Commentary

Just An Online Minute... Clinton, For Sale Online

  • by June 22, 2004
So Clinton's book is on sale and the race is on to get a copy and devour all 957 pages.

The tome already tops Amazon.com's Top 10, and it won't take long before excerpts begin appearing online--on blogs and in magazines. Well, maybe not on blogs.

Already, Google's sponsored links appear adjacent to news stories about the book. This morning for example, I spotted an offer for free shipping from Amazon.com which was hawking the book for just $21 (the list price is $35). Websiteiq.com offered a 40 percent discount, and Yahoo! Shopping invited me to purchase the book. Winsweepstakes.net wanted to know who my favorite president is, Reagan or Clinton; my answer was potentially worth $1,000.

Of course Clinton-bashers' marketing wheels are spinning. I found tons of links for books on the Clinton years by conservatives such as Rich Lowry who wrote "Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years." The book is also hyped with Google links directing online browsers to Amazon.

From what I can tell, reviews of the Clinton book have been less than stellar. Take the review from Associated Press writer Jerry Schwartz who finds the book dull. Schwartz writes: "Here is one of the most fascinating figures of his time, a charismatic and brilliant man - a fatherless boy who rose from humble beginnings to live, in his own words, 'an improbable life' - and he has produced a book that lacks anything more than the most rudimentary insights. This master politician does not even offer a single good discussion of the art of politics."

Clearly, Schwartz is disappointed. He faults the book's "relentlessly chronological" flow the effect of which he calls "mind-numbing." Schwartz says, "It's like being locked in a small room with a very gregarious man who insists on reading his entire appointment book, day by day, beginning in 1946."

And there are other disappointed reviewers. But all in all, I suspect that sales will be robust, especially online and that our former president, such a larger than life figure, a rock star of sorts, will fare well. He has a knack for landing on his feet in nearly every seemingly unconquerable circumstance.

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