In Big Book's Pocket

Obama's books success may put him in the pocket of a German publishing company.

This article by John Rosenthal is relatively reasonable and very well-corroborated (check out the link to Obama's 2004 tax returns).

A good sample follows:

"In the interest of transparency, Obama should surely now release the full details of his contractual relationship with the Bertelsmann Corporation. After all, if one is to judge by his recent tax returns, even as president, he will be paid far more by Bertelsmann than by the American taxpayers. For him to be taking advice from the Bertelsmann Foundation suggests conflict of interest on a magnitude that has perhaps never before been seen in the history of the American presidency. Although legally distinct, the foundation and the corporation are, in effect, just functionally distinct parts of a single entity. The Bertelsmann Foundation is in fact the majority shareholder in the corporation, presently holding roughly three-quarters of the company shares, to which, however, there correspond no voting rights. All the remaining shares are held by the Mohn family: family patriarch Reinhard, his wife Liz, and their children. The Mohns in turn control the foundation (to which Reinhard Mohn assigned a large part of the company capital in 1993), such that foundation and corporation are perfectly intertwined and both are, in effect, emanations of the Mohn family’s power."

There's nothing wrong with your book selling well (buy my husband's book!) but I do believe Americans should be concerned when their President receives outside income.

Of course, presumably all these payments will be put into a trust while the Obama's are in the White House. So on one hand all of this is pretty much a non-issue, on the other hand why are we only learning about these connections AFTER the election?

It does lead me to wonder, given the overwhelming bias Obama enjoyed during the election process, how many newspapers are owned by these large publishing groups?