This is unbelievable. Here is Lena Dunham’s advice book proposal. Random House bought this thing for, get this, $3.7 million. Lena Dunham, who is 26 years old and has just been paid nearly $4 million to write about her sex life ‘n stuff, doesn’t have a literary agent; she has a world-class hypnotist.
What $3.7 Million Will Buy
32 Responses to What $3.7 Million Will Buy
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Alf Kentigern says:
O’Hare airport has always had a chapel with I think both Catholic and Protestant chaplains attached, interdenominational although most used I think (not surprisingly given the history) by Catholics at least in terms of formal services of mass there. When I’ve been there, the other occasional users I’ve seen seemed to be mostly Muslim. I’ve occasionally used the space when empty for doing my prayer rule while waiting for a flight, a nice space for that.
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Sam M says:
Is this all that crazy? I’m not sure. Maybe Dunham and her agent are hypnotists–but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? This woman is 26 years old. Several years ago she started working on a TV series which became the single most talked about enterprise in who knows how long. She garnered four Emmy nominations for it. That’s not to say that it’s great art. It might be; I have no idea. It might be horrible. But she does have an amazingly strong track record for someone her age.
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KMT says:
I wish I could erase from my mind what I read in that link. I never knew that there was such a thing as an UPA, let alone that it could be fat.
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Brett says:
Rod – did you see Dunham’s “First Time” ad for the Obama campaign? I think you were in France when it came out, so you might have missed it.
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About ten pages of that are lists of things she had to eat…
I’m looking at my half-finished novel and feeling quite dispirited right now.
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steve g says:
This is nothing more than a composite
of twitter, facebook, texting, the View
and Survivor series writ large among
other social media. The same people
that participate or watch those venues
will no doubt buy this. BTW who is
her agent? -
Dan Davis says:
I’ve never heard of Lena Dunham, and I’m trying my best not to learn about her, but after reading the link, I just wonder if this is a symptom of why the whole traditional book industry is in trouble.
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Ampersand says:
You can thank capitalism for this. If someone can create a demand for something (in this case, her own creative output), corporations will jump at the chance to help supply it.
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MikeS says:
Following up on KMT’s comment: I just Googled FUPA and got 5.2 million hits. It seems to be something with its own subculture of photos and writing. One learns something new every day.
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Peter B. Nelson says:
Remind me, again, why I shouldn’t support with all my might a 92% tax bracket for her?
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Duh, comment above was for the wrong story.
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Franklin Evans says:
Um, people? What you are seeing is the literary analogue to free agency in professional sports. She’s being paid to sign with the publisher because the publisher expects to show a profit from her work in direct proportion to her advance. We don’t know if there might have been offers from other publishers and possibly a bidding war.
Maybe it’s a wild guess, but I’m betting there’s a clause in her contract making her liable for the advance if she fails to deliver something within a certain amount of time, or if what she delivers doesn’t “perform” as expected. Shrug.
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Noah172 says:
Why would anyone want to read about this broad’s sex life? The photo on the gawker link reminds me of “Pat” from Saturday Night Live.
Her parents’ occupations sound freakish: “Her father, Carroll Dunham, is a painter of ‘overtly sexualised pop art’, and her mother, Laurie Simmons, is a photographer and designer who creates ‘disquieting domestic tableaux’ with dolls.” (Wiki) Nice work if you can get it?
She’s an almuna of Oberlin — shocking.
Here’s food for thought: Dunham is the family name of President Obama’s mother, whose ancestors in the US go back to the earliest days of Puritan settlement. Lena Dunham’s father claims to be a Mayflower descendant. Are the President and this floosy distant kin? Wiki tells me that the first Obama maternal ancestor known in the US was born Singletary, but changed his name later in life because of an alleged claim to inheritance in the House of Dunham. Maybe this will give those Mormon genealogy hunters something to chew on.
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This woman is 26 years old. Several years ago she started working on a TV series which became the single most talked about enterprise in who knows how long. She garnered four Emmy nominations for it.
I don’t know; given that her mother is Jewish, could it be part of the New York Jewish pop scene, perhaps? It’s so talked about because it is by someone in the center of “high culture” and the people who talk about and review such things are also part of the same culture?
I can’t help wondering if there is some Jewish-interest ghetto in here; sort of like in the New York theater world. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but really, is the wider culture really interested in what she has to say or is it just that the people who tend to do the cultural analysis care?
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“About ten pages of that are lists”
Worked for Joan Didion!
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Church Lady says:
At least she’s worked hard to create an HBO series which has made her famous and very much in demand. Publishers aren’t looking for literary quality, they are looking for guaranteed sales. Which means celebrity. And someone people can identify with.
If you want the ultimate in celebrity book deals, look at Snooki, who got a deal (don’t know the numbers, but probably seven figures) to write a novel, after admitting that she’s only read two books in her entire life. And then got a follow-up book deal a year later. And then a big deal to write her autobiography.
Another reality TV star, Lauren Conrad, has gotten two books on the NYT bestseller list. Kind of makes your average working boy writer collapse in despair.
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This should be a cautionary tale for all those libertarians who insist that wealthy people get that way through hard work.
On the contrary, there are many who were the recipients of windfalls like Ms. Dunham’s.
When libertarians talk about “hard work”, what they really mean is what the street-wise used to call “hustling”.
This applies, I think, to many if not most of the people in the $250k+ bracket Obama calls “the rich”.
