The Rest Is Entertainment - How To Publish A Bestseller

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

What happens in the week of a major book being published? Richard gives the inside track as this week his new book 'We Solve Murders' is released worldwide. Marina and Richard are also talking, in the wake of the fake Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce relationship contract, fake romances aka 'showmances'. What is a 'showmance' and when did they begin? Richard also takes us inside his favourite TV show... Nothing To Declare. Recommendations: Marina: Only Murders In The Building (Disney +) Richard: The Siege - Ben Macintyre (read) Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie  It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Redeem data in 1GB increments. Save by mixing to lower cost plan and supplementing with rolled data. Downgrades effective following month. Full terms at Sky.com/mobile. Fastest growing 2021 to 2023. Verify at sky.com/mobileclaims. For more information about how you can use Snapchat Family Centre to help your teenagers stay safe online visit https://parents.snapchat.com/en-GB/parental-controls Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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$49 annual fee applies. See Home Club for details. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osborne. Hi Marina. Hello, you're in Birmingham. I am. I'm in Birmingham. I'm in the offices of Heart and Smooth. And you're at the Goalhanger, like the Goalhanger HQ.

Oh yeah, I'm at the mothership. What's it like? I'm gathering a large amount of intelligence with which we can have a full debrief later. I always assume it's very Bunga Bunga like there. Oh yes, constant parties I think. Yes, I think it's very much like that. It's in a very big sort of working complex with all sorts of people. So when I know more, so will you, Richard.

Is it like Tom Hanks' flat in Big? Yeah. I mean, of course there's pinball machines and stuff. I've had to push them all out of shot because I just thought it lowered the tone. Linaclan and trampoline. Yeah, it's just over there. What are we talking about this week? Well, I think we are going to talk about fake celebrity romances, showmances, although that

term is disputed. We are also going to talk about publication of books. Your book is out this week. I want to ask all sorts of things about what happens in publication week. A certain friend of the podcast, Lauren Sanchez, also has a children's book out this week, which I... Oh, and that's the battle of the big guns, isn't it? Amoeve Sanchez, finally. Yeah, bye-bye. I need to marry someone who owns Amazon. Yeah, you had a good run. And also very excitedly, I finally have an excuse to talk about my favorite program of

all time, which is Nothing to Declare, and the one about Australian Border Force. I shall tell you what that excuse is, but it's very interesting about the future of television. But it's essentially just going to be me talking about how much I love Nothing to Declare. That'll keep people the same, won't it? I hope so. Now listen, can we please kick off with showmancers? Yes, please. This is off the back of the fact that a fake contract was leaked. I guess it's not even been leaked if it's not a fake, but someone has put out

into the world a fake contract suggesting that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey's relationship is not real. It's just been a stage thing and that it's going to have run its pre-planned course and they're going to break up at the end of the month and there's going to be some sort of notes app style apology and that it's all been a PR stunt. If that happened, that would be too much for me. I'm too invested in that relationship. It would be like for me hearing that you and Ingrid aren't actually together. That's it. I'm out. I'm out. Or Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez hearing that if that was fake.

That would break reality. But first of all, we should say that showmancy is a word. It's a little bit like when we discussed this before, staycation, it slightly means different things to different people. In theater, it used to mean like an affair you have with someone while the show's running, the US big brother, someone said, oh, look, they're just having a showmance of back to contestants right back in the 2000s. But it just sort of morphed into meaning, oh, right, this is one of those things that publicists have set up. First of all, I suppose you have to say, does this actually happen?

And the answer is yes, this has obviously always happened. And if you go back to the golden age of the studios, the Hollywood studios, right back in silent films, they were always kind of creating these fake romances and saying when they sort of owned stars, they were sort of contract players. And it was obviously a huge way of creating buzz because I think there was one film that Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney were in when they were very young and it was made to seem as though they were having a romance. But it was most often used to kind of hide the sexuality of closeted gay actors and actresses right back in those days. So, I mean, Valentino married somebody, an actress called Jean Acre and it was not...

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Valentino and Jean Acre, that was for real, surely. I'm so sorry. She locked him out of the room on the wedding night and I think he was probably quite willing to be locked. So, there's quite a few of these. This is where the lavender marriage term came from. So there were many, many of these romances, but in this day and age, people sort of think all the time that things are staged. Taylor and Travis, I don't think for one second that are staged. It's so ridiculous. I do think that the reason that some people get into all these things is because it's sort of, first of all, it speaks to a kind of conspiracist mindset in general of our age. This is a very, this is a great age of conspiracies and people always want to

think they can see behind the curtain. Because that relationship is sort of perfect, isn't it? It's like America's sweetheart with America's golden boy. Yeah. It seems convenient. How many people could have staged it? Like commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodall, he might have staged it because it's got the ratings up. Her publicist might have staged it because she's got a tour on. There's all sorts of reasons why this may have happened.

By the way, I think this is all complete nonsense and it hasn't. That's not what's happened. Listen, they just met and they've been in love. Having said that, think of how much of her output is full of little Easter eggs and people try and count things and think of all the significance of certain days and things like that. So we're used to thinking of Taylor Swift in this very kind of planned breadcrumb following way. Do you think all of her previous relationships have been on the level or do you think she has been involved in a fomance or showmance at any point with any of the people that she's been linked to?

