Plenty of celebs produce and sell their own make-up, perfume, clothes, shoes, etc. But some celebs decide to go into publishing, either getting their own imprint under an already established publisher like Penguin and HarperCollins, or simply founding their own independent press, and publishing whatever they want to.
Here's a list of celebs who got into publishing and the kind of books they put out.1. Sarah Jessica ParkerSarah runs
SJP for Hogarth, an imprint of Penguin Random House, which publishes
literary fiction. Her first published title was
"A Place for Us", by Fatima Farheen Mirza, in 2018, about an Indian-American Muslim family ("a moving portrait of what it means to be an American family today, a novel of love, identity and belonging").
Parker is passionate about books and is
VERY involved in her imprint, reading the manuscripts that are submitted and making offers, meeting authors, travelling to bookseller conventions, coming up with cover ideas and attending marketing meetings. She has also been tireless in her promotion of the book, using her social media, doing interviews and even participating in podcasts. "A Place for Us" became an instant
bestseller. No word yet on what will be the next title on the SJP list.
2. Keanu Reeveshttps://instagram.com/p/Bfo0OCOFiY1
https://instagram.com/p/BjRWVFNhUy5
Immortal prince Keanu Reeves and the visual artist Alexandra Grant have
their own publishing house (not just an imprint), X Artists’ Books. They publish "artists' books and collaborations", or as the NY Times calls it,
"aggressively esoteric titles", including “The Words of Others”, by the Argentine artist León Ferrari, a
"1967 polemic against the Vietnam War and American imperial politics" and “(Zus)”,
"a visual essay by the French photographer Benoît Fougeirol with text by Jean-Christophe Bailly, structured around the 11 'Zones urbaines sensibles' of Paris’s banlieues that presents the Brutalist peripheries as a failure of both the state and imagination" (
whew).
Keanu and Grant make most business decisions together, including what to publish, but they don't have a steady output because they don't accept submissions or work with agents, preferring to go after artists themselves and discover "secret" books that "may seem unpublishable".
3. Lena DunhamDunham has a publishing imprint called
Lenny Books (w/ Jenni Konner) under Random House, since 2017. Lenny Books has three titles under their belt so far and there are no signs that they are stopping.
"Sour Heart" by Jenny Zhang is a collection of short stories about Chinese-American girls growing up in New York. OP remembers this being in loads of "best releases" lists last year but weirdly without mention of it being associated with Lena?
"Courage is Contagious, and Other Reasons to be Grateful for Michelle Obama", a book of essays celebrating Michelle Obama, and
"Providence" by Caroline Kepnes (best-selling author of the horror novel "You", currently being adapted with the Gossip Girl guy), a modern retelling of H.P. Lovecraft’s horror tale “The Dunwich Horror,” about a man who becomes a monster with destructive powers.
4. Viggo MortensenViggo has
his own independent press, Perceval Press, which focuses on art, leftist politics and poetry, since 2002. The NY Times once called him an
"indie publishing mogul". The print runs are small, there is no real advertising, and the books are available primarily online from the press' website.
Mortensen is
very involved with the press, collaborating with the author to choose exactly the right kind of paper, the cover, etc, and he personally goes through each title with "a fine-toothed comb" before publication.
Titles include "The Mark of Cain" by Alix Lambert, a book/film about
Russian criminal tattoos, "El Nuevo Arte Cubano", a collection of critical essays deals with
Cuban Art in the Período Especial (1987-present), and "Hijos de la Selva", which "outlines the story of German Ethnographer and explorer Max Schmidt, and includes many of the remarkable photographs that he made in the field while studying
the cultures of the Mato Grosso region of Brazil and remote areas of Paraguay between 1900 and 1935".
5. Gwyneth PaltrowPaltrow has a publishing
imprint under Grand Central Publishing and Hachette, called
goop press, since 2015. goop press basically publishes Gwyneth's own books (she's written 3 recipe books, "It's All Good", "It's All Easy", "My Father's Daughter") and self-help titles by Goop-approved doctors and gurus.
Titles include
"The Sex Issue", by the editors of Goop ("Throughout the book you’ll find
goopasutra-style takes on the reality of experiences ranging from plain vanilla to ménage à trois, plus
personal anecdotes from the goop team"), and
"The Postnatal Depletion Cure", by Dr. Oscar Serrallach
(about a condition the medical community doesn't recognize, but which the author is selling $90 vitamin supplements to treat, through Goop of course).
6. Jack WhiteIn 2014, Jack White started
Third Man Books, his own indie publishing house. He publishes poetry books, children's books (there is
a very cute children's book based on the White Stripes song "We're Going to be Friends"), music books (including
"TOTAL CHAOS: The Story of The Stooges / As Told By Iggy Pop"), and has lately acquired the rights to print in the US the award-winning historical fiction novel
"The Gallows Pole" by UK author Benjamin Myers.
Sometimes the books come with vinyls! They have a large list and show no signs of slowing down.
7. Johnny DeppThe
elderly windchime has (had?) his own imprint, Infinitum Nihil, under Harper Collins since 2012. He appears to have published four books, the first being “House of Earth,” a novel set in Dust Bowl America, by the folk singer Woody Guthrie with a foreword by Depp himself
(Guardian review: "very little happens in it, and there's not much social or political context either").
From what OP could discover,
the imprint doesn't seem to be active anymore, since the last book that it published is from 2015 and there is no official website.
The endeavor seems to have been a flop.sources 123456789101112ONTD, if you were a publisher, what kind of books would you choose to publish? [feel free to use this post as a book post]