Because the latest to step right up to the deal plate is Catherine Sanderson, whose blog Le Petite Anglaise caused a furore this past summer when her employers, the accountancy firm Dixon Wilson, decided to fire her for what she said on the blog - even though she never named them directly. And so, the Bookseller reports, Katy Follain at Michael Joseph/Penguin signed Sanderson up in a two-book deal, paying a sum approaching the mid six figures. The deal was done after a heated auction conducted by Simon Trewin and Sarah Ballard at PFD.

Follain describes Sanderson as "a very talented writer, one that we are very keen to build so that she becomes a household name with Petite Anglaise and future books." PETITE ANGLAISE will be published in the UK in the spring of 2008, and will also be published by Spiegel & Grau in the US and with Doubleday in Canada, through Zoe Pagnamenta at PFD New York. RCS/Sonzogno has also bought rights through Nicki Kennedy at ILA.

I'm not quite sure what a mid six figure sum is but let's imagine £500k and let's assume that non-UK rights are about the same. This means a total advance of at least £1m which represents a brilliant deal by the literary agent. It also means that the book will have to sell around a million copies to earn back the advance. I wonder whether Simon Trewin and Sarah Ballard might like to try raising a similar advance for a book loosely based around my experiences as recorded on this blog.

I was reminded that things weren't like this in the old days by the death of the wonderful Alan Maclean whose obituary appeared in today's Guardian.