Lorraine Kelly on Woman's Hour, plugging her new novel...

Unfortunately, the reason those ‘lucky to be published’, unknown authors then remain unknown is usually because there’s pretty close to zero spend on PR for their book launch, because it’s all gone to the celebrity launches who didn’t particularly even need it.

Then those celebrities get to appear on every book podcast, radio show, maybe even a few TV shows here and there, and hog all the space in supermarkets, the windows and front tables in Waterstones, and WH Smith and so on and so on.

Meanwhile the unknown author is having to work two or three jobs just to carry on writing and probably finding out that she never did stand a chance of being even in store anyway, because guess what, they’re only releasing the ebook version. Even if that’s not what got sold to them at the beginning, when accepting a publishing deal.

So I’m not sure many authors are particularly enthralled by the idea that the celebrity book releases are bankrolling theirs. They’d probably get better investment and returns if they sat in the street with a bowl.

Cross-post with @Morwenscapacioussleeves !

If the cap fits...

I haven't thoroughly sampled Walliams' output to know whether he bores children to death, but I notice he's monopolised supermarket children's sections. Of the two books of his that entered this house, they proved unpopular. I certainly wasn't going to waste any of my money finding out if they were outliers.

My most recent bugbear is actually Greg James. The bookworm child who reads on the walk back from school insisted on wasting his own birthday money on one of his, because the blurb and cover made it sound exciting. He couldn't manage it past a chapter, and he reads everything. He's read enough books he loved to simply dismiss Greg James as terrible and unrepresentative of children's literature, but what about children who aren't established bookoholics?

Damn you, WHSmiths, for your product placement of total tosh.

😂
I have absolute bookworm children & my lovely (non reader) MIL routinely buys them books she sees in the supermarket for birthdays & at the right age they have been given Walliams which they have all declared to be utterly horrible/awful/unreadable.

Aka couldn't agree with you more Potholes

Are we talking David Walliams here by any chance?!

Celebrity novels may be guaranteed to sell, but they're not guaranteed to be read, and I have a particular issue with that in relation to children's literature. Obviously it doesn't matter if adults buy terrible celebrity books for themselves and then never read them. It's their money and their decision.

Within children's lit, the celebrity vanity projects crowd out the books that would actually make children enthusiastic about reading, and that has long-term impact on children's futures. Parents, schools and libraries have limited budgets and once the book budget has been spent on a selection of poorly-plotted books with exciting covers, it's gone.

It just takes a few terrible books in a row for children to decide that reading is boring, and that all books forever will be boring.

There's no reason why celebs can't be good novelists - or even so-so or bad writers who nonetheless get great sales (see Walliams) - and there is an argument that celebs who are guaranteed to sell whatever dross they turn out, actually help to fund publishers to take risks on new unknown authors.

Couldn't agree more; am getting so fed up of celebrities churning out books and taking up bookshelf space. I make a deliberate attempt to seek non-celeb books that have good reviews etc. As for LK, I've never been a fan (she seems inauthentic to me) and this latest posturing just puts me off even more.
When you think of it most celebrities probably start as avid readers given that their minds are probably more creative (drama). There’s some good offerings out there, you should try a few

It is known in the horse world that geldings tend to be taller than stallions, and there is a correlation between height and the age that colts are castrated (tallest if gelded under 12 months).

I would rather be talking about horse bollocks than reading anything by Lorraine Kelly.

Can someone with photoshop skills change it to

The Isla Swimmer

With that pic of Isla Bryson.

Even the subtitle is perfect - Once the tide turns you can't hold it back.

No you can't. 😂

Yes, exactly.

That's bizarre. If I were Magnus Linklater I'd be a bit freaked out by this (unless they're friends, and it's some kind of tribute).

I mean, some adult males are 5’4” so it’s not impossible. But it’s so clearly shoehorned in, in a hapless attempt to make us NOT think of a TW as a hulking and intimidating, or just male-seeming, figure like so many of those who publicise themselves or end up in the news for unsavoury reasons. Which kind of just goes to show that’s an image that came to LK herself too.

Most of the comments on this thread are better written than that extract.

Here’s a peak (Google books).

Wincing. So Magnus managed to go through male puberty and still ended up five foot four as "Freya"?

I read ALL of these when I was 14.

For someone who doesn’t watch Lorraine and has very little interest in her, that account is hilarious! Thanks!

I love the X account "where is Lorraine" which documents how many of her own shows she misses. The current stats are 70.5% attendance so far this year 🤣

Also I'm not on board with calling her evil! What's that about!? I mean she might be but that's a bit of an unproven accusation. I think she's badly misinformed, incurious and lacking in critical thinking skills, like so many celebs on this bandwagon. And maybe she's self-centred and ruthless - a lot of famous/successful people are. But implying she's a witch who'd bite off your finger and worse - steady on! Even if you think that, the woman's got money and lawyers (and maybe even human feelings) and I don't think you should say it.

I think it kind of makes sense that she was a journalist, as there's a formula for writing TV and local news stories, especially positive/lifestyle ones, and cliches are part of the style. It's not that she can't string a sentence together, it's that the explication and didacticism are so clunky and the characters and dialogue are so unrealistic (at least from that one-page excerpt) - and any thought to what those characters would actually be like in reality is sacrificed to making a point. I don't know when LK thinks the gender ideology she's now espousing became a big thing, but older people in remote parts of Scotland more than 10-15 years ago would at least have given a 15yo boy "coming out" as a girl a mixed reception, if any of therm were on board, and probably still aren't all on the same page today. They wouldn't be universally "ah well Magnus always wore girls' clothes and now we know she's a girl it all makes sense! So sorry if we accidentally misgender you, we're old you know." Implication: Aren't old rural scottish folks the salt of the earth!? If you don't feel the same about a teenage boy heading down the road to castration with no one even checking whether that's a great idea, shame on you!

When you feel a book is preaching at you, it's offputting anyway, and even worse if it's unrealistic.

However this thread has educated me that Anton du Beke is a novelist! I had no idea!

That makes it worse, that it's so poorly written.

But also you can be good at writing but terrible, creatively, at writing a novel.

I bet readers just pick it up straight after finishing the latest Anton du Beke book. A nice read where you don’t miss a plot point while also watching QVC at the same time.

What I find interesting is that this didn't come up at all when she was on radio 2 this week!

That writing is awful and also seems to correlate being fat with being female??

Probably won’t read the book but LK does have a writing background. She worked as a journalist on newspapers and in TV production for many years before her big break in days when those industries were v tough for women.