HarperCollins: Kings of Conspicuous Consumption

The problem with auctions and bidding wars is that you end up shelling out more money than you can possibly earn back. So it’s going to be interesting to see the P&L charts for HarperCollins in the next year or so, considering that they forked over a million bucks for Vikram Chandra’s 1,225-page opus last week, and have followed suit with an equally megabucks deal for Anderson Cooper’s new memoir. Jonathan Burnham’s the acquiring editor, and he says that the book, whose proceeds will mostly go to charity, will “deal with the last year of [Cooper's] life as a journalist and human being in Sri Lanka, Africa, Iraq and Louisiana/Mississippi.” Luke Janklow’s the agent, and Cooper is said to be writing the book himself — no ghostwriters allowed to share in that hefty advance!

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