Here’s A Look At Lena Dunham’s $3.7M Book Proposal

By on December 11, 2012 10:52 am in Brooklyn Heights, Celebrity Residents

Brooklyn Heights’ resident and actor, director, executive producer, writer and creator of HBO’s “Girls” Lena Dunham sold her narrative “Not That Kind Of Girl,” in October to Random House for $3.7 million based on the strength of an illustrated 66-page proposal.

The book, packed with “frank and funny advice on everything from sex to eating to traveling to work,” is previewed on Gawker, which notes that the proposal, by itself, is worth about $56,000 a page.

Dunham, 26, proposed to structure the book as an advice tome in the tradition of Helen Gurley Brown’s “Having It All.” When her proposal was first announced in October, “Not That Kind of Girl: Advice by Lena Dunham” had a starting auction price of $1 million. “Girls,” meanwhile, launches its second season on HBO in January. Check out details at L Magazine.

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  • Boerum Bill

    Cool!
    When’s Homer gonna write, “Not That Kind Of Boy”?!
    I would definitely read that!

  • Prumis Bludaugh

    “her narrative…” You so fancy & “book” just won’t do!

  • David on Middagh

    B.Bill, I’m waiting for our wild denizens to receive their own $MM contracts for:

    “Not That Kind Of Pigeon”
    “Not That Kind Of Rat”
    “Not That Kind Of Gray Squirrel”
    “Not That Kind Of Red-Tailed Hawk”

    The other day I came upon a not-well-enough-fed-for-winter ratty washing his face at the bottom of a Borough Plaza garbage can. I felt sorry for him, and felt like I should toss him a contract, but didn’t have one with me.

  • Bette

    That book cover looks like a 1950’s edition of “Joy of Cooking”. Very retro and not in a good way. In fact it’s already dingy! Could this be intentional?

  • David on Middagh

    Bette, it seems like more than one book cover designer has aimed for faux wear/damage/schmutz. Some have fooled me. (Nathan Englander’s first book of short stories… )

  • David on Middagh

    … which you can see here:

    http://bookcoversanonymous.blogspot.com/2007/11/nathan-englander-gets-good-covers.html

    The dustjacket even employs a bas-relief effect for the droplets.

  • Gerry

    “Not that kind of Heights Casino member”

  • Winston Smith

    Not that kind of party member.

  • Wiley E.

    Not that kind of BBP supporter.

  • Andrew Porter

    From MediaBistro: “Lena Dunham Wages War with Gawker (FishbowlNY). Despite what most would think, Lena Dunham is not a fan of Gawker. In fact, she had her lawyer contact the site after Gawker published her book proposal, which fetched her a cool $3.7 million. Gawker did take down the proposal, but that wasn’t enough for Dunham. New York Magazine / The Cut: In response, Gawker removed the proposal but kept up a handful of out-of-context quotes, adding a couple of lines of analysis to each. The commentary is, to a certain extent, a joke about the fair use exception, which allows you to violate something’s copyright as long as you are commenting or criticizing the material. Entertainment Weekly / Inside TV: Instead, Gawker writer John Cook has added snide commentary meant “to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham’s proposal” to each excerpt. Example: “The quoted sentence demonstrates that Dunham is incapable of conceiving a rationale for writing that doesn’t serve the goal of drawing attention to herself.” BuzzFeed: You don’t have to like Dunham. You don’t have to like Girls. But this hate for Dunham and her work is such a clear-cut case of sexist jealousy that I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it.

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/13189502@N02/ Eddyenergizer

    Not that kind of Science Geek.