Business Notes Books

Over the past three years, Mesa Petroleum Chief T. Boone Pickens has become America's best-known corporate raider, earning more than $800 million for Mesa and its partners and striking cold fear into the hearts of U.S. oil companies. Knowing a good yarn in the making, at least seven major publishers have been competing for the rights to his autobiography. The winner: Houghton Mifflin, which will pay Pickens $1.5 million for his story. "We'll have some details that haven't been told before," said Pickens last week.

That statement is probably enough to guarantee sweaty palms in a few boardrooms as well as healthy sales. Aiming for spring 1987 publication, Pickens is writing the book with Joe Nocera, a senior editor for Texas Monthly. The two men have some 20 hours of tapes from chats on Pickens' plane, his ranch and elsewhere. The contract is less than the $2 million that Harper & Row is paying David Stockman, the former White House budget chief, for his memoirs, but that is no problem. Says Pickens: "At least it's more than Tip O'Neill is getting." The retiring House Speaker was paid just $1 million for his book.