Nate Silver, master statistician behind fivethirtyeight.com, has signed a deal for two books, one about the art of prediction and the other a Freakonomics-style guide to the mechanics of electoral politics, for about $700,000, Media Mob reported last week. FishbowlNY says they heard the deal was made based "solely on two pages of bullet-pointed ideas, and some printouts of blog entries" and has a clip of Arianna Huffington interviewing Silver (Huffington filled in for Rachel Maddow on her show last night). "Two books! WANT. NOW." pleads Wonkette. "Please include sexy nude numbers pix. The numbers 5 and 8, 69ing. We don't read for the words." Gawker says, "He is positioning himself to become the next Malcolm Gladwell-esque overpaid business idea guru. . . . Considering how much Gladwell gets paid to give PowerPoint presentations to conferences of business executives about how to go with their gut instincts, Nate Silver will soon be a wealthy young man."

Sure, $700,000 sounds like, and is, a big advance, but it’s nothing compared to the $2.5 million Sarah Silverman is getting for her book with HarperCollins (via Hollywood Grind), or the $6 million Tina Fey got for hers, or the $7 million Jerry Seinfeld reportedly got for his (via Media Mob). Since the economy is, to say the least, not so good, some people have been shocked by the massive advances, but Silverman and Seinfeld’s agent, Dan Strone of Trident Media Group, told Media Mob, “I don’t know why they should be horrified. As I say, nobody is forced to spend the money. People don’t spend the money unless they feel it’s a good investment.” Boxing the Octopus agrees: “All three of these celebs are genuine writers, not some barely literate pro football oaf and two well-packaged pop princesses. This is not book money being sucked up by Paris Hilton gassing on about her four minutes in jail. These are three people who love words and have the talent and skill to use them masterfully.” (We’re not sure if the same is true of Sarah Palin, who may get $7 million for her book, says HuffPo.)

Want to bet on how the books will do? “We’ll tell you that a rough profit and loss estimate on a book with a $7 million-dollar advance, a $24.95 hardcover list price, average costs for production/marketing/publicity/sales, and no foreign sales (assuming that Seinfeld/Fey/Palin have primarily American audiences…or that alternately, when a $7 million-dollar book has foreign potential—such as the Warren Buffett—the author/agent keeps control of those rights) has a break-even of 900,000 copies,” writes The 26th Story. “In other words, you have to believe that you will sell more than 900,000 copies to make money on these books.”