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A whole new genre

13.03.08 Alison Flood

Celebrity fiction has never been so abundant. The Bookseller looks at the varying degrees of success and whether the public and the trade are tiring of the model—or if we are just at the start of the wave.

A collective groan must have passed through Ebury’s offices last December when Kerry Katona admitted on “Friday Night with Jonathan Ross” that she didn’t write her first novel, Tough Love.

Rewind to 1995, when supermodel Naomi Campbell was reported to have said that, far from writing her novel Swan, she hadn’t even read it. Unfortunately, BookScan data doesn’t go back far enough to record sales of Campbell’s foray into fiction (it was—and is—largely seen as disastrous), but Tom Weldon, now m.d. of Penguin General Books, looks back with a certain amount of rueful humour.

“We were a decade in front of everyone else. We bought it for £100,000, and so we covered ourselves because we sold it all around the world. It did around 25,000 hardbacks and 100,000 paperbacks in the UK. It probably didn’t work because it was pre-celebrity culture, and I think the book trade was a bit more snobbish 15 years ago.”

Today, the trade has been forced to lay aside—genuinely or otherwise—any notions of snobbery when faced with the success of Jordan, aka Katie Price. Total sales of her three autobiographies top 1.3m copies; her début novel Angel has sold 246,082 copies to date; and her second, Crystal, has topped that with 275,211 sold since publication last summer.

“When I first raised [the idea of Price writing fiction] a lot of people were sceptical,” says Century publishing director Mark Booth. “They were remembering what happened with Naomi Campbell. The difference is that we’ve made sure we published a brilliantly written book.”

The reason Price has done so well, says Booth, is that the stories seem authentic to the reader. He believes they reflect life back to British women in a way that chick lit has largely ceased to do. “Chick lit was fresh and funny when it started, but now some of it is bit mannered and precious. It doesn’t reflect back to people who buy books in supermarkets the reality of their lives.”

Tough act to follow
Cue Random House stablemate Ebury, which was quick to capitalise on the apparent gap in the market with its own tabloid darling, Kerry Katona. Her Tough Love has racked up (as it were) more than 28,000 sales to date since it was released as a mass market paperback in October last year. Not bad, but it’s a far cry from the quarter of a million copies sold of Katona’s autobiography Too Much Too Young, and doesn’t compare with Jordan.

The novel is widely seen to have fallen short of expectations. “Kerry hasn’t done as well so far, perhaps because her brand is less of the ‘strong woman in control’ that Price has, which many of her fans aspire to,” says Waterstone’s Jon Howells. Weldon agrees: “My guess is that there’s something a little bit more aspirational about Jordan.”

Headline deputy m.d. Jane Morpeth is adamant that Katona made a mistake by admitting to not writing the novel herself. “People don’t like to be made fools of. If you say that, why are they going to give you money? Never underestimate the intelligence of the public,” she says.

But Ebury senior publishing director, Hannah MacDonald, brushes aside these criticisms. “Kerry’s an honest woman—she’s dyslexic, of course she didn’t write them,” she says, adding that writing “can be a very collaborative process”, and that Katona has “been involved at every stage, and had input into each draft”.

Booth agrees on this point: “People say [Price] doesn’t really write them—I don’t see what the fuss is. It’s no different to the way the recordings of The Monkees were put together.” Whether readers realise celebrity fiction is frequently ghost-written is a debatable point, but clearly it has found a market.

MacDonald admits Tough Love didn’t quite meet expectations, but Ebury is still firmly behind the Katona brand, and is about to roll out a new look for the next novel The Footballer’s Wife, due out in April. “We got support from the trade but didn’t sell quite so many through as we would have liked. The cover [for Tough Love], although very beautiful, was very dark. This one is much brighter, more descriptive as to the content. It’s less Martina Cole-esque—a bit less gritty, a bit more glitzy. The feedback we got from the trade is that’s what they wanted.”

Comic turns
Price and Katona follow in the footsteps of other celebrities—Pamela Anderson’s Star (which came with a removable jacket featuring a semi-naked photograph of the “Baywatch” star on the reverse), sold more than 30,000 copies.

A raft of popstars have also turned their hands to children’s books, including Madonna, Kylie and Geri Halliwell. Then there is the rich tradition of comedians writing novels—David Baddiel, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Ben Elton and Ricky Gervais, whose Flanimals books for children have been a huge success (“the daddy of them all in sales terms”, according to Howells).

Howells also points to other names, such as Alan Titchmarsh, Ann Widdecombe, Gyles Brandreth, Harry Hill and Martin Sixsmith. In his opinion, some ‘celebrity authors’ such as Titchmarsh eventually outgrow the celebrity tag. What becomes important then is whether the public likes their books.

“It depends on how you define ‘celebrity’,” he says. “Certainly all those people have had the advantage of prior fame which has helped market their books, but longevity in the market is down to talent and the public’s desire for their books.”

Weidenfeld & Nicolson publisher Alan Samson thinks there are different classes of celebrity when it comes to writing. “There are the quite legitimate ones like Katie Price, who collaborate on a work of fiction with a ghost writer. It is an extension of a memoir, and in no way dishonest. I suspect that no one who buys it thinks she’s written every word,” he says.