That's fascinating. I have to say that given what we know of her personality, and we know so much of her personality because she puts it out there, I think it's unlikely. Her PR is this woman called Tree Payne, and she used to run, it's kind of the Christian and country section of Warner's music. And I just don't think they do too much of it within that, I have to say. But she left Warner's in 2014 with one client, Emma Taylor Swift, and she'd have to say she's done quite well for herself. And Tree Payne is married to Denzel Washington, right? Yeah. Tree Payne is, yes, they lived together. No, she's, I think it's very unlikely. The trouble is, Travis Kelsey has got a publisher called Jack Katocian,

who unfortunately five years ago did go on some Australian podcast and say, oh yeah, these things happen all the time and I myself have set up two showmances for the cameras. Jack. Yeah, I know. So he can hardly complain. Now he's saying, I'm going to sue. It's like, well, I mean, what reputation do you have to defend? But he said, I've orchestrated fake romances. You're doing it to distract from bad publicity or maybe if someone's had a project that's flopped, it draws the eye somewhere else. It also multiplies fame a little bit, doesn't it? If you've got two people who are semi-famous

and they are together, their fame multiplies by each other and suddenly they are more than one famous person. People who understand, there's kind of people who sort of, I don't know, instinctively, reflexively understand what is required of them in public. I think at the 1991 Oscars it is Madonna and Michael Jackson went together and they held hands. No. Yeah, and everyone was like, and they held hands. No. Yeah, and everyone was like…

Are you saying that's a phoenix? Well, yeah, I'm saying that. She claims actually, I think that she had a big glass of wine and then stuck her tongue in his mouth later. I… No. Madonna and Michael Jackson? Well, I mean, I think just, you know, at the Vanity Fair Oscar party or something, who

knows? Again, I think that was pretty performative. I have to say, certainly on his butt. But really recently, great podcast favorite, certainly a favorite of mine, Glenn Powell and Sydney Sweeney, when they were publicizing Anyone But You, I think that she said to him, let's just have a pretend romance for the cameras, it's just funny, which they did. There kept being all these sort of funny pictures of him and they sort of leant into it because I think she just thought it was funny. And then afterwards he was very careful to say it had all been a game, but it was fine. It was her idea.

And I think she said, I mean, she is, as I say, someone who reflexively understands a certain type of publicity. She said, it's what the people want to see. So we gave it to them. Sometimes you've got to work hard to sell a movie. It's kind of true though, isn't it? It, it's all playing the game. As you say, in the olden days, it was forced upon people a lot of the time and for very uncomfortable reasons as well. You look at Elton John getting married and it was a sadder time. Rod Stewart sent a telegram to that wedding saying, you may still be standing. We're all on the floor. Oh Rod. Well done

Rod. Listen. They've got a hilarious relationship, those two. He called it out to be fair. But isn't it lovely, we live in a culture now where he's an absolute 100% solid as a rock glove match with David Furnish and he's comfortable talking about it, you're comfortable being in all the papers. And some things in this world progress, do they not? And that's certainly one of them. Taylor and Travis is a wonderful sort of world conquering relationship, but it most often happens there when someone comes out of Love Island or someone comes out a big brother and they're couples and this is the kind of currency that they have. Once you come out of Love Island, you have to have

something to get you in the paper and a relationship is probably the easiest way to do that. Absolutely. Then people are still interested in you after the life of the show has ended. There are people, mind you, though, I mean, obviously for many, many years, people have talked about the different NDAs around Tom Cruise's relationship that you needed NDA to go on the first date. It was clear that Katie Holmes, his ex-wife, was in a very long relationship with Jamie Foxx for many years afterwards, but it was said and reported very widely that she was not supposed to date in public until after a certain time. And so all of that was kind of, there are massive orchestrations with things like NDAs which is... So NDAs are non-disclosure agreements so that's something that you will sign if you've been

shown a project or you date somebody or just a legal thing that says whatever happens in this room, whatever happens in this relationship, you are not allowed to talk about it on pain of being sued. Yes, and this document within reason a relatively new tool of the publicist trade because it's certainly to the degree that it has become so widespread. NDAs are used all the time now, but they're also used in business. I think the New York Magazine did a cover story recently calling it the legal document of our time because they have become something that was really quite a specialist thing.

And of course, maybe if you're Tom Cruise, you get someone to sign something like this, if they become your housekeeper or whatever it is. But now the proliferation of these things across all levels, and that's everything from assistants to people who might one day deliver the flowers to every people assigning these things all the time. I mean, celebrities are weird. You have to say celebrities are weird. Celebrities are people of whom a significant number could believe that, you know, Beyonce faked an entire pregnancy. There are people of whom a significant number could believe that, you know, Beyonce faked an entire pregnancy. There are people who will actually believe that.

There are many, many, many people and there are people who will sit there all day and tell you things. You saw it to a different extent. And as we recently saw with Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, there were huge conspiracies when she disappeared for obviously medical reasons from the public eye. And people will say, and if they are able to get into on a kind of feeding frenzy on social media, where they just do believe that they are seeing behind the curtain and that they understand. As I say, it's an age of NDAs and it's an age of conspiracies.

