The most eye-catching title on the list is probably the collection of short, unpublished humor pieces by Mark Twain, which will be out in April. Other notable books in the mix: a memoir by 3rd Rock From the Sun star John Lithgow, a history of humor by New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff, and a Toni Morrison-edited collection called Burn This Book, about "the power of the word," that will feature pieces by her, Salman Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk, David Grossman, and others.

Also interesting: an as-yet-untitled discussion of "great business partnerships" written by former Disney C.E.O. Michael Eisner, who was Mr. Miller's boss for almost 15 years years while Mr. Miller was president of Disney's book publishing arm, Hyperion.

Other books worth mentioning: a Rolling Stone book about '90s music, a guide to 100 underappreciated films by Leonard Maltin, and a collaboration between the rapper 50 Cent and Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, which will teach readers "how to live successfully by living fearlessly." The book will hilariously be called The 50th Law, which provokes questions about the mysterious 49th law and why Mr. Greene is avoiding it.

In his blog post this morning, Mr. Miller provided some context for the assortment of titles:

Bob Miller, head of the Harper Studio imprint at the publishing house Ms. Friedman ran until a few months ago, said that if you bombed the terrace, "you'd lose the entire industry."

For Ms. Friedman, it was really just about friendship. Almost everyone who came, she said, except for the publicist Matthew Hiltzik, she'd known for over 20 years.

She thought the trick they played on her at the beginning, when she first came out onto the balcony, was hilarious. The trick was that everyone at the party had these cardboard Jane Friedman masks that they put in front of their faces right before she walked through the door. Mr. Rubin, who is the head of the Doubleday division at Random House, sent out an e-mail to all the guests the day before and asked that as many people as possible get there early so that the trick would "have a dramatic effect."

"We have maneuvered Jane to arrive around 6:20pm," the e-mail said. "Obviously this is all hush-hush. See you tomorrow."

Ms. Friedman said she loved it, but you could tell she wasn't really sure what to do when she came out and saw everyone looking like that. Part of the problem was that there had been no consensus on what to say when she emerged, so most people just stood silently while others halfheartedly shouted "surprise!"

Binky Urban, the literary agent from ICM, wasn't really sure what the whole thing was about.

"Should we all sing ‘happy birthday' or something?" she said.

Bob Levine, the publishing lawyer who said he represented half the people at the party, said there should be clapping. "Let's all clap," he said. "Let's all clap now."

Anyway, Ms. Friedman loved it. "Whoever thought of that was just brilliant," she said later. "I thought, ‘oh my God, what are they going to do with all those Janes? I just felt very pleased. I mean, this is my posse! This is it. There's no one here whom I haven't known for all the years that I've been in publishing. There are very few newcomers. So that's an amazing thing."

She made that point during her speech as well, which came after a series of warm and fuzzy toasts from newly minted Harper Collins number two Michael Morrison, literary scout and co-host Maria Campbell, Ecco publisher Dan Halpern, Mr. Rubin, and Gil Schwartz

Brian Murray, who replaced Ms. Friedman as C.E.O. of HarperCollins when she was fired in June, did not give a speech, because he was on vacation and couldn't come to the party.

Mr. Halpern had the best line of the night, when he said that Ms. Friedman's mom Ruth, whom everyone at the party knew for some reason, looked like she was aging in reverse. "I think that's what Keats meant by negative capability," Mr. Halpern said.

Right before Mr. Halpern gave his speech, Knopf publisher Sonny Mehta showed up. This was at like 6:50. All the guests were already facing the door because that's where the speeches were being delivered, and so everyone watched as he made his way down the steps and onto the terrace. Mr. Halpern stepped up as soon as Mr. Mehta had safely ducked into the crowd.

"Where was this bar?" Mr. Mehta asked someone in a whisper. Apparently someone had something about a bar.

"On the other side," came the apologetic answer.

Mr. Mehta could see there was no way he was getting over there, especially not with Mr. Halpern giving his toast two feet away. He swore a little under his breath. Later he was seen with a glass of red wine and some water, smoking an American Spirit.

Pretty soon it was Ms. Friedman's turn to speak.

"I'm actually overwhelmed," she said. "I really am. I'm - ahem!-what's the word? Perklempt? So I wrote a few things down because I didn't know if I was going to be able to speak."

The publishing reporters--from the Times, the Journal, New York, the AP: for some reason they had all been invited to this private gathering!-- got their notebooks out.

"So, this is my transition party. And I think that's very important to say!" Ms. Friedman said. "This is my transition party."

She went on: "It's very nice to have all of you here. As Steve said, I'm so pleased that in the dog days of August, when everybody thinks that everyone in publishing and everyone in the world is off on the Riviera, we have la creme de la creme on this wonderful, wonderful deck. So I thank you all for coming. You all mean a tremendous amount to me."

And also: "I also have to say something serious, which is I am very proud to be in this industry. And I am very proud to be known as one of its greatest cheerleaders. And while book publishing is certainly facing many challenges I know that it will survive and it will thrive and that's because of all of you in this room. So we have to all remember that. It's important."

