Carly Fiorina Inks Book Deal

Posted on August 25, 2005

Carly Fiorina, the ousted head of Hewlett-Packard, has inked a book deal with Penguin Group. One of the few women to be named as CEO to a Fortune 100 company, Fiorina got ousted in a nasty power struggle. Will Carly spill the beans about what really happened behind the scenes?

Penguin said the book will combine a memoir of Fiorina's career so far with her views on a variety of issues, including what makes a leader, how women can thrive in business and how technology will continue to reshape the world. Fiorina, 50, was one of the few female CEOs in the male-dominated computer industry when she was ousted from HP in February.
Adrian Zackheim, the founder and publisher of Penguin's Portfolio imprint, will edit the book, which has no title yet. Zackheim also edited Perfect Enough, by George Anders, published in 2003, on the battle over HP's merger with Compaq Computer and Fiorina's reinvention of the company. He also edited The HP Way, by HP co-founder David Packard, which was published in 1995 by HarperCollins. Perfect Enough was on the New York Times Bestseller List for two weeks in 2003.
There was so much interest by other publishers in a book by Fiorina that she and her representative, attorney Robert Barnett, decided to have an auction, which Penguin ultimately won as the highest bidder. Barnett, a litigation attorney with Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., has also represented Bill and Hillary Clinton, Bob Woodward and Jack Welsh, in their book deals.

Fiorina's attorney immediately engaged in legal doubletalk when asked whether Fiorina will spill lots of good gossip in the book. And he wouldn't say how much her advance was either, thereby ruining everyone's fun.