Celebs keep writing, publishers keep paying
By Dave
August 25th, 2008 | Leave a comment
Celebs keep writing, publishers keep paying
By Diane Evans
One of the books you’ll see all over the place this fall: The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life. With Bantam paying $7.2 million for North American rights to the title, expect big promotion – even though you may not see Buffett on a single talk show. He currently has no plans to be part of the promotion.
Which brings up a question: Would Buffett, at any point in his business life, pay that kind of money for rights to a celebrity book – knowing that 60 books already have been written on that same celebrity (in this case him) and about a dozen new ones are in the works.
I’d like to see that business plan. Especially given that it is common for celebrity books to lose money. For lovers of good reading, the real question is how many worthwhile manuscripts could have been discovered with $7.2 million. Perhaps a character as captivating as Harry Potter? Or a writer as reflective as Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love?
If publishing has lost glory, it’s because publishers go almost lock step on the road most traveled, which means playing off existing celebrities rather than creating new ones. They take the short cut, figuring, for example, that if you sell a million Buffett titles, you avoid the hard work of poring over heaven knows how many manuscripts in search of something great or at least inventive.
Is it any wonder that with the Harry Potter series completed, nothing has emerged of equal potential?
In The Snowball, the distinction is that Buffett pledged his cooperation to the first-time author, Alice Schroeder. He gave her access his files and correspondence. He also opened doors for her to interview people who could contribute insights. Schroeder and Buffett first met in the late 1990s when she worked as an analyst at Paine Webber covering Buffett’s Omaha-based conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
How well she analyzed Berkshire Hathaway is beside the point. In selling celebrity with a few new add-ons, she sized up the current book publishing industry right on.
The Snowball is due out Sept. 29.
Here’s another upcoming title, based on access to inside information: This one is Bob Woodward’s fourth book on Bush administration, titled The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008. It is due out Sept. 8.
Publisher Simon & Shuster is keeping the book under tight embargo, although embargoes are often broken to generate buzz. “There has not been such an authoritative and intimate account of presidential decision making since the Nixon tapes and the Pentagon Papers,” Woodward’s longtime editor, Alice Mayhew, said in a statement. “This is the declassification of what went on in secret, behind the scenes.”
A celebrity journalist since his role in uncovering the Watergate scandal, Woodward also co-authored All the King’s Me” and The Final Days on the inner workings of Watergate and the Nixon administration.
Diane Evans is founder and president of DelMio.com and SuLit Communications LLC.
