Defining celebrity is by no means easy. I sometimes come across lists of celebrity names in connection with “reality” TV programmes and rarely recognise any of them. If they are really well known, they are sometimes referred to as A-list. How far down the alphabet this taxonomy goes I don’t know, but Q-list wouldn’t be good.
From time to time, celebrities decide to write. This is to be expected, because a main point of celebrity status is being in the public eye. It may be that a given individual is a high-profile sportsperson, in which case they may write about their sport and their career in it. The footballer David Beckham has done this, as has the tennis player Andre Agassi. If they can’t write? No problem, a ghost writer can do it for them.
It sometimes happens that a celebrity will move from autobiography to fiction. I don’t know when this started, but the earliest example I can remember is when the yachtswoman, Claire Francis, published a novel. This was back in 1983, and what I read of it then didn’t impress me much. She has gone on to write several more and will doubtless have improved as she continued. But Francis had begun by writing non-fiction five years earlier, some or all of it based on her experiences as a yachtswoman, an area in which she clearly excelled.
Another case which comes to mind is Ben Elton. Elton was a stand-up comic who also wrote scripts for TV such as the comedy series, The Thin Blue Line. At some point he stopped all that and started writing novels, seventeen at the last count, I think. Elton has been extremely productive in TV, musicals, and books.
But what has brough this subject to the fore in what’s left of my mind is a flurry of recent publications. The Reverend Richard Coles has just published a novel, A Death in the Parish. Judy Murray, mother of tennis players Andy and Jamie Murray, has just published a novel, The Wild Card – about a young (female) tennis player and an older (male) coach. And Melanie Hamrick has just published First Position, in which “forbidden love takes an erotic turn in the dark world of ballet”. In the event you didn’t know (I did not), Hamrick has been the partner of Mick Jagger for nine years or thereabouts. A former ballerina, when it comes to ballet she knows what she is talking about.
My purpose here is not to evaluate these books, but to ask a simple question: would they have been published but for the celebrity of their authors? Because, from the marketing perspective, having a well known name on the cover will get sales off to a flying start – just what the publisher wants. Many people will wish to attend book signings and, so to speak, have their slice of the celebrity in question. Maybe even a selfie!
The fact that a book is good will not achieve much if no one has heard of the author. So if you’re a writer hoping to make it big, or even at all, become a celebrity first. Become known for being known.
Fragmented Mind 