“Last week that Random House canceled the second novel by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, the authors of the phenomenally best-selling The Nanny Diaries. As news began filtering out that the newly reconfigured little Random had canceled the reported-to-be $3 million contract, phones all over town started to ring. ‘Random House wants its money back,’ people said. ‘The book is a disaster!’ It may come as a shock to those who work in more normal businesses, but this kind of thing doesn’t happen every day.”