Celebrity biographies take on a life of their own

LONDON, Dec 28 (Reuters) Scores of familiar faces stare out from bookshops across Britain this Christmas as the nation's obsession with fame inspires a record number of celebrity autobiographies, industry experts say.

From style queen Victoria Beckham to reality television star Pete Bennett, everyone who is anyone appears to be putting their life story into print, often for huge sums of cash and typically with a ghost writer to pen the words.

Saturation of the market, however, means that several titles, such as soccer player Ashley Cole's ''My Defence'' and ''Living the Dream'' by reality TV winner Chantelle Houghton, have not done as well as expected, said Neill Denny, editor-in-chief of industry magazine the Bookseller.

''There are more celebrity books around now than ever before,'' Denny said. ''There have been 50 to 60 (different) celebrity books in the shops over the last six months. Some of these have flopped, while some have been very successful.'' Out in front is comedian Peter Kay's ''The Sound of Laughter'', which sold more than 580,000 copies by mid-December, followed by ''Humble Pie'' by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, which sold about 234,000, according to the latest Bookseller figures.

''Publishing is all about throwing something at the wall and seeing what sticks,'' Denny said.

'BIG BROTHER' EFFECT Autobiographies and biographies of noted individuals have existed for centuries but the genre has opened up in recent years to include increasingly youthful and lesser-known stars.

Critics say celebrities such as footballer Wayne Rooney, 21, and Bennett, the 24-year-old Tourette's Syndrome sufferer who won this year's ''Big Brother'' show, are too young to be selling their memoirs.

Andrew Croft, who ghost-wrote Bennett's autobiography, disagrees.

''This is the new generation. Somebody like Pete or (model Katie Price, formerly known as) Jordan, they are very different and very interesting,'' he told Reuters.

They key is finding a celebrity with a good story rather than someone who is simply famous, a fact that publishers are learning through trial and error, the experts said.

Publisher John Blake opened the floodgates to celebrity autobiographies in 2004 with the surprise success of ''Being Jordan'', the story of Price, now 28, who gave birth to a disabled child and had been linked to a series of men.

Blake, a former tabloid journalist, said he agreed to do the book after bigger publishing houses turned their noses up at it.

Just before it was published, Price captured the public's imagination on reality TV show ''I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here'' where she met her future husband, singer Peter Andre.

Suddenly everybody loved her. The autobiography, penned by a ghost writer, flew off the shelves in Britain at a faster rate than former US president Bill Clinton's memoirs, Blake said. It has sold about 950,000 copies in hard back so far.

Such a hit caught other publishers off guard.

''They are steaming in and paying crazy advances'' for any celebrity story, Blake told Reuters in an interview, noting that publishers Random House beat him in an auction for Price's follow-up book, offering her 400,000 pounds (786,000 dollar). He paid Price just 10,000 pounds in advances for the first title.

Now that books are stocked by supermarkets, customers who may have felt intimidated by traditional bookstores are now tempted to throw a copy of a successful autobiography in the trolley as they do their weekly shopping, the experts said.

While the variety of celebrity books may be a record, a spokeswoman at bookstore chain Waterstones noted that sales in the overall biography/autobiography genre had remained fairly steady since 2001 at between six and seven million copies a year.

Reuters BDP GC0923