Run don't walk (click don't paste?) to City Room where Mike Wallace (not that one), author of the definitive history of New York City, is answering questions. Ask him when the hell we're going to get the second volume already. [City Room]

Rights to O.J.'s If I Did It now belong to Ron Goldman's family. They want to rename the book Confessions of a Double Murderer, which seems like a rebranding misstep, right? Just lose the "if"! [AP]

Holly Peterson, a socialite with a billionaire father, has just published a book called The Manny, for which she received a $1 million two-book deal. She explains its appeal to the Times like so: "I have a unique perch from which to write about this world. I've got a big fat toe in it. Most people in this world don't write about it and most journalists don't see it." Almost nothing about this statement is true—even, probably, the part about Holly's fat toe.

Posh private school tell-alls are so hot right now! That Hotchkiss School roman a clef has been getting improbably lauded and Academy X author Andrew Trees has been getting ousted from Horace Mann—and now another insider peek at that rarefied world has sold. TABOO: A Manhattan Tutor Talks is to be an "autobiographical novel," written by an anonymous author writing under the name "Anna Taggart," whose real identity will be revealed "upon publication." Or maybe sooner. Hey, how's now?

USA Today has anointed The Tourists author Jeff Hobbs' as the winner in the battle of 80s brat pack protégés, saying that his book is "more impressive and ambitious" than Dana Vachon's Mergers and Acquisitions. Um, sure! Maybe in the same way that Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl was more impressive and ambitious than Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer. Anyway, the rave (yes, the USA Today rave) has thrust Hobbs' literary hand-holder Bret Easton Ellis (as opposed, of course, to Vachon's #1 fan Jay McInerney) back into the spotlight. He didn't go to Hobbs' book party, after all. Has he abandoned his furtherance of Hobbs' career?

The more one reads today of the forcibly entwined legends of Diana Spencer and Tina Brown, presented for the publication of Tina's The Diana Chronicles, the more one wonders: Why is Tina Brown so willing for everything that's wrong with our culture to be encouraged to be seen as her fault? Tina lunches at the Beacon, the staid but pretty room favored by Timesfolk with a decent dinner companion, with a suspicious Michael Kimmelman, the paper's chief art critic. It was a mistake to leave the New Yorker, she says. And there is no more editing any more, and things circulate on blogs and no one cares what's true anymore. All the magazines got so tabloid!

Kurt Andersen, whose name continues to be very difficult for the Times to spell, will finally have something to fill his days besides writing his column for New York magazine, finishing the two books he just sold, and hosting 'Studio 360.' He'll join his publisher Random House as Editor At Large, in which capacity he'll try to "find them two or three books that they publish a year." Sweet gig! But it's a less-happy day in career news for Daniel Menaker, Random House Publishing Group executive editor in chief, who will step down at the end of the month based on a decision he calls "mutual." "I cannot emphasize to you how fine I am about this," he says. Oh rly? Times bookladies Julie Bosman and Motoko Rich have an alternate theory: they think Menaker got Kunkeled.

Book Review editor Dwight Garner has a new Times blog, and he promises to post every day except when he's hungover. He has a lot to learn about blogging. [Paper Cuts]

Author John Grogan is steamed. The reason? Someone besides him is trying to cash in on the success of his sleeper bestseller Marley and Me, and that someone is his former employer the Philadelphia Inquirer. Publishers Marketplace reports that John's agent Laurie Abkemeier has sent a letter to sales reps complaining that Grogan wasn't given an appropriate amount of editorial control over the soon to be published collection of his P. I. columns, which the paper owns.

Inspired by the Canadian journalist who has successfully raised awareness of her knocking-up memoir by filing a lawsuit against Los Angeles-based comedy monopolist Judd Apatow, accusing him of stealing her unplanned baby and selling it to Universal, New Yorker writer and Superbad novelist Ben Greenman has issued an open letter to Apatow collaborator Seth Rogen, decrying the actor/writer/producer's re-appropriation of his original borrowing of some obscure James Brown intellectual property for his upcoming summer movie of the same name. An excerpt is above; fortunately for Rogen, no lawsuit is threatened, saving him the annoyance of having to fight off the kind of unhinged legal challenge that his allegedly womb-plundering friend is currently enduring.

