VodkaPundit is amused by the Great One’s famous work ethic.
It looks more and more like Barack Obama has made chumps out of yet another publisher:
Book contracts routinely include a “failure to perform†clause. Contracts that come with a reported $65 million advance, such as the one signed by Barack and Michelle Obama in February 2017 with Penguin Random House (PRH), will inevitably include such a clause.
Among the most common of such failures is the failure to complete a contracted work by an agreed-upon deadline. PRH is staring down one such failure right now. At the time the Obama deal was made in early 2017, insiders were telling Publishers Weekly that books by both Michelle and Barack would be released in fall 2018.
Michelle’s book did great, although Insanity Wrap believes there might have been some sales shenanigans as is sometimes the case with Democrat-penned political biographies.
That aside, here we are nearly two years after Barack’s deadline, and the publisher still has nothing to publish:
“The delay is wreaking havoc with print scheduling and of course budget planning,†one publishing insider told me. “The enormous advance is starting to ‘raise’ concerns within the publisher. While Michelle’s book performed well, Obama needs to deliver the book and sales to make the overall deal worthwhile.”
Back in the early ’90s, Obama took a $125,000 advance for a book on race and voting rights he never finished, although he did manage to hand in “bloated, yet incomplete drafts.†He also never repaid the advance, claiming he had too much student debt.
Some of the pages Obama did turn in, he wrote on a third-party’s dime:
He also did some writing at the offices of his new employer, Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, the town’s leading civil rights firm. Some of his new colleagues were reportedly less than thrilled to see their young associate, feet up on his desk, doodling on his book on company time. The named partners, however, indulged him.
Insanity Wrap is impressed: Obama managed to get two organizations to pay him for a book he never wrote.
Nice work if you can shirk it.
A. Squaretail
And the publisher trusted Obama? Where were they during his Presidency? Cuba?
ruralcounsel
With any luck, he’ll be able to finish it from a cell in Leavenworth.
George
Always struck me as lazy, except when he was filling out his bracket every March.
gwbnyc
one look at his old lady and this is a mystery?
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