Lorenzo Benet, who penned People Magazine’s cover story on Sarah Palin a few weeks back, has signed on to do a full-length biography of the vice presidential candidate for Threshold Editions, the conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster that employs former Bush advisor Mary Matalin and which recently published Jerome Corsi’s bestselling anti-Obama book, The Obama Nation.
According to Mr. Benet’s agent, Jarred Weisfeld of Objective Entertainment, the book will be out sometime in February, which means at least three months will have passed since the election.
The Observer spoke to Mr. Weisfeld earlier this month, shortly after Mr. Benet’s story ran in People, and at the time he said that a client of his—Mr. Benet, as we now know—was interested in doing a Palin bio but was having trouble convincing publishers to pick it up because of timing issues.
"It would be almost next to impossible to get the book out by the election unless you’re a really, really small publisher, but if you’re able to do that, the book is very valuable," Mr. Weisfeld said. "This is a very timely book. It’s election sensitive. If it comes out before the election, it’ll be a bestseller, but if she doesn’t and she loses, it’s a bomb. If it comes out after the election and she does win, then you have a bestseller again."
Mr. Weisfeld said at the time that he was still hoping to sell the book, and that he’d come up with an unconventional deal structure that might help things along.
"The idea that I came up with was, if Palin loses, the author would get X amount. But if Palin wins, the author would get three times that amount," Mr. Weisfeld said. ‘That’s the formula that I had gone out with, but nobody has been receptive to that because they’re all afraid that if Palin loses, the book is worthless."
No word on whether that’s the arrangement Mr. Weisfeld came to with Pocket. A call to associate publisher Anthony Ziccardi, who acquired Mr. Benet’s book, was not immediately returned, and Mr. Weisfeld declined to comment on the terms of the deal.