Claire Messud's contemporary classic about class and family and creativity and pretension in New York City in the significance-laden summer of 2001 comes out soon in paperback! To celebrate, Emily and Doree had a long conversation about who would play what roles in their fantasy version of the movie. Casting directors should feel free to send them bouquets and thank-you notes. Also, this is much more entertaining than Balk's "ha ha, ladies have blood come out from between their legs" thing that he did that one time.

Classy nonfiction author Eric Konigsberg's assessment of super successful thriller writer Harlan Coben's career begins on a slightly sour note—"What it takes to succeed as a thriller writer—even when the literary establishment doesn't acknowledge your existence"—and then just kinda keeps getting sourer. "Until I met Harlan Coben, I was only vaguely familiar with his name. It was one of dozens I would see on the short paperbacks that line the shelves of airport news shops." Hiss! A few sentences later, the seeming-vitriol is kinda-'splained.

After much deliberation over our photos of the prettiest people in publishing, Mr. and Mrs. BookExpo 2007 have been crowned by the people. Ladies and gentlemen, let's congratulate Braxton Robbason, who is a fiction writer and much much more, and Lauren Rosati, a curator and writer. Let's learn more about them!

Pity the poor souls still laboring under the delusion that book-writing can potentially be a lucrative, fulfilling career. Or, like, don't! Today, we learn of some of the pitfalls and dashed expectations that, yes, even published authors find themselves coming up against. Such as: even a six-figure advance isn't really enough to live on for a year once your agent's 15% comission has been subtracted and you've had to pay for your own permissions. Also, did you know that writing alone in your room all day can be depressing?

"Best Ways to Make Money: Underpay writers." Finally, someone explains how book publishing works! [NYM]

Sorry, Michael Chabon! The Picador paperback that's Oprah's next book club selection turns not to be The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, as many had predicted. Instead, Oprah's curveballed American ladies again by assigning them Jeffrey Eugenides' big fat Greek multigenerational family saga about a man-lady, Middlesex. Also, Galleycat was totally wrong, though we did enjoy their totally batshit 'Jonathan Franzen redemption via Corrections re-pick' theory.

Oddly enough, the rumor flying all around this week's Book Expo has almost nothing to do with books, which means that it's actually kind of interesting! It concerns longtime Farrar, Straus & Giroux editor Jonathan Galassi and William Morris agent Bill Clegg. The rumor goes that Jonathan is leaving his wife of several decades for Bill. This is nuts. Bill Clegg, of course, is best known for repping Nicole Krauss and Haven Kimmel and Cintra Wilson and for, a while back, having made an "abrupt disappearance" to spend some quality time on his "personal problems." Crazy! But is it, uh, true?

"So who says that book people don't know how to throw a great party!" crowed Nancy Bass Wyden, the glamorous blonde lady who, improbably, is the third-generation owner of New York's most beloved and endearingly crappy used book store. 'Everyone,' said the crowd with their eyes and wan applause. No offense to Nancy or the Strand! But by the time (8:00ish on Saturday night) she made her dramatic declaration, the book people were nearing the end of their annual spate of book people parties, and the Strand's valiant but sweltering contribution to the glut wasn't making much of an impact. There were cold cuts, though, and pickles, and photos by Nikola Tamnindzic and Ed Koch's reliable wackiness, and little Adam Gopnik!

Novelist Roxana Robinson loves the world and all its peoples, who are not so different from one another as you might imagine! She also, being a novelist, loves novels. So imagine her joy when those two things coalesced in an international literary festival: "The idea of this gave me a carnival sort of feeling, a fine fizzing excitement. There would be writers from all over the world, reading from their work, onstage." Omg, like knitting a kitten sweater while sipping hot cocoa! But before her excitement could fully finely fizz, she had to get to the festival in question, and the method of conveyance she chose was a taxicab. It was a lucky day for that cab driver, because Roxana opened up a whole new world to him: the magical world of the English language.

Publishers are creating their own in-house speakers bureaus. "They'll all fail," says a lecture agency founder. [NYT]