As publishers in the UK duck for cover what with ever-gloomy news about retail prospects for the Christmas season, Hachette UK CEO told Publishing News that much of the blame falls upon the clamor for celebrity biographies. "The big money that is being paid for celebrities and footballers has brought more authors into the market with the result that there are fewer copies being sold," Tim Hely Hutchinson said. "If you have 50 or 100 celebrity biographies out there, the public aren't going to buy all of them. There are publishers who are sitting on advances of 1m pounds – and sales of 100,000 copies are not enough for [such an] advance. I think there are publishers who are going to have their fingers burnt and I think that after Christmas we are all going to have to assess how much we pay for those books."

What Hutchinson neglected to mention is that Headline might well burn their fingers even more after signing up producer and Liza Minelli ex-hubby David Gest to write his memoirs. And as for book retail, analyst Nick Bubb told PN it's not doing too badly, compared with other sectors. "Relatively speaking the overall book market is in better shape than many other retail sub-sectors, in that it is seeing some modest sales growth. The problem, of course, is that the overall growth in the market is being led by Amazon and Tesco and so the High Street specialists are still under pressure, particularly as WHSmith is fighting its corner aggressively. My impression is that Borders' sales are holding up better than Waterstones'."