Pippa Middleton

Books — staid and intellectual cultural artifacts that they so often are — were not all just staid or intellectual this year. Not nearly. There were, in fact, scandals, at least a few of them surrounding books and their authors and publishers, and there were times in which discussions of books and the business grew dramatic and tension-filled. Near-scandals! Other times, these conversations were simply very, very interesting, full of twists and turns, much like a good book.

Even Pippa Middleton is not immune to book sales woes. As widely reported, sales of Pippa's book — even with the best distribution, publicity and name recognition — have fallen flat. If her sales are disappointing, what can authors who do not have the benefit of famous relatives or name recognition do to sell books?

For most authors, book sales are an important part of why they write a book. They want to entertain, educate, inspire or simply share their artistic work — and perhaps make money from the venture.

 Penguin has released a visual of the front cover of Pippa Middleton’s party planning guide, Celebrate, with the author promising it will be "a useful and practical journey into British-themed occasions."

Michael Joseph will release the book in hardback on October 25th, at a price of £25.


Profits at the book publisher Penguin slumped by almost 50% in the first six months, thanks in part to the runaway global success of EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey, which is published by a rival, Vintage Books.

The runaway success of Fifty Shades and The Hunger Games helped cut sales at Penguin by 4% to £441m and its adjusted operating profit down 48% to £22m.

If you have anything to do with the book industry, you are probably nauseated by the mere mention of that industry's annual tradeshow, which started on Monday and wraps up today.  But not everyone is some sort of book fanatic—some people just read books and are innocent about the disgusting process that brings them into being, like little children who don't know that babies are generated via

More Blogs