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Taking the mic

25.09.08 Graeme Neill

If book sales have proven anything over the past few Christmasses, it is that the British public loves a laugh. According to Nielsen BookScan, value sales of humour books have almost trebled between 2001 and 2007 from £13,444,516 to £33,691,680. More than 40% of those sales in 2007 were achieved during the last four weeks of the year.

While humour now ranks alongside the heavyweight genres of cookery and biography at Christmas, it is only recently that contemporary comedians have turned their hands to telling their own stories, rather than writing more conventional humour titles. The results have led to comics claiming the Christmas number one slot for the past two years with Peter Kay's The Sound of Laughter (Arrow) chalking up sales of 794,808 by the end of 2006 and Russell Brand's My Booky Wook (Hodder & Stoughton), which sold 440,430 by the close of 2007.
This year sees an even heavier line-up of comic memoirs. Among those comedians being published are Paul O'Grady (Bantam), Dawn French (Century), Alan Carr (Harper Non-fiction) and Frank Skinner (Century). While Jonathan Ross is more of a chat-show host than a stand-up comedian, retailers see his outspoken nature moving his Bantam memoir more towards comedy than a conventional autobiography. "I think Jonathan Ross in particular has a great chance of doing well," says Amy Worth, lead account manager for books at Amazon UK.

Steph Bateson, books buyer at Asda, believes that these books provide something different than the "standard autobiography". As she says: "Their success is probably down to the familiarity of [the comedians] being in your living room most weeks. They seem to have more interesting stories to tell and are good storytellers by the very nature of what they do.
"If a publisher does a good job of capturing the voice like with Russell Brand or Peter Kay, then the book can be massive."

Laughing off the credit crunch
Agent Addison Cresswell runs Off the Kerb productions, which represents such comedians as Carr, Ross, Lee Evans and Dara O'Briain. He says he has seen a huge boom in comedy's popularity in recent years. This has proved extremely profitable to Cresswell and his clients, most notably when Cresswell negotiated Jonathan Ross' £18m pay deal with the BBC a couple of years ago. "It's cultural," he insists. "Comedy is always really popular when people are skint. They have no money so they want to stay in and have a laugh.

"The last big boom was during Thatcher's reign. Even though there were four million unemployed, you had the likes of the Comic Strip, and so many great comedians who went on to become household names. I think as the credit crunch gets worse, you will see more people come into the public eye."

Cresswell jokes that he has become more of a literary agent than a comedy one in recent years, given publishing's appetite for book deals. But he suggests that books have become as integral a part of a successful comedian's career as other media.

"The DVD was the market leader for so long," he says. "Typically, a comic would start out, do Edinburgh, and maybe a few chat or quiz shows, then a DVD would come out. Now with books, it's a totally different ball game. To be honest, there's more money to be made there than with a DVD—publishers pay good advances and books don't cost as much money as a DVD to produce."

Despite the success of Frank Skinner's first memoir in 2001, retailers and publishers agree that the comic memoir boom really began with Kay's The Sound of Laughter. As Cresswell quips, "God bless the fat man". Asda's Bateson says that Kay is a great example of how to successfully publish a comic memoir; make sure your author is fully in the public eye at time of publication, ensure the book captures their voice, and nail the jacket. Amazon's Worth says that people really identified well with Kay. "That's probably driven his success as a comedian as well," she says. "But The Sound of Laughter was also a great book."
Belinda Budge, managing director of Harper non-fiction, has the same view, saying that author visibility and timing are crucial to a book's success. "It's a great time for Alan Carr," she says. "‘The Friday Night Project' has become mainstream television. You need TV to really drive a book like this. That was true with the success of both Peter Kay and Russell Brand."

Peter Saxton, Waterstone's biography buyer, says another important factor behind Kay's success is his appeal across all ages. "I know children who know almost every word of Peter Kay's TV shows, but his stuff also appeals to older people," he says.

The same set of circumstances resulted in Russell Brand clinching Christmas number one last year, despite a delayed launch following Brand's insistence on perfecting the memoir. "That book's success was incredible," Budge says. "He was just everywhere this time last year."

Carr for Christmas?
So who will follow in Kay and Brand's footsteps? Bateson identifies Alan Carr as a writer who seems to be ticking the right boxes for sales success. "He's up and coming at the moment and the book has a brilliant jacket," she says. "He will be all over the media this autumn. He's popular and people just seem to like him."

Waterstone's Saxton agrees, adding that he is "in the ascendancy" as a celebrity. "He has that cheeky chappie appeal that older people enjoy as well," he says. "What I have seen of the book is very funny and well-written."

Budge says that Carr's book has a nostalgic feel similar to that of The Sound of Laughter. "They are both like your end-of-the-pier performers," she says. "It's got quite a middle-England safe touch to it. You could give it to your granny and she would like it because of the warm sense of nostalgia throughout the book."

Another comedian tipped for Christmas success is Paul O'Grady, whose eagerly anticipated autobiography was published last week. Bateson says a good indicator of its potential is that the unofficial John Blake biography had strong sales, shifting 68,433 copies through BookScan to 13th September. "It did amazingly well for us," she says. Transworld managing director Larry Findlay says that the book is "poignant but funny" and its nostalgic tone seems to follow on from Peter Kay.

He is also publishing Jonathan Ross' book, which he believes will be a hit with readers. "It's laugh-out-loud funny," he says. "He's been part of our lives for around 25 years from when he first appeared on television. He's hugely popular." However, while it proved a popular pick among retailers for Christmas success, some suggest that Ross' outspoken nature may count against him in sales. "It's a bit too clever but then again, that's him all over isn't it?" says one.

Meanwhile, Dawn French's Dear Fatty is being published by Century. "Not only is it very funny but it's an extremely strong woman's story," says publishing director Mark Booth. "I think what makes a great autobiography is someone being totally honest about themselves. Both Dawn and Frank Skinner do that. It's that combination of honesty and care for language which makes a good book."

While retailers are effusive about the standard of titles this year, Asda's Bateson suggests that the category might ironically be too strong this Christmas. "The only concern would be that there are several really strong titles out there so there may be only one purchase made out from the range," she says. "There is also wider competition among general humour books, too, whereas if you look at someone like Michael Parkinson [Parky: My Autobiography is out on 2nd October], there's not a lot of competition in that field."

Plans are already in place for next year's big titles, with Transworld's Findlay already talking up his book by Jack Dee. Steph Bateson says that Carr's partner in mirth, Justin Lee Collins, is a comic with potential for a book deal. Also due next year is HarperCollins' follow-up to Russell Brand's My Booky Wook.

"Who else will break out? Who knows?" says HarperCollins' Budge. "Isn't that the beauty of publishing? Who thought Russell Brand would have sold more than 500,000 
copies? I wouldn't have put my money on it."

Up and comers
The next time you are at a stand-up comedy gig, there may be several publishers in the crowd working. Both HarperCollins and Transworld sent staffers to attend the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year to scout out fresh talent. Winners of the Perrier Comedy Award—sponsored by Intelllgent Finance since 2006—have proved a veritable gold mine of literary talent with past winners including Frank Skinner, Stephen Fry and Al Murray. This year the prize was won by David O'Doherty for his show, "Let's Comedy".

Century publishing director Mark Booth says scouting out comedians is worthwhile. "There has been a lot of hoity-toity nonsense talked about celebrities writing their own books," he says. "But when it comes to comedians, not only do they write the book themselves, but they have this care for language that I think  matches any other genre."

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