There's also a weird middle ground, by the way. So as I say, these things used to be put together by the studios and by PRs and things like that. There is a weird middle ground now, if you are on a celebrity reality show or regular reality show and there's two of you there and you both sort of know it would be useful for you both to be in a relationship and this would kind of multiply your brand and amplify it. So you just kind of go, well, let's give it a go anyway. And then you fall in love. You know, Tommy Fury and Molly May, I bet they both kind of knew that this was monetizable, though I suspect then they did fall in love and you know, they had a child and then it fell apart. So there's gradations of showmances

and fomances. It's a good romcom, two people who are forced together for publicity purposes who fall in love. I think someone did a really bad version of it called The Arrangement. That's what I was planning to do. Well, that's the truth. No, well, no. I was planning to do a very bad version of it. You could do the good version. Someone did a bad version of it.

It was on something like E or something in America, and I remember seeing one episode. But I think you could do a really good version of it because it's very, very interesting. And as I say, the legal side of all of these things, just because there isn't a showmanse or a fauxmanse doesn't mean there aren't a million little legal documents protecting every side of this. So to some extent, all of these relationships are managed in ways that the public can't see but suspect something more is going on behind the scenes. Well, in that wonderful book Reach for the Stars that Michael Craig wrote about the boy bands and girl bands of the 90s and noughties, the amount of, the opposite of this, of people who were in very loving relationships and they weren't allowed to tell anybody, to keep that completely secret,

you know, we weren't allowed to date anybody. If you're in five or if you're in Brussels or you know, any of that, you were not allowed to publicly be in a relationship with anybody. Well that's like K-pop now. Yes, K-pop, they're really not allowed to do anything. Yeah, and you're incredibly managed and you must be available to the fans. Because Richie from Five, I think, was in a relationship with Billie and they just went, you know what, we're both famous, we can deal with this, we can handle this. And the grief that Billie Piper got from that, from fans, and you know, that whole world

is sort of a mess, isn't it? The casual death threats of the 12 year old girls as we've discussed before The relentless on sort of it is pretty is a lot to handle. Here's the interesting thing Okay, so we always think about these foamances and showmancies and so on and always speculation about famous people who date each other But it comes about because so many famous people Date each other now. Why is that? What's that all about? Well it's their peer group. I mean as they would say no one else can understand the life I'm

forced to lead. Forced. Yeah because celebrities often there comes a point where they hang out with each other an awful lot rather than say they're friends from school. A lot of celebrities don't seem to have an awful lot of friends from school. say they're friends from school. A lot of celebrities don't seem to have an awful lot of friends from school. Oh no, they've shed them all along the way, yes. And they kind of embrace the new world wholeheartedly. But also there is a safety to dating non-civilians. Dating a civilian, they might end up going to the papers afterwards. They just might not understand the codes and morays of your new world, your new glittery world. And so you can see why it happens. And I do

think that people feel like they're constantly trying to debunk kind of some mainstream media narrative, and they're never happier than when they're doing it. I always think that someone who believes absolutely nothing, by and large, is more stupid than someone that believes absolutely everything, if that makes sense more stupid than someone that believes absolutely everything. Definitely. If that makes sense. And that describes a lot of our culture at the moment. You can see that the strategy is always adapting. Sometimes it's good for them to be with someone, sometimes it's not. I think Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey are probably both doing okay without having to have a show, man.

So we think they're for real. We think that Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart, that's for real. That's 100. And by the way, that is the breaking of reality. If they're not together, I'm out of here. I mean, listen, you're in the Goldhanger offices. Yeah. You can just sense it there, right? Oh yeah.

You can, do you know what? When testosterone mixes with testosterone, there's like an awful doom spiral of love. I can absolutely sense that. On that note, I think we'd better withdraw from this story, Richard. Yes, good idea. Welcome back everybody. It is obviously a fateful day this Thursday because Richard's

new book, We Solve Murders, is out. And I would like to ask you about your publication week and in fact publication weeks in general, Richard. We call them pub weeks, but that makes them sound more fun than they are. Yeah, it's the one place you're probably not going to go into. Tell me what you've been doing and why you've been doing those things. Well, there's two different ways. I will talk about the UK and then I'll talk about the US because the different publication weeks and I'm obviously able to do a lot more in the UK than I can do in the US.

So it's interesting to compare and contrast. You do magazines and newspapers and stuff like that. That stuff you have to do a month ago or two months ago because of their lead times. But this is the week where I get to go on live stuff. So I'm going on The One Show on Wednesday. You love The One Show for selling a book, don't you? Oh my God. What is it about The One Show that just you feel like it's the sweet spot? I love stats and I love numbers. And there's people at Penguin Random House, you can look at kind of sales figures the sweet spot. You know, I love stats and I love numbers and there's people at Penguin Random House, you can look at kind of sales figures the whole time and they look at the spike of the various different TV shows and they can tell you exactly which TV shows are the most useful

TV shows to go on. And the one show is definitely one of them. It's just got a big audience and a very engaged audience and an audience that buys books and an audience that is interested in hearing about books. So I love going on the one show. The key with all of those things, sometimes you see people go on those shows, authors, and they don't really talk about the book. And then there isn't the spike. You have to tell people how much you love the book. If you've got something you're proud of and that you think they'll like, you have to tell people about it. I was going to say, do you have a real game plan when you go out there of talking points you want to hit, all of those things?

