Smash hit

Being Jordan went on to sell more than half a million copies. A sequel appeared this year, and Price, or her ghostwriter, is now, inevitably, writing a novel.

The celebrity-powered book is not new. We have always been interested in famous people telling us their secrets, the more salaciously the better. Yet there is no doubt that as the grip of celebrity culture has tightened so an autobiography has become a required part of the intense (and lucrative) relationship between famous people and their audiences.

In Piper’s words: “I’ve a few good stories I’d like to share . . . Things I’m hoping lots of people can relate to and even be inspired by.”

The celebrity autobiography is a way of binding celebrities to their fan base. Many of the hundreds of reader reviews that flood on to Amazon.com for every celebrity memoir are highly personal, directly addressed to the author, a way of bonding with the famous, of Keeping it Real, to quote the title of Jodie Marsh’s autobiography, when this imagined relationship is, of course, utterly unreal.

In the words of Andrew Morton, whose book about the Beckhams sold more than 100,000 copies, “people want to know what makes the famous and infamous tick, how they became who they are and the good and bad choices they made along the way”.

Even if a celebrity author does not appear to tick in any meaningful way beyond essential biology, they can still write an autobiography. The divine Jade Goody parlayed being “an escape goat” on Big Brother (her own words) into 288 pages of memoir, with a blurb promising: “Every aspect of her life has been a source of fascination — from being abandoned by her father and living with a lesbian mother, to her volatile relationship with her exboyfriend Jeff . . .” Jade: My Autobiography is now at No 15 on the Amazon bestseller list.

In one sense, the market for celebrity autobiography reflects the changing economics of book publishing. With the end of the net book agreement in 1995, books could be sold in volume at supermarkets at the lowest prices. People who might not often go to a bookshop began buying books as part of the groceries. Tesco and Asda are now the biggest booksellers in Britain.

Traditionalists argue that Goody’s gripping account of the time her mum’s bed caught fire is driving out literature of a higher brow. But this is to assume that reading is a zero-sum game. In fact, the entire book market may be expanding, thanks to the intensely fertile collision of television celebrity and literature.

Nicholas Clee, a writer and former editor of The Bookseller, points out that celebrity books have become part of British “water-cooler” culture, while Richard and Judy’s television book club has expanded reading in new directions. “There is a big, new, middle market as well as a downmarket market,” Clee says. “Books have retained their currency. They haven’t been sidelined by celebrity culture, but are integral to it.”

“Bigger,” Jordan writes, at her most philosophical, “is definitely better.” And that may apply to book sales too.

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