Peter Arnell can't seem to catch a break these days. Earlier this year, the advertising mogul and "brand expert" was widely mocked for blowing millions on a silly, new logo Pepsi. Just weeks later, his decision to change Tropicana's packaging turned into an epic disaster, causing thousands of consumers to cry foul and sending sales plummeting by 20 percent. Now he has another more defeat to add to his list. HarperCollins just won a lawsuit against Arnell and he'll now have to write the publishing house a check for $100,000.

HarperStudio has pushed a seven-figure stake through the hearts of aspiring wordsmiths everywhere by giving a $1 million, 10-book deal to Twitter-abusing videoblogger Gary Vaynerchuk. Does anyone believe in books anymore?

HarperCollins will pay $3.2 million for two books from pilot Chesley Sullenberger, according to a story in the Daily Beast. And go figure: the Zen-calm "Hero of the Hudson" is a poet.

• HarperCollins is launching a new imprint which will focus on "pop culture, sports, style and content derived from the Internet." Clever! [NYT]
• Sony Pictures is cutting 300 employees, or 4% of its workforce. [LAT]
• YouTube and Universal are in talks to build a "hub" for music videos. [WSJ]
• Jon Stewart went to town on CNBC last night, in case you missed it. [Portfolio]
• For some reason, NBC has decided to bring back Heroes next season. [THR]
• In the first two months of this year, 7,453 jobs were lost at media companies. You know, just in case you're keeping track or whatever. [THR]

Last June, HarperCollins filed suit against Victoria Gotti after she failed to turn in a memoir she'd agreed to write (and for which she'd been paid a $70,000 advance). The reason? Gotti claimed the publisher had demanded she provide inside dirt on her late father, Mafia boss John Gotti, whereas she thought the book was going to just be about her. "They wanted more of dad than I was willing to give," she said at the time. It looks like someone's had a change of mind. Publishers Marketplace reports that Gotti has signed a new book deal:

HarperCollins paid about $1 million for the U.S. rights to Jonathan Littell's novel, but really what it bought was controversy in a box. That product is working as advertised.

HarperCollins is paying Nick Douglas a five-figure sum for Twitter Wit, a book of the Gawker alum's favorite Twitter posts. Is getting paid for aggregating other people's "tweets" as lazy as it sounds?

• HarperCollins announced layoffs and a major reorg today. [NYO, Gawker]
• No one wants to take the editor job at OK! [Page Six]
• Ron Burkle's magazine distribution company is suing a bunch of publishing companies for trying to drive it out of business. We should be so lucky. [NYP]
• Michael Kinsley explains why micropayments won't save newspapers. [NYT]
• Time's Walter Isaacson, however, argued the opposite position last night when he appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. [NYO, TDS]
• Hachette is dropping out of the Magazine Publishers of America. [AdAge]
• Live Nation and Ticketmaster have announced plans to merge. [NYT]
• CBS scored big ratings on Sunday thanks to the Grammys. [AdAge]
• A day in the life of Fox News anchor Shepard Smith. [Esquire]

Today is a major layoff day at publishing house HarperCollins. Below, two internal memos [Updated: three], and the rumors we've heard so far:

Layoffs are underway at publisher HarperCollins. Please send us details.

You have to feel a little bit sorry for Tatiana and Natasha Boncompagni, the two sisters embroiled in a nasty spat over the rights to the forthcoming novel Hedge Fund Wives. (If you've missed the action thus far, see here, here and here.) Both women have seen their reps damaged as a result, and Tatiana's career as a journalist and novelist will probably be overshadowed by the incident for many years to come. (Fortunately, she married into money. Or so she says.) Yesterday Natasha took down the website that hosted pages from the disputed manuscript. (We have a copy of the judge's ruling here, in case you're interested.) One party, we hear, that is not all that unhappy about the flurry of press that has followed in recent days? HarperCollins, not surprisingly. Hedge Fund Wives is now available for pre-order and the book's sales rank has edged up ever so slightly from 500,000 to 132,377. The messy feud has also boosted Boncompagni's first book, Gilding Lily: It dipped below 10,000 earlier this week before losing some ground today. It's now ranked 19,921.

