Warren Buffett Becomes a Snowball on Sept. 29th

New book from Bantam-Dell is first authorized biography of “The Oracle of Omaha”

NEW YORK (Sept. 2, 2008) – “Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill,” says billionaire investor Warren Buffett on the cover of his upcoming authorized biography, “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life,” written by Alice Schroeder and due out in hardcover from Bantam Dell Books on Sept. 29, 2009.

“Snowball” is the much anticipated book recounting with intimate detail the life experience and life-wisdom of the man known as “The Oracle of Omaha”: Warren Buffett. Though writers have penned thousands of pages about Mr. Buffett and his extraordinary gifts as a businessman and investor, “Snowball” offers an unprecedented portrait of Buffett’s life, of his values and his strategies, of his total experiences—all of which combine to tell a great American story.

Bantam Dell Books won the rights to the official biography of Buffett in a reported $7 million deal with Schroeder, one of the richest book advances on record. The reported $7 million deal puts it close to the $7.1 million General Electric’s former chief Jack Welch is said to have got for his memoir “Jack the Knife” and the $10-$12 million that former US president Bill Clinton’s “My Life” fetched. Nearly a month prior to its official release date, the book already ranks at No. 125 on Amazon.com.

Mr Buffett, 58, known as the "Oracle of Omaha, is regarded as one of the world’s savviest investors. Forbes magazine lists him as the richest person in the world.

Bantam, a division of Random House, part of Bertelsmann AG, said it had signed the deal with author Alice Schroeder, a Wall Street analyst, who would have Mr Buffett’s co-operation. Several best-selling books have purported to tell how Mr Buffett amassed a fortune estimated at well over $40 billion.

Bantam has said that Mr Buffett would be working on a book “for the first time in his life, after years of declining offers from editors, authors and publishers to write a memoir or a book”.

Author Alice Schroeder was a noted insurance industry analyst and writer who was a managing director at Morgan Stanley. She first met Warren Buffett when she published research on Berkshire Hathaway; her grasp of the subject and insight so impressed him that he offered her access to his files and to himself. Their friendship and mutual respect make her ideally positioned to write.

Ms. Schroeder was born in Texas, and she earned an undergraduate degree and her MBA at the University of Texas at Austin before moving east to work in finance. She is a former CPA and lives in Connecticut with her husband.

This book and other Bantam Dell Publishing Group titles are available for bulk or premium purchase. Inquiries may be sent to snowballbook@randomhouse.com.

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