Dishy, Trashy Publishing World Gossip

Okay, I don't usually propagate gossip (oh, who am I kidding?), but this was just too juicy to pass up: Why Naughty Nannies Got Badly Spanked At Random House. It's about Random House's cancellation of the second book by The Nanny Diaries authors. It's almost unheard of for a publishing house to pass or cancel on a second book when a first one was as hugely successful as The Nanny Diaries. But it's interesting in that it's a snapshot of what's up with the publishing industry now - how some houses are trying to keep a limit on some of the selective giant advances and overblown expectations that have been part of getting it into the trouble it's in in the first place. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, although in the short term it may mean that authors should expect less money. And what's the moral of the story? Something along the line of "Someone who is nice to you but not nice to the waiter [or the editor, or the publicist, or the editorial assistant, or the agent's secretary] is not a nice person." I still believe that behaving professionally and courteously to everybody will serve you well in the end. In writing and publishing, as in most industries, everybody talks to everybody, and everybody finds out everything. (Hey, look what we all just found out.)