Thanks to Book Deal, DeSantis Is a Millionaire

$1.25 million

Ron DeSantis is a millionaire for the first time, according to newly released financial disclosure forms that show the Florida governor made $1.25 million from his book deal last year, reports the Tampa Bay Times. DeSantis, who was required by state law to disclose his finances by July 3, reported the income from HarperCollins alongside his salary of $141,400 from the Florida governorship.

It Takes a Whole Book to Explain Why Lindsey Graham Is Single

126

Number of pages in “My Story: Lindsey Graham,” an e-book published on the presidential candidate’s website this week, wherein “Graham — best known as a flame-thrower on immigration reform and an outspoken critic of President Obama’s foreign policy — has opened up about his lost loves and a near proposal to a Lufthansa flight attendant,” CNN reports.

It’s Amazon’s World and We Just Live in It

I wanted to buy a book a few months ago for a relative who was hospitalized in a city about 40 miles north and who wasn’t a TV watcher. I figured I’d stop off at the mall or a shopping center as I drove up and pick up some books and magazines.

Except there were no bookstores. While I had been floating along, ordering books from Amazon because they were cheap or putting them on my Amazon wish list and waiting for the prices to come down, book shops all around me were going out of business. Instead of finding some cool books and artsy, interesting magazines, I had to stop at a grocery store to buy a lame edition of O Magazine by Oprah. I believe it went unread.

Your reading choices will someday be either 50 Shades of Gray or The Hunger Games…or a copy of O Magazine

If you watch the Colbert Report, you know that the responsible thing to do right now is to boycott Amazon. The massive “Don’t Be Evil” online seller is engaged in a very evil battle with traditional publishers to control pricing and set off a dumbing down process that will likely promote self-publishing as an Amazon work-around.

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Tailgunner Ted Cruz to Get Record Book Advance

$1.5 million

Amount Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) will be paid to write “a personal memoir about his controversial days in Washington and his vision for the future for HarperCollins,” the Washington Examiner reports. “The advance would be the biggest for a conservative politician in years, even more than the $1.25 million that former 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin received after her sensational rise in Republican politics.”

Panetta to Pen Memoir

$3 million

Amount of deal Leon Panetta, the former defense secretary and director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has struck to write a memoir, the New York Times reports. Said Panetta: “I have seen Washington at its best and at its worst. My goal is to give readers the opportunity to go behind the scenes and learn the lessons of how our democracy works, and sometimes how it fails to work.”