Number Crunch: Laura Bush's Memoir Deal

Did you hear? Laura Bush got an $8 million advance to write about life in the White House! Or maybe that's a $3.5 million advance. Or $1.6 million. Do I hear $1 million even?

In its initial report on the First Lady's deal with Scribner to publish a memoir in 2010, the Associated Press, citing no sources, guesstimated that the contract "would likely be worth at least as much as Hillary Clinton's $8 million for the memoir Living History."

This even though my Portfolio colleague Sheelah Kolhatkar, writing in The New Yorker last week, revealed that most of the editors who met with Bush to discuss the project came away unimpressed.

Today, the New York Post comes in with what sounds like a more reasonable figure for the advance, $1.6 million -- "although another source said it might have been 'a little higher than that.'"

Or maybe a lot higher: The Wall Street Journal cites "publishing executives" who peg the value of the deal at $3.5 million to $5 million.