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There will be blood on bookshop floors this Christmas as chavs, led by celebrity car-crash Kerry Katona, and national treasures, led by Michael Palin, scrap it out for the top spot in the festive book charts. Publishers have gambled heavily on an estimated 60 celebrity memoirs, ranging from Terry Wogan (price tag pounds 1m) to Big Brother winner Pete Bennett (price tag pounds 1m) that they hope will take the lion's share of a market that, at its peak, is worth pounds 10m a week.
With only a handful of celebs selling their stories for less than six figures, publishers sound understandably nervous when asked to predict the winners. "Who do you think will do well?" is the inevitable reply to the question. HarperCollins's Trevor Dolby is candid: "If I knew how to predict one I would be arichman." Dolby backed Pete Bennett's book, which is being turned around in six weeks. He has been an astute judge in the past: this summer he published Jade Goody's chart-topping autobiography.
The public is notoriously fickle in its affections' who can forget Anthea Turner's sudden descent from national sweetheart to national joke when her autobiography bombed? Books that dominate headlines when serialised can fail to shift in anything like the numbers expected - as happened to Edwina Currie's Diaries following the revelation of her affair with John Major.
The biggest problem facing publishers is that the maj ority of Christmas book buyers buy books once a year, making second-guessing their taste impossible. But Christmas has the power to turn a publisher into a profitable winner or ailing loser: traditionally, November and December are responsible for a third of the annual turnover of bookshop chains like W H Smith.
Celebrity autobiographies will take by far the biggest chunk of those sales, according to Jeremy Neate, head of research at Nielsen BookScan, which produces the charts. "The market for autobiographies rockets at Christmas to eight times its value for the rest of the year," he explains. "Most of the year, autobiographies, which are dominated by celebrities, are worth about half a million a week, then in September they rise to pounds 1m a week, but by Christmas they are selling pounds 10m a week." In comparison, biographies and...