I'll Gladly Write Tomorrow For A Sweet Advance Today

Sure I'll write you a book, Penguin.

A book to help teenagers cope with depression? I can do what Elizabeth Wurtzel couldn't seem to accomplish, and my advance wouldn't have to be $33,000. I'd settle for a third of that, and spare everyone the whinging.

I blog, Penguin. You want a blogger to write a humorous book, now that you've given up on Ana Marie Cox? She accepted your advance, but didn't deliver. I'm reliable. That's the sort of thing the old Ursulines drilled into my skull and the Jesuits reinforced. You won't be suing me for breaching a contract.

Penguin has gone to court, to force a few of their would-be authors to return advances that were paid out for books that were never written.

Non-fiction is sold to publishers based on a sales pitch and the author's platform. If you're famous enough, you can get a literary agent to represent you, come up with a contract, and then you're handed a check that is supposed to help you financially while you write your book.

The problem is the publisher's when the author doesn't deliver, and so, Penguin is forced to sue a few prodigal writers who took the money and never delivered a marketable product.

Given that these contracts were signed several years ago, how likely is it that the authors still have the money stored away in some bank account, and can return it upon a court's decree?

They're likely to argue that they tried to deliver the goods, but for some reason Penguin didn't accept the work. After all, these contracts were based entirely on speculation. No one guaranteed a great book would arise from a logline.

But as long as publishers are willing to take a chance, why not take a chance on me?

I could write a memoir of my hip-hop ministry and my falling out with Louis Farrakhan, and it would be a book as honest as Herman Rosenblat's telling of his Holocaust survival.

Right, Penguin is suing Mr. Rosenblat as well, for delivering a novel and claiming it was non-fiction. And Conrad Tiller's been served with a lawsuit as well, for failing to pen his promised opus of hip-hop and the Nation of Islam.

It's all for show, these lawsuits. Penguin will go right on signing non-fiction authors and giving them money based on a sales pitch and a platform. The business model won't change. As long as other authors have financial success to bring in profits, Penguin won't need to.