Little, Brown has apparently canceled a much-anticipated book about the war in Afghanistan by Michael Hastings, based on “The Runaway General,” last summer’s explosive Rolling Stone article on Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
The book deal was inked shortly after the bombshell article was published in June 2010. The piece created such an uproar, with its claims of high-level insubordination in the military, that McChrystal, who was then running the war in Afghanistan, was summoned to Washington and fired by President Obama.
Amazon still lists the book, called “The Operators,” as being published by Little, Brown with a December publication date.
Fueled by the publicity tied to the RS article, Hastings was said to have snagged a “high-six-figure advance.” With the cancellation, he may forfeit a good chunk of the advance.
Sources said that super agent Andrew Wylie had quietly begun offering the manuscript to other publishers this week.
After the original uproar, McChrystal was quietly appointed to a new advisory role for military families. An investigation by the Department of Defense said it could not find people to corroborate some of Hastings’ details and cast some doubt on the story.
RS never backed down. “We absolutely stand by the reporting,” a spokesman said yesterday.
Michael Pietsch, the publisher and president of Little, Brown, cast no light on what was behind the last-minute rejection of Hastings’ manuscript. “I’m not going to talk about that,” Pietsch said when reached by cell late yesterday. He then disconnected his phone, leaving one of the bigger book-publishing mysteries unanswered for the moment.
Wylie and Hastings had not responded to e-mails or calls by press time.
Cosmo for Guys
Hearst’s first tablet-only publication, known as CFG — which stands for Cosmo for Guys — has inked its first two advertisers in advance of its Aug. 1 debut — Perry Ellis, Fragrance for Men and a jewelry industry group, Platinum Guild International.
The tablet publication is the brainchild of Kate White, the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, which is still holding sway as the most profitable magazine in the Hearst empire even as it deals with all the industry’s problems.
“The idea really came from the guys themselves,” said White, who said she was constantly receiving notes from guys saying how much they secretly enjoyed peeking at their wife’s issues of Cosmo.
“The thing that makes this different from Maxim or Men’s Health is it’s women giving the advice,” said White, as she demonstrated a beta version of the publication for Media Ink in the Hearst app lab.
White admits she had toyed with a Cosmo for Guys on and off for years, even going so far as to do a mockup of a men’s magazine cover that never got off the drawing board. She feared men would never want to buy a Cosmo-connected magazine. She also toyed with the idea of a male-oriented Web site, but that never happened either.
But with the privacy offered by an app, White thinks she may have a home run.
One of the features in the debut issue will be a way to judge what various oohs and ahhs women make during sex mean. The five key choices include: the director, the faker, the moaner, the mute and the pollster.
“I imagine if guys are listening to this in public, they might want to use earphones,” she said.
Secret $$$
When Matthew Miller was at Forbes, he was the global wealth editor, in charge of some of the magazine’s most lucrative franchises, from the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans to the global billionaires list.
In 2010 he left to strike out on his own as a top partner in Wealth X, a data firm that compiled data on wealth for outside contributors.
Then he left that firm in January to join Bloomberg News as an editor at large.
Now he’s getting ready to unveil some of his new handiwork, and seems to be taking an unmistakable jab at his old employer.
Next week, Bloomberg Markets, the monthly that goes primarily to Bloomberg terminal users on Wall Street, unveils a cover story on eight billionaires that have never appeared on any other wealth lists. The names of the bil lionaires will not be re vealed until the issue hits next week.
Forbes Media spokes woman Monie Begley said, “Matt Miller was the wealth editor at Forbes, left a few years ago to pursue creating his own entrepreneurial company. . . . He’s a talented guy.”
On the overlooked billionaires, she said, “There are new ones every year, so it’s no real biggie finding eight who weren’t there before. Since no one has done these kinds of lists before, maybe they are unaware of fluctuations. In 2010 there were 1,011 billionaires on our list, and in 2011 there were 1,210. Big change.” kkelly@nypost.com