When I heard through the grapevine last week that Julie Klausner (longtime readers may remember her scathing commentary on diet books) had sold a memoir to Lauren Marino at Gotham Books, I was totally psyched—Klausner has long been one of my favorite comedic talents in this city. When I called his office, agent Scott Mendel confirmed the deal, which he described as "not inconsequential,"*, and described the book—tentatively titled I Don't CARE About Your Band, as "the Scarsdale Jewish Center's answer to Augusten Burroughs."

The timing couldn't be better: Klausner's latest stage show, Wasp Cove, opens tonight at Comix. It's a tribute to '80s prime-time soap operas that Klausner wrote and co-produced with Rachel Shukert (inset), in which the two star as estranged sisters in a tony Connecticut community. And if Shukert's name sounds familiar, that's because Emily just told you how much she enjoys her memoir, Have You No Shame? After tonight, there will be two additional installments of Wasp Cove on June 16 and July 28. (Oh, and the show also co-stars David Rakoff...as Yanni.)

*"Not inconsequential" probably falls somewhere in the high end of "very nice" or the low end of "good," for those of you using the Publishers Marketplace guidelines...

Two months ago, Gawker linked to a flowchart that asked readers, "Do you dress like a douchebag?" Literary agent Holly Bemiss spotted the item, got in touch with the chart's original creator, and now she's sold a whole collection of flowcharts to TOW Books, the line of humor books overseen by McSweeney's web editor John Warner. Other burning issues Paul Gerke will resolve through rigorous question-and-answer analysis include "Are you the drunk guy at the party?" and "Is another cheeseburger really what you need right now?"

Well, heck, it can't do any worse than the actual Gawker book did.

$350,000 or more for Stuff White People Like? I don't know what I can possibly add to that.

Well, okay, one thing: If somebody signed up Randall Munroe for that kind of money, that would impress me.

Former OC Weekly columnist Rebecca Schoenkopf chats with FishbowlLA blogger Mayrav Saar about Commie Girl in the O.C., the collection of articles Verso is publishing this summer, and how it was born of necessity:

"I quit my job, and I was lying on my bed in the sunshine for two weeks. I was utterly bone-deep relaxed. I was lying around watching my ass grow, and I loved it. After two weeks, my mom called and started bitching at me and telling me I need to get a job. So I went back, and of course I didn't keep my clips, so I had to copy and paste everything from the Web site."

Now that the book's done, says Schoenkopf, "I am still looking for jobs... Hopefully, I can be the editor of my own paper somewhere." Meanwhile, UnBeige, mediabistro.com's design blog finds something to look forward to from Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's Influence: It's going to be designed by Rodrigo Corral, whose most famous jackets include A Million Little Pieces, The Subject Steve, and a bunch of Chuck Palahniuk novels.

"I think some Modern Love columns work well [as books] because they are the most important story of the writer's life, and it's the kind of story that's rich enough to be explored much more deeply."

So says Modern Love editor Daniel Jones in Doree Shafrir's Observer piece on the Sunday Styles column that spawned nine book deals. By sheer coincidence, Amy Sutherland's What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage, based on a column that appeared in 2006, arrived in my mailbox today. And, if you'll excuse me, I have to go email all my friends about it now...

(One minor quibble: Susan Shapiro is described in the article as "a New York-based writing instructor whose students have managed to successfully publish in Modern Love several times," when we like to think of her as "a New York-based mediabistro.com writing instructor" with a one-day workshop on writing and selling your first book coming up in less than two weeks. Sorry; had to get that in there.)

Literary agent Kate McKean reports that, after a two-day auction, she's placed a print spinoff of the insanely popular I Can Has Cheezburger website with Patrick Mulligan of Gotham Books. "Instead of just slapping some lolcats on the page for the book," McKean says, "the authors are letting [website icon] Professor Happycat guide the reader through the different memes with brief definitions and context, while still capturing the absurd humor of the site."

McKean also sent in the image that Mulligan created to celebrate the deal, but not before I had put together my own spin on the announcement...

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There was a story in Sunday's New York Times about what Mary Jo Buttafuoco's up to these days: "working on a book... with a ghostwriter, which her agent is shopping to publishers." As she told Corey Kilgannon, "I want to get the point across that you can get through anything, whether it's tragedy or scandal, and come out with your head up and move on with life."

