The story of your life has a book: politicians, athletes, 'influencers' or celebrities on the hunt for readers

The best-selling non-fiction book so far in 2022 is, according to its publisher,

(Planeta, 2021), by the presenter, monologist, screenwriter and actor Ángel Martín.

An editorial phenomenon with more than 90,000 copies sold (165,000 since its launch last November) in which its protagonist recounts the psychotic break he suffered in 2017 and that led him to a parallel world of imaginary voices, the subsequent admission to a psychiatric institution and its reconstruction from scratch after being discharged.

Although in the world of books nothing can be predicted, it brought together the elements to be a success: an impressive human story on a topical issue such as mental illness, with a well-known and appreciated character, and also with a challenge to overcome that serves mirror to society.

But not all autobiographical bets, the literary genre of the self, obtain the same results.

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Perhaps that is why publishers diversify the profiles of authors.

They have nothing to do with each other, for example, the politicians Mónica García (Más Madrid) and Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo (PP), and even the latter with the former Prime Minister and popular co-religionist Mariano Rajoy.

do not resemble each other in style or attitude towards life .

There are personalities from the yellow press like Nicolás Vallejo-Nájera (Colate, especially known for his marriage to the singer Paulina Rubio), journalists like Pedro J. Ramírez, the trans woman Daniela Requena, famous names like Paz Padilla, Tania Llasera, Ousman Umar, Pepe Domingo Castaño, Máximo Huerta or Carmen Rigalt;

like Tamara Gorro or Mara Jiménez;

musicians like Álvaro Urquijo (The Secrets), Miguel Bosé, Mala Rodríguez, Eric Jiménez (The Planets), Jorge Martí Aguas (The Red Room) or Zatu;

athletes such as Lydia Valentín, Olatz Rodríguez, Gervasio Deferr, Joaquín (Sánchez) or Carolina Marín;

and of course there is no lack of other politicians such as Toni Cantó, Manuela Carmena, José María Barreda, Íñigo Errejón or Pablo Iglesias.

Presentation of the book 'Yolanda Diaz.

The Red Lady', by Manuel Sánchez and Alexis Romero, on April 21 in Madrid.

Victor Sainz

The only thing that connects them is the conscious decision to recount their lives, share their thoughts and, to a greater or lesser extent, bare their intimacies.

That is what autobiography consists of, a non-fiction genre that year after year gets more readers and for which publishers are betting more and more decisively.

Perhaps also because they know they have an emotional pull, they feed on the fan phenomenon.

And sometimes because they become gift books: they are given away more than they are read.

The previous search

"Normally, when it comes to a fiction book, an editor receives a manuscript either individually or through a literary agent, and values ​​it," says David Trías, literary director of Aguilar and Plaza & Janés, publishers of the Penguin group Random House, “but the dynamic changes with an autobiography.

Usually, the initiative comes from us”.

After analyzing the current trends and characters, they are the ones who contact the protagonists and try to convince them, seduce them.

The media and blogs in their day were the channels to search for these interesting lives, but now it is the social networks that catapult interest.

“Before we wrote diaries, and now people expose their lives on social networks.

There is less and less shame in telling the private story," says Trías, "People's conviction that their lives are unique and exciting and worth reading about is impressive."

But among that immense ocean of data that is the internet, he says, trends, sources of interest, hot topics are discovered and, sometimes, interesting human stories come out.

And among these trends, topics such as mental health, disorders, bullying... in general, lives suffered and second chances matter now.

But not everything goes.

“It is very common that there are interesting stories that give for a journalistic report;

yes, but do they give for a book?” asks Trías.

Sometimes yes, and it even becomes an editorial boom, as happened last year with

(Haper Collins), by the comedian and presenter Paz Padilla, the best-selling non-fiction book in Spain in 2021, with more than 200,000 copies.

In it, the comedian emotionally undresses after the death of her partner.

The humorist, screenwriter and writer Ángel Martín at the Valladolid Book Fair. EUROPA PRESS (Europa Press)

Finding a good book sometimes requires a great deal of chance and luck.

Belén López Celada, editorial director of Planeta, Ariel, Crítica and Península (of the Planeta Group), says that Ángel Martín was making a very interesting newscast on the internet and that the publisher believed that he could have a book behind it.

"We didn't know anything about his illness, and when we asked him to write about his professional experience, he told us that he did have a book, but that it was about a subject that we couldn't imagine."

The condition was to keep it absolutely secret until it was published, because his mental illness was only known to his closest circle.

It took a year to publish.

Another of the best-selling books in 2022 is

(Aguilar), the memoirs of radio professional Pepe Domingo Castaño, with more than 40,000 copies in just four months, according to the publisher.

The announcer had the beginning of a book, about 200 pages written years ago about his childhood and his beginnings in the profession, but he always thought that this was not going to interest anyone.

When Aguilar got in touch with him, Castaño took his text out of the drawer, he liked it a lot and they convinced him to complete it with the rest of his life.

The importance of writing

For Belén López Celada, the reference as an autobiography would be

(1947), by the Italian and Jewish writer Primo Levi, who narrated the horror of Auschwitz after surviving the Holocaust.

“The story is as important as the way it is told.

The voice is highly valued, that you really have the perception, through the writing and the tone, that that person is telling you in the first person”, reflects the expert.

For Trías, the ideal case in this literary genre is

, the autobiography released by the tennis player André Agassi in 2009 (in Spain, Duomo Ediciones).

