WURTZEL
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Not for nothing do these authors get paid.
Book-publishing giant Penguin Group has filed a dozen lawsuits in the past week against authors who have failed to meet their deadlines, despite being paid big advances.
The alleged deadbeat dozen include “Prozac Nation” author Elizabeth Wurtzel, New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead, Wonkette founder Ana Marie Cox, and Holocaust survivor/tall-tale teller Herman Rosenblat — and some of the writers have held on to the cash for years after their deals were canceled.
Wurtzel signed a $100,000 deal for a book to help teenagers cope with depression back on Valentine’s Day 2003. The suit says the manuscript was due by 2008, and the publisher pulled the plug when the “Bitch” writer blew her deadline.
She never returned the $33,000 advance she’d been given. The publisher wants it back, plus $7,000.
Mead, meanwhile, signed her deal back in 2003 for a collection of her previously published work — but somehow had failed to turn it in by April 2011, the suit says. The company wants $20,000 back, plus $2,000 in interest.
The suit against Cox says she never produced the “humorous examination of the next generation of political activists” she’d signed on for in a whopping $325,000 deal back in 2006. Penguin nixed the book when she hadn’t turned in a manuscript by 2007, but she never returned her $81,250 advance. The suit also seeks $50,000 in interest.
A rep for Mead did not return a call for comment. Neither did Wurtzel. A rep for Cox declined to comment.
One of the more brazen deadbeats on the list is Rosenblat.
He signed a big-bucks deal for his “true” life story. “Angel at the Fence” would tell “the amazing story of a Holocaust victim who survived a concentration camp because of a young girl who snuck him food. Seventeen years later, the two met on a blind date, and have been together ever since, married for 50 years.”
The unbelievable story — which also landed Rosenblat a multimillion-dollar movie deal — was also patently untrue.
After historians challenged Rosenblat’s tale, he admitted he concocted the story about his future wife having brought him food. She actually lived about 250 miles away from his concentration camp.
Penguin canceled his book after his confession, but he held on to the $30,000 they’d advanced him, the suit says.
Another brassy author is British journalist Lucy Siegle, who got a $35,000 advance for a book called “To Die For,” which would tell the “real story behind the clothes we wear.” She failed to deliver a manuscript by 2009, which is when they killed her deal. The book was released last year by HarperCollins, but Siegle still never returned Penguin’s advance, the suit says.
Penguin wants a total of $42,000 from her.