The History of Celebrity Books

We also had so many fun stories that maybe were too racy to tell. It's best to write what you know. There's going to be a lot of things in the books that people who, if they've at all, you know, followed our story will be like, oh, I know exactly what they're talking about. Richard Osman's book, The Thursday Murder Club, has been so successful that the movie rights have already been snapped up. I hope everyone loves Autumn Falls just as much as I loved writing it. I took a lot of facts about me to shape the character. It took a while for me to find my stride and learn to love the skin I'm in. And so I wrote this book to help little kids get there a little faster. Modelland creates something or teaches these women to become Intoxabellas. Intoxabellas are supermodels with super powers. I've done work in mysterious ways and he sent me down. Hello friends, welcome back to my channel. Today we're going to be doing something really different that I'm really, really excited for. So today we're going to be doing a history of celebrities writing fiction books and kind of how it's evolved all the time, the changes that have happened. And it's going to be a bit of a video essay, which I'm just so excited for. I've always wanted to do this kind of stuff and I've never done it before. So we're going to take a deep dive together into the history of celebrities writing books and how it has changed. So I'm not going to be speaking about celebrity memoirs or non-fiction that celebrities write in this video. I might do a separate video on that because I think that's an interesting topic as well. But today we'll be talking about something I know a bit more about and that's celebrities as fiction authors, as, you know, writing novels, writing the dream novel they've always wanted to write while someone else actually writes it. No, that's only some of the cases. This video was originally going to be called Why Aren't Celebrities Writing Books Anymore? Why Aren't They Writing Novels Anymore? But through my research, I realised that's not true. I thought it was, but it's not true. So let's take a deep dive together and let's start at the beginning. My perception of celebrities writing novels is that the height of it is like around early 2010s, 2008 to 2014, 2007 to 2014. Now, obviously, celebrities wrote books before this. They wrote novels before this. You've got Shop Girl by Steve Martin. You've got Swan by Naomi Campbell, to name a few. Swan was in like 1994. Shop Girl was in 2000. So, like, it has existed before. But my observation is this trend really began 2007 to 2014, I would say. And if you Google celebrity fiction books still, this is still the kind of books that you get shown. We're talking Dollhouse by the Kardashians, LA Candy by Lauren Conrad, Model Land by Tyra Banks. All of these kind of books. Snooki even wrote a book, which I learned. I didn't know. Iconic. Honestly, kind of iconic. Snooki wrote a book. Bella Thorne wrote a book. I knew that she wrote one recently, which is, again, kind of a memoir. I think poetry kind of thing. But I did not know that she wrote a YA kind of magical realism-y book. I really think in the late 2000s, early 2010s, this was a real trend of how celebrities could expand their merchandise. You know, it was the same as bring out a hairline, bringing out a makeup line. In the way that celebrities didn't really bring out makeup lines as they do now. You know, they'd bring out something with, like, Cover Girl or something. Do you know what I mean? Or they'd bring out shoes or, like, whatever. And this was kind of that era of the books being an extension of their branding, but in a really, really interesting way. This is what I think of as celebrity books. Because this is what I tend to want to read in vlogs. If I'm gonna do a celebrity vlog kind of video. These don't exist anymore. This is why it's so interesting to me. These kind of books don't exist. Yes, our trends have evolved. Yes, our tastes have evolved. What we will accept from celebrities has evolved. But I think it's so interesting there was this pocket of time when so many people wrote these kind of books, and then it's kind of evaporated. You don't really see the reality. It's mostly reality TV stars, let's be honest. Mostly women from reality TV shows who started writing these books. Out of the biggest reality TV shows, Love Island. The Kardashians are still up there, but you would not catch them dead doing something like this now. Real Housewives, The Bachelorette. You wouldn't really catch many of them doing this. The only example I can actually think of is one fiction book by Amber Gill, who won Love Island one year. It's called Until I Met You, and it's a romance book. That's the only example that is kind of along these lines of where it's within the celebrity's brand, what they're known for. It's based off of that. Them writing a fiction book off of that. It's the only example I can really find of that in kind of the modern era. What is so interesting to me is that all of these books, back in the day, were