According to Publisher’s Weekly, @gselevator says he will sue the publisher “100 times over” if they try to get back the book advance they gave him. Nothing sounds more appealing to another publisher. For a guy who has made a living off of 140 characters or less, you’d think he’d be more careful with his words. Why not just go into your next pitch meeting and say, “Look I’d love to sell you my book for multiple six figures, but if you find out I’m not who you think I am, don’t think you’re getting your money back because I’ll sue you.”

There really shouldn’t be an issue here, unless… the book proposal doesn’t line up with what the book is now. Back when @gselevator was just @gselevator and not John Lefevre, the potential for a book had a certain mystique. Sure his twitter account was a parody, but his book promised to be true stories. For me, this was a harder sell. Any anonymous person can make up crazy banking stories. Now he gets to tell his story using real names and places, protecting the innocent of course. This should be a layup.

Simon and Schuster made a business decision. It has nothing to do with John Lefevre. If they thought they could sell 100,000 copies of his book, they’d still be buying it. There’s no moral or ethical dilemma here if the book rings true. If it’s as great as he says it is, then he should have no problem finding another publisher. That is, unless he keeps sending out tweets like this: “Stay tuned. Next week, I will tweet locations and times, at various bars in NYC — All drinks will be on Simon & Schuster.”

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