Would-Be Senator Packs a Publishing Punch

Since beginning her career as an author in the 1990s, Caroline Kennedy has done an about-face. According to The New York Times, she started out playing down her familial connections and did very well. After a while, she embraced those connections... and did even better.

Published by Hyperion, these later books were anthologies of famous poems, stories and prose, handpicked by Ms. Kennedy and packaged with tantalizing, if dignified, glimpses of the life of a Kennedy: pictures culled from old family albums, poems written by her mother, and Ms. Kennedy’s own ruminations on childhood and other subjects.

While her first two books were best sellers, her later books have been sensations. According to independent sales figures, Ms. Kennedy’s five books for Hyperion have together sold well over a million copies, sales that would have earned Ms. Kennedy roughly $4 million under a standard royalty arrangement.

The piece offers a solid portrait of Kennedy and an overview of her books and it’s here.