Who says crime—or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof—doesn’t pay? Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, has signed a deal to publish his autobiography that will net him over $1.3 million dollars.
In an interview with Britain’s Sunday Times, Assange is quoted as saying:
I don’t want to write this book, but I have to. I have already spent 200,000 pounds [about $309,00] for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat.
The book will be published simultaneously in the U.S. and U.K. by publishers Alfred A. Knopf and Canongate respectively. The deal with Knopf will bring Assange $800,000, the deal with Canongate 500,000 dollars. Assange expects to earn an additional $1.5 million from serialization and book club rights.
Apart from the financial burden of covering attorneys’ fees, Assange has faced an uphill struggle keeping WikiLeaks alive. Credit card giants Visa and MasterCard, Bank of America, and PayPal have all blocked donations to the whistleblower site. Assange, who is on bail and fighting extradition by Sweden over allegations of sexual assault, has called these companies “instruments of U.S. foreign policy.”
WikiLeaks’ latest project is the gradual dissemination of tens of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables. The U.S. Justice Department continues to weigh criminal charges over the release of 250,000 secret cables in November.
Meanwhile, now that the terms of Assange’s book deal have been released, speculation is running high on who will play the Australian in the film version of the book, which is sure to follow. This observer says smart money is on Neil Patrick Harris.
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Cross-posted at the Examiner. Follow me on Twitter or join me at Facebook. You can reach me at howard.portnoy@gmail.com or by posting a comment below.
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