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MEDIA INK
IRRATIONAL exuberance is gripping the book world as publishers get ready to dangle big bucks to try to reel in the memoir of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
First-round bids are due today, but the real fun starts when the expected auction gets under way tomorrow.
Early handicapping is now calling for a price tag to reach at least $7 million.
Greenspan circulated a 10-page proposal and made the rounds of New York publishers two weeks ago.
Penguin is said to have tried to offer a pre-emptive bid of $5 million to Greenspan's attorney Robert Barnett - the same high-powered Washington, D.C., attorney who snagged a record-shattering $12 million for Bill Clinton's "My Story" and $8 million for Hillary Clinton's "Living History." Penguin declined to comment on its rumored bid.
Also expected to be among the bidders are Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Random House, HarperCollins, Time Warner Books and the von Holtzbrink group, which owns Henry Holt and St. Martin's.
Sources say the potential co-writer who seems to have the inside track at the moment is David Wessel, the Wall Street Journal's deputy bureau chief in Washington, D.C.
"I've had conversations with Greenspan about doing this, but he said we can't negotiate a deal, even a handshake, until he finds a publisher," said Wessel.
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The Weider family that sold its fitness magazine empire to American Media for $360 million is back in the publishing business. It just spent an estimated $15 million to buy the 10-title history magazine group from Primedia.
The group includes Military History, World War II, Civil War Times, Wild West, America's Civil War, British Heritage, Vietnam, MHQ, American History and Aviation History plus the historynet.com Web site.
Eric Weider - nephew of Joe Weider who engineered the sale of the muscle mags to David Pecker's AMI - said he plans to keep the history titles in Leesburg, Va., where they will be known as the Weider History Group. Eric Weider will be the president and CEO while Bruce Forman will be the chief operating officer.
"We told the people here they have a nice business and a nice foundation," said Eric Weider, reached yesterday when he landed in Leesburg.
Eric gets his fascination from his dad, Ben Weider, a bodybuilding fan and history buff who wrote the book, "The Death of Napoleon."
Eric Weider had already started Armchair General magazine.
"The whole family is excited about being back in the publishing business," said Weider. "It's in our DNA."
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Joanne Lipman, the editor-in-chief of the still-untitled Conde Nast business title that is still a year away from launch, is staffing up. She has just raided Fortune magazine to hire Dan Roth as a new senior writer.
"That's the rumor, and it is true," said Roth yesterday. He starts the new gig March 20.
"It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go to a start-up magazine that is backed by Conde Nast," he said.
Sources say that Conde Nast outgunned the New York Times, where Roth was in the running to replace Jim Impoco, the paper's former Sunday business editor who earlier joined Lipman as the new mag's executive editor.
Roth, a one-time tech editor, has penned a slew of Fortune cover stories including an April 2004 feature on Donald Trump. More recently, in April last year he penned "Nike after Knight" on the legacy of Phil Knight, and in January he co-wrote "Why There Is No Escaping the Blog" with tech writer David Kirkpatrick.
keith.kelly@nypost.com
Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
