(Celebrity Autobiography – Kristen Wiig reads Suzanne Somers)

Okay, celebrities are allowed to write or “write” via a ghost writer about their lives because that is in keeping with their role as public figures. But all this business of celebrities writing “novels” and self-help books and children’s books? It has got to stop.

Why? Well for one thing, it squeezes good writers out of publishing and furthers the idea that you have to be famous (i.e. have a big platform) to garner the kind of book sales that the corporate structure of most major publishing houses demand. But there’s another good reason celebrities should not write books–they suck at it.

When unqualified people write books, you end up with situations like Jennifer Love Hewitt’s new book, The Day I Shot Cupid, or Hello, My Name Is Jennifer Love Hewitt, And I’m A Love-aholic. In this book, Hewitt helps other “lova-aholics” … I’m not sure. Find true love? Learn how to love themselves? Something like that. You know, because Jennifer Love Hewitt totally has it together, which is why she broke up with her boyfriend the same week her book on love came out.

NPR has a hilarious article on Hewitt’s book by Linda Holmes titled “Ten Things I Read In Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Book That Are Not Hallucinations.” A sampling:

1. On page two of the introduction, the word “TRUTH” (in all caps, thusly) is followed by 23 exclamation points. On page three of the introduction, the word “love” is followed by five question marks. Two sentences later, the word “CUPID” is followed by two exclamation points. Three pages into the book — pages of the introduction, which comes after the preface — you’re already basically reading the late stages of an Internet message-board meltdown.

and:

4. “This is embarrassing and personal, but once a month, since I was twelve years old, I go to my favorite jewelry store and try on my dream ring.” She is 31 years old. If this is true, she has made roughly 225 trips to the jewelry store to try on engagement rings. I do not know where to go with this.

Jennifer Love Hewitt is why I find it depressing that publishers let celebrities write. She has nothing to say, she doesn’t know how to use words to express herself, and she comes off as naive at best, stupid at worst. The only reason she is writing a book is because they think her name will sell it.

Maybe I should have more of a sense of humor about this celebrity-book-writing trend, because no serious reader is going to want a book by Jennifer Love Hewitt, so what’s the harm? But there is harm. Every book with her name on it takes bookstore shelf space away from a real writer. Every end cap devoted to her book could be used to promote a good book instead. That’s dumb.

And there is another, more insidious problem here. Most major publishers are owned by the same companies that own all our music, movie, and television studios. For example, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s book was published by Hyperion Books, which in turn is a division of Disney-ABC Television Group, which is a division of The Walt Disney Company, which practically owns the whole world. Lauren Conrad recently wrote a novel for HarperCollins, which is a division of News Corporation, the world’s second-largest media conglomerate behind The Walt Disney Company. It owns Fox News, 20th Century Fox Studios, MySpace, Hulu, etc. etc. etc. You’ve heard of Rupert Murdoch? That guy’s company.

It’s not so much that these media conglomerates are trying to achieve brand synergy by publishing books (although that may be their original intention when acquiring the publishers) as that book publishing has long been the under-performing branch of these companies, and that has not gone unnoticed.

If you ask me, book publishing isn’t cut out for the corporate structure, which says that you have to do better and better every quarter or your stock prices are going to drop and your board of directors is going to be pissed. So instead of having a lot of modestly performing books with a few drops here and there but a general improvement in sales over time–which seems to me the way publishing worked in the past–now publishers have to show a profit every single quarter. Therefore, they are constantly looking for the next Twilight or The Da Vinci Code so they can get the kind of insane sales numbers that make rich white men happy.

This problem is, it’s hard to predict the next Twilight or The Da Vinci Code. No one really knows what the next trend in publishing is going to be because no one really knows what the public wants to read. (For the record, the public doesn’t know what it wants to read either.) JK Rowling was turned down by 12 publishers before she sold Harry Potter. It’s not that those publishers were stupid so much as that this is a very hard industry to place bets on. Most blockbuster books come as a complete surprise to publishing experts.

So how to fill the gap while you’re groping around in the dark for the next Twilight? Publish good writing and give the books a proper marketing push? No, noooo, you have to get that quarterly profit margin up, remember? You need books that sell, and now. So what’s a publisher to do?

Let Jennifer Love Hewitt write a book. That’s what.

Yeah maybe publishing her contributes to the dumbing down of our culture. Maybe it further glorifies the idea that packaging is more important than content. Maybe it is knowingly putting dreck into the world for the sake of a quick buck. But her name guarantees a certain number of sales, and that is the important part.

And it works. Kanye West may freely admit that he hates books while on book tour for a book that he wrote, but people will still buy his book because his name is on it. Recently Lauren Conrad did a book signing at my local bookstore and the line of teenagers who came to see her stretched three city blocks. That book was also a NYTimes best seller for I don’t know how many weeks.

I think publishers have a hard job and really, I can’t blame them for trying to serve their corporate overlords. But I also think that cashing in on celebrity culture is short-sighted and accounts for certain trends in publishing, like why independent publishers fared better in the recession compared to their corporate counterpoints. Independents are closer to the original model of publishing I mentioned before. They are a. putting out smaller books, which means it doesn’t hurt as badly if a book fails and b. they are putting out more artistically exciting books.

That last point is key. Independent presses put out the books that the big houses will no longer take a chance on (because, in part, their marketing/publishing dollars are tied up in Jennifer Love Hewitt instead), books that are interesting and complex and fun and just plain good. By doing so, independents are filling a niche in the marketplace that the big houses are starting to ignore. While the person who buys one book every three years might want a book by a celebrity, the person who buys many books a year want stories that enrich their lives, move them, and make them think. You know, good writing.

So, if your business is selling books, tell me–which customer does it make the most sense to serve?