It is a slim volume of anecdotes and fragments of speeches that has sold a modest but respectable 17,000 copies. That would mean $10,000 to most writers. But Reflections of a Public Man ($5.95) has earned its author, House Speaker Jim Wright, a princely $54,642, which is about five times the publishing industry's standard royalty. The munificent publisher is Carlos Moore, a printer in Wright's Fort Worth congressional district and one of his early supporters. As it turns out, Moore was paid $265,000 for work done during Wright's re-election campaign last year.
Wright also earned more than $30,000 in 1986 from...