Pippa Middleton gets £400,000 for a party planning book. Amusing assessment from the Independent :
The party tome is a classic Sudden Fame Cash-In Book, a low-brow genre even less dignified than the celebrity memoir. Whereas the latter tends to appear towards the end of a lengthy entertainment career, the former tends to be rushed out in haste soon after the author's first exposure to the public's gaze, for fear that their appeal may not survive the year.
The most recent example is Nancy Dell'Olio, who announced two weeks ago that she is to write a "lovers' guide" (with pictures of herself in saucy knickers). Ms Dell'Olio was known for years only as the hyper-maquillaged Italian girlfriend of the England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, but her celebrity was fast-tracked by her appearance on this year's Strictly Come Dancing.
An earlier example of the cash-in author, someone persuaded to produce a book despite having no particular talent or subject, was Christine Hamilton. Known only for her on-camera handbagging of Martin Bell during the 1997 election campaign, when he stood against her husband, Neil Hamilton, she was ridiculed by the press as a classic Tory harridan and Home Counties termagant. So, following the famous advice that when it's raining lemons you make lemonade, she published The Book of British Battleaxes.
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