We'll try not to use too much insider publishing industry "lingo" as we break this down for you: Dan Brown is with Random House, and he sells more books than Jesus, and he was taking forever with his new book so Random House was totally sweating, particularly with this recession and all, but finally his book dropped this week and sold a million freaking copies in the first day, so now Random House has cake and champagne. Although look at this celebration pic at Galleycat, what did they do, just press an audiobook directly into the top of the cake? Bootleg.

Every book publisher should get Dan Brown!
[Pic: Getty]

• Angelina Jolie, growing increasingly uncomfortable with Jennifer Aniston sending "motivational texts" to Brad Pitt, has told Aniston to "back off" of her man who used to Aniston's man before she stole him from her. Why don't they just move to Utah and all get married and be one big, happy family? [Mirror]
  
  
• According to the author of a new book, Marlon Brando nailed Jackie O twice during a two day fling in 1964. The author said that Brando had written notes on the affair for his memoir, but Random House later insisted that the passage be cut. [Page Six]
  
  
• The allegedly rehabbed Lily Allen went out the other night and a paparazzi caught a photo of her with "white debris" all up in her nose. [Sun]
  
  
• Gavin DeGraw, Jason Mraz and Rob Thomas spill the beans on what it's like to be a musician on the road with lots of young ladies willing to give themselves to them. [Gatecrasher]
  
  
• Lindsay Lohan smokes cigarettes while she's sitting in the beautician's chair getting her hair did. But in her defense, that can take like, what, two whole hours or something? [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Victoria Beckham stepped out in a tanktop so that all the paparazzi could get a look at her brand new boobs. She recently had her third breast augmentation, a reduction this time. [Sun]
  
  
• Katy Perry posted a picture of herself nude in a bathtub with her privates covered by a pizza onto her Twitter account, and the Brits are all in a tizzy. [Sun]
  
  
• Joy Behar has called off her marriage to longtime boyfriend Steve Janowitz. She claims they're still together and that she just had another case of cold feet. [Gatecrasher]
  
  
• Russell Simmons has dumped the grapefruit heiress he's been dating for a model named Noemie Lenoir. [Page Six]
  
  
• Some New Orleans residents have started a movement to try to encourage Brad Pitt to run for mayor next year when Ray Nagin is term-limited out of office. [nola.com]
  
  
• Now that Seth Rogen has dropped a bunch of weight, expect gossip to float each time he gets caught eating too much of something good in public, like this Page Six item busting his balls for eating a bowl of pasta, [Page Six]

  pic via

Mr. Dohle delighted in the fact that fully nine of the ten books on the NYTBR list had been published by Random House. Those nine, for the record: Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser; A Mercy by Toni Morrison; Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri; The Forever War by Dexter Filkins; Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes; The Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust; The World Is What It Is by Patrick French; Netherland by Joseph O'Neill; and The Dark Side by Jane Mayer.

This memo fits into our earlier critique of layoff memos, even though it's a post-major-restructuring memo. Although we never said that there should be a law against cheeriness in the midst of these situations, maybe there should be.

[New York Observer]

Basically Random House's many imprints, such as Nan A. Talese and Spiegel & Grau, will be moved around to its other divisions (Knopf, Crown, Random House group, etc), but the Bantam and Doubleday divisions will be no more. Bantam and Doubleday publishers, Irwyn Applebaum and Steve Rubin, are "step[ping] down" and their imprints will be farmed out/consolidated as well. In short: this "massive reorganization" is a big deal and they need to save cash, thus spooking everyone who works there. "I've never seen so many smokers outside the building at one time before," says a tipster. "Everyone is giving each other the pity look."

Massive Reorganization at Random House: Steve Rubin, Irwyn Applebaum Step Down; Doubleday and Bantam Divisions Dismantled [New York Observer]

We can guess the book will be full of the usual Ann Coulter material, slightly updated for a new age of Democratic ascendence, but what is the over-arching theme?

How will she top SLANDER: Liberal Lies About the American Right, TREASON: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, and GODLESS: The Church of Liberalism?

Maybe this one is called "SOCIALISM." Or "GAYNESS." Or "BESTIALITY."

Or "BAD THING: Liberals Being Not Good From Pontius Pilate to Kim Jong-il." Or "NEGRO: That Is The Color Of the Liberal Heart In Illegal Immigrant Spanish, Not a Racist Reference to Barack Obama (Wink Wink)."

Or "ALIEN LIZARD PERSON: What I Am."

Whatever it's called, we're sure it'll be a big hit, because Ann Coulter is still very popular and relevant.

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  Victor Ganzi, Hearst CEO—Ganzi quit this week, in a move that came as a shock to some. Though Hearst is not doing poorly, signs are there that it may be on the decline. Ad page counts at its top magazines are creeping downwards. Ganzi may have seen the writing on the wall.
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  Jack Kliger, Hachette CEO—Kliger lasted nearly a decade at Hachette, but stepped down this week. He leaves a company with an unsure future—layoffs, a questionable digital strategy, and stagnant ad growth will go down as big parts of the legacy of the end of his reign.
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  Jane Friedman, HarperCollins CEO—Friedman was sent packing from the publishing giant earlier this month, replaced by a man more than 20 years her junior. She spent nearly 30 years at Random House before coming to HarperCollins in 1997, and had a good deal of early success. But she was done in either by corporate infighting, or poor performance.
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  Peter Olson, Random House CEO—the book-loving, erudite bean counter was replaced last month by Markus Dohle, a robotic numbers guy who many feel will focus on earnings at the expense of "the romantic idea of literature." Uh, yea.

