NEW YORK – Late as always, but still greeted by cheers and screams of “Bill, we love you,” former President Clinton opened the year’s hottest book tour with a marathon signing at a midtown Manhattan Barnes &Noble.
“I’m glad it’s finally happening,” Clinton, who received a reported $10 million advance, told reporters Tuesday before settling behind a desk stacked with and surrounded by copies of his book. “I’ve been living with this for two years.”
Later in the evening, he went to Harlem’s Hue-Man Bookstore to sign more books. “I hope that this book will in some way be a gift to black America, that they’ll understand that we can get together. We just have got to keep working at it,” he said.
Clinton’s memoir was officially released throughout the United States Tuesday with a first printing of 1.5 million, and fans stayed up late, got up early and took time out of their lunch breaks to buy it. Barnes &Noble estimated that between 90,000 and 100,000 copies were sold Tuesday, a record debut for a nonfiction book.
At Hastings Books, Music &Video in Waco, Texas, near President Bush’s adopted hometown of Crawford, manager Steven Kling said he expected to sell out his store’s 100-plus copies by day’s end.
“This is Bush country, but we’ve had a lot of interest over the last several weeks,” Kling said. “With the television going crazy on the coverage, it’s a big hit.”
Outside a Borders store in Chicago, about a dozen people were waiting when the store opened at 7 a.m., an hour earlier than usual due to anticipated demand for the Clinton book. Clerk Deborah Liebow said the store’s 32-book display rack holding “My Life” had to be refilled at least 10 times before noon.
Fans began lining up in Rockefeller Center on Monday night, with Clinton admirers camping out on the concrete. An atmosphere of camaraderie helped speed the waiting, they said. Lynne Roberts, 37, played gin rummy with her boyfriend and read a newspaper before swaddling herself in a sleeping bag.
The gregarious, chronically late Clinton started 25 minutes behind schedule for his signing but was clearly forgiven as he emerged smiling from a side door amid an entourage of Secret Service agents and other officials.
Fans slipped him notes, pictures and leaned across the desk to say they loved him. Clinton kissed the hand of a woman in a wheelchair and offered signed congratulations to a youngster who confided it was her birthday. One young woman was in tears, speechless, after her book was signed. Another woman was heard telling her friend, “That was intense! Oh, my God!”
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