 Later in November 2008, Silver signed a contract with Penguin Group USA to write two books, reportedly for a $700,000 advance.Silver was invited to be a speaker at TED 2009 in February 2009, and keynote speaker at the 2009 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference (March 2009).While maintaining his "FiveThirtyEight.com" website, in January 2009 Silver began a monthly feature column, "The Data", in "Esquire" as well as contributed occasional articles to other media such as "The New York Times" and "The Wall Street Journal".