Sunday 18 July 2010

How to write a best-seller

He is no. 1 in Amazon sales, he's being serialised in The Times and interviewed and reviewed just about everywhere, and his book signings are attended not just by punters but by photographers (serious ones, with those expensive cameras with long snouts) and reporters with fuzzy micrphones.

Are we all jealous? Of course we're not (well, we're not, are we?). But how has he done it? Well, without reading the book, but having heard about it and seen extracts, it seems that the recipe for success goes thus: firstly, you get a job in high political office, then you get sacked, then you return, get sacked again, return and are made a lord. Then (and here's the really clever bit) you publish your memoirs just when your old colleagues have lost power, slagging them off and reporting their private conversations, and hey presto! You have a best seller.

Now, why didn't I think of that?

4 comments:

  1. To think of all that you'd have to be Peter Mandelson and I'm not sure that would be a good idea, Frances...

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  2. Peter who?

    But perhaps you're right, Alis.

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  3. You've actually described my plan for success.

    I just haven't been very good at implementing it. And, for a Yank, getting made a Lord is a high hurdle.

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  4. I suppose 'as a Yank' you'd have to be THE Lord - a very big challenge indeed. But it would make one hell of a book. You might even out-sell Dan Brown...

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