Congressional books going for pennies, but Murphy gets $100K

Yet another media study of Congressional memoirs is raising questions over U.S. Representative Patrick Murphy’s lucrative deal to publish his 33-year old life story, the Majority Accountability Project (www.majorityap.com) has found.

The Capitol Hill publication Congressional Quarterly (CQ) reported recently that sales of books by House leaders are in the cellar, garnering only pennies of their original retail price.

“Speaker: Lessons from Forty Years in Coaching and Politics,’’ by former Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-IL, the longest serving Republican Speaker in U.S. history is selling on Amazon.com for “about a penny, plus $3.99 for shipping and handling,” CQ reported. That’s the same price as “Lessons Learned the Hard Way: A Personal Report,” the 1998 autobiography of another former GOP Speaker, Newt Gingrich, R-GA.

Despite the poor performance of books by nationally known political leaders, the unknown Murphy, a Pennsylvania freshman, netted a $100,000 advance for his memoirs from a politically-connected literary agent. Majorityap.com has reported extensively on the suspicious nature of Murphy’s advance, noting he barely beat a House ethics deadline to cash in on his election.

Documents Murphy is required to file with the House of Representatives show he is upwards of $765,000 in personal debt.

CQ’s is not the first story to detail the poor retail performance of political memoirs. In August, the Associated Press (AP) reported on book deals made by several presidential candidates, finding that “big book profits are not a reality for many White House hopefuls, even if they're well-known.”

Murphy’s $100,000 advance is larger than what John Kerry earned for his 2004, presidential year biography, “A Call To Service.” Even before publishing a single page, Murphy has earned more than New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, two-time Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich and others, according to the AP.

Why a political neophyte like Murphy - who narrowly defeated another virtual unknown in 2006 - would merit the kind of six-figure advance usually reserved for established authors and nationally-known figures remains a mystery. But as majorityap.com has continued to detail, a host of Democrat party officials were extensively involved in the deal which provided Murphy a desperately needed infusion of cash.