Agent Peter H. McGuigan Predicts More Celebrity Books

Over the weekend, journalist Timonthy Egan begged publishers to stop giving multi-million dollar book advances to celebrities like Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. “Publishers: with all the grim news of layoffs and staff cuts at the venerable houses of American letters, can we set some ground rules for these hard times? Anyone who abuses the English language on such a regular basis should not be paid to put words in print,” he wrote of Palin.

As the recession deepens, this kind of big advance backlash will only increase. For a little bit of context, GalleyCat caught up with Peter H. McGuigan, founding partner at Foundry Literary + Media. McGuigan made big advance headlines when he sold Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World to Grand Central for $1.25 million.

In this new climate, McGuigan predicted more of the same:

“This is a much better time for celebrity books. Publishers are given much less leeway to exercise wistful thinking or dice rolling. Identifiable brand names are going to be able to sell. You say ‘Sarah Silverman‘ and everybody knows who you are talking about. Publishers are buying authors, but not books, in some cases. Sometimes, they will say, ‘This proposal is crap, but this person, this brand, is something bankable.’ So they’ll buy the book and deal with it later.”

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