semi-autobiographical. On interviews for Dollhouse, which I kind of think everyone forgets existed, but I mean, they did a lot. The Kardashians did a lot of stuff, a lot of branding, a lot of sponsorships that I think we forget existed. But in an interview for Dollhouse, they spoke about how part of the fun for readers is trying to figure out which stories are from their real life. It's going to be interesting for everyone to read it and to see what they think is real and what's not. I think that's the fun part because you never really know. And it's a really interesting extension of them as a celebrity in this case. It's a way to expand their brand of being a reality TV star and play into like the salaciousness and the drama and the scandal of reality TV and play into that drama that people want from it without being directly tied to those stories. You know, Snooki can write about people going wild without having to go and do it herself. And I thought I would read you some excerpts that I've highlighted that are just wonderful excerpts. Gia gulped. She reached for the front fastener and set her girls free. And it solidifies your brand in this fictional way so that you're not directly attached to it. It would always be linked back to their brand. Write what you know, right? It was never writing like, you know, anything particularly outlandish. To be fair, Kendall and Kylie Jenner did write a sci-fi book. They wrote a sci-fi book, which I think is, you know, crazy. But it was all about this society in which people got plastic surgery to look a certain way. And this was even before, I think, Kendall and Kylie really got into that. But it's interesting that this is what they chose to write about. And I would say they were actually, the last of this trend was with YA before it was more like adult books. But YA in 2014 with Kendall and Kylie Jenner and Bella Thorne. Bella Thorne actually, to be fair, she released the first book in 2014. It was a series. She had two more books come out. This was tied to that contract. Because I feel like by 2016, Bella Thorne was doing Bella Thorne things that didn't exactly go with like a cookie cutter, young YA book series. So why was there this Peter out? Why was there this change in what was accepted from celebrities? Why did this trend die out? Of course, trend shifted. Instagram had this growth. So you no longer had to kind of create a fictional life to like further your narrative, to interest your fans. You could just show them your real life within certain parameters that were easier to control. But I also think that greater accountability towards celebrities and the validity of what they do played a big role in this. So all of these books are ghostwritten, right? We understand that. I don't think in this era, any of them were really writing their books. If you haven't seen, I did a reading vlog many years ago, reading Kendall and Kylie Jenner's book. And I did some research beforehand. And I found a story about how when they were working with the ghostwriter for that book, they worked on together. So Kendall and Kylie Jenner were involved in a double-sided sheet of A4 on what they wanted the book to be about. I think they met with the ghostwriter about two or three times and they let her come to New York Fashion Week with them to follow them and their friends around so she could base the characters off of them. That's the extent, right? That's the extent of their input. And I feel like we were okay with that. Because I think in publishing in this era, ghostwriters were hidden. Whereas I think the change started happening where people wanted more credit to the people who were actually writing the books. In this really good article by Book Riot, they talk about how ghostwriter was a dirty word. You wouldn't tell anyone if you were a ghostwriter. And I think that kind of attitude did pervade throughout many of those years. Whereas then a shift happened. In 2014, the kind of around the time that this petered out, Zoella, who was one of the biggest YouTubers in the world at the time, you know, now UK YouTubers have fallen off a bit, but they ran YouTube early in the day. And Zoella wrote a book. She published a book. She spoke about how it was a life dream to publish a book. It was a very, very big deal. The book sold almost 80,000 copies in its first week, which made her the fastest selling debut novelist of all time since its records began, which is kind of crazy. But her book was revealed to be ghostwritten and there was a big controversy about it. A lot of people were upset. A lot of her fans were upset. A lot of people were kind of, you know, using it to make commentary on her. This is an interesting contrast, right? Because I think everyone knew celebrity books were ghostwritten, but everyone wanted to ignore it, right? What did you expect? Like she could write a book, but they were going to get a ghostwriter in for her. Like with a celebrity of that name, I don't think they were going to trust her to write the book herself, even if she wanted to. I mean, she might not have wanted to. She might've wanted a