Palin memoir could net big bucks

Coming soon to a bookstore near you... Sarah Palin's memoirs?

Speculation is mounting that the Alaska Governor and former Republican vice presidential nominee is closing in on a deal that could net her $7 million to tell her story. Reuters reports that Palin is in high demand:

"Every publisher and a lot of literary agents have been going after her," said Jeff Kleinman, an agent at Folio Literary Management.

The price tag would place Palin in pretty exclusive company. Few other prominent politicians have inked such lucrative deals.

At the top of the, ah, shelf: Former President Bill Clinton's "My Life" in 2004. Clinton's advance was over $10 million (AP puts the figure at $15 million), and he delivered with record-breaking sales. Fueled by a public eager for lurid details about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, first-day sales of "My Life" topped 400,000 copies, a record for nonfiction that shattered the previous record held by none other than Hillary Clinton.

But the former first lady still did okay. She netted an $8 million advance to pen her 2003 memoir, "Living History" -- falling just shy of the standing record at the time for a nonfiction advance ($8.5 million for Pope John Paul II in 1994).

What about President Bush? He recently told CNN he wants to write a book: "I want people to know what it's like to make some of the decisions I had to make. What was the moment like. I've had one of these presidencies where I had to make some tough calls." 

Maybe so, but as President Bush prepares to leave office with history-making low approval ratings and an economy in crisis, some in the publishing biz told AP that now is not the best time:

"If I were advising President Bush, given how the public feels about him right now, I think patience would probably be something that I would encourage," says Paul Bogaards, executive director of publicity for Alfred A. Knopf, which in 2004 released Bill Clinton's million-selling "My Life."

It's a different story for First Lady Laura Bush, a former librarian who has also expressed interest in writing a memoir that, according to the AP, could fetch an advance rivaling Hillary Clinton's.