Report: N.Y.-based Harvard grads score Facebook satire book deal

The New York Observer reported Monday that Greg Atwan and Evan Lushing, two recent Harvard graduates living in New York, have reportedly earned a five-figure book deal for a satirical take on social-networking phenomenon Facebook. The book pitch, called The Facebook Book, sold to Harry N. Abrams, Inc. for somewhere around $50,000, according to The Observer.

Facebook famously started in a Harvard dorm in 2004, with founder (and eventual dropout) Mark Zuckerberg and several friends creating the social network as an alternative to the school's physical "facebook" with photographs and contact information for the student body.

Thanks to my membership in the sprawling "New York, N.Y." network on Facebook, I did the appropriate Reporting 2.0 thing and promptly did a search for both young satirists; it appears that Lushing, a 2004 graduate of Harvard, also attended Zuckerberg's boarding school alma mater, the elite Phillips Exeter Academy. Atwan, who earned his Crimson cred in 2005, has locked up his profile to non-friends.

The Observer article relates that the Chelsea-based roommates have both quit their jobs in anticipation of the book, which should see print in the spring. Lushing, who had been on staff at the Harvard Lampoon satire magazine while in school, had been working in an online-video comedy troupe in Los Angeles and has relocated to New York; Atwan was an editor at the news aggregation start-up Newser.

Let's hope The Facebook Book is a better read than Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs.

(I, for the record, thought that my colleague Tom Krazit was much too nice to Fake Steve Jobs scribe Daniel Lyons in his review of the book.)

[geekbooks]

Don't Quit Your Day Job

As much as I love to recommend casting down the shackles of the man, this one made me chuckle.

These two are splitting a $50K advance and have quit their jobs. They'll be living large for *how* long? Even *if* the book earns out, it'll likely be months before they see another dime from the publisher.