ghostwriter. Madeline Morrell in that same book riot article spoke about how publishing is absolutely dependent on ghostwriters. I've had some authors who basically never even read their books. So it was like, well known, but everyone wanted to ignore it. But I feel like with this controversy, celebrities couldn't really get away with having ghostwriters anymore, especially for older audiences, older YA and other audiences who want to feel like if you're reading it, you're reading it, you know, for a purpose. And that purpose is reading something from that celebrity. To then find out they didn't write it is like, well, what is the point? I feel like the era of just buying things because your favourite celebrity's name on it is kind of gone. I think we still have an era of buying something because of recognisability, because a celebrity, you know, endorses something and we recognise it from them and we trust them, we buy it. But I feel like just mindlessly buying things because you like the Kardashians or you like Tyra Banks or you like Lauren Condon or Hilary Duff, like whoever. I feel like that era has kind of gone. There has been undoubtedly, in my opinion, more accountability in celebrities actually being involved in their products. That's why you see Miss Kylie Jenner up in the lab as if she's like making the makeup. She's like, science, you know what I mean? That's the perception celebrities want. When they bring out a makeup or skincare line now, almost like they have to justify it. Like, I mean, they're just bringing it out because they want to bring out makeup. Some of them because they have a real desire and want to, some because they want the money, right? I mean, all of them want the money. You're not going to make something. You're not going to make a brand if you don't want the money. But I think some genuinely want to and some have a genuine ethos, but the consumer now wants them to justify it. Why did you want to make, why do you love makeup? Tell me why you love makeup so much. Tell me what, do you know what I mean? There has to be this justification, which I feel like back in the day, if, you know, the Kardashians, I use them as an example because they've been around for the longest time in kind of both eras and evolved to fit both of them. They could just bring out something CoverGirl or like bring out something with, I don't know who they, like the ******* Kardashian clothesline. Like they could just bring it out and stick their name on it and it was done. There wasn't that same questioning that I think we have now. I think it's easier for celebrities to pretend this with things like makeup and skincare than books. If it's a book, you have to say, I've always dreamed of being an author. My dream has been to write a book. I have been a bookworm since the minute I could read, it's all I did. All I did was read. Like a fiction book, right? And again, we're not talking about memoirs. A memoir is easy to justify, which is why there's lots of them. I just want to tell you about my life. But a fiction book, why did you want to do this? That's the question they're being asked. It's harder for them to justify. So where do we go from here? I said to you, celebrities are in fact writing books. They're writing fiction novels. I just wasn't finding them. So what has been happening from this shift in 2014? Enter David Walliams. I believe this is a cultural shift. I truly do. David Walliams is a UK comedian. He was a judge on Britain's Got Talent. He's a very famous UK comedian. His first book, The Boy in the Dress, came out in 2008. He has since become one of the three highest earning authors in the UK with his book sales totalling over 100 million. He's in the top 100 books in the UK. I tell you, if you're not from the UK, I don't think David Walliams literally has the success. But I think as we'll talk about, his success has dictated the trend that we've now seen with celebrities. When you go into a WH Smith and you go in the kids book section, it'll just be David Walliams and Harry Potter. I'm not kidding. That's all that will be there. I'm not a big fan of his books. I don't think I'd let my kids read them or I don't think I'd pick them out for them because I think there is some harmful dated stereotypes in them. But they're very popular. They're so popular. It's all the kids read. It's David Walliams, David Walliams. So turns out, all the celebrities are writing kids books. That's what they're doing. In terms of the UK, celebrities that have followed this mould of the David Walliams set, we have Tom Fletcher from McFly, who is a very popular band here. I loved him very much. And he writes a lot of kids books, such as the dinosaur who pooped a planet, I think, or something like that. It needed to. PO! PO! We have Lenny Henry. We have Stephen Mulhern. A lot of you won't know who Stephen Mulhern is, but he presents the sister show of the show that David Walliams hosted. So he's like, I see the success, let me dive in on it. This is a list from Romper of celebrities who have published children's books. Are you ready for this? We