In 2006, publishers handed out more than £10m in advances to celebrities for their "autobiographies." Of the 15 or so big money books on offer this Christmas, perhaps four will make money, three will break even, and the rest will make a loss—some a thumping loss. Celebrity publishing is not a new phenomenon. Sports and film stars have been writing their memoirs for several decades, and the genre's antecedents go back to the Victorian confessional and even, perhaps, to the medieval lives of saints. But when Katie Price, aka the glamour model Jordan, brought out Being Jordan in 2004, a new sub-genre was born: the "chav memoir." The book's success caught the publishing world off guard: at the time, editors believed that the public was only interested in getting stories about the size of pop stars' penises from the tabloids and magazines like Heat. Being Jordan made it clear that people would also buy books about such matters.
Over the past ten years, I have been involved in publishing many celebrity autobiographies; it is fair to say I was one of a small group of editors who invented—or at least popularised—the modern form of the genre. Martin Kemp (once of Spandau Ballet and more recently EastEnders) was one of my first clients, in the late 1990s. A friend mentioned that Martin had written his autobiography while recovering in George Michael's house following a brain tumour. I said I would take a look—the combination of pop star, soap star and near-death experience seemed promising. The manuscript turned out to be fairly good—and was entirely Martin's work. I paid a reasonable—though unspectacular—advance, and spent a couple of weeks at his house putting the manuscript in order. The book went to number one and was on the bestseller list for nearly four months.
Soon afterwards, Tim Rice called me, saying that his friend, the singer David Essex, had written his autobiography. He, too, had written every word, and very good it was. I spent an agreeable week with him working on the manuscript; the book sold over 100,000 copies. It was also around this time that I published Dave Pelzer's A Child Called It, which launched the only genre to rival the celebrity biography for commercial success in recent years—the misery memoir. Why was it so successful? Because it was the kind of book bought by people who don't usually buy books.
By and large, it is this same market of non-readers who buy celebrity memoirs, at least at the trashier end. These people—mainly young women—don't view celebrity memoirs as books, but as extended magazine articles. Like magazines, these books are mainly sold in supermarkets (especially Asda) and large newsagents. In order for them to sell, it is vital to get the celebrity out on the road glad-handing fans and preferably appearing on Parkinson or Jonathan Ross's chat show. Pamela Stephenson's biography of her husband Billy Connolly, Billy, wasn't doing that well until Billy's friend Parky asked him to talk about it on air; after that it shot into the Sunday Times bestseller list.
The books by Kemp, Essex and Stephenson were all well written in their way. They belong to a long-established publishing tradition. But the celebrity memoir has been joined in recent years by Jordan-inspired chav memoirs: books by reality television stars, teenage pop singers, soap actors and Z-list celebrities that try to capitalise on the rise of the new, in-your-face celebrity culture typified by programmes like Big Brother and I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!
I was head of non-fiction at Orion at the time Jordan's memoir first did the rounds. Her agent was quite brazen. I remember her calling me: "Jordan is writing her autobiography. How much will you pay for it?" I suggested she send me a short outline. The phone went quiet for a second, then she came back: "No, we just want to know what sort of money you will pay." I declined to commit. Some time later a respected agent, Maggie Hanbury, took the book on and found it equally hard to sell. Again it came across the desk of every non-fiction editor in London. But still I couldn't imagine who would buy it, and so once again declined.
It was John Blake, a former tabloid journalist now running his own publishing company, who eventually bought it. He was rumoured to have paid only £10,000. He cleverly marketed it to Essex girls—a market the big publishers didn't believe existed. I was at the London book fair when Jordan launched the book. I couldn't believe the brouhaha. The gallery at Earl's Court was like a film premiere, yet just a handful of people there knew who Jordan was. When Being Jordan came out, I realised how shrewd Blake had been. With a magazine-like cover and the words "by Katie Price" prominent, the book was an exposé of Jordan's alter ego. It sold over 500,000 copies.
We now accept the chav memoir as part of the furniture, but there was nothing inevitable about its rise: it had to overcome the disinclination of publishers to allow the values of trash journalism to infect what they have long regarded as their rarified trade. Despite the success of Being Jordan, many still considered it a one-off. Still, when Jordan's second volume of autobiography, A Whole New World, was put up for auction in 2005, editors decided they couldn't take the risk that the first was an aberration, and a furious bidding war resulted in a £750,000 three-book deal for the memoir and two novels. Now head of HarperCollins's entertainment division, I wasn't prepared to offer for the novels—after the notorious failure of Naomi Campbell's Swan a few years earlier, I didn't believe they would work—but I did bid for the memoir. In the end, Random House published the memoir, quite successfully, although the first novel is, indeed, selling slowly.
When we lost the Jordan deal, I charged my editors to come up with an alternative. But it was one of our Heat-reading young accountants who popped her head around the door and said we should go after Jade Goody—the charismatically ignorant Big Brother contestant who endeared herself to the nation by asking a fellow contestant whether "East Angular" was a foreign country. We paid a low six-figure advance for Jade: My Autobiography, and it has sold over 120,0000 copies, mainly through supermarkets and WH Smith with a discounted price of around £10. We also secured a big newspaper serial deal—another reason these books can work financially. Most are bought with serial rights included, and this can save the publisher's blushes.
