With all the hoopla surrounding the tell-all memoir from Madonna's brother that was unveiled earlier this week, including the no-preview 350,000-copy drop, it would be reasonable for an outside observer to assume that Christopher Ciccone (and his co-writer, Wendy Leigh) had been working under cloak of darkness, and that Simon Spotlight Entertainment scooped up the manuscript right away and rushed it into print.

Reasonable, but perhaps not entirely true: While that might be an accurate characterization of the way SSE got involved in the project, at least one highly-placed editor at another publishing house claims to have read a proposal for Life With My Sister Madonna, or a project very much like it, back in late 2007.

UPDATE: Andy's got a source at SSE who says the announcement may be recent, but the acquisition wasn't.

(1991 photo of the Ciccone siblings from the AP files)