Not really. It all, genuinely, it all comes comes down to are you proud of the book? And if you are, you're just letting people know that. Obviously, I've got an elevator pitch for the plot of the book and things like that. The big difference is if an interviewer has read your book and enjoyed your book, then it's a really, really great experience. And that's whether it's a local newspaper, whether it's the one show, whatever it is, if they've read it and enjoyed it, then they will usually sell the book for you. And that's a really, really useful thing to do. So the one show I'm doing this week, apart from that, I'm just doing radio. So I'm doing Zoe Ball, I'm doing Chris Evans, I'm doing

global radio. And with those things, people always go, yeah, but people will get bored because you're on Chris Evans and then you're on Zoe Ball and then you're doing, you know, heart breakfast. I think, no, but because no one listens to all of them. I remember your mum saying to you, why did you tell that same anecdote that you told on TalkSport on something like Newsnight? And you were like, mum, you're the only person who has listened to both of those. No one is listening to both of them. I'm one of the few people who is as happy being booked on TalkSport as I am on the Today program. I'm very happy with either of those.

Well, that's unusual about you. I do think that's unusual because a lot of authors will say to you, oh my God, it's the worst because I'm an introvert. I sit alone for most of the time and then suddenly you've got to sort of emerge and be on the scene and talk to people and do however many interviews a day and they find it really, really hard. I realize that you're not held back by this. I always say, I was talking, I was on Sunday brunch, I think, no, Saturday kitchen, Sunday brunch, Saturday kitchen, you know what I mean? Same thing. And there was a chef and she had a cookbook out and she was like, I don't know how to set it. There's going to be a point

where they talk to me about the book and I feel too shy to set it. And I said, well, are you proud of it? And she went, yeah, I'm incredibly proud of it. And I said, well, say that because that's not arrogance. That's not saying you're going to love it and I said well are you proud of it? And she went yeah I'm incredibly proud of it and I said well say that because that's not arrogance, that's not saying you're gonna love it, it's just saying that this is from my heart, I love it, I put it together with love and you know people really really respond to that but you can do that without feeling like a fraud. You know you can never say my book is great but you can say I'm proud of a book or you know stuff like that.

It's fascinating because I always you know you can always look at the charts and if ever like there's a cookbook at number one on the Amazon charts at the moment by Poppy O'Toole, then I'll know that she's been on Sunday Brunch or Saturday Kitchen. On Sunday, the chart is always, the top three is always one dish bakes by somebody or other and you know they've been on Saturday Kitchen. I'll do all of that stuff in this week and then Lorraine next week and various other things. Can I ask you about reviews? Because by the way, the reviews for your book, every single one has been phenomenal and has said, he's done it again. This is amazing. I love this

new series. Obviously, you must be always terrified that like, well, you're not terrified because you just realized it's coming. It's an inevitability that at some point someone's going to go, I'll tell you what, I'm just going to randomly give this a kicking. But do you think the reviews shift books? Not really. No, I think word of mouth shifts books and that's the only thing that shifts books. I think maybe in the case of We Sold Murders, because people have already read Thursday Murder Club and they're worried, oh, maybe this will be different. And you read a review that says, oh, it's the same old thing.

No, they haven't said that, by the way. Not so much. Broadsheet can be very good for if you've got a slightly more obscure book from an independent press that people might not have heard of. It can suddenly take that from no one knowing it to it, you know, being at number nine or number eight in the chart, which can be the start of a really big thing. Now, one thing I am doing this week, which I would say to any author, because we'll talk about my American publication week, which is completely different because that is me, you know, there's no TV or anything like that. It's me just going to bookshops

and it's me talking to blogs and all the hard yard stuff, which I also love doing. But the one thing I'm doing this week that is a possibility for other authors is, and I've said it before, the biggest rated show on television almost every day is local news. If you are a local author in a local place

and you have something, an interesting story and you have something to say about your book or you've teamed up with a local charity or with a local bookstore then always always always pitch your story to local news because it's huge local news is massive and that's local radio and it's local television and all of that kind of stuff pitching it to those people pitching it to local bookshops that's the thing that really really works go to go into wherever your local Waterstones is even if you've got to get on a train to do it talk to them because they'll talk to Central Waterstones

and you never know, you absolutely never know, which is what I do in America, is go door to door, hand to hand, shop to shop, meet people, talk to people, put the book in their hand and grow organically. And as I say, in the UK, I'm immensely fortunate. So I'm aware that what I'm talking about is not something that a debut author is able to do.

