The Corner Office: He Did It
The next step was the “Today” show on Aug. 15, when I … went in and announced that I was the publisher of the book. … I was seated next to [Nicole Brown Simpson’s sister] Denise Brown, who came with 455 reasons why this was an outrage that somebody would be publishing the book. There are all kinds of reasons why what she was saying wasn’t accurate or genuine. For example, the Goldmans were awarded 90 percent of the proceeds of whatever was earned [from the book], and the Browns were only awarded 10 percent, because the Brown family had never perfected their claim. They weren’t happy with that. So to them, to a certain extent, it was all about the money.
… The publicist [for the book was] Michael Wright …. It was his strategy to keep the Goldmans off of television until [“The Oprah Winfrey Show”]. … So he sent out me and other surrogates to deal with the media and to keep [the interest] going, and also to get Denise Brown to say basically everything she would ever say and actually run out of things to say. Denise Brown, during this whole time, started a petition [to stop the publication of the book] and was on television everywhere, but everyone got tired of her. She was, like, whining. … She claimed she wasn’t going to go on “Oprah” and then at the last minute changed her mind. She did a separate interview; she didn’t have the guts to sit with the Goldmans [on Oprah]. She was a total flop on that show. … But the Goldmans were brilliant …. They were very authentic. That helped a lot.
The other thing that helped a lot in this interim period is that Barnes & Noble … made an announcement … that they weren’t going to buy the book [to sell in their retail stores]. … Well, what it did was make [the book] No. 1 on BN.com as well as Amazon.com, and that persisted until finally Barnes & Noble said, “Well, we’re actually going to participate, too.”
