The lustre of celebrity memoirs, possibly the most reviled literary genre in history, is fading as publishers voice their alarm over returns from books that have been “authored” by star names to whom they have paid vast advances.
One publishing house, Hachette UK, has already announced redundancies because of cutbacks in “ghostwritten celebrity and sports memoirs” so that it can focus on more traditional titles.
Others are perturbed at a slump in this section of the market, traditionally a reliable earner for the industry at the approach to Christmas. The fall in sales of celebrity memoirs is deeper than that for non-fiction books in general.
“Sales are down by around 25 or 30 per cent this year, more than the decline in the book market overall,” said Tom Weldon, the deputy chief executive of Penguin UK. “This is mostly the fault of publishers, because some of the titles seem a bit tired and D-list this year. Maybe we are running out of celebrities, or perhaps some of them are running out of new things to say about themselves.”
Mr Weldon suggested, however, that claims about the demise of such books may be more the product of wishful thinking by their critics. “I don’t think the category is dead. It is worth noting that the biggest selling authors this year will be Ant & Dec, while Jeremy Clarkson, Chris Evans, Frankie Boyle and Peter Kay will also be in the top ten,” he said.
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Ant & Dec, otherwise known as Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, sold 26,302 copies of Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story in the week ending November 28. Although this was enough to make it the highest-placed celebrity book, its performance still compares poorly with That’s Another Story by Julie Walters which sold 64,405 copies in the same week last year.
Literary agents have told The Bookseller that such a decline may reflect a wider trend. Jonathan Lloyd, chief executive at Curtis Brown, said: “In the end, you cannot fool the public. They expect to have the real book and the majority of offers this autumn are not real books, certainly not must-haves.”
Piers Blofeld, at Sheil Land Associates, said: “The celeb seam has been fairly well mined and publishers are finding they increasingly have to return to the more traditional nonfiction publishing model.”
There are reports that Wayne Rooney’s £5 million, five-volume, deal for his life story has been quietly shelved. Publication of Carol Vorderman’s autobiography has been postponed, as have the memoirs of Simon Pegg and Russell Brand.
The Book People, an online bookstore, has reduced the number of such books it stocks this year. Seni Gleister, its chief executive, said: “The only genre that we have deliberately cut down on in 2009 is celebrity biography, but for us there was very little on offer that was immediately compelling. As our customers have tended to agree with our lukewarm response to these books, we are not yet regretting our caution.”
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Past publishing turkeys have included Chantelle Houghton, elevated to stardom in 2006 after winning Celebrity Big Brother, who received a reported £300,000 from Random House for her autobiography. Leaving the Dream sold fewer than 5,000 hardback copies that Christmas.
The literary career of Katie Price, however, has more often made such books worth the gamble. Her first memoir, Being Jordan, sold more than 720,000 copies and, despite some diminishing returns, the former model’s fourth-volume autobiography released in October is still selling relatively well.
This causes consternation among other authors who complain that the life blood of their profession, as well as their cash advances, are being sucked dry by celebrities.
In a speech to the Crime Thriller Awards this year, Lynda La Plante implored publishers to “stop spending your millions on this tripe ... on these reality TV writers who are here for their 15 minutes of fame”. Pointing out that Price’s book had outsold the Booker Prize list, she added: “She is a terrible thing for young girls who just want pink welly boots.”
Martin Amis was, typically, even more forthright about Price. “She has no waist, no arse,” he said. “All we are really worshipping is two bags of silicone.”
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At BookBrunch, Liz Thomson has regularly attacked the capacity, or lack of it, for celebrity authors to produce work of any merit. “Most of us are aware of our limitations and have sufficient humility and commonsense to say no to things we do not understand and cannot accomplish with dignity and honesty. Not so the many celebrities who put their names to novels they have not written, and to ghosted memoirs about their vacuous lives,” she wrote.
Yesterday she suggested that the recession had made consumers think twice before buying such memoirs on impulse. But she also expressed the hope that the decline in sales reflected how “the public have, rightly, got sick of them”.
Philip Stone, charts editor of The Bookseller, rejects much of this kind of criticism as coming from snobs “disgusted by the reality of the world we live in”. He recently pointed out that sales of Martin Amis’s books totalled £200,000 last year, compared with the £1.7 million generated by Alan Titchmarsh. “So, shock, horror, publishers have a willingness to publish popular books. Yes, by those boo-hoo, horrid little celebs. I know, outrageous!” he wrote.
Indeed, Ebury Press — part of Random House — has posted an advertisement in The Guardian for a commissioning editor under the heading “Amy, Lily or Cheryl — who would you choose?”.
Those wishing to be considered for the post must answer three questions: “1) Why are you the right person for this job? 2) Who you believe is the most influential pop culture figure of 2009? and 3) What do you think is the next big thing?”
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For the time being, at least, reports of the death of celebrity memoirs may have been exaggerated.