An e-mailer says this “proves again that hype pays:” Lloyd Grove follows up on Gawker’s report last week that Anderson Cooper is about to “sign a rich book deal to write about his journalistic adventures.”

“The furious bidding — which has involved Hyperion, HarperCollins and Rodale Press, among others — hit $1 million last week, and I hear that Cooper’s agent, Luke Janklow, is getting close to crossing t’s and dotting i’s with a generous publisher,” Grove says. “Yesterday, a publishing insider told me that Cooper’s book — a professional memoir spanning the year from the December tsunami to Katrina to Hurricane Rita — is being sold without an outline, a formal proposal or even a paragraph on paper.”