Books worth big bucks

Book advances have skyrocketed in recent years. Barely a week passes without some publisher gambling huge sums on an unknown they hope will be the next JK Rowling, Zadie Smith or Dave Pelzer. Debut children's novelist Lady Georgia Byng received £1 million for Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism, while Charles Frazier, whose first novel, Cold Mountain, topped the charts worldwide, barely needed to touch his keyboard before publishers paid £5 million for a second novel on the basis of a one-page synopsis.

But while the rewards may be great if a title catches fire, a book that bombs not only leaves a dent on the balance sheet, it leaves egg on the face of the publisher, as Anthea Turner's straight-to-remainder autobiography testifies.

It is, though, less of a lottery than one would expect. When acquiring a book, publishers reduce the odds through informed judgment based on a book's quality, the profile of the author and the track record of similar titles. But track records can be misleading, especially in the fiction market, says Carole Welch of Hodder and Stoughton, and it can be hard to discern a one-hit wonder from a niche creator.

If a book does well, editors rush to supply the next hit in that market, driving up advances. This has happened with children's authors, thanks to the demand for titles that will cross over into the adult market and succeed JK Rowling and Philip Pullman. Last week US publisher Talk Miramax announced it had paid $3 million to British fantasy writer Jonathan Stroud for a trilogy as yet to be written.

It is easy to get carried away, admits Welch: "We all do it at auctions, start low, and then, because it is a new, high-profile book, persuade ourselves that we can sell more than we really can."

One would expect non-fiction to be an easier call but even in the world of celebrity, a regular spot on the cover of Hello! is no guarantee of book sales for the author. So what makes a memoir sell? Suffering, says Alan Samson, editorial director of Time Warner Books, which published Anne Robinson's at times harrowing confessional.

Buddy-buddy anecdotes such as Bruce Forsyth's memoir last year, for which he received £750,000, have fallen from favour with readers, who now want gritty revelations, epitomised by Pamela Stephenson's biography of Billy Connolly and the proposed biography of John Thaw by his widow, Sheila Hancock, bidding for which continues but has reached £1 million.

The cause of all this suffering is the rise of misery fests such as Dave Pelzer's abuse memoir. "The mould for memoirs has been broken by Pelzer, where you have a sense of the obstacles the personality has overcome," says Alan Samson.

It seems readers want to identify with their heroes. The estimated £600,000 paid by Hodder to TV's Richard and Judy will reap dividends if they are open about their personal lives, such as Judy's health, Richard's shoplifting episode and their marriage. If they remain safe and saccharin, Hodder's gamble may backfire.

The appetite for the personal applies equally to politicians' memoirs. It makes them approachable. John Major, Mo Mowlam and Betty Boothroyd pass what publishers describe as the Provinces Test: personalities who epitomise the values of people beyond the M25.