And finally: "So anyway. What I'm going to say --and this is it-- is I am not done, and I am not done by a long shot."

By 8:15pm most of the guests had gone home. By the looks of it, a lot of them took their Jane masks with them.

Today, Mr. Miller announced two hires: Julia Cheiffetz from Random House will start later this month as a senior editor, and Debbie Stier from William Morrow will start in July as director of marketing and publicity. Mr. Miller also announced that his imprint will be called HarperStudio-- predictable, in retrospect, since "studio" was the word he consistently used to describe the operation when he first announced it in April.

The announcement comes less than a week after HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman, a longtime friend of Mr. Miller, abruptly resigned from atop the company and handed the reins to her deputy, Brian Murray.

Among the publishers who lost out to Viking at auction: none other than Bob Miller, who left Hyperion last month to start an experimental new publishing studio at HarperCollins. As part of the project, Mr. Miller and his new boss, HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman, vowed to flout industry convention by keeping advances low and instead offering writers a 50-50 share of sales profits.

But according to a trusted source, Mr. Miller may have already reverted to his old ways, apparently wanting so badly to win Stroke that he was willing to put all his idealistic ambitions aside, and bid no less energetically than his competitors when Ms. Taylor’s lawyer put the book up for sale at the end of April.

UPDATE: After initially declining to comment, Mr. Miller said today that the offer he made for Jill Bolte Taylor's book included a $100,000 dollar advance and a 50/50 profit-share. Contrary to the notion advanced above by way of our trusted source-- a well-placed person at Viking's parent company, Penguin Group USA-- this offer is consistent with the vision Mr. Miller has been describing to literary agents, which allows for a profit share model supplemented by an advance up to and including $100,000. 

In an e-mail today, the lawyer who oversaw the auction, Ellen Stiefler, declined to comment on the details of Mr. Miller's offer, but noted that "no one at Penguin would have known the detail of Bob's bid, so I will say that your source may be mistaken." She added: "Jill and I both liked Bob Miller very much and are confident in his ability to create a successful new venture at HarperCollins. Jill finds a kindred spirit in Bob as another independent and brave individual."

No word yet on what Mr. Weisbach's next move will be—he hasn't returned our calls, though a Weinstein spokesman told us he does have a job in publishing lined up—but Mr. Miller is heading to HarperCollins, where he will head a new, nontraditional publishing "studio" that will put out 25 short, low-priced hardcover titles per year. Mr. Miller will work with a small staff and report directly to company CEO Jane Friedman, with whom he has been friends for almost 30 years.

Mr. Miller's last day at Hyperion will be Wednesday, but yesterday afternoon Ms. Friedman welcomed him to the HarperCollins fold with a champagne toast outside of her office on the 11^th floor of 10 East 53^rd Street.

"The seed was planted at a drink date with Jane on Feb. 29, I think," Mr. Miller told The Media Mob in an interview. "We were at the Omni Berkshire hotel, at the little bar in there. I was just talking about the frustrations of the business, which is what book people do when they have drinks, and she was sharing some of her own. I was talking about how, wouldn't it be cool to start over from scratch and do it all differently? And she said, ‘Why don't we?'"

What will Mr. Miller be doing differently? First off, he's going to try to work with bookstores to develop a method of distribution that does not involve returns, an ancient industry-wide policy that allows booksellers to send back any books they haven't sold and get refunded for them. This policy has long hurt publishers because it places the entire burden of risk onto them rather than the bookstores, meaning that the buyer at Barnes & Noble can order a million copies of the new James Frey novel without worrying that much about whether that's too many, since, if the book flops, they can just send whatever they don't want right back to HarperCollins and force them to swallow the printing costs.

"The return rate is now up to 40 percent on average," Mr. Miller said. "It's not healthy. I want to try to work with bookstores to come up with terms that allow us to sell non-returnably."

Reached in her office this afternoon, Ms. Friedman said she hopes Mr. Miller's as-yet-unnamed entity will yield an efficient new distribution system that can one day be adopted more broadly.

"It's not as if we're saying today all of HarperCollins is going into a non-returnable situation," she said. "This is an experiment. My hope is that we will work very closely with the booksellers and we will all come to a happy place and be able to adopt these practices in a broader way."

Mr. Miller also wants to try paying authors smaller advances upfront, but compensate by splitting profits with them 50-50. This would be a drastic departure from standard practice, which often results in publishers losing huge amounts of money on books after paying their authors enormous advances.

Whether or not Mr. Miller's experiment will lead to an industry-wide revolution remains to be seen, obviously. For now, the main thing people are talking about is The Last Lecture, the book that Mr. Miller signed to Hyperion this fall for a reported $6.7 million dollars. That book's coming out next week! With Mr. Miller gone, who will be its shepherd?

"The mood is framed by the sound of options exercising," said one Time Inc. editor.

A Time Inc. executive explained it: "Every employee with at least a year's tenure gets T.W. stock in his or her pension fund each year, paid for by the company, with the opportunity to buy an additional amount in for a pension fund. Ranking employees-usually the senior-editor level and up for edit types-get options every year, at higher-ups' discretion. Option grants vest over a three-year period, but as of the Saturday vote by the board to accept this deal, which constitutes under the option rules a change of control, all unvested options became vested."

On Jan. 11, the day after the Time Warner sale was announced, a People magazine staff member told Off the Record: "It was pretty giddy around here yesterday. A bunch of celeb-chasing journalists who can barely understand any measurement except a hem length and haven't multiplied two numbers together since grade school suddenly sounded like a bunch of hotshot day traders as they tried to calculate their net worth and worried whether it was time to sell. Corporate drones actually looked up and smiled at each other in the hallways."

The new tagline for Brill's Content is elegant, if chilly: "Skepticism Is a Virtue."

So are we being virtuous in asking Steven Brill why so many people are leaving his fledgling e-commerce Web site? Departures from Brillscontent.com include on-line manager Ari Voukydis and on-line assistant editor Kendra Ammann, as well as staff writer Matthew Heimer.

"It's the same old normal turnover," said Mr. Brill. He also denied that it had anything to do with the arrival of David Kuhn, an editor formerly of Talk who has been placed over Brillscontent.com editor Howard Witt, the ex-editor of the Chicago Tribune Web site.

Why was the magazine redesigned by Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising agency?

" Ad Age did a piece this week saying that because we were lagging in circulation and advertising, we redesigned," Mr. Brill said, scoffingly. "A year to a year and a half into any project, I start to focus on how it looks like."

It's all according to plan, he insisted.

"The major work they're doing for us has to do with the new venture," he said. "As part of the new venture, we're starting to raise the profile of the magazine."

Was Ogilvy hired to do the e-commerce venture after its original geek-architect, Ed Schlossberg (husband of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg), left in the fall?

"Schlossberg was working on the early stages," said Mr. Brill. "Very little to do with design, more to do with figuring out what it would be about. And I'm still talking to him about that."

(Mr. Brill wrote a grandstanding piece in the October issue of Brill's Content chastising the press for taking pictures of Mr. Schlossberg's child and running them when John F. Kennedy Jr. died.)

Mr. Brill, you told The Wall Street Journal in a piece that ran Dec. 1 that after a year of flat advertising pages, "the February issue will carry about 52 pages of ads." But the February issue contains, by Off the Record's count, 33. Why?

"I didn't predict 52 pages, among other things that were wrong with that story," said Mr. Brill. "Our budget for that issue was 30 pages." Did he ask for a correction? "Uh, no. If I did that with all stories written about us, I'd spend my day doing it."

The Journal reporter Matthew Rose referred comment to Dow Jones spokesman Richard Tofel, who said, "That number appears in Mr. Rose's notes and was read back to Mr. Brill before the story was published."

The February Talk is out, redesigned by Oliviero Toscani, who designs the Benetton clothing ads. The magazine comes packaged with one of the clothing company's multipage "transgressive" advertorials. It's a little booklet that comes with the magazine, featuring photographs of death row inmates, and interviews with them, too. That's synergy! Talk 's creative director serves the same function for the magazine's major advertiser.

The interviews with the inmates, by the way, are full of softball questions-asking them what they think of prison life and Monica Lewinsky, etc. Nothing about the people they murdered or other such unpleasant topics.

Although editor Tina Brown lamented the disappearance of the old design ("The free-form pagination and multiple-image covers I admired in European magazines seem to have bothered enough readers here to merit some adjustment," she writes in her editor's letter), it looks better, and it's easier to find stories, including one by Washington Post media critic (and CNN host) Howard Kurtz.

It seems odd that Mr. Kurtz would write a story for a magazine that itself constitutes a large, ongoing media story.

"Every once in a while, I like to write a freelance piece," Mr. Kurtz said. "And if I have occasions to write about it, I'll certainly disclose it."

Mr. Kurtz, who has also written for Vanity Fair and Brill's Content , said he proposed the article to Talk , but that he'd asked permission to write it.

"I would simply add, as a media reporter, I try not to write too often for any one publication," he said.

Magazine mogul Bob Miller and his partners are seeking $200 million for his Vibe-Spin Ventures, but may have trouble finding suitors willing to come up with the asking price, according to magazine industry sources.

The sticking point in the deal? It might be Spin , the old indie-rock magazine. While profitable, it made its name covering a genre of pop music that had its heyday in the early 90's. Vibe , on the other hand, covers hip-hop, which continues to be big business. So does another Miller publication on the block, Blaze .

Two of the three likely bidders-Time Warner Inc. and Viacom Inc.-are in the middle of mergers, which may be slowing down the sale of the magazines. Another possible suitor, Jann Wenner of Wenner Media, is in the midst of spending a reported $50 million to remake his monthly celebrity magazine, Us , into a weekly. One magazine source said Mr. Wenner has expressed no interest in Blaze , a fact that flabbergasts one Miller insider. "People still don't believe it, but Blaze is in the hottest position," said one source.

The private equity firm of Freeman Spogli & Company backed Mr. Miller's Miller Publishing but forced the sale of the two music magazines last fall.

It's possible that Vibe could be broken off from the group and sold separately, sources said.