The new New Hampshire?

The NYT has an article today on books by the current crop of presidential candidates. It quotes the editor of Hotline as saying that publishing is now a critical part of the nomination process:

“The book publishing business has become the new exploratory committee... That’s when you find out: Are you interesting enough to get enough interviews? Can you get people to show up for a signing?”

If this is true, then perhaps Darth Hideous is in more trouble than I thought. The article notes:

In December, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s publisher rereleased 'It Takes a Village' in a 10th-anniversary edition, but it flopped, selling only 6,000 copies...