HarperCollins appears to be standing by Tatiana Boncompagni as she battles her sister, Natasha, over who actually authored the forthcoming novel Hedge Fund Wives. At least for the moment! We just heard back from Erin Crum, director of corporate communications at HarperCollins: "We hope that they can work it out amicably, and we will still be publishing the book on May 5th."

Oh, great: The children's division at HarperCollins is planning a novel based on the teenaged years of Sex And The City character Carrie Bradshaw. Sex inspiration Candance Bushnell will write the thing and HarperCollins will target it at both teenagers and older fans, making the novel perfect for parents who'd like to give it as a "gift" to their children before awkwardly reclaiming it once it's been read. And what sorts of sex scenes might whole families be enjoying once this book is published two years from now? The Observer's Leon Neyfakh used this question as an excuse to re-watch his entire collection of SATC videos:

What promises to be an onslaught of publicity for Tatiana Boncompagni's novel Gilding Lily is just beginning. The book, which sounds more than a little autobiographical, isn't out till September 9th, but HarperCollins released a video of Boncompagni (in a low-cut dress, natch) poking fun at the high society her characters inhabit—which is a neat pre-emptive measure against being dismissed as yet another author of shallow chick lit. Because if she deliberately wrote it that way, it's actually satire! See Tatiana laugh at herself and her ilk after the jump.

And that doesn't include the cost of fact checking! " In addition to being the driving force behind one of the music industry’s top bands for nearly 40 years, the singer and songwriter has a personal comeback story to tell, having overcome a heroin addiction." [Crain's via Observer]

• Whoops! The "anonymous" magazine editor who was quoted in this week's New York cover story about plastic surgery? Meet Elle's Carol Smith. [Portfolio]

Alec Niedenthal is the 17-year-old Alabama novelist who became suddenly prominent thanks to a cheeky letter in the Times Book Review last month. The missive promised a new wave of fiction from a "MySpace-addled" generation, called out well-known older authors and included many large words. This attracted interest from publishers HarperCollins and Grove/Atlantic and an inquiry from Jonathan Franzen's literary agent. But of this group, only one party, HarperCollins, deigned to meet with Niedenthal on his trip to New York this past weekend, and the ambitious young writer left town with a tote bag rather than any deal. He'll presumably have a more fruitful tour after finishing his own edition of the collective "manuscript" alluded to in his Times letter. Until then, the hordes of older novelists struggling to get published have no reason to gouge their eyes out with a fork. After the jump, Niedenthal recalls for the Observer his HarperCollins meeting.

Undeterred by Jerry Seinfeld identifying her as a potential assassin because of her three names, cookbook author Missy Chase Lapine is expanding her defamation lawsuit against the Seinfelds to also include Jessica Seinfeld's publisher HarperCollins. Both Lapine's book, The Sneaky Chef, and the book she accuses of ripping it off, Deceptively Delicious, became bestsellers, but—surprise!—the author with the famous husband who also landed a coveted appearance on Oprah has sold many more copies of her book.

The people who run some of the (once) grandest institutions in print media are tumbling from their perches like so many fallen leaves, cast off in the face of a new season. It's not always their fault. Print is slowly wasting away, and as companies shrink, they cut off their own heads in a desperate bid to prove that they're doing something to address the problem. Not fair, but that's capitalism for you. After the jump, a list of recently deposed members of the old guard; mourn their passing, briefly.

The exit of HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman continues to baffle everyone, including New York magazine, which tried to figure out why Friedman was let go but could only figure out two non-reasons. Some people thought she was maybe ousted because, at the London Book Fair in April, she decided Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany was too anti-Israel and so moved his cocktail party away from the official HarperCollins booth. But "a source close to Friedman" said she just doesn't ever like having book parties in the booth. This source also shot down the idea, floated by at least one former News Corp. insider, that Friedman was fired because in 2006 she pushed out profitable publisher Judith Regan after she was charged with making anti-semitic statements, a charge News Corp. called false when settling a Regan lawsuit. If rumormongering, journalism, guessing and scapegoating didn't revel the truth about Jane Friedman's departure, what on heaven's Earth will? Someone award this woman a tell-all book contract or something before everyone dies of suspense (or, more likely, stops caring). [New York]