Samuel P. Jacobs: The Missing Pages in Palin's Book
[Samuel P. Jacobs is a staff reporter at The Daily Beast. He has also written for The Boston Globe, The New York Observer, and The New Republic Online.]
Sarah Palin’s book hits stores on Tuesday. For Washington’s navel-gazing elite, particularly its Republican branch, the publishing event of the season carries with it a crucial question: Does the former vice-presidential candidate mention you?
It used to be that there was an easy way to find out. All the big names in town would do it: stop by the Georgetown Barnes & Noble or Politics and Prose, stare admiringly at the cover, then furtively flip to the index to make sure your place in the power structure was secure.
But, according to a source at the book’s publishing house, Palin has a surprise for Washington’s self-important set: Going Rogue has no index.
She’s not alone. Two weeks earlier, the other big political book of the season, David Plouffe’s The Audacity to Win, landed on shelves. It, too, has no index. Plouffe and Palin may hail from opposite ends of the political spectrum. But they’re engaged in an unwitting conspiracy to kill one of D.C.’s favorite pastimes. We are witnessing the death of the “Washington Read.”
“I suppose we’ll actually have to read the whole book from now on,” said former Clinton adviser and CNN commentator Paul Begala. “Heaven forbid.”
What is behind this change in the world order? It’s bad enough that D.C. has to suffer through a plague of lobbyists, the monochromatic dreariness of a one-company town, subpar restaurants—and the dismal won-loss records of the Redskins and the Nationals. Why are Plouffe and Palin bent on robbing Washingtonians of their one true joy?
One answer: time. It takes two to three weeks to put together a good index, says Peter Osnos, the founder of Public Affairs, who has published Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan, Scott McClellan, and nearly every other Washington macher over the years. Cutting an index can mean the difference between getting a book into stores well before Thanksgiving or missing the holiday sales season altogether. Speed is at an even greater premium now, in the age of e-books and instant downloads on the Kindle. And of course, skipping the index means fewer pages—and fewer dollars spent to bring the book to market. “Every penny counts,” Osnos said.
Not surprisingly, members of D.C.’s power elite are not amused.
“Books like that should have indexes,” said D.C. literary agent Raphael Sagalyn.
“If you’re writing a substantial book, and I don’t know if Ms. Palin’s book qualifies, I think there’s a moral obligation to write an index,” said Christopher Buckley, a life-long observer of D.C. etiquette (and now a columnist for The Daily Beast).
Even some of New York’s biggest boldface names express sympathy.
“When I go into a store with a book like that, I would always flip through the index to see who she says nice and not nice things about. From a book-marketing standpoint, it’s dumb,” said Kurt Andersen, celebrated journalist, novelist, and co-founder of the legendary Spy magazine. According to Andersen, it took “1,000 interns working for 1,000 hours” at Spy to create an index for the index-free Warhol Diaries in 1989.
In Washington, the index has become such an essential part of political reading that when it’s missing, people take notice. Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes, a chronicle of the 1988 presidential campaign, roiled the chattering classes by leaving the index out...
Read entire article at The Daily Beast
Sarah Palin’s book hits stores on Tuesday. For Washington’s navel-gazing elite, particularly its Republican branch, the publishing event of the season carries with it a crucial question: Does the former vice-presidential candidate mention you?
It used to be that there was an easy way to find out. All the big names in town would do it: stop by the Georgetown Barnes & Noble or Politics and Prose, stare admiringly at the cover, then furtively flip to the index to make sure your place in the power structure was secure.
But, according to a source at the book’s publishing house, Palin has a surprise for Washington’s self-important set: Going Rogue has no index.
She’s not alone. Two weeks earlier, the other big political book of the season, David Plouffe’s The Audacity to Win, landed on shelves. It, too, has no index. Plouffe and Palin may hail from opposite ends of the political spectrum. But they’re engaged in an unwitting conspiracy to kill one of D.C.’s favorite pastimes. We are witnessing the death of the “Washington Read.”
“I suppose we’ll actually have to read the whole book from now on,” said former Clinton adviser and CNN commentator Paul Begala. “Heaven forbid.”
What is behind this change in the world order? It’s bad enough that D.C. has to suffer through a plague of lobbyists, the monochromatic dreariness of a one-company town, subpar restaurants—and the dismal won-loss records of the Redskins and the Nationals. Why are Plouffe and Palin bent on robbing Washingtonians of their one true joy?
One answer: time. It takes two to three weeks to put together a good index, says Peter Osnos, the founder of Public Affairs, who has published Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan, Scott McClellan, and nearly every other Washington macher over the years. Cutting an index can mean the difference between getting a book into stores well before Thanksgiving or missing the holiday sales season altogether. Speed is at an even greater premium now, in the age of e-books and instant downloads on the Kindle. And of course, skipping the index means fewer pages—and fewer dollars spent to bring the book to market. “Every penny counts,” Osnos said.
Not surprisingly, members of D.C.’s power elite are not amused.
“Books like that should have indexes,” said D.C. literary agent Raphael Sagalyn.
“If you’re writing a substantial book, and I don’t know if Ms. Palin’s book qualifies, I think there’s a moral obligation to write an index,” said Christopher Buckley, a life-long observer of D.C. etiquette (and now a columnist for The Daily Beast).
Even some of New York’s biggest boldface names express sympathy.
“When I go into a store with a book like that, I would always flip through the index to see who she says nice and not nice things about. From a book-marketing standpoint, it’s dumb,” said Kurt Andersen, celebrated journalist, novelist, and co-founder of the legendary Spy magazine. According to Andersen, it took “1,000 interns working for 1,000 hours” at Spy to create an index for the index-free Warhol Diaries in 1989.
In Washington, the index has become such an essential part of political reading that when it’s missing, people take notice. Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes, a chronicle of the 1988 presidential campaign, roiled the chattering classes by leaving the index out...