Christine Boutin's political literary flop. Or how not to write a best seller...or a seller

The late Christopher Hitchens once said (among many other things of course) that, "Everyone has a book inside them which is exactly where I think it should, in most cases, remain."

Sadly though, so many fail to heed that maxim and among those who seem to think the rest of us should benefit from their written words (of wisdom?) are French politicians.

A couple of years ago France Inter dedicated its weekly one-hour programme "Le Grand Bain" to the very question as to why so many French politicians felt the need to write and publish.

The conclusion being that while some had written something worthwhile reading and a certain talent in expressing themselves, the vast majority of them were best served leaving literature, in all its forms, to others and concentrating on what they supposedly did best.

Of course an inflated ego (which politicians must have believing, presumably, that they know best how to serve their fellow citizens in office and determine what's in the interests of the country) must play a part.

But the bottom line of (most) publishing (houses) is surely also to make money - which opens up perhaps the equally perplexing question as to how come so many French politicians manage to find an editor... because so many "œuvres" (inverted commas entirely intentional) are far from being profitable.

Quite the contrary.

Take, for example, the most recent offering from Christine Boutin, "Qu'est-ce que le parti chrétien-démocrate ?".

You remember her, surely.

Boutin served as housing minister for a couple of years during Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency before being unceremoniously sacked.

She was also at the forefront of the demonstrations against same-sex marriage in 2013, continuing her long campaign for Christian values (aka "family values" in her parlance) and boring most of us silly with her frequently ignorant and equally ill-judged remarks.

In 2014, for example,  Boutin shared her views on homosexuality with the quarterly political magazine "Charles" describing it as "an abomination".

Ah well. You can read all about that here - old news - but it'll stick around to haunt her (or more likely the rest of us) for quite a while.

Back to that book "Qu'est-ce que le parti chrétien-démocrate ?" ("What is the Christian Democrat party") her 128-page 2010 follow-up to her 2009 book "Chrétiens : de l'audace pour la politique".

Guess how many copies, according to GQ magazine, Boutin has managed to sell.

Christine Boutin's "Qu'est-ce que le Parti chrétien-démocrate ?" (screenshot Amazon.fr)

Pause for thought.

Here goes.

38.

THIRTY-EIGHT?

It pretty much tells the whole story, don't you think.

Of course Boutin isn't alone among politicians who fail to attract readers.

The current finance minister, Michel Sapin sold 346 copies in three weeks of his diary as employment minister  "L'écume et l'océan , Chronique d'un ministre du travail" (clearly few were interested).

The president of the national assembly, Claude Bartolone, fared no better with his "Je ne me tairai plus" ("I'm not going to remain silent any longer") which was bought by only 268 people in two weeks.

And the former environment minister Delphine Batho only managed to shift 715 copies of her book "L'Insoumise".

At the other end of the scale - and perhaps providing a lesson (if not literary, at least a commercial one) was that political potboiler from France's former first lady Valérie Trierweiler.

Her "Merci pour ce moment" has so far sold more than 600,000 (and counting) copies, proving that...well, a tell-all political tale about her relationship with the French president, François Hollande, really might have been a "triumph of self-obsessed raving" but it certainly earned her a bob or two.

Valerie Trierweiler's tell-all memoir to be made into a film

We've already had the best-selling book - although we didn't really need (or want) it.

So it's perhaps not so much of a surprise that it's about to be followed up by a film...a tee-shirt, a mug and a song.

No. Those last three elements aren't true (yet) but the first part is.

The best-selling tell-all tale "Merci pour ce moment" ("Thank you for this moment") from France's former first lady Valérie Trierweiler is apparently going to hit the big screen after the actress-producer Saïda Jawad revealed that she had secured the films rights.

Valérie Trierweiler (screenshot interview with BBC's "Newsnight" - November 2014)

In an interview with the weekly glossy magazine "Gala", Jawad spoke about her plans to turn the book of her "close friend of three years" into a movie, saying that her production company was, in agreement with Trierweiler, was working on developing the film adaptation.

"In the book, Valérie embodied the struggle of a woman trying to tell the truth," Jawad said.

"The film will be a fictionalised biopic in which I envisage the main character telling her story to a close friend and allowing us to understand better the political world," she continued..

"And I can guarantee you that there'll be a lot of new things to discover."

Wonderful. Bet you can't wait.

As a book, Treirweiler's "tale" served as a (very) lame excuse for a women scorned and determined to give her side of the story after being dumped  by her former partner, the French president François Hollande - or as Hadley Freeman in "The Guardian" wrote when "Thank you for this moment" was released in English, it proved to be "a triumph of self-obsessed raving"

But of course "Merci pour ce moment" (which has sold over 730,000 copies in France and has been translated into 11 languages) is not a book of "revenge" - - even though that's pretty much how it has been interpreted -  but an attempt by Trierweiler to reveal the misogyny that exists in French politics and "to rebuild her life after the painful split."

So the film is surely a logical step in ensuring she'll be able to add an infinity swimming pool, top of the range sauna and other luxury accoutrements should she need additional resources in her rebuilding enterprise.

Valérie Trierweiler's travails - and the price of fame

She might have written a best-selling warts and all score-settling book, "Merci pour ce moment", published at the beginning of September 2014 and politely described as a "political memoir" but that doesn't seem to have endeared France's former first lady, Valérie Trierweiler, to the nation as a whole.

Valérie Trierweiler  (screenshot BFM TV report on release of "Merci pour ce moment")

Indeed, given a recent poll, she's giving her former partner, the French president, François Hollande, a run for his money in the unpopularity ratings

Yes another poll.

Clearly someone at le Parisien/Aujourd'hui en France thought it would be interesting to discover what the French felt about their former first lady...and then tell them what they probably already knew.

Namely that 69 per cent of those questioned (a representative sample of the population as a whole of course) had a "bad opinion" of Trierweiler and 59 per cent thought she had been wrong to write her book.

(screenshot "Merci pour ce moment" front cover)

On the other hand, while some might not agree with what she wrote and others might not like her (if the survey is to believed) Trierweiler still elicits a great deal of interest.

Or is it simple curiosity?

Because on Saturday (the day before the poll was published) the Paris Match journalist (yes she still works for the magazine) had to beat a hasty retreat while out and about.

Trierweiler was in the Barbès area of northern Paris - shopping (for cassava and plantain, as she would later reveal) with a friend -  and being the celebrity that she has become was quickly recognised by people eager to have their photo' taken with her.

But it all threatened to escalate out of control and a plainclothes policeman (who just happened to be around) apparently directed her into one of the shops while he waited for reinforcements to allow her to drive away from the adoring throng.

Making light of the "incident" Trierweiler later took to her preferred method of communicating with fans and followers - on Twitter, of course.

"Thank you for the welcome very very warm welcome in Barbès . Neither panic nor the need to go to the police station. But cassava and plantains. And a lot of selfies."

Ah. The price of fame.