I like Lena Dunham. But her $3.7 million book deal with Random House, after a bidding war involving all of the major publishers, is emblematic of what is wrong with corporate publishing today. 
 
 My first publishing job, in 1987, was at Random House. Bennett Cerf’s publishing company, the home of Faulkner, Capote and Dr. Seuss, is now only one of a handful of “major” publishers, by which I mean publishers who are corporate, bottom-line-driven, freighted with massive overhead and generally reactionary. The Dunham deal smacks of a search for the "Barton Fink" touch -- as in, "get me the next 'Bossypants,' stat." I realize that Dunham is an easy target — she's only 26, from an artsy New York family and the creator, star and director of her own HBO show. And there is an element of sexism in the backlash — a young, strong, independent female scores a big deal — but I have no problem with her agent, Kim Witherspoon, shaking down the dinosaurs on her client’s behalf. It's what the market will bear. I imagine Dunham’s book will kick ass, yet it will also get its critical ass handed to itself because of the advance. If Random House is already hucking it as the next Tina Fey meets Nora Ephron meets David Sedaris (no pressure, Lena), then the critics will be expecting Fey meets Ephron meets Sedaris. 
 
 It has been reported that Tiny Fey received an advance of over $6 million for "Bossypants." A huge number, but at the time she already had nearly 10 years of "Saturday Night Live" plus two years of "30 Rock" under her belt, not to mention a visionary editor, Reagan Arthur, helping her. The genuinely sharp, funny and widely appealing "Bossypants" went on to sell more than a million copies. Rough math figures that Random House will need to sell a minimum of 500,000 copies of Dunham’s advice book to break even. Good luck with that. 
 
 Even if they do break even or if somehow every single person who watched the premiere of Dunham’s show “Girls” buys the book — all 872,000 of you out there according to Nielsen — is this any way to run a publishing company? Put aside the cultural impact question for a second. The whole approach seems short-sighted at best. 
 
 My publishing hero is Barney Rosset, the late, great founder of the Evergreen Review and Grove Press. Rosset was responsible for publishing Samuel Beckett, Pablo Neruda, Henry Miller, Jean Genet, William Burroughs and many other writers who have shaped our culture. They are also perennial sellers, forming a solid backlist that allowed Rosset to continually take risks and fight censorship battles. Rosset formed partnerships with his writers, was fiercely loyal to them and paid them small advances. But they were fighting the good fight together, and when the publisher made money, so did the writer. 
 
 Imagine what Rosset would have done with $3.7 million dollars? Let’s say he paid 370 writers $10,000 advances each. Odds are that 20 years from now, a handful of those books would have been cultural touchstones, each outselling Dunham’s advice book. Right now, off the top of my head, I could give you a list of 370 writers who would write books that would have longer lasting cultural impacts than Dunham's 15 minutes of publishing glory. Or, let’s be more generous and more selective: Let’s give 37 writers $100,000 advances. Most struggling writers I know would kill for that kind of advance and could easily stretch that amount out to finish their books. Let’s say only one of these writers turns out to be a Lorrie Moore, Dorothy Allison, Karen Russell or Denis Johnson. Over time, they would surely outsell Dunham. And if two of the 37 turn golden? Let’s be ambitious. What if there are five brilliant writers in the group -- roughly one out of every seven writers -- we’ve chosen to invest in? 
 
 This argument presumes time. Which is what corporate publishers don’t have. They have shareholders, parent companies or both, and they must justify their quarterly earnings. And this is why small publishers are thriving. Paul Harding’s 2010 Pulitzer prize–winning novel "Tinkers" was published by the micro-press Bellevue Literary after Harding was rejected by all of the major houses. There’s a good reason that small publishers like Graywolf, McSweeneys, Lookout Books, Soho Press, Wave Books and a handful of other indies are thriving and winning many of the awards the major houses used to regularly dominate. This is not to say that all of corporate publishing is dominated by versions of Lotto Fever and Ambulance Chasing. There are pockets of risk-taking, most notably with publishers like Calvert Morgan and his It Books, somehow hidden within the fortress of Murdoch’s HarperCollins; or Spiegel & Grau, a fiefdom inside the borders of Random House; or Reagan Arthur Books within Little Brown. 
 
 Yet Random House’s rash deal with Dunham is the rule, not the exception. These decisions are why the corporate publishers are losing cultural relevance and why they might soon lose solvency as well. ||||| If she scores this jaw-dropping book deal, Lena Dunham won't be just one of the "Girls" anymore. 
 
 Bidding for Dunham's upcoming book skyrocketed to $3.6 million on Wednesday, according to Deadline.com's Mike Fleming. Fleming reports that this number could climb even higher: 
 
 The numbers for the book of advice and anecdotes from the 26-year old creator of the HBO series Girls should go even higher as publishers see her as an influential creative voice for young women. She met yesterday with editors. Stay tuned. 
 
 Dunham's literary agent Kim Witherspoon of InkWell Management is working on the deal, which should be finalized soon, according to Deadline.com. Witherspoon is an ideal agent to contend for Dunham's deal, as she herself founded an agency at 26 years old and now represents the likes of Sophie Kinsella, Lionel Shriver and Anthony Bourdain, the New York Observer notes. 
 
 Slate's David Haglund reported on Monday that Dunham's book deal had a set an "in-house floor of $1 Million” for U.S. rights to the book. Dunham told the online magazine: “There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman.” 
 
 Dunham's book, tentatively titled "Not That Kind of Girl: Advice by Lena Dunham," is a collection of essays with an advice motif. 
 
 "In the intro, Dunham is self-deprecating about the idea that she has any wisdom to share, but says that if the book can help anyone avoid some of the mistakes she’s made it will be worth it," according to Slate. The proposal says the work will include candid accounts of "losing her virginity, trying to eat well (detailed diet journal included), obsessing about death, and so on, along with tips about how to stay focused on work, how not to ruin a potential relationship, and what have you." 
 
 Dunham's potential multi-million dollar deal is certainly impressive addition to her list of accomplishments. The 26-year-old filmmaker and actress has written for The New Yorker and Rookie. Her feature-length film "Tiny Furniture" won Best Narrative Feature at the 2010 South by Southwest festival.
– Want to know what's wrong with the corporate publishing industry? Take a look at Lena Dunham's insane book deal, which Rob Spillman pegs at $3.7 million on Salon. Random House will need to sell at least 500,000 copies to break even, which Spillman thinks is a long shot. But even if the company pulls it off, "is this any way to run a publishing company?" Spillman wonders. "Put aside the cultural impact question for a second. The whole approach seems short-sighted at best." Imagine if Random House had taken that $3.7 million and instead given $10,000 advances to 370 writers—or even $100,000 advances to 37 writers. Surely a few of the resulting books would have been better and more successful than Dunham's book, and a few of the writers would have outsold her over time. But "this argument presumes time. Which is what corporate publishers don’t have," Spillman explains. "They have shareholders, and/or parent companies, and must justify their quarterly earnings." That's why small publishers are increasingly winning the big literary awards after taking chances on books that the major houses won't touch. "Random House’s rash deal with Dunham is … why the corporate publishers are losing cultural relevance, and why they might soon lose solvency as well." Click for Spillman's full column—or a column in defense of Dunham's massive deal.