Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

In October, Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 75 percent of the US book market, reported that A Woman in Charge by Watergate hero Carl Bernstein had sold just 57,000 of the 275,000 copies that Alfred A. Knopf printed. At the same time, Her Way by New York Times reporters Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta had sold only 19,000. Little, Brown and Co. reportedly printed 175,000. Grim. The writing was on the wall, as it were.

And wasn't it ominous that Random House engaged Sally Bedell Smith, who has produced tomes about Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy, Princess Diana, Pamela Harriman and William Paley (all dead!) to write For Love of Politics? Bedell Smith didn't trouble herself much with welfare reform, budget-balancing, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the health-care debacle and other weighty Clinton-era topics when it came to assessing the "co-presidency". Rather, the Clintons' marriage and their financial and sexual scandals during the White House years were her focus. Guess it all seemed fascinating when the big advance was being handed over. But people don't want to read about it anymore and they don't want to vote for another four years of it, either. Expect some serious book bargains after next Tuesday.