Inside Amy Schumer’s $8M-To-$10M Book Deal

The auction for Amy Schumer’s The Girl With The Lower Back Tattoo could not have been better timed: After weeks of speculation and squibs in the publishing trades that the sale would top the numbers scored by fellow female comedians Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Mindy Kaling, the final bids on Schumer’s memoir-slash-essay collection came just hours after her big win at Sunday night’s Emmy Awards. The outcome was every bit as over-the-top as predicted: CBS-owned Simon & Schuster publishing house will pay between $8 million and $10 million for the book, slated to go out under S&S’ Gallery Books imprint, Deadline has confirmed. Earlier reports at Publisher’s Weekly and Entertainment Weekly, among others, had followed the bidding

The deal was done by David Kuhn, a one-time Vanity Fair editor-turned-literary agent who most recently also repped Michael Riedel’s new inside-Broadway tome Razzle Dazzle and Leslie Bennetts’ coming Joan Rivers bio. Kuhn stoked the competition and the interest by requiring a closed-door audience with prospective bidders at his office, where they were allowed to read the proposal. The final round of bids began Monday, and Schumer’s Emmy fueled the last-minute frenzy, pumping the meter up from the mid-single-digit millions to closer to $10 million for the winner. By comparison, Fey reportedly won a $6 million advance for Bossypants; Lena Dunham got $3.7 million for her memoir, Not That Kind of Girl.

Schumer is riding a very tall wave, following the breakout success of her summer flick Trainwreck and the Emmy affirmation that her Comedy Central show Inside Amy Schumer has become one of the most popular, not to say influential and talked-about, shows as it heads into its fourth season of sex- and gender-related comedy sketches and stand-up.