Jill Abramson, the former New York Times executive editor, has signed a rumoured $1m book deal – but readers hoping for a score-settling page turner may be disappointed, according to her publisher.
Simon & Schuster won the hotly contested bidding war that erupted over her first book since leaving the paper.
The deal, brokered by her agent, William Morris Endeavor, began and ended in a day after the proposal was circulated among publishers last week.
According to reports, Abramson, 60, will write about the future of media in a rapidly changing world.
“I’ve been a frontline combatant in the news media’s battles to remain the bedrock of an informed society,” Abramson said. “Now I’m going to wear my reporter’s hat again to tell the full drama of that story in a book, focusing on both traditional and new media players in the digital age.”
An S&S spokesman insisted: “It is not a score-settling book. We haven’t announced a publication date yet but Jill is writing and reporting as we speak.”
Simon & Schuster’s president and publisher, Jonathan Karp, told the New York Post: “The transformation of the news business is one of the most important cultural stories or our time. Jill Abramson has the talent, perspective and journalistic chops to write the defining book on this revolution.”
In May 2014 Abramson was stripped of her title by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr because of what he called, in addressing the staff and anointing her successor, an issue with management.
She was succeeded by Dean Baquet, who had been her former deputy.
Much conjecture surrounded Abramson’s departure – with speculation that she took exception to a “gendered” pay gap between what she was earning and what her predecessor had earned. Her brusque and abrasive management style was also cited as a factor in her departure.
Abramson made no substantial public comment at the time but posed for an Instagram picture soon after wearing boxing gloves.
In her first public comments after her departure she gave a commencement address at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and struck a lighthearted tone.
“And now I’m talking to anyone who’s been dumped,” she said. “You bet. Not gotten the job you really wanted, or received those horrible rejection letters from grad school. You know the sting of losing. Or not getting something you badly want.
“When that happens, show what you are made of.”
She did not comment on whether she would get the tattoo of the Times “T” on her back removed.
This will not be Abramson’s first book. She is the author of The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout, published in 2011, and a 1994 book Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, which was a National Book Awards finalist.