Name: “They Thought They Had Identified Another Political Star”: Sources Say Cuomo’s Tortured Pandemic Memoir Fetched a Seven-Figure Advance
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“They Thought They Had Identified Another Political Star”: Sources Say Cuomo’s Tortured Pandemic Memoir Fetched a Seven-Figure Advance

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The scandals swirling around Andrew Cuomo have reignited speculation about the memoir he published last year, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic, highlighting his then heralded handling of New York’s coronavirus emergency. The biggest curiosity of all remains the size of Cuomo’s book deal with Crown, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House. The governor has declined to specify how much he got for the book, , “You’ll see it on my financial disclosure,” the deadline for which is May 15. But the talk among sources familiar with the deal is that the book sold for at least low to mid-seven figures, which is a blockbuster sum by industry standards. Cuomo has said he would donate a portion of his earnings from the book .The precise origins of the book are also a bit murky. One source with knowledge of how things played out told me the project was initiated by Crown. According to this source, executive editor Libby Burton approached Cuomo’s literary representative, Beltway power-lawyer Robert Barnett—who brokered the Obamas’s with Penguin Random House—to express interest. From there, Burton and Crown editor in chief Gillian Blake jointly acquired the title, the source said, adding, “They had published Stacey Abrams together , and thought they had identified another political star.” However, in another version of the backstory that is circulating, Barnett was the one who cooked up the idea and brought it to Crown, and possibly other publishers as well. Reps for Penguin Random House ghosted my repeated email inquiries, and when I got ahold of Barnett, he would neither confirm nor deny any of my reporting. He redirected me to the governor’s office, where a spokesman didn’t return emails over the weekend.Cuomo was criticized for taking a with the book while the pandemic was still raging around the country and the world, and Crown may very well regret doing it altogether. Cuomo has become the latest powerful man battling highly credible sexual harassment allegations, and he is also under increasing scrutiny for misrepresenting deaths of New York nursing home residents from COVID-19. The Wall Street Journal Thursday night that “Cuomo’s top advisers successfully pushed state health officials to strip a public report of data showing that more nursing-home residents had died of COVID-19 than the administration had acknowledged.” The New York Times published a similar report, , “The extraordinary intervention…came just as Mr. Cuomo was starting to write a book on his pandemic achievements.”Print sales for American Crisis totaled 45,800 as of the week ending February 27, according to NPD BookScan. Topical books like this tend to see their numbers drop off after the first eight weeks, and Cuomo’s book, which came out on October 13, has taken an extra hit since the scandals erupted. “We can confirm that the title’s sales have dropped in the last five weeks, and for context, this is not reflective of a larger market trend,” a rep for BookScan told me.More Great Stories From Vanity Fair&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;— How Will Move On in a Post-Trump America?— Mayoral Hopeful Andrew Yang on His — Inside Over Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Trump Jokes— Beto O’Rourke Wants to — Is Going on With Bitcoin?— Marty Baron Dishes in a — See the 2021 Hollywood Portfolio— Leak of Led to Multimillion-Dollar Settlement— From the Archive: Why Do Dubai’s Princesses ?— Not a subscriber? to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.Most Popular is Vanity Fair’s senior media correspondent and the author of **. He previously worked at publications including Politico and the New York Observer. Follow him on and .The freshest-and most essential-updates from Washington, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley.

The scandals swirling around Andrew Cuomo have reignited speculation about the memoir he published last year, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic, highlighting his then heralded handling of New York’s coronavirus emergency. The biggest curiosity of all remains the size of Cuomo’s book deal with Crown, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House. The governor has declined to specify how much he got for the book, , “You’ll see it on my financial disclosure,” the deadline for which is May 15. But the talk among sources familiar with the deal is that the book sold for at...

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Vanity Fair is a monthly magazine of popular culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast in the United States.  The first version of Vanity Fair was published from 1913 to 1936. The imprint was revived in 1983 and currently includes five international editions of the magazine. As of 2018, the Editor-in-Chief is Radhika Jones.

“They Thought They Had Identified Another Political Star”: Sources Say Cuomo’s Tortured Pandemic Memoir Fetched a Seven-Figure Advance

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