Monday 15 January 2007

And Yet It All Seemed So Obvious

According to The Guardian Peter Kay had the best selling celebrity biography over the Christmas period. Experts put this down to Kay being likeable and the book being well written. Imagine that.

The flops include Cashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand, Chantelle, David Blunkett and so on. You know, people you'd probably avoid having a chat with never mind getting to know at any length.

Also it seems that publishers have discovered that just because someone is on TV it doesn't necessarily mean that anyone is particularly interested in that someone. Again, imagine that.
"The main criterion is affection - do people like the person?" says Joel Rickett, deputy editor of the Bookseller. "It's so simple but it has been lost sight of by publishers thinking, this person is on TV every day, they've got a huge profile, they are worth half a million. People will happily buy a paper and read about a celebrity but when it comes to buying a book they feel like they are buying a piece of that celebrity. Do you want to line their pockets if you don't like them?"

It seems not all publishers are inwardly disgesting this idea:
David Gest was snapped up last month for a rumoured £500,000 after his stint in I'm a Celebrity ... At Little, Brown, Hodgson has taken on Ozzy Osbourne. She has also got Tara Palmer-Tompkinson fronting a book about how to live fabulously[...]. Richard Madeley of Richard & Judy is reported to have got more than £500,000 from Simon & Schuster for a memoir about generations of men in the Madeley family.

That last one in particular boggles my mind.

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