Dove Audio, which produced an audiotape of President Nixon’s Watergate tapes, plans a $20 seven-hour audio of the Starr report read by actors David Ackroyd and Tracy Brooks Swope. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz reads the White House reuttal.

The Starr report has had other effects on the publishing world. Little, Brown announced it was postponing the publication of All Too Human by the former White House aide and Clinton confidant George Stephanopoulos, who had received a $2.7 million advance. The book has been further delayed to allow Stephanopoulos “to integrate these momentous events (in the Starr report) into thestory”.

Other authors have benefited from the Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr triangle. The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals by William Bennett, a conservative pundit, and Ann Coulter’s High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case against Bill Clinton, are both rising in the bestseller lists.

Simon & Schuster is rushing out two books: The Clinton Enigma: A Four-and-a-Half Minute Speech Reveals This President’s Entire Life by Washington Post reporter David Maraniss, and And the Horse He Rode in On: The People v Kenneth Starr by Clinton defender James Carville.

— The Observer News Service