How much would you spend on a joke stocking-filler? £5 £10 £15? Not much more than that, surely, the ways things are at present. This vacuous question was prompted by yesterday’s astonishing news that Penguin has apparently paid Pippa Middleton a £400,000 advance for a book on party giving, working title: How to be the Perfect Party Hostess.
The Guardian’s Alison Flood relates how there was a ‘fierce bidding war by some of Britain’s largest publishers’ over Middleton’s first book, with Random House overwhelmed by Penguin at the eleventh hour.
As Flood says, publishers obviously have faith in Middleton’s winning smile, so much faith in fact that they expect her to sell glossy tomes. The Bookseller reports that the books will be published next autumn in ‘high-production hardback, in the style of Nigella Lawson’. Behind that quote echoes the unmistakable sound of a TV pitch to coincide with the Christmas party season.
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