have Keith Richards, Kelly Clarkson, Metallica, Bruce Spingsteen, Whoopi Goldberg, Pharrell, Lupita Nyong'o, Jimmy Falun, Jimmy Kimmel, Kobe Bryant, Kristen Bell, Hilary Duff, Gabrielle Union, Lil Nas X, Jim Carrey, Ricky Gervais, Octavia Spencer, Julianne Moore, Marie Kondo, this typo is Natalie Portman, Viola Davis, the Bush sisters, Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, and the Clinton's cat. So they're all writing children's books. That's where they are. That is where the celebrity book market is now. A lot of these celebrities aren't children's celebrities, right? They're not people who are appearing on Disney or on, you know, kids TV shows and movies. They're the parent celebrities because that's where the money's being spent. They're for the parent audience. But I think writing children's fiction removes a lot of the barriers that we spoke about earlier for them to actually write it themselves. Some of these will be ghostwritten, but I think it actually removes a lot of the barriers we spoke about for them to not have a ghostwriter and thus be able to be held accountable or like responsible for writing these books. Firstly, it's easier. Not in terms of quality. I'm not saying, don't get, I'm not like dissing children's authors out there. But, you know, a lot of these are actually picture books. A lot of them are for very young children. So it's a lot easier in terms of time, not quality, I'm talking time, you know, for a celebrity to dedicate their time to this, to write a picture book than to write an 80,000 word novel. That's a very different talk in terms of commitment, right? The audience aren't gonna come at you online on Goodreads, give you a ---- rating if it's ---- because they can't, they're like three. And also you don't have to link it to your brand. You don't have to justify it to your brand, your personal branding, because it doesn't link to your audience as much. It links to a different audience, which is children. Andy Barr, who's a CEO and founder at 10 Yetis Digital, suggested the move could widen a star's potential reach to new and younger audiences. So this article that I read kind of spoke about how this is clever. I think it was an article about Idris Elba, who signed on to write a big children's series now. How it's clever because they're setting their audiences up for the future. I don't necessarily think this is a motivation because that's a lot of forward planning. If you're Idris Elba, I don't know if you need... Is he gonna be working in 20 years or is he gonna be living sweet, blissful retirement? I don't know. I don't know if I buy that argument. I think personally the bigger benefit is that it's a different audience where you don't have to make everything as personal to you as they did back in the day. So what are these books about, right? What are celebrities writing through our kids? There's a very interesting contrast to the ones I've looked at. The men's books are light-hearted, funny, haha, jokes, dinosaur poop on a planet. Do you know what I mean? Without much of a message. But the ones written by female celebrities often have a very strong message about identity or personal experience. Lou Peters' book is about colourism. Hilary Duff's book is about girls being able to dream big. But what this is doing is making it very difficult for non-celebrity children's authors. Book author and illustrator Chris Priestley told The Guardian it's a tricky time in publishing at the moment, saying he's met a lot of writers who have had harder times getting book deals than they did a decade ago. So not only are more and more celebrities taking over this market, the children's book market, thus kind of kicking out a lot of children's authors that already existed, celebrities are gonna get such a bigger advance than a non-celebrity author. Publishing houses are gonna pay them so much more money. And that does multiple things. Firstly, it means that they can pay less to non-celebrity authors. It means they can buy less books from non-celebrity authors. And it means the books they do buy, they're giving less marketing because they've spent so much money on the celebrity's book, they really need to push it. So that's the case with children's books, right? But however, I did find out in my research, there are some adult books being written by celebrities, but they all seem to be by men. I didn't read much about this in my research. It's something I've noticed. Now people could disagree with me on this. This isn't something I found consensus on because I don't know if people don't wanna write about this, but this is something I believe strongly in my core. We've transitioned from having books written by women from reality television who are perceived as being by society, not in my opinion, but being perceived by society as being bottom of the barrel for intelligence and for literary merit, right? That's what they're perceived as. In my opinion, celebrities having to prove their worth if they wanna write a book, justify them writing the book, justify publishers buying the books from them. And so