Chicago ? Less than a week after the death of advice columnist Esther “Eppie” Lederer, known to millions of readers as Ann Landers, her daughter, Margo Howard, Wednesday publicly accused her cousin, who writes the syndicated column “Dear Abby,” of a “crass” attempt to cash in on her mother’s legacy.

“My mother has not been gone a full week yet, and I am highly offended by Jeanne Phillips’ not-at-all-subtle move to make hay of my mother’s death,” Howard said in an exclusive telephone interview with the Chicago Tribune from her home in Cambridge, Mass., where she writes an online advice column, “Dear Prudence.”

Howard’s comments were prompted by Phillips’ appearance Tuesday night on CNN’s “Larry King Live” show, in which she tearfully expressed grief at her aunt’s death. Howard said she also learned Wednesday that Universal Press Syndicate (Dear Abby’s distributor) was offering Phillips’ “farewell letter to Eppie” to all Ann Landers’ newspaper clients and other media, offering to let them run it free of charge, even if they do not have the rights to the “Dear Abby” column.

“This is not about grief,” said Howard. “This is about new clients.”

Lederer died Saturday of cancer at age 83 at her home in Chicago.

Column competition

At stake in the wake of her death could be what some observers suggest is as much as $12 million in revenues from the more than a thousand newspapers that subscribed to the Ann Landers column.

The battle of the cousins (Phillips is the daughter of Lederer’s twin sister, Pauline Phillips, originator of “Dear Abby”), mirrors the bitter and much-publicized feud between their mothers that added drama to the long-running competition of their advice columns. Reportedly the sisters did not speak to each other for years after disagreements over the creation of the columns.

A statement issued late Wednesday from Universal Press Syndicate said: “Jeanne Phillips turned down interviews on several national television shows to discuss her aunt’s death, including the ‘Today’ show. However, she felt obliged to fulfill the commitment she made (to appear on ‘Larry King Live’ this week) … As a guest on the show, she could not control content or questions, but she answered the questions that were asked of her about her aunt with the utmost respect and sincerity. We regret that Ms. Landers’ daughter and other ‘Dear Abby’ competitors see her efforts any other way.”

Filling Ann’s shoes

Meanwhile, in addition to the cousins’ escalating public battle, another sort of war is afoot, as other columnists and distributors skirmish to fill the void at newspapers left by Lederer’s death.

For three years, Howard herself has written the weekly “Dear Prudence” for Slate.com. Even as Abby’s syndicate was enticing the Landers’ newspapers, Creators Syndicate Landers’ longtime distributor was offering a package of “Dear Prudence” along with a new seven-day-a-week column titled “Annie’s Mailbox,” written by two longtime Landers’ associates, Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar, and a best-of Ann Landers column as a replacement to the newspapers that ran Ann Landers.

Soon after Lederer’s death was made public, editors across the country began receiving a torrent of resumes, e-mails and proposals from those already working in the advice business (in newspapers and on the Internet) and others who sense the opportunity for a high-profile, high-paying job. Some editors have already decided how they will fill the space after the final Ann Landers column appears on July 27.

“I’m surprised that editors are already making decisions,” said Brent Bierman, lifestyle editor of the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, headquartered in Washington.

He said there are about a half-dozen possible successors currently writing, but added, “we still don’t know if a celebrity will sweep into the marketplace.”