To celebrity and chav memoirs must be added another category—the sports memoir. Though these have existed since at least the 1960s, they too have taken off in recent years. I joined HarperCollins soon after it bought David Beckham's autobiography. Backed by a huge serial deal from the Sun, the book, which came out in September 2003, went on to sell nearly 1m copies worldwide. The timing was perfect: it was the moment Beckham became a global celebrity, just after his move to Madrid. Had we published a year later, the book might well have flopped.
Before Beckham's book, there had been a few big successes in recent sport biography, notably Tony Adams's Addicted, an account of his drug and drink problems, and Alex Ferguson's autobiography. But it was Beckham's book which gave publishers the idea that any footballer in the gossip magazines was a reliable publishing success. There is a logic to this. The increasing interchangeability of the worlds of sport and tabloid celebrity—symbolised by the attention lavished on the "WAGs" at last summer's World Cup—means that there is little real difference between the autobiographies of Jordan and, say, Ashley Cole (who is married to Girls Aloud singer Cheryl Tweedy): they can occupy the same shelf in the supermarket, and appeal to broadly the same readership. This autumn has seen a glut of football memoirs, with total advances of around £2m being paid to Frank Lampard, Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole and a few others, in addition to Wayne Rooney's multimillion multi-book deal. Only two have been successful—those by Steven Gerrard and, rather wonderfully, Pelé.
All this merely proves the age-old arithmetic of publishing: it's a business that spreads its bets. More than 100,000 non-academic titles are published each year in Britain, with total sales of around £2.8bn. Just a few hundred account for the majority of business. To compound this, four publishing companies now account for almost 50 per cent of all British trade: the Hachette Group (which includes the Hodder Headline and Orion imprints), Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins. It is these big publishers (and perhaps Bloomsbury, with its Harry Potter war chest) who are bidding against each other in the celeb arena. None of them is going to go under because it has spent a few million and lost it.
The finances are quite straightforward: when you pay £20 for a book, the bookseller's share will typically be £12.50, leaving £7.50 to the publisher. Of this, the manufacturing costs are around £1.50, royalties to the author account for £2 (although these go to the publisher until the advance has been recouped) and the publisher's other costs are around £3, leaving the grand total of £1 in net profit. The press always looks at the advance and what numbers need to be sold to recoup it, and judge a book's success on this basis. To recoup a £1m advance through copies sold alone, a publisher needs to sell around 500,000 in hardcover (there is, generally, very little paperback life in these books), on the basis of a £2 royalty for each copy sold. But recouping an advance is not the same as breaking even, because the publisher will also have been making its own profit on every copy. To break even on a £1m advance, therefore, a book will typically have to sell around 333,000 copies (and that's excluding other sources of revenue such as serials): £2 royalty plus £1 profit per copy.
One potential money-making source, however, is largely closed to publishers of these biographies: books by British celebs don't sell abroad. There are exceptions: Gordon Ramsay's autobiography, Humble Pie, which I published this autumn, was sold to the US on the strength of his Hell's Kitchen success and the imminent opening of his New York restaurant. But in the US they prefer their stars to write books that are lessons in life, not just accounts of their own lives. This summer, I published Desperate Housewives actress Teri Hatcher's Burnt Toast in Britain, and although it sold a respectable number, it didn't fly, because it was an account of being a good parent and what being a star—in Teri's eyes—is all about. In the US, it sold over 300,000 copies.
This autumn the market was flooded, and as usual there will only be a few big winners—Peter Kay, Gordon Ramsay, Steven Gerrard and, perhaps, Kerry Katona. Publishers are already looking towards next autumn. It is now obvious that the winners of reality shows do not work (the memoirs of X Factor-winner Shayne Ward and Pete the Tourette's sufferer from Big Brother have bombed), and there is a feeling that the chav memoir may have been a transient phenomenon. Indeed, the high-advance gamble of celebrity publishing in general may be past its peak. Having said that, Orion recently paid a reported £1.7m for Julie Walters's autobiography.
Celebrity memoir extracts
From My Defence, by Ashley Cole
Somewhere along the A406 North Circular road, one telephone call changed everything about how I viewed and felt about Arsenal… "Ash! Are you listening?" said a virtually hyperventilating Jonathan [his agent]. "I'm here in the office and David Dein is saying they aren't going to give you £60k a week. They've agreed £55k and this is their best and final offer. Are you happy with that?…" Best and final offer. That's what I remember the most: the words "best and final offer." That is important to know… When I heard Jonathan repeat the figure of £55k, I nearly swerved off the road. "He is taking the piss Jonathan!" I yelled down the phone… I was trembling with anger… The [board's] conclusion seemed to be how cheaply could they get me.
From Jordan: A Whole New World by Katie Price
As we sat on the sofa together…[Pete]… told me how good I looked and I returned the compliment, thinking, Phwoar, phwoar, fucking phwoar!… My eyes widened as he peeled off his boxers, revealing his huge cock… It was long and thick—it was definitely dickalicious!… My golden rule of waiting a month before sleeping with a man belonged to the past.
From All About Us—My Story by Peter Andre
Ours was a very strict household because my parents are Jehovah's Witnesses… to this day, I love what I learned and will always respect the Witnesses… I waited until I was 17 to have full intercourse—that's how long the guilt stayed with me.
