The last plane flown by Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who has opted to try poetry

Hero airplane pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger — yes, the guy who landed the plane in the Hudson — signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins imprint William Morrow yesterday for a cool $3 million, which has prompted Sara Nelson to pen a column for the Huffington Post in which she declares “Yes, it’s official: The book world has gone crazy.” The crazy part, says Nelson, is not the first book in the deal –a memoir, which everyone saw coming–but the second book, which, it was announced, is going to be a book of “inspirational poetry.”

Nelson says “make no mistake, if William Morrow had not signed up the second book, many other publishers would have, just to get Sully’s memoir.” But, she continues, “the rest of BookLand doesn’t have this pandering rationale to blame for some of the nutty deals that have gone down in the last few weeks. $2.5 million to comedian Kathy Griffin? (Who, with that advance, goes from Hollywood’s D-List to publishing’s A-list.) And a staggering $4.8 million to Audrey Niffenegger…?”

At least, as one editor put it in a Crain’s report on the deal, Sully “has more substance than most people getting their 15 minutes of fame.”