Laura B. Gets $1.6M

The New York Post -- that bastion of journalistic integrity and rectitude -- is reporting that Laura Bush's one-book deal with Scribner's for a memoir is pegged at $1.6 million.

Their source? "One well-placed publishing source." (Though another source, placed either less well or more well or precisely as well -- the Post doesn't specify -- thinks it could be a little more.)

That's about what I would have expected -- you can't offer a first lady less than seven figures, and the "point-six" implies some jockeying for position, or a possible auction. Bush's eventual book still might not earn out -- that's the risk every book runs -- but it'll have a better chance than those overpriced Clinton tomes of earlier this decade.