Like its author, Ari Fleischer's Taking Heat has been condemned for being simultaneously dishonest and stupefyingly boring. So I'm heartened to see that it's getting the rejection it so richly deserves. Let us rejoice this once in the good taste of the American people:
GETTING ICE-COLD? Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer received a reported $500,000 advance for his memoir, "Taking Heat," which was launched last month by William Morrow with an eye-popping press run of 200,000. That's a lot of dead trees to spin a happy (and, by most accounts, news-free) yarn about the all-around fabulosity of President Bush. Alas, Fleischer's publisher has just placed a tiny little ad in Publishers Weekly Online announcing "a special price promotion for retailers and wholesalers" - often a buzz phrase in the publishing biz for throwing in the towel, admitting a big overestimation of demand and trying desperately to avoid an avalanche of returns by slashing the price. A William Morrow spokeswoman insisted: "It's a Mother's Day and Father's Day promotion." But according to Nielsen Bookscan, Fleischer's volume had sold less than a tenth of the copies in print as of March 3.
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