So much for yesterday's item about the perceived slowness of the Karl Rove auction. Observer book man Leon Neyfakh, who's a bit more plugged into this sort of thing than Crain's New York Business, reported late yesterday afternoon that Rove's memoir is pretty much locked in at Simon & Schuster, with the only question being whether the house's new conservative imprint, Threshold, or the less easily categorized (though once classically libertarian) Free Press will pick up the tab.

As Neyfakh explains, both imprints "essentially held hands throughout the auction process and never bid against each other at any point," thanks to S&S corporate policy regarding auctions, "and now that they're the only two interested parties remaining, the subject of money is unlikely to be up for discussion. Rather, Mr. Rove and his representative, DC lawyer Robert Barnett, have to decide based on other, perhaps less quantifiable factors, whether Free Press or Threshold would be a better fit." Which usually means "who's got the better marketing proposal?", but in this case, you have to figure that both sides have an equally good shot of guaranteeing him a 60 Minutes interview... Anyway, he'll probably make up his mind by Friday.