He also thinks it is wrong to assume that the work celebrities are producing is no good. “There are a lot of highly intelligent, creative people out there who are writing every word themselves. Julie Walters’ Maggie’s Tree sold 30,000 copies in hardback. I resent this notion—it’s a real snobbish thing—that celebrities are only capable of producing trash and are not real writers. Some of them intersect. Every celebrity we take on, we probably decline 20. There is a feeling out there that we throw a contract at every celebrity who calls.”

The tempting thing about finding a brand under which regular novels can be churned out is the reliable nature of fiction—it eliminates as much of the risk as possible. Non-fiction can be hit or miss; autobiographies can only be spun out so far. But a novel, by a known quantity, is a different matter, and publishers aren’t just trying to mine the vein with celebrities.

The million-plus-selling Torey Hayden, who has chronicled eight stories of child abuse looking back to her time as a psychologist, is set to turn novelist in June with Overheard in a Dream.

“In some ways she’s drawing on her non-fiction experience as a special needs teacher,” says Harper Non-Fiction publisher Carole Tonkinson, who has another novel to come from Hayden at a later date.

“She’s unusual in that she’s not writing about her own experiences. She’s helped countless children. Most people might do one, two or three memoirs at the most, then come to a bit of an end. There is the odd non-fiction person who has repeating books but they are pretty rare.”

Tonkinson also published misery memoirist Jane Elliott’s novel Sadie last November, and has another novel from Elliott to come next autumn. “We’ve two other authors we’re looking at who have fiction submissions in with us, one in the same genre,” she adds.

At Penguin, Michael Joseph has successfully moved misery memoirist Kevin Lewis, who has sold almost half a million copies of his chronicles of his own life, across to fiction. His first, Kaitlyn, has sold almost 70,000 copies to date, while his second, Frankie, is closing in on 35,000.

“He does write them himself but we work quite closely to bring out his writing style,”  says commissioning editor Alex Clarke. “As he goes on he’s getting better and better—he’s a wonderful plotter. He might not be a masterful literary writer, but that’s not what we’re after at all anyway.” A new novel, Fallen Angel, is due from Lewis this August.

With the success of celebrity authors such as Price in the fiction market, the industry is rethinking whether there is more scope for this kind of writing, says Morpeth. However, in her view, the “jury is still out” on whether it will work for others. “Katie Price is [in] a very unique situation. She hasn’t opened the door to lots of celebrities writing fiction—she’s only broken the rules in her unique position.”

Booth agrees. “I think in a weird kind of way Jordan is unique. She has replaced Diana in many people’s affections.”

Independent bookseller Tim Walker—and others—believe we haven’t seen the last of this kind of fiction, and indeed publishers are currently scrutinising a début novel by Martine McCutcheon.

“I think celebrity fiction is now very firmly seen as part of a celebrity’s brand extension, part of their brand ‘building’, and I have no doubt that it will continue,” says Walker. Clarke agrees: “A lot of people will be moving into that area. Would Peter Kay ever do it? I’m sure people would be interested in that.” But MacDonald isn’t sure there’s room for more candidates. “There’s only so many the market can take. But I think we haven’t seen the end of this.”

 

ABOUT THE BOOKS

Katie Price
Crystal: “Crystal is beautiful, talented and ambitious. All her life she has dreamed of making it as a singer. After years of trying to break into the music industry her chance finally comes when her girl band enters a TV reality show contest . . .”

All edition sales, to Feb 2008 (released November 2007): 275,211

Angel: “When Angel is discovered by a modelling agent, her life changes for ever . . . But then she meets Mickey, the lead singer of a boy band, who is as irresistible as he is dangerous . . .”

All edition sales, to Feb 2008 (released July 2006): 246,082
Signed by Century for a further three novels and one autobiography

 

Kerry Katona
Tough Love: ”Leanne Crompton had it all—beauty, fame, money. But when Leanne is sacked by her modelling agency she soon finds herself penniless . . .”

All edition sales, to Feb 2008 (released October 2007): 28,308

Two more to come: The Footballer’s Wife (April) and High Stakes (October) 


 

Pamela Anderson
Star: “An innocent evening at a football game sets off a chain of life-altering events. One minute Star is cleaning the tanning beds at Talon’s, and the next she’s being primped and prodded in preparation for the front cover of a national magazine . . .”

Sales to Feb 2008 (hardback October 2004, paperback editions followed): 33,004

Star Struck: “Star is back in the spotlight, and back in love . . . As she navigates Hollywood stardom and a hasty marriage to rock ‘n’ roll bad boy Jimi Deeds she learns the hard way that there’s a lot of truth to the old saying ‘marry in haste, repent at leisure’. And let’s not forget that video tape . . .”

Sales to Sales to Feb 2008 (h/b September 2005, other editions followed): 5,257

 

Naomi Campbell
Swan: “Swan is a leading supermodel but is aware that she doesn’t want this life forever. The search is on for a girl to replace her in a cosmetics contract worth millions. Five girls line up to compete, then one man steps forward with an ambition of his own and Swan seems about to lose everything . . .”

Sales to Feb 2008 (h/b October 1994 and p/b in April 1995): not recorded by BookScan

 

 

Media Flagship Feature Alison Flood

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