Ever since David Caplan left his senior gig at Star magazine for the, ahem, more respected trenches of VH1’s Best Week Ever brand, he’s generated a new hoard of followers. And haters. Among them? GalleyCat, Mediabistro.com’s book industry blog, which is calling bullshit on Caplan’s “exclusive” for 24Sizzler.com that HarperCollins canceled the tell-all book Baby Girl from Anna Nicole Smith’s bodyguard, Big Moe.

GalleyCat’s beef? Not so much with the report – GC insists none of their HarperCollins insiders have ever heard of the book – but that Caplan’s report is a hatchet job on Lisa Sharkey, the Star Jones-ing former Good Morning America producer who essentially replaced Judith Regan (though HC doesn’t see it that way).

The story is something like this: Lisa Sharkey’s first big get for HC was Big Moe’s book, but now nobody wants to touch it, and it’s been canceled for good. Caplan’s sources say this is really hurting Lisa’s rep at the publisher; GalleyCat, meanwhile, sorta comes to her defense and plays another game of fingerpointing, all the while emphasizing that the book wasn’t a big deal for HC in the first place and labeling Caplan’s item a Sharkey hatchet job.

To be sure, Caplan’s original item does harp on Sharkey quite a bit. And though GC acknowledges there was an April press release about the book, the blog’s sources at the publisher say “they’d never heard of Baby Girl or its cancellation.” Huh.

Says GalleyCat:

Sharkey wasn’t even attached to the book deal that fell apart: If you check the deal listings at Publishers Marketplace for Baby Girl, you’ll find that Mauro DiPreta is the editor who acquired the book; Crum confirmed late Tuesday afternoon that Sharkey was never involved with the project. (And for Caplan’s source to tell him “Lisa brought the book to Regan” doesn’t even make sense—Regan the publisher was plainly long gone when Sharkey arrived, and so was Regan the imprint.) One more nail in the coffin: Caplan claims “the halls of HarperCollins [were] buzzing” after the book deal fell apart, but when I called my own highly-placed insiders yesterday, they’d never heard of Baby Girl or its cancellation.

That leaves the suggestion that the book’s failure somehow not only throws doubt on Sharkey but executive editor Cal Morgan; Caplan’s “loose-lipped insider” suggests that Harper allowed Morgan to help throw Regan overboard and is now wondering what they have to show for it. “Cal Morgan had nothing to do with Judith Regan’s departure,” Crum emphasized when I asked about that angle on the story. “He’s currently thriving and doing well.” So whoever this disgruntled employee might be, perhaps he or she is nursing two big grudges…

Two? We can only hope there’s three!

Original post by Perez Hilton and software by Elliott Back