Take one of the hottest news stories of 2003, involving a former ambassador to Iraq, a grand jury investigation of alleged misdoings by the Bush administration and a manuscript that names names, and you don't typically end up at a publisher that barely makes the list of the 25 biggest houses. But in April, independent New York press Carroll & Graf will bring out The Politics of Truth by Joseph Wilson, in what could be one of the most significant pieces of political publishing of the year.
Wilson, the last official U.S. ambassador to Iraq, traveled to Africa in 2002 on a CIA-sponsored trip to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium from Niger. He found little evidence of such an effort, but the president made a general allegation about Iraq's attempt to buy African nuclear materials in his 2003 State of the Union address. When Wilson reported his findings about the claim in a New York Times op-ed essay last July 6, syndicated columnist Robert Novak responded by outing Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent, in a July 14 column that cited two unnamed senior administration sources. The leak now is the subject of a grand jury investigation that has questioned Novak, Wilson and a number of high-profile administration members, and could lead to felony charges for the sources, punishable by as many as 10 years in prison.
Now, in a book that's under embargo until April 30, Wilson will reveal who he believes leaked the information to Novak. Wilson's memoir covers his career in foreign service, including his time in Africa in the 1970s and in Iraq before the first Gulf War; his investigation of the Niger claims; and his critique of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But the biggest nugget is his explanation of the leak, which is helping the book grab the attention of major broadcast media and, quite possibly, a spot on the bestseller list.
Another Iraq Embargo
While the book "lays it on the line," according to C&G editor-in-chief Philip Turner, and Wilson (who sat for a long interview with PW) comes across as disarming and persuasive, the house faces a tricky publishing scenario. If the grand jury investigation doesn't lead to indictments, for instance, it could deflate the story. More immediately, there's the book's embargo: make it too loose and C&G risks giving away its scoops; make it too tight and the house could withhold material that would stoke buzz. On top of that, the house has never before withheld any of its titles from the press, and there are signs of growing pains: the original media embargo date, for instance, was a week after the book's 100,000-plus—copy laydown by PGW.
The publisher must also make sure to steer clear of legal challenges while still seeking a response from the Bush administration. Wilson pointed to The Price of Loyalty (S&S, Jan.), Ron Suskind's bestseller about former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, which provoked two days of boisterous responses from the administration that helped drive headlines and book sales. "It's not a surprise to anyone that the more debate we can stir up, the more beneficial it will be for the book," said Charlie Winton, president of the Avalon Group, which owns Carroll & Graf. To keep things noisy, the house is hitting the broadcast circuit hard, with an initial author interview on Dateline, followed by appearances on Meet the Press, The Today Show and Larry King, and a six-city tour.
Inside the Beltway, Carla Cohen, owner of Washington, D.C.'s Politics & Prose is fairly confident the media coverage won't tell readers all they want to know about Wilson. "I thought that might happen with Ron Suskind's book," said Cohen, who has become an expert on the perils of newsmaking books. "But we didn't see it. I would assume the Wilson book would be pretty much the same. People will be very interested in reading the details. They won't just want the news aspects."
In Houston, a pro-administration stronghold, bookseller Karl Killian of Brazos Bookstore sees the book's potential but warned that overall positioning and reviews will play a stronger role in the book's fortunes than its newsmaking aspects. "People need to feel like they're not just buying it to get a name," he said.
At Barnes & Noble, v-p of merchandising Bob Wietrak said that the book's publicity lineup had helped prompt the chain to take a strong position across the country. "We are very excited about this book and think it may well be a bestseller," he said.
Though the risk of big returns on the book is a major one for an independent like Carroll & Graf, the house reduced its financial exposure by signing up Wilson's book for a modest advance, before he made headlines. After a mutual acquaintance put Wilson together with C&G's Turner, the two negotiated through last August and September, with Turner working to convince Wilson to write a book and to allow C&G to publish it. Then, just days before a grand jury was impaneled at the end of September, the two signed a deal, with the help of agent Audrey Carter, who represented Wilson late in the negotiation. The book went for a strikingly low $10,000, according to industry reports.
Even though he could have shopped his book around, Wilson said that he had already had a good relationship with Turner and believed that a small house could release the book quickly—a priority for him. Plus, he said, smiling, "I kind of thought of it as Field of Dreams— 'if you write it, they will come.' "
Wilson promises a book that "will touch people close to the president." Though he couldn't be sure his account "will topple anyone," he was confident that his "theory of and how why this happened" will spur a lot of questions [that will be] hard to quash."
