Fake Steve Jobs lands book deal – but who’s the writer?

“For months, cyber sleuths have been trying to unmask the mysterious writer who has been spoofing the Apple co-founder on The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs Web site,” Keith J. Kelly reports for The New York Post.

“The frenzy heated up earlier this week after BusinessWeek’s Apple reporter John Burrows wrote that the fake Steve Jobs had landed a book deal. Cambridge, Mass.-based Da Capo Press, an imprint of Perseus Books, inked the mysterious writer to publish ‘Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs – A Parody by Fake Steve Jobs,'” Kelly reports.

“Sources tell Media Ink the advance is estimated to be only $75,000, a decidedly un-Jobs-like number, but that hasn’t stopped the buzz – or led to the revelation of the person behind the fake Steve Jobs,” Kelly reports.

Kelly reports, “Wired.com had been a paid sponsor of the Secret Diary Web site from February until just this past Monday. ‘He [fake Steve] called and said he wanted to end it for his own reasons,’ said Wired News Editor-in-Chief Evan Hansen.”

Kelly reports, “Hansen said he knew the identity of the writer, but much like an anonymous source, he has pledged not to break the silence. That has not stopped the guessing game, however. ‘All the names I’ve seen mentioned so far have been wrong,’ said Hansen. And the guess that it was his own managing editor [Leander Kahney] was wrong as well, he said. ‘The person is not a Wired staffer,’ he insisted.”

Full article here.