So over here, I can talk about it interestingly about what it means about television, what it means about which shows are popular. In the other countries in the world, you know, in Germany, America, stuff like that, I'm doing the going from shop to shop to shop, chatting to everyone I can, signing whatever I can, talking to whoever I can, talking to every single blog there is, talking to every single podcast there is, saying yes to pretty much or yeah to pretty much every opportunity. And that's, that's, that's how you break in a, in a territory. And we should say that publishers have fantastic people on the

ground in all these places. You sort of come and meet you often if you're in a far flung place and a really nice to you and take you to all that and take you between the different places and really kind of that sort of local stringers almost and they really kind of care for you and they do the same for so many authors all the time. If you're a debut author, the single most important people are the sales reps. Nobody else, someone will say, oh, you should have a, let's have a launch party and we'll have champagne for your friends. Have a champagne for the sales reps. They're the single most

important people in that entire process because they give it to the bookshops, the bookshops give it to the people, people give it to their friends. That's the way you sell books. I've never had a launch party ever in my life because there's people who already know me. I always say anytime anything is ever suggested, I would say, how many books will it sell? I'm so annoying. And so I would never have a launch party.

But I think what's interesting is, my book is out this week and people often ask why are books out in certain weeks and why do hardbacks come out at a certain time and why the paperbacks come out at a certain time. What we are in now is like a sprint in the Tour de France when everyone just gets their place about a kilometer from the end. They all get on the shoulder of the people they need to get on and the entire publishing industry from the start of September is essentially jockeying for Christmas number one and also

jockeying essentially just for Christmas sales which dwarf sales at any other time. Forget holiday sales, you know people going on summer holiday, Christmas sales is where every single pound is and that's for authors, that's for publishers, that is for bookstores, that's for everybody. My week which is this week, my book is coming out, the Guinness World Records is coming out which was Christmas number one last year. The idea of it is you get your first week sales, which hopefully if you're a known author are big and people love what you do. But then also as it gets towards Christmas, you've got all of those kind of gifting stuff and you just, you know, there's just a lot more kind of publicity shops are putting more

money into advertising things. It's just, it's a very big market. This precise week is the primo week, isn't it? No, there's super Thursday. Books always come out on Thursdays and they come out every two weeks. So all the big books will come, there'll be a fortnight, there'll be a gap in between where the big books won't come out. And that's purely because of the supermarkets and the supermarkets change their stock every two weeks. And so the big books only come out every two weeks, which is a very weird thing. But you'll see if you ever look at the top 10 charts, some like last week, I think there were five new entries in the top 10, it was all the big people.

It was all the Bob Mortimer book, Matt Haig, Kate Atkinson all came out in the same week. This week you will see they will still all be in the top 10 because nothing big has come out to disrupt them. But then the week of sales that we're about to have, mine is out, Guinness World Records is out, Ben and Mackie's book is out. The bigger books that try to avoid each other. So Sally Rooney's is out on the 24th. So people are trying to avoid me, people are trying to avoid Sally Rooney. Matt Haig bought his out a little bit earlier. Bob Mortimer bought his out a

little bit earlier the end of August. But Super Thursday, which this year is October the 10th, and this is a huge thing in publishing, there are 1900 new releases bought out on Super Thursday, which 450 are hard backs. Oh my God. A lot of books and a lot of sales for bookstores as well. And Ian Rankin is out on Super Thursday this year and he's essentially had the number one on Super Thursday, I think, for three of the last four years, Ian Rankin, quite rightly as well. Sophie Consider is out on that day. Kate Moss is out on that day.

Boris Johnson's book is out on that day. He is out on Super Thursday. Boris Johnson unleashed. All the big hitters, essentially in every fortnight from here until roughly Christmas, this is where you're gonna get your Christmas number one from. So two weeks ago, Bob Mortimer,

this week you've got Guinness World Records. The 24th, you've got Sally Rooney, Intermezzo which will be a huge book and Jamie Oliver as well. October the 24th you've got David Williams against Jeff Kinney, the first time they've ever released books on the same day. That's the diary for Wimpy Kid's guide Jeff Kinney and also Lee Child's new novel written by Andrew Child his brother. But Christmas number one, so November the 19th there's two books coming out which both are gonna do very well Pinch of Nome which is the book that often gets Christmas number one they always release very near Christmas because they think they'll get Christmas number one but that's been

released on the same day in November the 19th the Shares autobiography that's gonna be good isn't it yeah and the big autobiographies this year by the way share Allison Stedman they've got high hopes for an Al Pacino as well So those are all the books that are in the market for that kind of huge Christmas time. It's all the hardbacks that come out and hardbacks is where publishers really, really make their money because they cost more than paperbacks, just to put it bluntly. So it's the same book, but it doesn't cost an awful lot more to produce, but they make a lot more money. So everything is thrown at these three months. And the one thing I always find fascinating, so Waterstones, I think, is opening up at midnight for the Sally Rue Lee book, right? And there's sort of 10 different Waterstones

are opening up and you can queue up and you can buy it. And I thought before I was in the book industry that that's gone. My God, the publishers must be throwing a lot of money at that to get them to open up early. And the thing you really realise is the book market leading up to Christmas is so lucrative that thing you really realise is the book market leading up to Christmas is so lucrative that the real battle is between the book chains. The real battle is between Waterstones, W.H. Smiths, and Tesco and Sainsbury's, you know, and the independents.

