As News Story du Jour Ends, Books Follow

Publishers have passed this way before. They always do.

A major news story reaches closure--more or less--and a passel of books comes out in a bid to make cents of it all.

There were stacks of books after the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan flap, after the O.J. Simpson trials and after Princess Diana crashed in the Paris tunnel.

In the aftermath of President Clinton’s impeachment trial, the books scheduled to reach stores are among the bigger titles focusing on this flawed leader and the events of the last year or more.

First up may be “Monica’s Story.” It’s Monica Lewinsky’s version as told to Andrew Morton, the British biographer of (and apologist for) Princess Diana. St. Martin’s Press acquired North American rights to the book for about $600,000 from Michael O’Mara Books in London and was expected to publish it by the end of this month. However, it appeared this week that publication may not come until March. Richard Hofstetter, an attorney representing Lewinsky, declined to comment. First printing is a reported 350,000 copies.

George Stephanopoulos’ “All Too Human,” a memoir of his years as one of Clinton’s closest advisors, will be excerpted in the issue of Newsweek available on March 8 before going on sale three days later. Little, Brown & Co. is paying about $3 million for the book, which it had pulled from last fall’s schedule so that Stephanopoulos could add material on independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s newly released report to Congress. Although sources say that the memoir contains a news-making revelation or two, one who has read the manuscript reports that its strength lies in a richly detailed view of a White House fraught with crises almost from the moment Clinton took office.

“It’s such a great portrait of life in the bunker,” the source added.

A Little, Brown spokeswoman said the first printing would be “very large.”

“Uncovering Clinton,” Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff’s account of how he got the Lewinsky story (and the Kathleen Willey story), will be shipped to stores by Crown Publishers on March 17. First printing is a healthy 90,000 copies.

Nora Rawlinson, editor in chief of Publishers Weekly, sees a stronger sale for “Monica’s Story” than seemed likely when the book was announced in November.

“The videotapes of her testimony made her look more serious than people thought she was, whereas the [earlier] audiotapes of her talking with Linda Tripp had reinforced the whole bimbo aspect,” Rawlinson said.

Interest in Lewinsky’s unsubpoenaed version of events doubtless will be heightened, too, by another bit of TV magic--the heart-to-heart she is supposed to have with Barbara Walters. As of Tuesday, the interview had not taken place and ABC News had yet to schedule it for broadcast, apparently because of the lingering restraints on Lewinsky imposed by Starr.

Due in mid-March is “The Impeachment and Trial of President Clinton,” the official transcripts of the House Judiciary Committee hearings, the House deliberations and the Senate trial from Times Books.

Coming in April is Christopher Hitchens’ “No One Left to Lie To,” subtitled “The Triangulation of William Jefferson Clinton,” from Verso Books. Hitchens’ critical book should get a nice lift in visibility as a result of the British journalist’s controversial affidavit about Sidney Blumenthal, which contradicted sworn testimony that the White House advisor has given about a conversation with the president.

Simon & Schuster has scheduled for July Washington Post sleuth Bob Woodward’s book about the American presidency since the Watergate scandal, a work that will examine the Clinton years.

Other scandal watchers with book deals include Jeffrey Toobin (Random House); the formidable team of Time correspondent Michael Weisskopf and the Washington Post’s Susan Schmidt (HarperCollins), and a duo known for spotting conservatives’ thumbprints on the case against Clinton. They are Joe Conason, columnist with the New York Observer, and Gene Lyons, columnist with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (St. Martin’s), signed by St. Martin’s to write “The Hunting of the President.”

Meanwhile, comedian Al Franken’s “Why Not Me?” (Delacorte), a satire about the “making and unmaking” of a Franken presidency, and William J. Bennett’s “The Death of Outrage” (Free Press) continue to hold slots on the New York Times’ national bestseller list. Appearing outside the top 15 on the Times’ extended bestseller list, which is available on the paper’s Web site (https://www.nytimes.com), are James Carville’s Starr-bashing “( . . . And the Horse He Rode in On” (Simon & Schuster) and “Face-Time” (Crown), a novel involving a presidential affair written by Washington observer Erik Tarloff that was singled out by key critics and pundits when published last month.

Paul Colford’s e-mail address is paul.colford@newsday.com.