Thursday, March 16, 2006

Ming' Memoirs: The Plot Thickens

I wrote about Ming Campbell publishing his memoirs in September a few days ago. It seems he had hired a lobby hack to ghost them, but has now decided he needs a different approach and dispensed with their services. Instead, someone who has what is described to me as a more "flowery" approach has been taken on. What can it all mean?

Coming tomorrow: The winner of the Name the Ming Campbell Memoirs Competition

at

8 comments:

  1. AnonymousMarch 16, 2006 12:13 pm

    Surely it has to be

    'The Minging Memoirs'

    ReplyDelete
  2. Paul LinfordMarch 16, 2006 12:17 pm

    Come on Iain, name names and stop teasing!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMarch 16, 2006 1:43 pm

    The lobby hack in question was a card carrying Lib Dem too...I won't name him or her though he or she made no secret of it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousMarch 17, 2006 7:49 am

    As he claims to have been a world class runner, surely "From the fast lane to the slow lane"

    ReplyDelete
  5. Paul LinfordMarch 17, 2006 8:28 am

    I seem to recall something similar happened with William Hague. He hired a respected lobby hack to write his "official" biography (I won't name him/her either) then changed his mind and went for a fluffy piece of hagiography penned by the lightweight Tory it-girl Jo-Anne Nadler.

    As Iain will no doubt know, I'm sure publishers also have some say in such decisions.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Iain DaleMarch 17, 2006 10:28 am

    Paul, you've got that wrong. Hague had been cooperating with a female journalist from the Yorkshire Post but she never actually got around to writing anything and couldn't get a publisher. I talked to her but she decided not to proceed. it was then that he cooperated with Nadler. I should know - I published the book!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Paul LinfordMarch 17, 2006 11:03 am

    Thanks for the clarification Iain!

    I suppose the obvious follow-up question to you as a book publisher is: why was Nadler's book deemed more publishable than the one being planned by the ex-YP journo? And might a similar thing have happened with the Ming memoir?

    I will understand if you think you are bound by commercial confidentiality here though....

    ReplyDelete
  8. Iain DaleMarch 17, 2006 11:11 am

    Paul, that wasn't the case. The YP journalist decide not proceed partly because, as I recall, no publisher could meet her financial expectations. It was nothing to do with one book being more publishable than the other. I would have happily gone ahead with her book.

    ReplyDelete