Confused? We are too, especially because on December 3rd London’s TimesOnline carried two completely opposite stories on the same day! The first, Publishers Pay Big Money For Celebrity Memoirs — And Make Big Money by John Blake, said: “Big publishers are paying £1 million advances for celebrity memoirs. The author gets about 10 per cent of the cover price after the advance has been earned. So if a book is on sale for £20 they will have to sell 500,000 copies before the advance is paid off. Publishers will go into profit before this happens because they sell books for far more than they cost to produce.

Then came this story:`The lustre of celebrity memoirs is fading by Tom Baldwin and Tim Glanfield: “The lustre of celebrity memoirs, possibly the most reviled literary genre in history, is fading as publishers voice their alarm over returns from books that have been “authored” by star names to whom they have paid vast advances.”

So, which is it, people? And…any advice about what agents should tell their authors?

Richard Curtis