Clinton signs on at book blitz launch

LATE as always, but still greeted by cheers and screams of “Bill, we love you,” former US 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."

Mr 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.

At Hastings Books, Music & Video in Waco, Texas, near President George W Bush's adopted hometown of Crawford, store manager Steven Kling said he expected to sell out all of his store's 100-plus copies by the end of the day.

"This is Bush Country, but we've had a lot of interest over the last several weeks," Mr 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 7am, 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.

The book also went on sale Tuesday in parts of Europe; translated editions were being readied in France for a Wednesday launch of 150,000 copies.

In Ireland, which the ex-president still visits yearly for golf and lucrative speaking engagements, Dubliners lauded Clinton as a driving force behind both the country's 1990s economic boom and the peace process in neighbouring Northern Ireland.

"Clinton was a charmer, whereas Bush is just scary," said Pat Huxtable, a psychotherapist thumbing through a copy of "My Life" in a Dublin bookstore.

Fans began lining up in New York's Rockefeller Centre on Monday night, with Clinton worshippers camping out on the dirty 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 for a nap.

The gregarious, chronically late Mr 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. Mr 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!" The line wound its way from Mr Clinton's desk, at the back of the store, through the front entrance and then circled all the way around the block. Barnes & Noble planned to give out more than 1,000 wristbands that would allow customers to purchase several copies, but only one autographed by the former president.

Alex Schafroth, a 26-year-old law student from Jersey City, NJ, said he had waited since 6pm Monday night and called his brief encounter with Mr Clinton "a thrill nine seconds of thrill."

To promote his book, Mr Clinton has served as keynote speaker at BookExpo America, the publishing industry's annual national convention, and been interviewed by "60 Minutes," Time magazine and the BBC's Panorama, among others. Over the next month, he will visit independent booksellers, chain superstores and price clubs.

But critics and Mr Clinton's political opponents are not impressed. Conservative radio presenter Rush Limbaugh has said it should be called My Lie. Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Tuesday that the book, which he does not plan to read, was "a public relations effort to rewrite what happened in the '90s".

The New York Times, called the book "sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull." Associated Press likened reading the book to "being locked in a small room with a very gregarious man who insists on reading his entire appointment book, day by day, beginning in 1946."