So who's the agent? Sharlene Martin, who says the former Mrs. Buttafuoco, who now goes by Connery, came to her through another one of her literary clients, Beverly Hills facial restoration specialist Dr. Babak Azizzadeh. "After meeting with Mary Jo, I knew she had a real survivor's tale to tell—one with dignity and encouragement to other women facing various adversities throughout their lives," Martin says, also noting her new client's "incredible wry sense of humor." Martin confirms that Connery will have a co-author on the project: Julie McCarron, who has previously collaborated on celebrity memoirs by Tracey Gold, Gene Simmons, and Shannon Tweed.

Yesterday, when I told you about Leo Babauta (left) and his decision to abandon the copyright on his Zen Habits blog, I mentioned that he was still looking for a book deal: "When I get published by a major publisher," he wrote. "I probably won't be able to release copyright. I accept that as a cost of getting published in print, which is a dream of mine." And I added that I was sure he'd get a book deal eventually, because he's that good.

It turns out that he's much further along that path than I'd realized. Literary agent Holly Root dropped me a line yesterday afternoon to tell me that she sold Babauta's The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential to Brendan Duffy at Hyperion last month, which I'd missed in the Publishers Marketplace deal lunches during the holiday crunch. So congratulations are already in order—and if you aren't reading Zen Habits already, you can familiarize yourself with the material now, before the book comes out.

Financial journalist Felix Salmon has considered Tom Wolfe's move from FSG to Little, Brown, and as he sees it in his Portfolio blog, "this deal makes sense for all three parties." Wolfe gets something like $7 million for a book he hasn't finished yet, Michael Pietsch and Pat Strachan get the prestige of publishing the novel when it's ready, and Jonathan Galassi hangs on to the Wolfe backlist without having to spend another dime—and, the way Salmon cites Hachette Book Group CEO David Young's declaration that the company is dedicated to "helping Tom Wolfe find the biggest readership of his already extraordinary career," it seems pretty clear that they will spend a lot of marketing money on Back to Blood, creating a promotional aura that will undoubtedly have some marginal benefit for FSG down the line.

Some observers think Galassi cut Wolfe loose not a moment too soon, like Gawker managing editor Nick Denton, who cited Nielsen Bookscan numbers quoted in Motoko Rich's summation of the deal, putting the 70% mark for sales on I Am Charlotte Simmons at "293,000 copies in hardcover and 138,000 copies in paperback." (And apparently the reported numbers on the first printing were, get this, exaggerated!) "Book publishers are no different from their counterparts in the magazine and newspaper industries," Denton claims after sifting through the tea leaves. "As print declines, so the claims, whether of print runs or circulation figures, become ever more inflated and ever more desperate." Maybe; Gawker readers didn't seem particularly impressed by the analysis, though: "Isn't this the kind of conclusion that the Times makes, and Gawker mocks?" one commenter asked. Adds another, "As opposed to being an indicator of decline in publishing perhaps there is something positive to be said for an overblown, overrated writer not selling the books that his publisher expected him to sell." Obviously, Little, Brown doesn't agree with that literary assessment, and is crossing their fingers that whatever went wrong with Charlotte Simmons doesn't happen again this time...

(Speaking of Back to Blood, I was struck by Pietsch's comment to the Times that "it's Tom Wolfe writing the kind of novel that only Tom Wolfe among the living American writers can do... He's looking at a society in huge flux and the combinations of ambition and class and all the different human drives that make cities fascinating places." Maybe I'm just a science fiction geek, but I still think William Gibson beat Wolfe to it with last year's Spook Country. And then there's Northern Ireland's Ian McDonald, who plunged forty years into India's future in River of Gods...)

photo: Bruce Gilbert

After hearing the news about Tom Wolfe's decampment to Little, Brown, and getting FSG's Jonathan Galassi to confirm it was all about the money, Leon Neyfakh heard from the Man in White himself, who didn't say much about changing publishers after more than four decades other than describing the process as "all very friendly."

What Wolfe did open up about to Neyfakh was the big themes he's preparing to deal with in Back to Blood, his first novel since 2004's I Am Charlotte Simmons. "My original subject was just immigration, not from any policy point of view, but just curiosity about what the life of recent immigrants is like, and how they feel when they come up against American culture or Americans in general," Wolfe told the Observer, adding that he was still conducting research trips: "I'm so journalistic about this stuff that I can't stand winging it. I don't think anybody's imagination is even in the same league with what happens in places like that." There's also the de rigeur statement about all that new territory he'll be charting: "When I first told people I had this idea, it was two years ago, and the response at that time was, 'that's very interesting.' But there was never a second question—obviously it bored them to death."

Obviously, Little, Brown thinks the material might be a bit more exciting than that—to the tune, if New York's sources are correct, of a $6-7 million advance.

photo: Richard Burbridge/NY Times (2004)