For the candidates, the books are a chance to speak directly to the voters–as well as position their earnest mugs in every bookstore. Though the prose is boilerplate, the books are often unintentionally revealing. Saying in his book “I believe that all people are created equal” doesn’t tell you much about Howard Dean. But he is distinguished by being the only candidate who doesn’t acknowledge in his book that he got help with it. His ghostwriter, Ian Jackman, says he likes Dean and doesn’t care about getting credit, but admits that a mention would have been nice. The relentlessly upbeat John Edwards stunned his collaborator–John Auchard, an English professor and an old classmate of Edwards’s wife–by adding his name to the cover.

The prose often suffers in the hands of the politicians, who mark up the manuscript themselves. “He’s not as good a writer as he thinks he is,” says one collaborator of one candidate. Nervous advisers can pick the drafts clean of flavorful nuggets, says Sarah Crichton, former publisher of Little, Brown, who worked with the Liebermans. A staff member nixed Joe Lieberman’s admission that he thought Reagan was a charismatic speaker. “You take out enough and you’re not leaving the reader with a lot of zip,” says Crichton. John Kerry’s book was a team effort with his advisers–and it reads like one. Even his spokesperson says it’s only for people interested in the nitty-gritty of policy: “If I was going to recommend a book to understand who John Kerry is as a person, I would recommend [instead] Doug Brinkley’s [forthcoming biography],” says David Wade. True to form, the blunt-spoken Dean didn’t remove anything out of caution, says Jackman, who’s also worked with James Carville. Kucinich, maybe, should have held back a bit: “Spirit merges with matter to sanctify the universe. Matter transcends, to return to spirit.” Try putting that on a bumper sticker.

So who buys these things? In Richard Gephardt’s case, only 37 souls this year, according to Nielsen BookScan. (It sold better when it was published in ‘99.) Clark and Dean lead the pack, with Clark nosing ahead with an estimated 17,578 to Dean’s 16,094 as of last week. Kucinich says his book’s third-place showing proves he may surprise everyone yet. Maybe that’s what he means by the spirit merging with matter.