Bob Miller and the original crew at HarperStudio

And so, after less than two years in office, Bob Miller exits the stage of big time New York publishing, to the shock of the media that covered him like he was, well, news. He got huge coverage as a revolutionary when he started HarperStudio, from lots of trade hacks who should have known better — hacks who called people like me (see this garbled mistake on my part) to couch their vague suspicions that Miller was essentially ripping off the hard-earned innovations of indies, which of course he was.

His departure didn’t even bring that shallow level of scrutiny.

He’s quoted, instead, in this Publishers Weekly report and elsewhere, as saying that he was “very proud of what we have accomplished at HarperStudio.” But of course, he doesn’t say what that was.

Well, don’t hold your breath for the exit interview that asks him about his undelivered-upon claims that he was going to end returns and otherwise change the book biz. It seems a safe assumption, too, that no one is going to ask him about how difficult it must have been to have to offer writers only six figure advances — because he’d sworn to lower advances — after having built a career at Hyperion on winning ridculous auctions. And it seems most certain of all that no one’s going to observe he must have left Harper because he either saw a cut coming — because HarperStudio just wasn’t working? — or because he sold out to go to a smaller operation for a ton of cash … or both?

Leave it to Gawker, lonely Gawker, to report with suitable irony on the likelihood of a conglomerate ever sticking with such an effort beyond the desertion of its huckster front.

The only thing that otherwise seemed accurate in press reports this time was that, for once, those of us in the indie realm saw in Miller’s breathless quotes none of our ideas being ripped off — after all, there’s nothing innovative about selling out your principles for a wad of money.