Celebs who write books don’t know how fortunate they are

David Barnett, The Independent

Picture the scene: the A-list actor, Keira Knightley, opens the door to find me — a slightly shabby-looking, largely unknown writer — standing on her doorstep holding a stack of big cards and a tape player. Inexplicably, she does not call the police, but with a puzzled smile invites me to continue. I hold up the first card, which says “Say it’s carol singers,” while pressing play on a crackly recording of “Away In a Manger”. It is October, Keira quite reasonably points out. “OK, say it’s trick or treaters,” my next card reads, and I turn the tape over to play “The Monster Mash”.

“You don’t know me,” says the next card. “In the last month I have had two novels released, a folk horror called Withered Hill and a festive romcom, very much like the one we are aping now, called The Little Christmas Library.”

Next card: “And the slight sense of shame at shoehorning this sort of desperate self-promotion into an opinion piece I have been asked to write on a Saturday morning, in the hope that the editor won’t cut it out, is something that you, as a newly announced celebrity author, will never have to experience.” Yes, it’s that time of year again: a big celebrity has announced that they are finally realising their dream and writing a book, and up steps someone you’ve never heard of to whinge about it. Which is sort of the point. Am I, the author of 14 novels, jealous that Keira’s children’s book, I Love You Just the Same, has been picked up by the publisher Simon & Schuster, accompanied by great fanfare and endless headlines? Am I bitter? Is the only thing in my fridge sour grapes?

Well, sort of, yes. I have no direct beef with Knightley; in fact, I quite like her, which I’m sure is a source of great comfort to her as she sits (hopefully: give it a retweet on X/Twitter, will you, Keira?) reading this.

It’s perhaps unfortunate that she’s the current celebrity author target in this perennial grudge match between jobbing writers and famous people who write books, because I’ve read things she has written, and it looks like she can string a sentence together — and by all accounts she’s an accomplished artist who will be illustrating her own book, inspired by her experiences as a mother. She’s also dyslexic, so fair play to her. The thing is, Knightley’s experience — and that of any celebrity who writes a book — is going to be vastly different from mine, and from that of the thousands of other authors toiling away in the word trenches every day.

In a year’s time, when Knightley’s book is out, there will be a whirlwind of promotion. She will doubtless be on The One Show, This Morning, maybe Loose Women or Graham Norton (though it has to be said, Norton did an amazing job promoting authors when he had his Radio 2 show). Last weekend, I drove almost 100 miles to north Wales to talk about my books to an audience of about 12. Nobody paid for my travel. I did, however, get free coffee, and I had an amazing time, because most of those 12 people bought a book — and if they enjoy it, they might buy others of mine, or tell their friends about it. That’s how promotion works for most authors. And, let’s face it, nobody wants to see me on The One Show.

The real problem authors have isn’t necessarily with the celebrities who write books (that’s if they actually write them. No words for those who just lend their name). Nobody is trying to gatekeep or say people should stay in their lane. Many celebrities work in creative industries as actors or musicians — who’s to say they can’t turn that creativity to writing? But it’s when “writing a book” is merely the next thing on the celebrity tick-list that it really grates. I saw a TV interview with a celeb who had a book out a year or so ago, who didn’t profess to a lifelong ambition to be a novelist, but said she had written it because a fellow celeb who had also just had a book out told her she ought to give it a go.

And the real issue, of course, lies with the publishing industry itself. It is a world built on books — without authors, there’s no business. But what rankles for many of us is the marketing and promotional budget put into selling these celebrity books. Appearances on TV and radio, and ads on the side of buses, are things most of us can only envisage in our wildest dreams. The general argument for celebrity authors says that the money they bring in to a publishing company helps to finance the books by nobodies like me. Which would be fine, but advances (the money paid to an author for a novel, offset against royalties from future sales) are dropping like a brick. The most recent survey of earnings for authors in the UK put the median figure at £7,000 a year. I don’t know how much Knightley got as an advance, but I would hazard that she’ll earn a lot more than seven grand for her book.

And marketing and promotion for relative unknowns, or mid-list authors who prop up the industry, is often next to non-existent.  Anyway, enough whingeing. Knightley’s book will probably sell truckloads — and possibly deserves to. The next book announced by a talent show judge or a soap star or a TV chef or a boy band singer will sell like hot cakes as well.