George W. Bush’s book deal, news of which broke yesterday, is valued at about $7 million, according to a person familiar with the matter. The sum is less than half what Bill Clinton was paid for his memoir, My Life, and less than the $8 million Hillary Clinton received.
The Associated Press reports the former president has already written 30,000 words of the book, to be published by Crown and tentatively called Decision Points, which will focus on his most important life lessons.
“I want people to understand the environment in which I was making decisions. I want people to get a sense of how decisions were made and I want people to understand the options that were placed before me,” he told the AP.
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Although Bush’s $7 million deal—which, like Clinton’s, was negotiated by Washington attorney Robert Barnett—the new book will not be a memoir: Instead of recounting his life story, he’ll write about a dozen personal and professional choices, including giving up drinking and picking Dick Cheney as his vice president.
The book is scheduled for release in 2010, after the publication of former first lady Laura Bush’s memoirs.
Lynn Sherr is a former ABC News correspondent, author of Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words and Tall Blondes, a book about giraffes. She is also co-editor of Peter Jennings: A Reporter's Life. At ABC’s 20/20 news program, Sherr specialized in women's issues and social change, as well as investigative reports. Her most recent book, a memoir—Outside the Box: My Unscripted Life of Love, Loss and Television News—is just out in paperback.