The stars aligned there: a famous character who reveals a tremendous story (an aggressive father and a son forced to succeed in a sport that he comes to hate), a great literary quality and a bestseller.

The secret: It was written by a famous Pulitzer journalist and writer, JR Moehringer, author of

, in the first person.

Without deception, the reader knows from the start that it is a writer who has written it, but from the first page he gets into the skin of the American winner of eight Grand Slam tournaments.

Moehringer could not be called

.

A figure, that of the ghost writer, also known in the jargon as "literary black", which publishers deny: if someone participates in the writing, his name appears either on the cover or inside the book .

And asked if it could happen that, with a volume that is delivered to them already written, this could have been previously prepared by a person other than the protagonist, Belén López Celada replies: “For that there are already signed contracts, which force the character to be the author of the text.

A particular case was that of the writer Philip Roth who decided to hire Blake Bailey himself as his biographer and collaborate closely with him until his death.

The book and the author have not been without controversy.

André Agassi, with his book.REUTERS

What publishers do admit is the figure of the collaborator.

No matter how good the character is at his job (musician, athlete,

, politician), he may not know how to write as well.

And in those cases, an expert (writer, journalist) can be provided to interview the protagonist, record the conversations and write a draft, which is then corrected by the interested party in several back and forth steps.

A curious case is that of Eric Jiménez, the drummer of the bands Los Planetas and Lagartija Nick, who wrote his book,

(2017), and who in 2021 repeated the experiment of recounting his experiences with

, based on recording voice recordings in Granada, sometimes very long, which he sent to Holden Centeno, novelist, author of

and an expert on the Andalusian band.

Perhaps the difference in this world of literary collaborators is that in other countries, such as the United States, it is more customary for the writer to appear on the cover, even when it comes to great politicians, explains Pablo (not his real name), a journalist who He has participated in a dozen of these editorial projects as a collaborator.

But the national scene is different: "In Spain, the publishers tell you that if you take out a book by a famous person and on the cover it says that someone else has written it, it seems that the fans of the character do not buy it."

The fact is that their names appear on the inside pages of the book in a rather small font size.

"Sometimes they ask me if it doesn't bother me that my work is signed by others," explains Pablo, "and I always say that it is not my work, it is what a man has told me, and neither the information nor the experiences are mine, I'm just the editor."

This semi-

writer , who usually charges around 3,500 euros per project, in which he calculates to invest three and a half months part-time, also reveals a radical change in the self-confidence of the

.

"Many times, these people are offered to write a book and they think they don't deserve it, they are very insecure at first and believe that their life is not going to interest anyone," he explains, "and then you have to convince them that his life is very interesting, but you have to tell it well”.

Then the attitude usually changes: “When they finish, all those fears have disappeared, perhaps because a person has been listening to them for hours with maximum interest.

And in the end they are proud of their book.”

Although there are perhaps fewer titles, sometimes an autobiography reaches the market through self-publishing.

In this case, the specialized publishers (the large groups also have their own self-publishing labels), receive the protagonist's proposal without having a prior interest.

Explains María Jesús Trinidad, editorial coordinator of the Sevillian company Lantia, which in addition to printing books on demand for its own and third-party labels, and promoting self-publishing, has its own publishing brands, such as Samarcanda.

"Normally it is the author who pays and what we offer are some services, layout, design, proofreading... they are not books that we previously bet on," Trinidad summarizes.

It is the way used with

(Samarcanda), the autobiography that the singer presented during the Book Fair.

"In this case, it was Karina herself who applied, her representative contacted us," explains Trinidad, who highlights what really interests the readers of these books: "They already know the professional part of the character and what They try to investigate his personal life, what he does on a daily basis, his family, his stories, the most human part”.

Despite the lesser involvement of publishers, in certain cases Samarcanda is more involved in the presentation and promotion of the book.

Above all, with more relevant characters, as happened with the book by Julián Contreras Ordóñez, son of Carmen Ordóñez.

Or with the recent volume of Zatu, the well-known rapper Saturnino Rey, from the group SFDK.

The unknowns of the promotion

However, no matter how much prior analysis is done and no matter how much knowledge one has of the market, publishers do not know if a title is going to sell 5,000 or 60,000 copies.

And although they consider that promotion is essential for a book to take off, they are also clear that many books can have a great impact, but not all of them have a great sale.

“That there is a great media hype about the book, is it going to help us sell it or is it even going to subtract from us?

That they cite excerpts in the media, are you going to encourage the reader to spend those 20 euros or are you going to consider that he already knows what it is about and does not buy it? ”, Trías asks.

It also happens the other way around, there are authors of few events and few signatures, but more regular sales, generated by word of mouth.

Perhaps fueled by a mixture of the two processes, media repercussion and word of mouth, 2022 has surprised us with another phenomenon:

, a book by Jorge Martí Aguas, singer of the Valencian band La Habitacion Roja, in which his The author lays bare his double life, the one he stages in Spain as the leader of a rock band, and the one he leads in Norway as a nurse in a hospital for patients with dementia and Alzheimer's while taking care of his daughters and the love of his life, Ingrid Øverås , who suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome, and to whom he has dedicated 89 of the group's songs.

A book emerged as a result of a documentary about his life (

) and that, finally, according to Plaza & Janés, has aroused the interest of various production companies to bring his life to fiction.

But that, the jump to the screens of autobiographies, is another story.

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The humor of my life.

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Journey to the country of the whites.

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How to be Bad

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Ultimate love song.

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