• Previously: Nor did Olson call the shots at home

The New York Times reported the 58-year-old Olson had been "distracted and unavailable" since falling ill in November. But the newspaper didn't explain quite why he couldn't be reached. Candice Olson—known as Candice Carpenter when she ran the iVillage website for women—commandeered all his communication devices, according to a friend. After she left the internet business, Candice Olson decided that she wanted to do something else with the rest of her life. ''I personally came to the conclusion that being a C.E.O. is hell,'' she said in an interview. By some combination of poor results at Random House, pneumonia and a domineering wife, Olson has had the same decision made for him.

The Olsons have five children, two adopted from Eastern Europe; and Candice was still attempting another natural pregnancy at the age of 50. This is the couple's first-encounter story. When Candice met the Random House chief executive in 2001 at a party—only three months before marrying—he heard her explain what she was doing after retiring from business. Mrs. Olson recounted to the New York Times: "I said I was trying to be the best mommy on Park Avenue. That's what captured Peter's attention.'' So the clichéd explanation for so many corporate exits—the desire to spend more time with one's family—may actually hold true in this instance.

But that's quite enough generosity for the departing executive, who acknowledged himself that he was a "pariah" in the literary reaches of the publishing industry. His critics remembered smirking relish with which he fired Ann Godoff and other editors who viewed publishing as an art rather than a business. Wandering around a book fair at the time, he told an interviewer: ''I recognize hundreds of people here. Many of them worked for me. Many of them I fired personally.'' He did not seem upset by this; in fact, he seemed amused, observed the Times' Lynn Hirschberg ''I fired him,'' Olson said as two men passed by. ''There are so many people here that I've fired that we could have a reunion.''

Full letter:

I do know that I wrote the book as a kind of wake-up call — a plea to the citizens of our country, that they might reconnect to literature, and awaken their hearts from a long moral slumber ... People spend more and more time in front of screens, letting the shiny abs and fake death wash over them. This is precisely what corporate America wants: they want young people who consent to the myth that happiness can be purchased via credit card.

The author of Sin in the Second City is a feisty Philly girl named Karen Abbott, who used to work at the same alt-weekly in Philadelphia that I did, and so I immediately felt the kind of kinship with her that you feel when you meet someone who was, like, at the same POW camp as you were, even though your time there didn't overlap? Like, we totally had the same jailer! Karen lives in Atlanta now with her husband, a very nice man named Chuck Kahler, and is tan and really kind of hot, which her editor said was helpful in promoting the book. (Well, duh!) Karen is also the type of person who seems to say whatever is on her mind, propriety be damned, which is another thing I liked about her. For example, when her editor and the host of the party, Water for Elephants author Sara Gruen (Sara and Karen met years ago in an online writing group, which must have been some writing group!), were giving toasts, Karen said a few words, including about how great her editor, Julia Cheiffetz, is, because Julie was more than an editor, she was also a friend and, it seems, a sort of remote therapist, and would advise Karen to sleep, go to yoga, and take a Xanax when she felt stressed out, which sounds like a smart combination.

Also, Karen said that if she had known that Random House editor Will Murphy was going to be there, she would have made it a cash bar. Ha! The truth of this statement was borne out as the party slowly wound down to its inexorable end. You know that point? It happens at every party, and it's when things start to get weird. Like, all of a sudden, off in the corner, Will Murphy is sucking face with a very tall, very skinny publicist from Wiley in a way that causes one person to remark, "That is the most un-sexy making out I've ever seen." Other people are imploring the bartender to pour them one last drink. And through it all, the hors d'oeuvres—spring rolls, fried dumplings, some goat cheese and endive thing—never stopped coming.

Jason Pinter's The Man In Black
For the non-nerds: Dooced [Urban Dictionary]
Earlier: Starbucks Better At Pimping Books Than Oprah?

Dear Random House Employee or former Employee:

I write to inform you about a matter of concern that came to our attention recently. In 2003, Bertelsmann engaged the services of the consulting firm Towers Perrin to work on a project on behalf of all Bertelsmann companies in the United States, including Random House. For the purposes of this project, Towers Perrin had access to employee data, including names, Social Security numbers, addresses, dates of birth and other information related to your employment, but no bank or credit card information.

Bertelsmann was recently informed by Towers Perrin that computers which may have contained this data were stolen from their offices on approximately November 27, 2006. The suspect, an employee of Towers Perrin, has subsequently been arrested, but the computers themselves have not yet been retrieved. As an employee of record at Random House in December 2004, your employee information may have been included in this data on the stolen computers. Only individuals who may have been affected by this incident are receiving information regarding the possible data loss.

Update: All Amex employees apparently received a near-identical memo yesterday; one suspects that "there's more to this than they're letting on" (fwiw).

[Image Source]