Richard Curtis, president & CEO of 10-year old E-reads, today offered Dick Cheney (his wife says the name rhymes with meanie) significantly more than the $2 million Cheney is reportedly seeking for his memoir. Curtis established his credentials in the book world first as an outspoken defender of the rights of authors, then as an author (How To Be Your Own Literary Agent and Beyond the Bestseller, and now as publisher of E-reads.
In mock solemnity, in Literary Agents, (Macmillan, 1995) Curtis told author John F. Baker, VP and Editorial Director of Publishers Weekly:
"If anyone wants to chisel something on my tombstone, I'd like them to say that 'Here lies a person who raised consciousness about royalties.' I think I succeeded, to the extent that royalties are now better reported than they were," Curtis told Baker. (p. 64-65)
In an era when the book publishing industry is circling the same drain as the newspaper industry, Curtis is characteristically offering Cheney a generous contract available to few other writers in these trying times.
Like you, I note the eight interminable years that Cheney hid behind a curtain of arrogant silence refusing congressional subpoenas, most public discourse and all accountability. He spoke only in environments such as the Federalist Society and American Enterprise Institute when he was protected by Über Right-wing allies. And then suddenly like a rabid bat emerging from a subterranean tomb, Cheney is popping up everywhere in the last month spreading fear wherever he goes.
The game is his prelude to establishing that he has something to say that the public will pay to read. Curtis offers to play Cheney's game on his own terms. In the letter to the former Vice President, revealed for the first time earlier today, Curtis wrote:
We are prepared to offer a substantial advance and an unprecedented royalty percentage for the privilege of publishing your story. If you require the services of a professional co-author we have access to many superb professional writers with ghost-writing or co-writing credentials.
Naturally, before we sign a binding commitment it would be mutually beneficial for us to spell out the content and "voice" of your book. A paramount consideration is the degree to which you can be candid about your personal life and political career. Though I realize you're a newcomer to the publishing process, I'm sure that as a businessman you will appreciate that the more frank you can be, the higher the commercial value of your book. A memoir perceived as self-serving (such as public statements you have made since leaving office, if I may be so frank) will simply not enable us to recoup our investment. I'm afraid we can't count on foreign rights revenue as responses to feelers made by our agents abroad have not been encouraging. It seems that the willingness of the Coalition of the Willing does not extend to acquiring rights to your story.
For Cheney to receive the special deal embedded in this generous contract offer, the publisher insists that Cheney reveal how he outed a CIA officer and got his chief of staff to take the fall.
In addition, Curtis made notes on additional topics he wants covered in the book he proposes that Cheney write. The part of the list that was made public today includes these points:
* How you undermined the Constitution
* How you suspended the right of Habeas Corpus
* How you steered no-bid government contracts to Halliburton, a company in which you have a multimillion dollar interest that has appreciated by thousands of percent since the war began
* How you scammed America's allies with Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction"
* How you created a secret cabal of oil and other energy lobbyists
* How you sent thousands of young men and women to death and maiming in the prosecution of a "phony" war whose real goal was to exploit Middle East oil
* How you leveraged your office to create a policy of torture and brutality
* How you instituted secret wiretapping and email monitoring of American citizens
For the book to succeed commercially, the publisher insists on complete candor.
"If you are uncertain about the meaning of that term, let me recommend a book that might serve as your model. I'm thinking of The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir by former dancer Toni Bentley whose candor about her sex life was painfully frank. In particular she rhapsodized about anal intercourse."
For this book to be a commercial success, Curtis said the public is not so interested in Cheney's sex life. "Nevertheless, you might find anal intercourse to be an effective metaphor for your conduct as Vice-President. I don't want to put words in your mouth but if you were willing to talk about giving it to the American people 'in the ass' we would probably raise our first printing another 100,000 copies in the blink of an eye."
Part of the formal, multimillion dollar offer Curtis's book publishing company
made to Cheney
is here.