This just in! Just because you can act/play football/have a cute nose doesn’t necessarily mean you will be a bestselling author!
Impossible as it may have seemed at the time, when all the publishers were jumping on the celebrity book train as if it were the last transport out of a war-ravaged state, many of this past summer’s celebrity stories have failed to sell. Combine this with the price tags placed upon many of these book deals, and you have the Celebrity Book Deal Hall of Shame. Or Fall of Shame. Both meanings of ‘fall’ apply.
For yes, even though Rupert Everett’s screen presence might induce innocent lovers of his work in historical comedies to go see a film that otherwise wild dogs could not drag them to (Next Best Thing, anyone?), only 15,000 copies of Everett’s book were sold. And as Little, Brown paid £1 million for the memoir, entitled Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, they are staring at a significant loss.
And Rupert Everett’s book was hardly the greatest flop, if slightly costlier. Former Home Secretary David Blunkett sold a little over 1,000 copies within the first three weeks in recompense for a £400,000 book deal, and Ashley Cole’s book, My Defence, sold 4,000 in six weeks for a comparatively scant £250,000 for its author. Indeed, the 37,000 sold copies of Wayne Rooney’s book does make it seem the runaway success of the season, until one realizes that Rooney is running away with £4 million for five books over the next 12 years. After five books, I rather imagine that it will be the bookbuying public executing the ‘run away’ maneuver.
Publishers have, in part, Jordan to blame. Her 2004 , Being Jordan, sold 900,000 copies, and set records at WH Smith for the most copies of an autobiography sold in one week. Amazon.co.uk joyously proclaims, “In fact it has turned out to be the surprise darling of the book trade!” Indeed. But the book trade can only have one, or possibly two, surprise darlings (provided each darling’s presence is concealed from the other), and with roughly 60 new celebrity titles last season, we are witnessing a microcosm of the larger, much-discussed publishing glut.
“The problem is over-publishing. Across the board, books are suffering,” concluded David Wilson, editorial director of Headline, Ashley Cole’s publisher. “They are not getting the shelf space in the shops. There are just too many celebrity books out there—and a lot of the major sports memoirs are basically celebrity books too. A few rise to the top, but you can never predict which they will be.”
Publishing commentator Danuta Kean defended the motives of the celebrity book craze with an agility more frequently seen in politicians’ press agents. Apparently, publishers released celebrity memoirs in order to show potential celebrity authors they they’re in the market for the next generation of celebrity books.
Maybe I’m slow, but this seems to me like showing other playground bullies that yes, you will hand over your lunch money without even requiring a thrashing. Congratulations, the precedent has been set for you acting like an imbecile! But Ms. Kean knows better than I, and she explains that “Publishers may make some dodgy judgements but they can do the maths and know how to operate in a tough market.” Well, that’s a load off of my mind.
I will not discuss what a shame it is that celebrities who have other not only viable but also voluminous sources of income (film, modeling, sports) have sucked away money from the publishing industry, execpt for in the first clause of this sentence. I will, however, mock their writing ability vicariously through The Independent’s streamlined summary of “the flops:”
Wayne Rooney
Wayne Rooney: My Story So Far
DEAL: £4m for five books
SALES: 35,000 (published 27 July)
EXTRACT: “I was aware that my foot had landed between his legs… but it was an accident. I’ll go to my grave and still maintain it was a complete accident.”
David Blunkett
The Blunkett Tapes
DEAL: £400,000
SALES: 1,000 (published 16 Oct)
EXTRACT: “The reader will make his or her judgement regarding the part I played in my own downfall - and also… regarding my contribution to making a difference.”
Ashley Cole
My Defence
DEAL: £250,000
SALES: 4,000 (published 21 Sept)
EXTRACT: “My love for Arsenal was soured by what I see as neglect and resentment… The truth is, I felt that Arsenal had done jack-shit… to hold on to me.”
Chantelle
Living the Dream
DEAL: £300,000
SALES: 4,000 (published 26 Oct)
EXTRACT: “I paused at the top of the steps… Behind me was an eerie quietness, a deserted house, which for three weeks had been home.”
As an addendum to this discussion, I recently came across an absolutely fantastic post from “One Minute Book Reviews” (thanks to Critical Mass for pointing me to this excellent site). The blog’s author, Janice Harayda, was prompted by the inane prose of Mitch Albom’s For One More Day to run a selection through Microsoft Word’s Readability Statistics, an optional part of the spelling and grammar check. With a false-start selection that judged Mr. Albom’s prose at a grade level of 2.8, she eventually determined that he writes at a third-grade level—3.4, to be precise. Her curiosity led her to check a comparable section from different authors, yeilding the following results:
Nora Ephron I Feel Bad About My Neck Grade 12.0
Alex Kuczynski Beauty Junkies Grade 10.3
James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson Grade 8.6
Stephen King Lisey’s Story Grade 8.3
Danielle Steel Toxic Bachelors Grade 4.8
Emily Arnold McCully An Outlaw Thanksgiving, a picture book for 4-to-8 year olds by a Caldecott Medalist Grade 4.3
Mitch Albom For One More Day Grade 3.4
I will leave you to peruse Harayda’s blog article yourself for her smart questions about these results, and also for an additional pay-off which I will hint at only by giving you the post’s title: “Does Mitch Albom Think He’s Jesus?”