That's the thing, if you've got a book, if you think Sally Rooney is going to sell 200,000 hardbacks, for example, at 15 quid each, that's a lot of money. And Tesco want to be market leader there, Sainsbury's want to be market leader, Waterstones want to be, WHSmith want to be. Everybody wants as much of that market as they can get. And so often it is the chains themselves that are giving sort of buy one, get one free offers, that are knocking the price down, that are, you know, running prizes or opening the stores at midnight. It's because

they want as much of that money come to them as possible. Do you think you're quite unusual in also wishing to crack the business side of the code that you're so interested in all the nuts and bolts, all the behind the scenes things? Has it influenced a lot how you've gone about doing your books? Yeah, I genuinely I find it fascinating and I'm never happier than when talking to retailers. Those are the people I love to talk to. I love to talk on the public side, I love to talk to love to talk, on the public side, I love to talk to the sales reps, and on the other side, I love to talk to retailers, and I love to talk to people who sell books for a living.

There isn't a business without that. So those are the people I love to talk to. For example, I always done a bonus chapter for independent bookshops. So if you go to an independent bookshop up and down the country, there's a special limited edition, We Sold Murders, with a bonus chapter.

I'll always try and do that. Waterstones have got one as well, with a special edition as well. I like the fact that over here I can do best practice and try and work out the absolute best way of doing things and when I'm in America or Germany that I'm much more down in the dirt thinking oh my god how on earth do I sell books. You know books really can start from nothing and you know we've talked before about Colleen Hoover and Sarah J Maas and all these all these people who self-published.

You really can build a multi-billion dollar empire from nothing. It's one of the few industries where you can do that. But the key is relationships and the key is people reading your book and liking your book. But sales, sales, sales is the main thing. Listen, I'm leaving aside creativity, which I assume you've taken care of yourself if you've written a book and you've got a great book that you're proud of, you've done that bit and everything else is how do I get as many people as possible to read this? So this week I am up against Lauren Sanchez, I believe.

Well, I was about to say, speaking of independent retailers, I'm about to not. Lauren Sanchez, the fiance of Jeff Bezos, has got her first book out this week. It is a children's book, Richard. Just as we have our elections on Thursdays and our books come out on Thursdays, they have their elections on Tuesdays and their books come out on Tuesdays. So on Tuesday this week in the US, The Fly Who Flew to Space will hit the shelves, published by Simon and Schuster. Now, by the way, it's got a removable glow in the dark poster, has yours? Do you know what? There's me being cocky saying I try to look at every angle. I do not have

a glow in the dark poster. I do have a fly that flies to space in my book, but then I always do. Yeah, of course. So this is a picture book for the sort of children's market, obviously, which we'll have to do a separate thing on in the future with celebrity children's authors. But anyway, a fly who accidentally goes to space and he learns about stuff like climate change, which as we know is a great preoccupation of the Bezos Sanchez's who go everywhere by private jet. She said it's a dream that's been a decade in the making. And I was just thinking, it's probably about 500 words. I mean, plus you're married to the guy who owns Amazon. I mean, why has it been

a decade in the making? You're not that slow, are you? That feels to me like that's not, yeah, I have nothing but respect for brilliant children's authors. I don't think that that's taken 10 years. I've got nothing but respect for Lauren Sanchez, as you know, but I am worried on one front. Can I tell you something quite interesting? You know how when you publish a book and all authors know this, and also you don't have to know this to have published a book, you'll always see a book, Amazon will almost have created a special category for you. They've come up with some sort of complete rich category. You say, oh, it's, you know, number one in

domestic science philosophy books or, you know, like number one in sort of crime thriller set in Hazelmere. And you'll think they've actually just sort of created this special thing. Can I tell you, the fly who flew to space is currently only 32 in children's bug and spider books. Lauren, do you not know anyone who knows anyone who knows something about the algorithm? At the moment, she seems to be having no help from her intended algorithm, but we'll have to see how that ends up. And we will definitely in the future talk a little bit about the celebrity children's book market and how long those authors last and how much they write and don't write. I think I'm just going to assume that Lauren wrote the whole book.

Let's give her the benefit of a doubt. Although it takes quite an imagination to think of a fly. I would think of a fly, me, as I would think of a fly, well, that's just going to fly in the air. To go, no, wait a minute, what if it goes further than the air? What do you mean, Lauren? What if it goes to space? Well I'll tell you how she came upon this. She was in her helicopter. She's described as journalist, pilot and philanthropist, my favorite iPhone 8. She was once in a helicopter and she saw a little fly in and she thought, oh my gosh, this fly is flying. But I tell you what, always the creative mind is being pushed to further extremes. And when Bezos

went up into space, she thought, hang on, my fly in the children's book I haven't yet written, should go to space. But she says it's also about inclusivity. I mean, what isn't? Of course it is. And it's about STEM subjects. Do you know what I would call a fly that goes to space? Buzz Aldrin. What a trick has been missed. Yeah, she missed that. Yeah, she's missed it. Well, perhaps he owns the rights to the buzz.

