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Lena Dunham Decides to Pay the Opening Acts on Her Book Tour After Gawker Report

Lena Dunham is now going to share the wealth.

After catching all sorts of flack for originally planning to let the opening acts on her book tour perform for free ("will perform for 'Girls' cameo"?), the "Girls" star and creator tweeted today that she had reconsidered, thanks to various "good points" made by Gawker.

The site was the first to call her out in detail, backing up its WTF argument with a breakdown of how much Dunham earns ($6 million last year, per Forbes) and how much she's exepcted to rake in on her soldout, hipster-tastic tour in honor of her memoir, "Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's 'Learned.'"

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"As an artist raised by artists, no one believes more than I do that creators should be fairly compensated for their work," Dunham, who first made her mark on the indie film scene with "Tiny Furniture," tweeted this afternoon.

"This feature of the tour was meant to be a way to showcase local talent and I could not be more excited about it. Some good points were raised and I've ensured that all opening acts will be compensated for their time, their labor and their talents. The fact that Gawker pointed this out really proves Judd Apatow's saying that 'a good note can come from anywhere.'"

And hers is not the sort of book reading where you just show up outside a store and wait in line, hoping to get a decent seat. No, tickets for this started at $38, but sold out immediately. Gawker flagged one for Dunham's Oct. 21 reading at the Brooklyn Academy of Music that was going for $900 on Craigslist.

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But the audience will be treated to quite the variety show before the main act takes center stage.

Dunham held open video auditions to find performers of any ilk to go on tour with her, the submissions ranging from "disturbing," as she told the New York Times, to the handful that made the cut and now find themselves on a lineup that will be costing some folks as much as $900 to watch.

"I found the idea of a traditional author tour, where you go and stand behind the lectern and talk about yourself, I found it a little bit embarrassing, a little blatantly self-promotional and a little boring," she said. "I wanted it to have an arts festival feel, which is why we now have all these remarkable, special weirdos who I found on the Internet."

And now they'll be getting paid!

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