One last excerpt from Options, the fictional novel by Fake Steve Jobs poser Dan Lyons.

Another excerpt from Options, the fictional novel by Fake Steve Jobs poser Dan Lyons.

Another excerpt from Options, the fictional novel by Fake Steve Jobs poser Dan Lyons.

Another excerpt from Options, the fictional novel by Fake Steve Jobs poser Dan Lyons.

Options, the fictional novel by Fake Steve Jobs author Dan Lyons, is out already if you know where to look. To help you blow off Friday I'll post the best passages as I hit them. The novel, spun out from Lyons's insanely great Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog, tells Steve's side of the stock options backdating scandal. Here's the first of our excerpts:

Looking for a copy of Options, Fake Steve Jobs blogger Dan Lyons's parody of the Apple guru? As I type this, Borders in San Mateo has 3 copies. The San Francisco stores in Union Square and Stonestown each have 5. Sometimes, people, you need to quit Googling and pick up the phone. Dial now and ask them to hold you one, which they'll do for three days.

Being an intrepid tech reporter, I buy books related to my work. I just picked up The Gawker Guide to Conquering All Media (obligatory: it is the greatest work ever put to print. You should buy copies for yourself and all your friends). I preordered Options by Forbes editor Dan Lyons, writing as Fake Steve Jobs, way back in July. I've been pantingly awaiting the arrival of my copy from Amazon.com. A few days ago, I got an email from Amazon saying my book arrival date was getting pushed back — to December 14. I thought it was just a mixup, but now we've heard from other sources that Amazon sent them the same email. What's going on? Here's what Fake Steve himself has to say about it.

A few weeks ago, Forbes editor Dan Lyons, writing as Fake Steve Jobs, wrote a devastating analysis of the One Laptop Per Child project. On Tuesday, Wayan Vota, a blogger who follows the OLPC project, responded in essence, that while he agreed with Fake Steve, he still agreed with the project's aims. That would have been the end of it, except for a comment left on his post by "Fake Steve Jobs." The problem? Lyons didn't leave that comment. Vota compared the IP address that left the comment to others that he'd received and tracked it back to the Racepoint Group, the PR firm that reps OLPC. The commenter has since apologized, but the damage is done. To Kyle Austin, soon-to-be-fired flunky at Racepoint Group we say: great spin control. Proof after the jump.

Tech satire is all the rage. Forbes editor Dan Lyons parlayed Fake Steve Jobs into the book Options. Now two Harvard grads, Greg Atwan and Evan Lushing, have received "in the range" of $50,000 to lampoon everyone's favorite social network in The Facebook Book, to be published next spring. [The New York Observer]

No, make that just plain writing for dollars. Fake Steve Jobs has a day job? Why, yes. Dan Lyons, the Forbes editor who pens the faux-Apple CEO blog, has chucked his pajamas, donned a suit and tie, and filed a story for the magazine's website. How does he find the time, with all that blogging? The subject: SCO, the software company which filed for bankruptcy as a series of its anti-Linux lawsuits fell apart. [Forbes]

Options, the long-awaited book by Apple-CEO impersonator and Forbes editor Dan Lyons, gets gently panned by the digerati. The verdict? Airplane reading, at best. [News.com]

AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, tired of playing ambush journalist with her handheld videocamera, tries her hand at pretending to be Dan Lyons, the fabulous Forbes fabulist behind "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs." Sort of. Except here, she's Fake Jerry Yang, a faux version of Yahoo's CEO, not Fake Steve Jobs The best bit comes when Swisher imagines Yang's reaction to Brad Garlinghouse, the controversial Yahoo executive who called for major changes in what's now called "The Peanut Butter Memo."

Earlier this week, we conducted a thoroughly unscientific poll asking Valleywag readers how much Forbes should pay Dan Lyons, the senior editor recently revealed to be Fake Steve Jobs, to bring his faux-Apple-CEO show to the magazine's website. The answer? A solid majority said Forbes should pay Lyons at least $100,000, and the weighted average of the votes came in at $275,495. That's just a bit more than Lyons school chum and Lenovo marketing VP David Churbuck said the blog was worth, shortly before his pal was outed. The people have spoken, and for Lyons's sakes, one hopes his bosses will listen — but I can't help pointing out that that's a lot of cheddar for a blog long on cheese. The final results, after the jump.

Brad Stone, the ruggedly handsome Timesman who outed Fake Steve Jobs, explains how Apple drove Forbes editor Dan Lyons to starting the faux-Apple CEO blog. [New York Times Bits Blog]

Since the two of them got sweaty and wrestled in prep school, Lenovo marketing executive David Churbuck has been a loyal pal to Forbes editor Dan Lyons. For months, Churbuck has been protecting Lyons's secret identity as Fake Steve Jobs. But now we're getting worried. Churbuck, you see, has gone on a fast — just like Fake Steve himself. Now, the public story is that he wants to "lose some weight" and "clear out the plumbing" (ewwww). But we suspect that this is the truth: Churbuck is fasting until the stingy bastards at Forbes give his buddy a big fat raise for selling out his popular blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Now, gentle readers, you have two lives to save, not one. Get Churbuck eating again, and put food on Lyons's table, by voting in our poll: How much should Forbes pay Lyons to be Fake Steve? You decide.

On air yesterday, CNBC anchor Melissa Francis told Dan Lyons, the Forbes editor recently revealed as Fake Steve Jobs, that he deserved a raise. Lyons nervously concurred. Nervously, because he still hasn't concluded fraught negotiations with his employer on how much Forbes will pay to bring his blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, on board when Brad Stone of the New York Times outed him as the author. But no matter. "We've already established what you are, ma'am," I can imagine Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard telling Lyons. "Now we're just haggling over the price."

Dan "Cowardly" Lyons of Forbes commits the worst sin of any blogger: being boring. [The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs]

In an interview with CNBC, Dan Lyons, the Forbes senior editor revealed as Fake Steve Jobs, makes two fascinating admissions: First, that he has, in fact, not concluded negotiations with his employer on bringing the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog to Forbes.com. Second, that he and his employer did have a plan in the works to launch a Forbes-backed version of his site after Labor Day. I'm counting that as two hunches confirmed.

My musing on why it took Forbes so long to reach a deal with its own editor, Dan Lyons, to bring his Secret Diary of Steve Jobs to Forbes.com, raised a question in my mind: How do we know the outing of Fake Steve Jobs wasn't an inside job? There's one very close link: Damon Darlin, the recently appointed technology editor at the Times who edited the story, used to work at Forbes. I have the utmost respect for the reporting skills of Brad Stone, the Times reporter who broke the story, and believe he discovered Lyons on his own, the old-fashioned way, through hard work and shoe-leather reporting. But is it possible Forbes insiders, to create buzz for both Lyons's forthcoming Fake Steve book, Options, and the arrival of his blog on Forbes.com, fed the Times just enough tidbits to help Stone land the scoop — or, at the very least, decided to play along once they learned he was on the hunt?

What took Forbes so long to strike a deal to sponsor The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, now that Forbes editor Dan Lyons has been revealed as the faux Apple CEO? Fake Steve has been complaining about money woes for most of the year. It turns out that he asked close chum David Churbuck for help securing a sponsorship back in February, and lo and behold, Wired signed up as a sponsor that same month. And a couple of months later, without much ado, Fake Steve dropped Wired. At the time, Lyons, as Fake Steve, told me this: