It just had to happened, didn’t it?
It’s like with all chronic irritants: just when you seem to forget about them altogether, something random will cause them to flare up…
We were just talking about Beef‘s second season, my daughter and I. I remarked how shocking it was that the Ashley character was so obsessed with childbearing. An attitude rarely observed nowadays not only among gen-zers, but the millennials as well…
And that, somehow, prompted my daughter to tell me that Aubrey Plaza (six months my daughter’s senior) was expecting. With whom?—I wondered, since her husband passed away last year. Christoffer Abbott. Oh, he is cool. We saw him on Broadway in The House of Blue Leaves with Ben Stiller, Edie Falco, and Jennifer Jason Leigh back in 2011. He was also in the first season of The Sinner…
...And Girls…
As if I could ever forget! He is the one who left the show because he got fed up with Lena Dunham.
By the way—my daughter said—I just saw a clip of her on The Drew Barrymore Show. I don’t know why it was pushed to me. But some things she was talking about were quite…
Why, dammit?!! Lena Dunham—my personal symbol of undeserved attention and unrestrained nepotism! Please, stop!—I wanted to plea…
Yet… Why was she on Drew?—I asked. Is she promoting a new project? I mean, Too Much1 just came out last July… (I know because Netflix tried to push it on me.)
She wrote a new memoir…
All these tidbits are such peripheral, insignificant bleeps on the cultural radar. I wouldn’t know anything about them… But now… I got triggered. And you know how it is with mosquito bites—once you start scratching, you can’t stop. And now I am up to my ears in this…
The pushy dissemination.
My daughter shouldn’t have been surprised that Lean Dunham’s appearance on Drew was pushed at her after she decided to notice the news of Aubrey Plaza’s pregnancy. The actress starred in her late husband’s Jeff Baena‘s The Little Hours with one of the four Girls—Jemima Kirke. And there is zero degrees of separation from the future father. That’s how it works…
The only way we can stop the activity trackers from curating our content feeds is by quitting the whole online existence entirely. And there are probably brave and admirable people who do just that.
But I don’t think I have the emotional strength for such radical acts. I can bitch and moan about feeling like a fly stuck in the world-wide web, yet I continue to submit. And the stuff continues to be pushed…
Even Anna Wintour has soft spots.
Of course, I had to look up Lena’s book on Amazon… Just to see the title and the description. (I know, I know—we do it to ourselves, we do!)
Famesick… Ah, I see. Was pursuing her creative ambitions worth “all the pains of fame“?—she invites her readers to ponder… Fatigue, addictions, sex, and everything in between… The struggle is real!
Then, probably on the same day, I was on IMDb looking up the year The Prestige came out… It’s a regular thing for me. I am a cinephile…. Plus, I frequently feel compelled to rate what I watch… I’ve been using the site for decades now. Naturally, since Amazon acquired it in 1998, the interconnections became inescapable. I search for something on Amazon Prime and then I’m flooded with the ads for those items on IMDb.
This time, however, the sidebar invited me to checkout the collection of photos from Met Gala 2026—Fashion Is Art. Deep inside I knew. Of course, I knew. And there she was: in a feathery thing of the signature Valentino Red hue. Beyonce, Jay-Z, Rhianna… and Lena Dunham.
And that, actually, made perfect sense…
Truth be told, Lena Dunham has always had a good sense of style. As well as personal ties—cultivated through parental wealth and art connections—with haute-couture houses. But so are thousands of other people.
Did you know that Anna Wintour personally selects the 700 or so invitees to the Gala and approves their outfits? She’s been doing it for nearly 40 years now. And even though she stepped down as Vogue’s editor-in-chief last year, she still carries that particular responsibility on as Condé Nast’s Global Chief Content Officer.
Still, Anna Wintour—widely known as a demanding, exacting, and formidable media executive—has her soft spots too. They get softer when she is affected by strong PR, off-kilter cultural airs, and the liberal feminism…
She has always been partial to Lena, making Ms. Dunham probably the only memoirist and fringe movie-TV-maker to be a Met Gala invitee. In fact, I already wrote about it twelve years ago when Lena beat Kim Kardashian for the March 2014 cover of Vogue.
As per usual, a few numbers…
Let’s see… Since Amazon holds about 50% share of the printed books selling market and about 80% of ebooks, its data makes it easier for us to do some guesstimations.
The best selling rankings
The book came out on April 14th, 2026. Dunham’s publisher announces right there above the description that the memoir was an “instant #1 New York Times bestseller”. In non-fiction sector, of course. Definitely a certified hit. To make that rank a book usually sells about 3,000-4,000 copies a day in
all outlets combined.
I don’t know how long it stayed at #1, but in its fifth week, it was #5. So, the initial impact is diminishing. And it was listed as #3 in the memoir section of Amazon’s Charts as of May 18th. That translates into 1,500-3000 copies a day.
Let us be generous here. Let’s say that the memoir sold 4,000 copies a day for the first two weeks and 3,000 for the following three. That gives us total of 119,000.
The Amazon reviews
We can try to prove this number further. The book already has around 1,500 Amazon Reviews. Those can only come from verified purchasers. (Unlike Goodreads ratings that can be entered by anyone with a free account, whether they bought, read, or even saw the book cover.)
From the marketing POV, Amazon reviews are “engagements”. So, naturally there are statistical sales probabilities attached. The publishing industry consensus and author data indicate that only a small fraction of readers leave a review. Of course.
And the rule of thumb is the “50x multiplier”, or 2% of all readers. That gives us 75,000 copies sold in 5 weeks via Amazon. Still on the same wave of generosity, let’s say that it represents 60% of overall sales, yielding us 125,000 copies in total. Very close.
The royalties
I have experience with both the publishing-house (CFO Techniques) and the self-publishing royalties(I Built This Prison). So, let me tell you.
A publishing house, which carries the responsibility for production and marketing costs, usually pays author 10-15% of the list price of the printed books and 15-25% for the ebooks. We are going to go with the higher percentages. So, Lena’s royalties are about $4.50 per printed copies and $2.50 per digital version.
Believe it or not, people still prefer to hold a real book in their hands. Print books dominate with 80% market share. Multiply this and that: we come to the total 5-weeks yield due to Lena of $512,500.
Not I’m Glad My Mom Died, but, impressive for a niche celebrity memoir anyway. Not surprising, of course, considering all the PR efforts with the promo circuit that includes The Drew Barrymore Show and such.
And it also probably entirely irrelevant as I don’t believe that Lena Dunham would bother writing anything on spec2. Also, her agents wouldn’t allow that.
So, the advance...
I doubt, of course, that Random House would expose themselves again to the loss they experienced with Lena’s previous book Not That Kind of Girl. Back in October 2012—just three months after Season 1 of Girls ended—they got themselves into the bidding war, which they won with a highly publicized $3.7 million advance, hoping for at least 1 million of books to be sold. According to Nielsen BookScan, their expectations were fulfilled only by about 30%.
Understandably, the advance Lena received for Famesick wasn’t publicly disclosed at all. Nevertheless, we can safely extrapolate that she received at least $1 million at the contract signing. Less agents’ commissions, less taxes.
Still, a needful chunk of change probably. As I estimate that the residuals from Girls—still available for streaming on Max—are drying out by now. Considering that Ms. Dunham created, starred, and produced it, wrote about 70% of the episodes, and directed a third of them, they used to be quite sizable. But it’s been nine years since the show closed, so now it’s down to less than 2% of the original payout level.
…and my rhetorical questions.
Which I can’t help but ask.
What fame?
Of course “people” know her… In Hollywood and within New York’s arty intelligentsia circles. Especially among indie-obsessed cinema lovers such as yours truly. But what do you think the probability of a random person you stop on the street knowing who Lena Dunham is? Don’t even go to rural Nebraska—try the Bronx. I think it’s not very high. I dare you.
Actually, Lena always had a bit of an exaggerated take on her success. I remember back in the Girls days, there was an interview, in which she lamented about some TSA agent giving her hard time at the airport. She was actually expecting him to say something like, “Love the show”. I vividly remember my shock at her delusion.
The truth is, when Girls originally aired, the show’s viewership consistently averaged between 600,000 and 800,000 per episode. And I seem to recall that the latter seasons dropped to something like 300,000 viewers. I mean, there are 270 million adults in this country.
Of course, it would be ridiculous to compare such an intellectually introspective and socially esoteric show as Girls, aired on a paid premium channel, to mass-appeal broadcasting blockbusters. On the other hand, another HBO show, Game of Thrones —same time, same price—managed to draw over 10 million viewers per episode.
And here is another question:
If something really makes you sick, wouldn’t you try to avoid it?
I feel a bit bewildered here… I mean, if being “famous” puts you in peril, if it affects your existence to the point of having a deteriorating effect on your physical wellbeing—what the hell are you doing prancing in front of paparazzis in 5-inch heels? At the event that bills itself as “the world’s most prestigious and glamorous”, where “FAME, wealth, power, social influence” come together.
Of course, Ms. Dunham has been discussing, essaying, and scripting her mental problems since her college-years YouTube videos. And surely the bravery of exposing yourself to the world takes its toll… But was it really such a big deal for your immediate artistic circle of friends and family to accept your creative choices? I mean, nudity—both physical and emotional—has been a habitual subject of Art since the ancient times.
On the other hand—after the euphoria of the entertainment industry’s attention ebbed—Lena could’ve naturally fallen into a down cycle. Maybe she was actually missing the “fame”.
But damning fame is so much more compelling, isn’t it? Appeals to everyone. To celebrities—always struggling with various insecurities and such. As well as to the general public that welcomes anything proving to them they dodged the fame bullet… So ripe for pitching and marketing!
And are you all better now after channeling all that pain through your book? Is that what readers are going to find at the end? The hopeful start of the new chapter of your life? Really? Good for you!
But it begs the most important question now… And believe you me, I’m asking it with all the compassion of a person who can relate to many a mental problem. Especially those of the body dysmorphia, OCD, and self-harm kind (I called that Chapter of I Built This Prison—Buckets of Tears and Blood)…
Girl, what could you possibly know about real pain?
You rode into “fame” you blame for your ills on the coattails of your famous-artist mother and her network of such friends as Meryl Streep. And didn’t she finance your breakout Tiny Furniture? And also played herself in it? You gave her the second billing!
Very good mother by my standards. Two personal thumbs up from me. I mean it. In spite of my utter distaste for nepotism. (I’m torn like that: maybe she genuinely believed in her daughter’s merits, not just layering the yellow bricks for her spawn…)
Now, try to imagine starting off and striving on without that bulldozing PR machine you were born into behind you. Like many thousands of aspiring writers, filmmakers, and artists.
Contemplate opening your heart and pouring your troubled soul out onto the pages of your memoir, then go through the struggles of self-publishing, and end up living with one review. How would you feel then?
Yet, objectivity is my highest priority.
I honestly believe that Ms. Dunham is actually controlled by an unparalleled driving force within her. I think Miriam Cohen is right: Lena IS The Girl Who Perseveres. She will never give up. Pains of fame be damned!
And my initial hunch was correct, by the way: it’s not just the memoir. There are plenty of other new endeavors too. In on-screen entertainment alone, Lena Dunham currently has four upcoming projects. A movie genred as “steamy romance”, which she wrote and directed, is in post-production. It stars Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, and Meg Ryan. Two TV series. Plus, another movie she will executively produced.
Two of these projects have the word “sex” in their titles. And one is still untitled. So, who knows… It’s all about the shock of Lena’s fantasies, isn’t it?
I probably will not live to see Ms. Dunham achieving actual artistic merit deserving the attention she gets. But I must say: that Valentino gown—just breathtaking… And so appropriately Lena! This is exactly what I imagine she can do: just wrap a giant boa around her naked body. Fabulous!
- In a typical outcome for practically all of Lena Dunham’s projects, the show garnered unduly kind critical reviews in such prominent US outlets as The New Yorker and Los Angeles Times. Yet, it had very moderate viewership and a mediocre 6.2 IMDb rating. A British reviewer writing for The Guardian was blunt: This pile of clichés, she said, amounted to “way, way too little”. Four months into airing, Netflix announced the show will not be renewed for the second season. ↩︎
- In hopes of success, without pre-existing deal with an advance. ↩︎
The Frustrated CFO 