That’s how much Warner Books agreed last week to pay Welch for his autobiography, and the record amount for a one-time nonfiction book left the publishing world gasping for air. It’s more than Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf and the pope received, and more than twice the whopping $3.25 million advance Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, landed recently for his book. “Advances in excess of $5 million used to be reserved for the Oval Office,’’ says Jeffrey Krames, editor in chief of McGraw-Hill’s business-book division. “Now they are going to the corner office.''
To earn his advance, Welch will have to get in touch with his inner J. K. Rowling and move roughly 1.6 million books. Warner is placing a huge bet that readers are aching for a big fix of Welchian wisdom. Harper Collins was willing to make the same bet last week, but Warner won the contract in part by playing the synergy card. Warner can tap the Time Warner-America Online media empire to market the book and attempt to make Welch a household name like Lee Iacocca, whose autobiography sold about 6 million copies. Most CEO authors don’t even come close to selling a million copies.
Welch can certainly count on hefty sales in the business community, where his star power is unequaled. Several books about Welch have already sold a total of more than half a million books, and business magazines compete fiercely for permission to shadow the CEO whose cost-slashing ways earned him the nickname “Neutron Jack’’ (John Byrne, a senior writer at BusinessWeek who will be Welch’s coauthor, wrote a cover story in 1998 on how he runs GE). The only thing missing from the Welch canon is his uninterrupted voice and insights into the thinking behind his thinking. Will that sell 1.6 million books? “I don’t think he has that kind of draw,’’ says Alice Fried Martell, the agent who handled the book “Jack Welch Speaks: Wisdom From the World’s Greatest Business Leader.''
That $7.1 million advance is walking-around money to Welch–he pocketed more than that last year just from his annual bonus–and he’s promised to give it to charity. But that’s real money by any measure in an industry fretting about its future in the Internet age. Many in the publishing business said last week that $7.1 million–for North American rights only–is a lot of chips to stack on the shoulders of someone who isn’t a household name.
If nothing else, this sets up an intriguing postelection competition: how much will publishers advance Bill Clinton if he decides to write a book? Agents say the answer depends on what he promises to reveal. Perhaps a better question is, who would play Welch if someone wanted to turn his book into a movie? Jack Nicholson, Robert Duvall or Kevin Spacey? It’s not likely to be Welch–even if he aced his audition, Hollywood probably couldn’t afford him.
