From today's Times

[Alan Ford]

> Who's got the X Factor?
> John Peel's memoirs v Sharon Osbourne? Danuta Kean assesses the book
trade's
> tips for the big Christmas sellers
>
>
> ONLY A FOOL WOULD PREDICT what will top the book charts this Christmas,
but
> I am going to do it anyway. No 1 in the bestseller lists on Christmas Day
> 2005 will be John Peel's Margrave of the Marshes, part-autobiography,
> part-memoir by his wife Sheila. It will sell in shedloads.
> If I am wrong I will not be alone. Ask any bookseller. The Peel memoir,
they
> all say, will be a shoo-in. It has the "tingle factor", says the
independent
> bookseller Elaine Silverwood, of Silverdell Books in Kirkham, Lancashire.
"I
> was at a booksellers' conference when his publisher showed a short film
> about the book and my spine was tingling." Silverwood's tingles are worth
> knowing: she helps to pick the books that appear in your local bookshop
> Christmas catalogue and claims to have spotted the Calendar Girls'
potential
> way before the press noticed.
>
>
> Transworld, which paid �1.4 million for the book, will be relieved. The
> festive Top 10 is notoriously hard to predict, as HarperCollins, which
paid
> �600,000 for Jon Snow's autobiography last year, or Time Warner, which
paid
> �400,000 for Anthea Turner's disastrous memoir Fools Rush In, blushingly
> recall.
>
> With an audience that stretches from the Glastonbury mosh pit to Home
Truths
> grannies, Peel's appeal is obvious. The chances of it turning into a
turkey
> are slim. Booksellers are less certain about the expensively acquired
> memoirs of another household name, Sharon Osbourne's Extreme, for which
Time
> Warner paid �2 million.
>
> For industry insiders, Peel's safe bet takes some of the fun out of the
> sales season. But there may yet be a tough competitor if Thomas Harris's
> prequel to the Hannibal Lecter series, Behind the Mask, materialises.
>
> Full article here:
>
> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-1771659,00.html
>
>
> Alan
>
>
>