Courtney Love Biographer Sues Singer for Breach of Contract

Courtney Love‘s co-writer, Anthony Bozza, has sued the singer for breach of contract with regard to her highly anticipated memoir, tentatively titled The Girl With the Most Cake. The author – who was previously a Rolling Stone editor and has co-written books with Slash, Tommy Lee and Tracy Morgan, among others – is seeking damages of at least $200,000 in the suit, which a New York court received last week.

Bozza states that he entered into a contract with the Hole singer in 2010 and delivered a 123,000-plus–word manuscript of the book to both Love and publisher HaperCollins in January 2014. The lawsuit claims that both Love and HarperCollins said they were happy with the manuscript at different points. Bozza said that Love emailed him in June 2012 to say that an introduction and draft of two chapters were “fucking beautiful” and left her “breathless.” A HarperCollins rep reportedly called the manuscript “brilliant” in a teleconference between Bozza’s agent in May 2014.

Bozza claims Love subsequently texted him in April 2014, though, saying that she was “trying to fix the book” with another writer, but that that new co-author was “worthless” and the book was “now in even more chaos.” Bozza says in the suit that he told Love he was not offended by her decision, but asked her to pay him (his contract would still entitle him to payment proportionate to the amount of his work that would be published); he did not get a reply.

That same month, she told The Telegraph she’d rejected the book. “I said, ‘Keep your bloody money,'” she told the paper. “I’d rather keep my friends.”

A representative for Love did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The agreement also stipulated that Love would “make herself available to [Bozza] for interviews…at mutually agreed times.” The lawsuit contends that Love did not make herself available to Bozza “for months at a time,” resulting in “substantial delays.”

In the suit, Bozza states that his collaboration agreement with Love guaranteed him a minimum of $200,000 from advances Love received, as well as his expenses, regardless of whether the book came out. Bozza says he has spent around $10,000 on getting his interviews with Love transcribed, an expense he claims she has not reimbursed. Furthermore, he would receive royalties up to a maximum of $300,000. So far, Love has paid Bozza only $100,000, he claims, despite already receiving $400,000 of a $1.2 million publishing advance.

In October 2013, a source at HarperCollins told Rolling Stone that Love would release the book by early 2014. But by August 2014, Love was saying the book had become a “disaster” and that she was uncomfortable with personal details that had occurred from 2006 to the present that she had revealed in the book.