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Sunday 27 May 2012

Celebrity ‘authors’

One of the most salutary lessons for a writer is to start a publishing company. They should all do it. Nothing acquaints you faster with the other side of the picture and every book trade argument, nothing makes you stop whingeing as an author more effectively than donning a publisher’s hat.
The latest ‘Oh woe and thrice woe’ outcry among authors is about the celebrity book ; not, in this case, the celebrity memoir but the celebrity novel, as written by, say Jordan aka Katie Price, or Naomi Campbell.

The only thing wrong with these – except maybe the books themselves – is that they lie, deceive and present a false face. They pretend to be by the celebrity author named on the cover but they are not, they are by a ghost writer. The celebrity has had nothing to do with them, probably not even read them. Now, ghost writing is not a dishonourable profession and if, say, a highly successful sportsperson has a great life story to tell  but cannot not string two sentences together, then why should a ghost writer not do it for them?  The point is that it is still their story and they will have spent many hours telling it to the ghost writer. Better a well-written book about how someone won 100 Olympic gold medals or climbed every mountain wearing only a vest, than a badly written ditto.

But to pretend to pen a novel, to appear and sign the book for long queues of people and never to acknowledge the ‘real’ author, is simple deceit and the many people who buy a novel believing that it really was written by Jordan or Katie Price, are being cynically manipulated. They are often not regular book-buyers but fans of the celebrity, they may not know that, somewhere in fairy writing on the inside among the dull publishing details may possibly be the name of the person who actually wrote the book. Sports personalities are usually up-front. The name of the ghost writer of their memoirs will usually be prominent – ‘as told to…’

But deceit and the intention to mislead apart, why shouldn`t a ‘celebrity’ write and publish a novel or a children’s book, or a book of any other sort ? You might just as well say that Terry Wogan, who would be the first to admit that he cannot sing, should not have brought out a recording of The Floral Dance.
 
Celebrity novels do not always sell well – sometimes they jump up and bite their publishers on the nose. But if they do, and assuming they are not pieces of deceitful marketing, then they will accomplish two things. They will encourage people who do not read many books to start with this one and perhaps continue to others. And they will make money for the publisher. And for every book that makes money, the publisher is enabled to take a chance on half a dozen good books which thoroughly deserve publication, but which may well make a loss. (Though every book we publish is a gamble, the most unexpected horses come in at 100-1 and the odds-on favourites are sometimes roundly beaten.)
My own small publishing company has had a couple of books which have sold between 50,000 and 95,000 copies. They have enabled me to take risks on quite a few new authors, to publish books on which I may, if I am lucky, break even but which I know are good books and worthy of being out there looking for readers.

I will blog another time on exactly how much it costs to publish a book properly, what the breakdown is on one costing, say, £10 retail, how long it is before the publisher, who takes all the initial risk, may begin to make some of their investment back. But the stark fact is that in the last few years it has become very common for good novels to sell under 100 copies. Some sell under 50 copies and this is books from the major firms, not self- or vanity -published. If you hit 1,000 these days, as a novelist outside the top list, you are doing well and at 1,000 one may break even. No publisher can make anything but a loss on a book which sells a hundred or two.

Which is why they publish the celebrity stuff. It still does not make it acceptable for celebrities to give their name to fiction they have not written and indeed, other than supplying their name  for a large fee, with which they have had absolutely nothing to do. But if a pop star or a D list celeb or a Society Girl writes, all by themselves, a decent popular novel, what is wrong with a publisher bringing it out ?  There are a few too many high horses being ridden around the book trade.

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Someone commenting on my appearance as a blogger here suggested that it would be like The Archers. I hasten to disabuse them and any others. I haven`t listened to the programme regularly for 30 years, mainly because none of those in charge of it live in the country or know anything about it, though they may be perfectly decent soap producers. But it is their Political Correctness which is beyond all reason. I listened one time when a young woman had given birth to a baby whose father, to whom she was not married and about whom none of her family knew anything at all, was black. Now I am certain that two things would happen if this baby had been born around here. The first is that nobody, nobody, would have cared a jot about its having a black father. The second is that everybody, everybody would have noticed and remarked on the fact. But The Archers had the mother of the girl seeing the baby for the first time and making absolutely no comment whatsoever on the fact that its father was clearly non-white. That just wouldn`t happen. But The Archers is nothing if not urban PC.

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