ATTORNEYS
WASHINGTON, D.C.,
METRO AREA
Robert Barnett closes deals
throughout the Beltway
PHO TOGRAPHY BY LARRY MARCUS
It’s a good thing Washington, D.C.’s Robert Barnett has 10 fingers,
because it seems he’s got one in everything. There’s his general
corporate work, which typically has him supervising litigation for
clients that have included McDonald’s, Revlon, Toyota and Comcast.
Then there’s his work helping departing government officials (think
Dan Quayle and Madeleine Albright) transition into the private
sector. Add to that TV negotiations for his news correspondent and
producer clients, and even corporate crisis management. Oh, and,
by the way, he just so happens to have brokered some of the biggest
deals in book publishing history, like the $12 million and $8 million
deals for Bill and Hillary Clinton, respectively. He’s still doing big
things in publishing. “I was very pleased, back in 2004, when then-
Sen. Barack Obama asked me to represent him on some literary
projects,” Barnett says. One of those projects was the illustrated
children’s book, Of Thee I Sing, published in 2010. “The president
wrote the book and turned it into the publisher in 2008, prior to
the Inauguration,” Barnett says. “He wrote every word of it himself,
as was the case with Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of
Hope.” All proceeds from the book, which is “framed as a letter to
his fabulous daughters,” goes to charity. “The book has been a huge
success. It was No. 1 on The New York Times’ children’s bestseller list
for many weeks and will be on the list for the 14th week this Sunday
[March 6, 2011],” Barnett says. “We have sold rights to the book in
more than a dozen countries.”
President Obama isn’t Barnett’s only political client who has gone
the children’s book route: He’s repped Laura and Jenna Bush, Lynne
Cheney and James Carville in similar endeavors. Lest you think
getting a children’s book on the shelves is easy, “It is not,” Barnett
stresses. “Only about one out of 10,000 proposals actually gets
published. Children, and their parents, are discerning readers.”
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