Stormin' Norman: The Book

By Richard Zoglin

He crushed Saddam Hussein's war machine and became an overnight TV star when he told the nation how he did it. He won standing ovations in Congress, cheers along parade routes and pleas to run for office. What more is left for General Norman Schwarzkopf than that final ratification of modern-day success, the best-selling autobiography? For months publishers have been salivating at the prospect of putting Schwarzkopf's life and thoughts between covers. Now Bantam Books has won the right to publish his memoirs, for a hefty price: more than $5 million for worldwide rights, probably the most ever paid for a nonfiction work.

The Schwarzkopf deal has triggered another round of soul searching in publishing circles over the spiraling sums being paid for books that frequently do not live up to their blockbuster expectations. In Schwarzkopf's case the gamble could be especially dicey. To be sure, Americans could not get enough of their newest war hero in the heady months following the gulf campaign. But will they love him in November 1992 (assuming he and a yet-to- be-named ghostwriter work fast) as they did in May 1991?

"His story is going to have a very, very broad popular appeal," says Linda Grey, Bantam's president and publisher. "He exemplifies a lot of things that we are looking for in this country: moral centeredness, traditional values, courage and also a kind of competence and leadership." Bantam has a track record with such inspirational life stories. In 1984 it scored a success with Lee Iacocca's autobiography (2.6 million hard-cover sales in the U.S. and Canada), and it had another in 1985 with Chuck Yeager's right-stuff memoirs (1.2 million).

But some publishing executives are skeptical about how Schwarzkopf will sell. "I would be very nervous if I were they," says Roger Straus, president of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. "If the book isn't published until 1993, will the general's name still mean anything to people?" Farrar, Straus is playing it safer by bringing out a quickie biography, In the Eye of the Storm: The Life of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, co-written by Claudio Gatti and New York Times reporter Roger Cohen, due in August.

The Schwarzkopf deal looks especially rich at a time when book buying is in a slump. Revenues for 1991 are expected to be flat, after several years of steady increases. A number of recent high-profile offerings, such as Ronald Reagan's autobiography, have done disappointing business. Sales figures for best sellers are down compared with a year ago.

Still, publishers keep spending. The book industry increasingly bears more resemblance to Hollywood's high-rolling studios than to the decorous literary < houses of yore. Most large publishers are now part of corporate conglomerates, which are looking for blockbuster subjects to attract new audiences. "What you've got," says a high-level publisher, "is a lot of corporate executives who don't know publishing saying, 'Aha! There's a huge market out there that has never been tapped. Let's go after it.' " In a controversial article in the New Republic, writer Jacob Weisberg attacked this frenzied pursuit of blockbusters, charging that high-powered book editors are "not judged by the quality of the books they acquire" but rather "by the number and dollar amount of the contracts they sign."

By that measure, Bantam is the latest big winner. Whether its victory turns out to be Pyrrhic, however, will depend on what General Schwarzkopf has to say -- and whether the American public, with its fleeting attention span for celebrities, still wants to hear it.

With reporting by William Tynan/New York