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39Joshua says:
Wow, Lena Dunham’s self-confession proposal is comic gold, although it doesn’t quite rise to the heights of the pretentious pensees Bernard Henri-Levy wrote about himself a few years ago (“I’ll let you into a secret: I never, never eat at home. I know it’s odd, but I find the idea of eating at home repugnant.”) The French are simply better at shameless self-absorption than we are – they’re able to do it with a certain finesse that Americans like Dunham lack.
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Jon says:
Is this meant as an actual advice book, or as a spoof of an advice book? If the latter I have far more respect for Ms. Dunham.
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Rod Dreher says:
Maybe it’s a wild guess, but I’m betting there’s a clause in her contract making her liable for the advance if she fails to deliver something within a certain amount of time, or if what she delivers doesn’t “perform” as expected. Shrug.
No, the advance will be hers to keep, no matter what the book sells. There is almost certainly a clause requiring her to deliver the book on a certain schedule, or pay back the advance. But the book could be a total flop, and she’d keep the advance. It’s true for me too. Something like 95 percent of all books fail to make back their advance. I’m serious. My book “Crunchy Cons” didn’t have that big of an advance, and it failed to make it back — this, despite a rave review in the Wall Street Journal, a positive review in the NYT Book Review, and a front-page WaPo Style section story, as well as lots of talk radio, and some national TV (e.g., Fox & Friends, CBN).
Lena Dunham will have to sell roughly 1.2 million books to break even for her publisher. That’s an Everest to climb for someone who is not Stephen King, Danielle Steele, Nicholas Sparks, and their level. I am quite serious when I congratulate her agent for selling the book at that astronomical price. Random House wouldn’t have bought it if they didn’t think they could make a profit on the book, though the odds are very much stacked against them. The book sounds like garbage to me, but then again, I’m not the audience for it.
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Lena Dunham will have to sell roughly 1.2 million books to break even for her publisher. That’s an Everest to climb for someone who is not Stephen King, Danielle Steele, Nicholas Sparks, and their level.
Not really, considering especially how much of Dunham’s readership will be from very young ipad, iphone, and kindle ebook readers, which have a much higher profitability margin for the publishers. Epublishing has really changed the economics of the industry, and writers who appeal to the ebook market can get much more money that those who depend on traditional book and mortar sales.
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Connie says:
“About ten pages of that are lists”
Worked for Joan Didion!
And Nora Ephron.
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Not really, considering especially how much of Dunham’s readership will be from very young ipad, iphone, and kindle ebook readers, which have a much higher profitability margin for the publishers.
Well, I ought to have said that the number of books Dunham will have to sell depends on how her deal is structured. If it’s structured the standard way, this is how many she’ll have to move, though you’re right that e-publishing affects the numbers. No matter how you look at it, Random House is going to have to move a hell of a lot of merchandise to make back their investment.
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No matter how you look at it, Random House is going to have to move a hell of a lot of merchandise to make back their investment.
Yes, but they are also noticing how much impulse buying goes on in the youth/ebook market, and they are desperate to tap into that demographic and milk it for all its worth. These publishers are looking for ways to take advantage of the very forces that might seem to be dooming them. They are willing to take risks there, whereas in almost every other area of publishing they are cutting back on advances and playing things very conservatively. Young celebrities talking about sex have a huge potential upside that most other areas of the market just don’t have.
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“Lena Dunham will have to sell roughly 1.2 million books to break even for her publisher. ”
Not sure if this is true. The advance might have bought them an interest the larger “platform” and a piece of any revenue related to television, movie or other rights. She’s shown herself to be adept in this regard. In a sense, they are paying for her marketing skills as much as her literary talent.
Again, I can’t judge her because I’m not familiar with her work, but I get the sense that she’s neither as lazy nor as lightweight as some people are assuming here. I might not agree with her “project,” but it seems like she might have one. Who wants to read about her sex life? I don’t know. Same people who want to read about George Plimpton’s boxing match or Elizabeth Gilbert’s vacation or Hunter Thompson’s bender.
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K. W. Jeter says:
Things like this are some of the reasons why indie e-publishing writers laugh when they hear about what a valuable cultural service is performed by the traditional publishers — you know, the ones who do all that high-toned “curating” to make sure that important literary masterworks wind up in the bookstores, saving us from all the junk available on Amazon.
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Rick says:
“The advance might have bought them an interest the larger “platform” and a piece of any revenue related to television, movie or other rights. ”
Exactly. The subsidiary rights are the real value here, not the book sales.
Random House is probably recouping a substantial portion of the advance immediately through rights sales. Random House is paying out one large advance, but could be receiving advances on
Multiple foreign language editions
Magazine excerpting
TV rights
Movie rightsplus maybe even product placement fees for brand mentions within the book
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Floridan says:
Most of the comments here seem to be of the “I wouldn’t want to be on the cheerleading squad — those girls aren’t that cute and they’re really stuck up.”
As to Dunham’s age, Stephen Crane’s novel, the Red Badge of Courage, was published when he was 24. I’m sure there were a number of people who groused, “Why is his novel being published? He wasn’t even born until aft r the Civil War.”
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I’m grateful for the informative commentary… but I’m really inordinately proud of my sports free-agency analogy.
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EngineerScotty says:
Perhaps some things are better left alone and ignored?
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GCR says:
Tucker Max is also fairly young, sleeps with tons of women (or at least claims to) and sells boatloads of books.
Anyone got a similar problem with him?
God loves drunks, fools and babies.