New York magazine details the finances of “Palin, Inc.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

From Gabriel Sherman's April 25 New York magazine article:

The numbers are staggering. Over the past year, Palin has amassed a $12 million fortune and shows no sign of slowing down. Her memoir has so far sold more than 2.2 million copies, and Palin is planning a second book with HarperCollins. This January, she signed a three-year contributor deal with Fox News worth $1 million a year, according to people familiar with the deal. In March, Palin and Burnett sold her cable show to TLC for a reported $1 million per episode, of which Palin is said to take in about $250,000 for each of the eight installments.

While she's waiting for her television career to begin in earnest, she's been busy on the speaker's circuit, having signed with the prestigious Washington Speakers Bureau. Palin commands $100,000 per speech, putting her in the same league as fellow Speakers Bureau clients Colin Powell, George W. Bush, and Rudy Giuliani. Since leaving office, she's scheduled speeches to the Daytona Chamber of Commerce; the Salina Area Chamber of Commerce; the Bowling Proprietors' Association of America; the Charity of Hope fund-raiser in Hamilton, Ontario; the Get Motivated Seminar in Beaumont, Texas; the Complete Woman Expo; the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America; and the Sierra-Cascade Logging Conference. In February, she delivered the keynote address at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville.

Palin's $100,000 contract for the tea-party event-which drew fire from rival tea-party groups angry that Palin was cashing in at their expense-included $18,000 for private-jet travel for her and an entourage of five people, according to two people who've seen the contract. Palin jetted to Nashville with two bodyguards, her spokesperson Meg Stapleton, and her daughter Piper. “I remember looking at the contract and was thinking, Holy cow,” one person involved in organizing the event says. “It was very specific on a lot of details.” Most events require a Learjet, or its equivalent, from Wasilla, at a cost of some $1,500 per hour of flight time.