New York mayor to offer business advice in book

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York's billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg will offer business and political advice in a book entitled "Do the Hard Things First" due out in September, the publisher said on Tuesday.

The book, written in collaboration with Margaret Carlson, is subtitled "(And Other Bloomberg Rules for Business and Politics)" and will be published by Vanguard Press, a member of the Perseus Book Group.

Bloomberg plans to donate all proceeds from the book to the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, he said in a statement.

The mayor is the author of 1997's "Bloomberg by Bloomberg," which told the story of how he founded his own company with the $10 million settlement he received after being fired from the Wall Street firm Salomon Brothers in 1981.

Bloomberg became a billionaire by creating his news and information company, Bloomberg LP, a competitor to Thomson Reuters Corp.

The former Democrat switched to the Republican Party to run for mayor in 2001 and was re-elected in 2005, spending some $150 million of his own money on both campaigns.

He dropped all party affiliation last year and contemplated an independent run for president before ruling that out in February.

"Over the course of both my private and public sector careers, I've learned a set of rules that I believe offer guidance that people of all professions will find useful," Bloomberg said in a news release promoting the book.

"In this book, I've summed up these rules and my experience in how to follow them: from how to build a first-rate team, to create the conditions for innovation, and to know when to say 'yes' to your customers and when to say 'no."'

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Timothy Gardner and Bill Trott)