We'll have to see how it does. Number 32 in children's bug and spider books at this stage means that something has gone a bit tits up on the older publicity plan. See, it's fascinating. One of my very favorite things about this podcast is we get to talk about books sometimes and when we do, they go up the charts and you can see them go up the charts. And that's really, that's such a lovely thing to be able to do. This might be the first occasion ever where a book doesn't go up because I can't imagine anyone listening to this and going, I am actually, you know what, I am actually going to unironically

buy this. At an independent bookshop on purpose. Oh, that'd be nice, an independent bookshop, but genuinely support your chain, support your local bookshops. If you can go and buy it in a bookshop, do so. I know not everyone lives near one, but if you can, because the pricing thing is interesting

because again, because everyone's competing for market share. So Amazon will, every book have it at 50% of recommended retail for every book. Smith's will sometimes be able to do it if it's a book they really want market share for. Waterstones can occasionally get close to it. The Indies can't for a number of reasons. The terms of trade that they have, obviously the premises that they own, the fact that if you're W. H. Smith's you can have a loss leader bringing people into the shop.

If you're a book shop, that's all you're selling. So the book shops, I've said it before, they are not ripping you off. They're giving you that book as cheaply as they possibly can. Buying it, you're not just buying the book, you're also contributing to your high street. You're contributing to the smart people in your area. You're just contributing to the world. So if you can buy it in an Indie, it's always worth it. There are ways online to buy from Indies as well. Honestly, for me, it's an exciting week because I love this book and proud of it.

It's a new departure for me because it's a new story and the reviews have been lovely. But I love the thing of talking to people about the book. I love the thing that I know in the next few weeks, I can walk down the street and talk to people about the characters. It's a story to bang on about it on this podcast. But yeah, come on. No, come on. It's out there in the world. Yeah. No, but it is. It's nice. And I love the thought of you. You do always stop and talk to people about your books. Yeah, I really do. And I love that. But also this week, Ben McIntyre's book, The Siege, is out about the Iranian embassy siege, which I was fortunate enough because he's with my

publisher. I was fortunate enough to read it early and it is brilliant. And Christmas number one, by the way, I've mentioned pretty much all of the main runners, but if I'd done that last year, I'd have missed out on the actual Christmas number one, which we discussed, which was Myrtle, which was the kind of word or quizzes, but for murder. So you never know with all this stuff, all the planning in the world, all of these publishers who are putting all this money behind all of these books, all of the bookshops who are putting all their money behind this book, all this cleverly sort of avoiding each other, all this absolutely scientifically working out the right day to

release something. Occasionally a book would just come along and blow everything out of the water, which is what Myrtle did. Who knows this year. Now please, Richard, let's get on to the thing you actually really want to talk about, which is nothing to declare Australia. Nothing to declare. Yeah, absolutely. Australian Border you actually really want to talk about, which is Nothing to Declare, Australia. Nothing to Declare. Yeah, absolutely. Australian Border Control. It seems to have about 15 different titles. It's the show that if ever you're sort of going through the EPG and you come across it, you're like, oh, I watched two minutes of this and like three hours later, you're still watching it. If you've not watched it, it follows the border patrol officers

in various Australian airports. There's some in Melbourne, it's in Brisbane, Sydney. Every episode is pretty much identical, I would say. Almost always, because there's a lot of Southeast Asian travelers, it's almost always, every episode definitely has some Southeast Asian travelers being asked if they've packed any food in their suitcases. Them saying, no, we haven't packed any food.

Ticking a box saying we haven't packed any food. And then the rest of the episode is customs officers unzipping a whole succession of suitcases, all of which contain carcasses of various animals and eels in jars. And it's just them saying, but we said, is there no food? You go, oh no, this is just for me. Yeah, but it's food. Always that. There's always someone who's come off a transatlantic flight, usually an American surfer, clearly off their mind on drugs, pretending they haven't taken any drugs. With a trace of narcotic on their shoe occasionally. That's a real type. I've seen that multiple times on that show. Oh, they go straight to the lab, which is also at the airport, and they sort of drip something

and it turns blue for heroin. And yeah, there's always, although sometimes someone's completely, absolutely out of their mind on something and they find absolutely nothing. They just send them on their way. They're just a character. Oh, actually, the American who gets sent back, I often see those, you've got a criminal record, so you're sent back. You can't come to Australia.

Yeah, they sort of come to visit a relative and they say, well, this is the name of your relative and they put them in a room and then they ring the relative saying, mate, we've got John here. He says that he's marrying your daughter and Joe said, yes, he is coming. The only thing is, mate, he's got seven convictions for murder and he hasn't declared them And he's got a lot of food in his luggage as well And then they get sent back. There's people you come over with up with the wrong work papers It's fascinating that it's so addictive. It just happens to be and I've always thought oh, is that just me? Is it just me that loves this show? Last week

Sky released their really, really first ever detailed drill down into the viewing figures of every single show on the Sky platforms. And the top five will not surprise you. Game of Thrones, of course, is number one. The Walking Dead is there, that's number five. The Sopranos and the Simpsons are in the top five. But number two, number two, beating the Sopranos, beating the Simpsons, beating the Walking Dead, 15 million hours of viewing, it is nothing to declare. Isn't that incredible?

When there's a million shows, a million kind of, you know, blues and twos type shows out there, a million precinct shows out there, nothing to declare is a show that's absolutely captured the imagination of people. I mentioned it on Twitter the other day and the amount of people saying, that's my favorite show, that's my kid's favorite show. There's something extraordinary about that program.

