Bookstore and book department shelves have long been filled with celebrity-penned memoirs, humor titles, cookbooks, picture books, and lifestyle tomes. A more recent development, however, is for celebrities to launch entire publishing imprints tied to their names or lifestyle brands. The imprints serve as a trade name or umbrella for not only the celebrity’s own writings but also, often, the work of other authors and/or personalities.
The most recent example occurred yesterday with the announcement that actress Lena Dunham and her producing partner Jenni Konner would head an imprint called Lenny at Random House, inspired by their feminist publication, Lenny Letter. Books will include fiction and nonfiction from a variety of authors.
Last month, film and TV writer/producer/director Michael Mann launched Michael Mann Books to publish fiction and nonfiction by a core group of authors, which would then be developed for entertainment. Tie-in titles to some of Mann’s films, such as Heat, are also possible. The imprint said at the time of the announcement that it planned to start talking to publishers soon.
In November, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop lifestyle site partnered with Grand Central Publishing for Goop Press, an imprint devoted to releasing three or more books per year, some based on Goop content and some written by the site’s contributors. The first title is a cookbook authored by Paltrow, and the second a beauty title under the Goop brand.
Paula Deen, who had a long-time publishing deal with Random House that ended with her 2013 scandal, signed a deal in March 2015 with Hachette to distribute her backlist books as well as new titles, with the first of the latter being a cookbook released last fall. Her books with Hachette are published under the Paula Deen Ventures brand, which is also the name of the company she formed in 2014 to oversee her business activities.
One of the first celebrities to take the imprint route in recent memory is former New York Yankee Derek Jeter, who joined with Simon & Schuster after his retirement from baseball in 2013 to form Jeter Publishing. Described as a co-partnership, the imprint encompasses nonfiction for adults as well as picture books, middle-grade fiction, beginning readers, and other formats for children. Adult titles to date are mostly memoirs by sports figures, including Jeter Unfiltered, while children’s titles include a picture book, middle-grade reader, and baseball guide, all under Jeter’s name.
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