The newest It Deal Girl has to be Diane Setterfield, whose debut THE THIRTEENTH TALE netted her a cool 800,000 pounds from Orion (and potentially over $1M in the US, though the auction had yet to close as of this writing.) She's interviewed in the Yorkshire Post about her surprising windfall, with additional quotes from her soon-to-be editor:

Jane Wood, Orion Books editor-in-chief, said: "I knew from the very first page it was special – she creates a wonderful fictional world. It's a book for book lovers, but also a real page turner."

Setterfield, already working on her second novel, said: "Of course I'm very happy with how it all seems to be going yet but nobody has bought a copy yet. All the success so far is lovely, but the real acid test will be September when it gets into the shops."

Meanwhile, Vikram Chandra -- whose third novel got an equally staggering amount in the UK, US and worldwide, speaks to Mumbai Midday about his current work-in-progress:

You received a million dollar advance for the book, but you still say no literary writer can survive on his own (Chandra is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley)?

That’s true. A book takes a long time to finish. You need something else to do. The million dollars help though (laughs). Besides, I like teaching. I have a tendency to just camp out in some little hole with a computer and books and not emerge for a week, and that’s actually bad for me.

It's probably not a bad idea to keep the day job, big money or no big money...