One Minute Book Reviews also tells you how to use Microsoft Word to determine a piece of writing’s grade level, so of course I needed to figure out how to apply this newfound knowledge. The answer was obvious: the Celebrity Book Deal Hall/Fall of Fame must be judged. Of course, I only had the tiny sections quoted by The Independent, as I am not among the few, the happy few, who contributed to the above sales. Had I a full 305 words, the answers might be different, but as they stand, they are somewhat suprising:
Wayne Rooney Wayne Rooney: My Story So Far: 5.9
David Blunkett The Blunkett Tapes: 12.0
Ashley Cole My Defence: 5.5
Chantelle Living the Dream: 4.3
Congratulations, Chantelle, you/your ghostwriter writes with more art than Mitch Albom.
Let me make a guess and say that your post came out at grade level 12.0? I congratulate you on setting the precedent for using the word ‘imbicile’!
This is one of the wittiest publishing blogs I’ve come across, and since it’s mostly writers and editors behind those sites’ keyboards, you’re in good company.
Comment by James — December 3, 2006 @ 4:45 pm
I abashedly confess that, yes, my unneccessarily complicated verbosity did register at a 12.0 grade level. I was a little too embarassed to include this fact in the post, because it would either smack too much of self-congratulation, or be evidence that I have probably sacrificed a certain amount of ease-of-reading with my persiflage.
But you are so kind! Not to mention courageous to make it through my ridiculously long-winded posts. I’m so glad you enjoy them.
Comment by Thomasina — December 15, 2006 @ 2:08 pm
How delightful to come across your comments on my post on Mitch Albom. Thank you!
The Albom story has an interesting dimension that relates to the U.K. In the States, Albom’s “For One More Day” is the ONLY book sold in Starbucks coffee shops. (Disheartening, isn’t it?) Starbucks shops the U.K. apparently have the freedom to make their own decisions about about promoting books and are doing are better job of it.
Take, for example, the flagship Starbucks on Princes Street in Edinburgh (the one that’s upstairs and overlooks Princes Gardens). This Starbucks has put up a handsome display about the acclaimed science writer Erich Hoyt, who lives in an Edinburgh suburb. Hoyt has won many awards for his books about whales, dolphins, and other sea creatures, including the 2002 “Outstanding Book of the Year Award” from the American Society of Journalists and Authors for “Creatures of the Deep” (Firefly). Think of how much good the U.S. Starbucks shops could do if each honored an author like Hoyt instead of Albom!
You can learn more about the Edinburgh Starbucks display by going to Hoyt’s Web site, http://www.erichhoyt.com/, and clicking on the link that says “Cafes and Libraries.” I will also encourage Erich to post a comment on BookInfo.Net about his experiences with Starbucks.
Early in 2007, I will post on One-Minute Book Reviews names of the finalists for the site’s Delete Key Awards (for authors who aren’t using their delete keys enough), which will recognize some of the worst writing published in the U.S. in 2006. Dare I say that Albom has a head start on making the short list?
Comment by Janice Harayda — December 27, 2006 @ 6:15 pm
Thank you very much, Janice Harayda, for your comments on my books and my experiences with Starbucks. Your One-Minute Book Reviews is the literary “blog of the year”…
In many of its stores in Scotland, and I think around England, too, Starbucks has indeed forged links with local writers, artists and photographers to give a more individual look to the stores. It is up to the individual store manager to submit ideas and then the “head office†in the UK has to give its approval.
In my case, when Starbucks re-fit its flagship store on Princes Street in Edinburgh, the manager approached me to ask for ideas and I suggested a collage with my book covers and sample manuscript and journal pages. I worked with the designer on various drafts, with my comments being incorporated; in the end, Starbucks decided to make a permanent mural from the collage.
The funny thing for me being “local†and have written parts of four books in Edinburgh cafés, I’m still not considered a Scottish or even a British author. This is after 17 years living here including kids born in Edinburgh and sporting strong Scottish accents. It’s true that parts of my books have been written on the road in Russia, Argentina, Japan, France, usually in cafés. I suppose I will always be called an American-Canadian writer but really I have become a sort of international citizen specializing in café culture…
Comment by Erich Hoyt — December 29, 2006 @ 4:57 pm
Did you know that as of Feb. 15, all the Starbucks shops in the U.S. are dropping Mitch Albom’s “For One More Day”? They are replacing it with Ishmael Beah’s “A Long Way Gone,” a memoir of the author’s experience of having been forced to fight a child solider in the civil war Sierra Leone.
Beah’s book isn’t in stores here yet, so none of us can review it. But the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has posted on its site http: http://www.wagingpeace.org/ an essay the Beah wrote as a high school student about his experiences as a child soldier. It’s poignant. And while Albom is writing at a third-grade level, Beah was writing seven years ago (when he wrote the essay) at the level of grade 7.5. I’ve put up a brief post about this on One-Minute Book Reviews.
Starbucks didn’t explain its decision to show Albom the door. But Entertainment Weekly magazine recently named “For One More Day” one of the five worst books published in 2006. Also on the list: Thomas Harris’s “Hannibal Rising” and the latest book by Paul Burrell, butler to Diana, Princess of Wales. You can read list and descriptions of the five worst books on http: http://www.ew.com/, the Entertainment Weekly site.
Comment by Janice Harayda — January 13, 2007 @ 7:17 pm