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She was charming, got a filthy mouth. I’ve never known a woman swear like it in my life,
you know, bless her. But the best parts were selling a million books, let’s be honest,
the bestselling book I ever had, changed my life for a while, and everybody else’s life.
My sales guy, out of his share of it, he bought a house in Portugal called Cassa Katie and
retired. The worst part was when she fired me for doing a book with her arch rival Jodie
Marsh and wouldn’t do any more books with me. But bless her, she made my life better,
you know, and I wish her nothing but good and nothing but success.
I wrote a book about the Rolling Stones, called Up and Down with the Rolling Stones, way back,
and it did really well. William Morrow published it in America; it went to number six on the
New York Times bestseller list, sold in Japan, sold in Germany, sold everywhere. And then
I couldn’t get a UK publisher and so, it was really weird, and it was a big bestseller
and it had really done well. So I got my agent to introduce me to one of these publishers
who had turned it down, and I was talking to them and I said, ‘What I don’t understand
is, this book sells really well, it’s sold well in America, and I can’t get a publisher.
Why don’t you want to publish it?’ And so he said, ‘Well, really John, it’s just
too mass-market for our list.’ And I said, ‘Hold on a sec, by ‘mass market’ you’re
saying that it’s going to sell loads of copies? Am I being stupid, is that what you’re
saying?’ and he said, ‘Well, you could phrase it like that, yes, it probably will
sell lots of copies but that’s not the kind of book we want to publish.’ And so I thought
at the time, ‘British publishing’s run by idiots.’
They were all rich, Oxford-educated trust-fund babes with lots of money, and so, but in America
they just want to make books sell and it was vibrant and exciting. But the British lot
were all interested in what they could discuss at dinner parties and books on Yeats and things
like that. So I thought, ‘You know what I should do? I should publish that book about
the Rolling Stones myself in the UK.’ Because I still had the rights. And then some mates
of mine heard I was doing it; Piers Morgan, a guy called Wensley Clarkson, Stephanie Hill,
and they said, ‘Ooh, we’ve got books, would you publish our books?’ And so I ended
up in my spare bedroom in my house in Twickenham and I did four books, including Up and Down
with the Rolling Stones. So that’s sort of how it all began. It was sort of a total
reaction against the stuffiness and, you know, lack of zest of British publishing.
Really it’s all timing. It’s timing, timing, and timing. You know, I’ve got a book out
at the moment on Adele, which is doing, it’s my bestselling book at the moment. And that’s
doing really well because you listen to those lovely songs and, you know, she touches anybody,
if you’re ten or you’re me. Just beautiful, and it’s so autobiographical. And you’re
immediately intrigued. Who was she singing about? Why was she inspired to write these
profound love songs? And so everybody feels that way about her.
A lot of publishing is to do with the right moment and the right timing.