publishing is buying books by intelligent men, intelligent male celebrities. Now we have the example of Richard Osman, who I obviously love Richard Osman's books, but I feel like he is a prime example of this. He's, if you don't know, in the UK, he's known for being very clever on British game shows, essentially. He's kind of like the expert on them. And obviously he's had such big success with Thursday Murder Club. They've been, I think, some of the biggest books, especially adult books, sold in the UK for many, many years. It's been like a roaring success. He's constantly top of the charts here in the UK. Eden Hawke wrote this book that got very high praise. He's another example. It was a fictitious account of a 15th century knight. He concocted a clever literary backstory of himself as like the descendant of this knight who was going through the documents. Other examples that we have are Graham Norton in the UK, Dermot O'Leary. This is a very UK specific phenomenon. I couldn't find as many US examples, but I think it's interesting also that, I've just realised this, all of these men are from forms of reality TV, entertainment TV. Graham Norton is a talk show host. They're all from that reality TV entertainment sphere, but they're like the straight man, you know? They're like the clever man. They're like the person on the other side. They're not the contestants. They're not the entertainment fodder like the women we saw writing were. Even Dolly Parton, queen lyricist Dolly Parton, when she wrote a book, she needed the validity of co-writing it with James Patterson. Now it couldn't be my choice, but that is the biggest female celebrity I can think of recently who published a fiction book and she co-wrote it with the man. Do you know what I mean? I feel like there's that validity at the moment in publishing where we've gone from female celebrities writing books to intelligent male celebrities. And I just think that's very interesting. So where do we go from here? If you studied your literary history, this is not new. Writing was originally for women. It was seen as lowbrow entertainment, you know, Jane Austen era. It was pretty much women, just women writing. Then Charles Dickens and his homies appear and for many, many years after that, women could not get access to writing. It suddenly switched to a man's game once it could be seen as intelligent. Kim Kardashian and Jane Austen, they're twinnies. This is history, in my opinion, repeating itself on a smaller scale and I think it is so interesting. You also have the issue of class and access that the more celebrities that write books and that's what the publishing house focuses on, the less money there is for non-celebrities. I'm not saying celebrities shouldn't write books at all. I'm really not saying that. I've never said that. I'm not saying these men shouldn't write books at all. I mean, look at Rich Rosman. My favorite book of last year was written by him, right? So I'm really not saying that, but I think observing these trends is interesting and perhaps acknowledging our role as consumers in this where if we're demanding that celebrities be literary masterpieces if they're gonna write a book, be great at writing, have this real deep love for their craft, write it themselves, be perceived as clever enough to write a book, not, you know, not have the criticism of, oh, you didn't write a book. It's just a cash grab, right? These men are seen as valid. They're seen as society and intelligent enough to do this. I think if we keep asking for that as consumers, I think we've contributed to that trend. I'm not saying Tyra Banks, Hilary Duff, Lauren Conrad are dumb. I'm not saying that. I'm saying it how it's socially perceived, that theirs was lesser and the celebrity males are greater if we're talking adult fiction, which I think is fascinating. And so I think there needs to be that recognition that by demanding all of these things that celebrities can only write books if they fulfill this criteria because of societally ingrained notions of some kind of female celebrities, that's gone out the window when once it was the main thing. So that concludes our discussion for today. I hope you found this interesting. I had a lot of fun researching it. I'm very excited to edit this video. So let me know your thoughts. I want to hear all of your thoughts on this discussion down below, what celebrity books you've read, what you think of celebrities writing books, what you think of celebrities now getting a greater and greater monopoly over the children's book space, which I think is incredibly interesting, particularly not even like middle grade, like young children's books. That's predominantly where these celebrities are writing for, what the effects of that are. I would love to know your thoughts down below. Please make sure to like the video because it helps me out so much and subscribe if you haven't already. If you've enjoyed this and hopefully if you guys enjoy this, I will be doing more video essays in the future. So thank you for spending your time with me and I will see you very soon. Bye.