You've seen it, right? I've seen it many, many times. I've seen far too much of it. My kids find it fascinating. We should say it's made by The Seven Network in Australia. There's a sort of perfect marriage sometimes between idea and country. And Australians, it's really interesting. Australia is a place of many rules, which is strange because they've got a national self-image as a sort of like, you know, a larrikin culture and what have you. Australia is mega, mega strict about its biosecurity and it's like a real national sort of obsession. Because they've had all sorts of things introduced,

invasive species or whatever that caused massive damage to their ecosystem. So they're really hot on it. Apparently, when you're in Sydney airport, they put these signs up saying, they're filming today, do approach someone if you don't want to be filmed. You sort of have to opt out because there's so many people going to an airport. You can't get everyone to sign the release form for the background stuff. But it always amazes me that people have agreed to be on. It also does give you access and one of the controversies about these sort of things is that you have to be blessed by the Australian Border Force and Immigration Department in order to get access to the custody suites and the sort

of, you know, the sort of back rooms and control towers and all the places that you'll see on the show. Certain people will sort of say to you, oh, this is like, this is security theater. People talked about it a lot after 9-11 and they would say all this stuff they make you do, like give you a tweezers out and give all that, you know, this is rubbish. Actually, scanners are really easy to defeat. All the sort of stuff that you're patting down children. This is security theater. It doesn't make anyone safer. A lot of people believe a show like this to be, you know, in a sort of weird way, a kind of part of the, I don't think soft power is quite the right phrase, but a part of the sort of outreach of those government departments.

And there's something slightly, even though it's on its 17th series and is obviously globally, massively popular. And I think they have to have a certain amount of Australian TV is also, you have to have a certain amount of Australian programming on it. So this really fulfills this for Channel 7. The interesting thing about all of this is I absolutely love that show. These shows are not being made anymore. Nothing to declare is still being made because it's a legacy hit. But these types of shows have been completely squeezed out worldwide. So we still have the very high budget things and we still have the very low budget things. Nothing to declare sits in the middle. Is it not low budget? It feels, sorry.

Because it's ob docky, there's a lot of editing goes on, it shoots out in the wild, it's real people, it's lawyers involved. There's a lot that goes into it. Listen, it's not costing the same as Star Wars, but equally as you know, it's costing more than pointless. There's a brilliant article by Manori Ravindran in the Anchor this week, talking about how this type of show, these kind of lifestyle shows, the shows that the come dine with me's,

nothing to declare, is these shows that run and run forever and populate every single platform you can find are no longer being commissioned because channels just no longer have the money to do it. So they have the money to do a few big things and then everything else has to be filler now. It has to be super, super cheap filler. And these things, if you go on iPlayer or ITVX or All4, any of those things and try and find a gentle lifestyle show. Try and find Escape to the Country,

or Pointless on the BBC iPlayer. You will not find it. You'll find the big, buzzy, showy things. The same with any of these platforms. So Cloxsons Farm you'll see on Amazon all day long, but you won't see hours and hours and hours of these smaller shows, and people are not commissioning them anymore.

These shows are not being made because they don't make financial sense for the channel themselves. So if you're ITV, if you're channel 4, if you're you know 7, they don't really make sense for you. They make sense for distributors but you're not a distributor by and large. And so distributors are now started making these shows themselves and you can pitch directly to a distributor or distributor will go to a channel and say you take this show for free. We own all the rights and the fact that it's on a channel for means that we can set it around the world and that's

where we're going to make our money which are completely different business plan than TV's ever had before the big new game show in the States is called lucky 13 presented by Shaquille O'Neal and that is entirely funded by third parties not funded by the broadcaster at all. So it's been given to the broadcaster. They said to the broadcaster that we've got this format, it's got a shack, it's got big prize money. And of course the broadcaster say, yeah, we'll take that. And they try and make their money back on the distribution. So this is going to be a model we see far more, but how lovely to be able to speak about

nothing to declare. Honestly, if you haven't seen it just listen you that doesn't matter what season you start on you haven't missed anything it's the it's the same each time but there's a new series being shot at the moment we haven't got it yet over in the UK it's done it's done and dusted it's in it's in the it's in the can but we know what's gonna happen on it it's gonna happen those three characters will be present those three character types will be present in episode one I think think that's about it. Do you have any recommendations, Marina? I will just do a quick one. And it's a very mainstream of it. It's utterly brilliant. It's the new series, series four of Only Murders in the Building. Two episodes have dropped and I've been

watching that on Disney Plus and I love it. And it's definitely one for suddenly most of the family. It's all of our family anyway. Can't wait, I'm saving that up. And I will recommend, I said already, the Ben McIntyre book, The Siege, about the Iranian embassy siege. If that's something, there's a point in that book where on the same page they're talking about the SAS, the early Thatcher cabinet and the snooker. And I thought, here we go. This is a bit of me.

It's made for you. Now, listen, do keep sending in your questions to therestisentertainment at gmail.com and we will answer lots of them in Thursday's edition. Excellent. Well, I'll see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday. We are the United States of America