so Snooki got a book deal

please note: i have never seen an episode of JERSEY SHORE, mostly because i don’t have a TV that does anything other than play DVDs.

so Snooki got a book deal. and there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth. OH WOE IS PUBLISHING! ANOTHER “CELEBRITY” THROWAWAY INSULT TO THE READING PUBLIC! WHYYYYYYYYYYY …. etc etc etc.

except that: i am totally on board with this.

the fact that someone like Snooki, who is famous for being on a reality show (one that, as far as i understand, is not exactly sparkling with literary wit), wants/can have a book deal means that publishing is far from dead.

seriously — let’s break it down. either A) Snooki went out looking for a book deal; or B) someone approached Snooki about a book deal and she said yes.

if we go with scenario A, then this means that someone who is not a literary type believes they have things to say that are best said in the medium of a book. someone who already has a platform, a following, and many options as to ways to increase her presence has decided that a book is the next piece of the puzzle for her, when her options as far as promotion are almost endless in terms of media and technology. (i’m not saying that everyone wants to have Snooki on their show, or that she can get whatever publicity she wants — just pointing out that she has a lot of options as far as publicity goes, and a book is not exactly one of the most obvious choices). if you take it a step further, which i think is reasonable, this says to me that Snooki believes that a book will be good for her image. that it will increase her public presence, that she has a story to tell (ZOMG IT’S A NOVEL. mind: blown). the fact that someone FAR outside the literary pale believes this is music to my ears, because it means that i am not crazy to be trying to build a career in books — it means that books are so embedded in our culture that, even as entertainment and technology collide, people in the limelight still think of them as important and worthy of pursuing.

but maybe this wasn’t her idea. maybe some executive at a board meeting thought: “I know what will save publishing: a Snooki book!” fine and dandy! because that in turn means that people who are also outside the literary pale are buying and reading books. are they reading the new Franzen? or Bolaño? nope, probably not (although maybe the Franzen, thanks to Oprah). but if a publisher believes that the advance and the marketing and publishing will be worth the payout (and is probably counting on a big return) then that means that books are not an elitist endeavor, that not only those attached to the industry, or snobby people, or students who are assigned books, or [insert NO ONE READS ANYMORE tripe here] are reading. all those surveys can take a running jump — if a Snooki book is worth it to a publisher (which, by the way, i will bet good money that it earns out and then some), then people — the men/women on the street — are reading.

now, obviously there are doubts as to the QUALITY of such a book. but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post.

and i suppose at this point someone will pull the “well maybe people are reading, but WHAT they are reading is more important” card, to which i say, FOR SHAME. judge not, lest ye be judged. our tastes are our own, and no one should be belittled for what they enjoy. it’s easy to take potshots at popular books, and i have increasingly less respect for people who do it regularly.

Advertisements
so Snooki got a book deal

2 thoughts on “so Snooki got a book deal

  1. “and i suppose at this point someone will pull the “well maybe people are reading, but WHAT they are reading is more important” card, to which i say, FOR SHAME. judge not, lest ye be judged. our tastes are our own, and no one should be belittled for what they enjoy. it’s easy to take potshots at popular books, and i have increasingly less respect for people who do it regularly. ”

    That’s what it really does come down to! I know I will not want to pick up this book by Snooki, but so what if others do?

    I think part of the furor is that there are better (however that’s defined) writers out there who can’t get themselves published.

    Also, I do wonder how well this book will sell. It might sell more as a celeb autobiography, but as a novel? Should be interesting to see how it all plays out!

  2. Yeah, the quality is what I’m worried about.

    I’m pretty sure Snooki (and by extension Simon and Schuster) see mega $$$$ if she writes a book.

    She can write it – and I hope someone at least edits it to make it halfway intelligible, or just hires a ghost writer – but I sure as heck don’t want to read a book “written” by someone who tweeted about reading her first book “ever” this year. Maybe she should read a few more first…

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

w

Connecting to %s
https://jennirl.com/2010/09/30/so-snooki-got-a-book-deal/
jennirl.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2018-26
53608
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:HX7HLMTLWF2ZWTEJU42NBY6EOAGDFBWN
<urn:uuid:77d6c376-3238-4a0d-bef5-138e46e8d2f8>
2018-06-23T02:25:56Z
192.0.78.24
text/html
sha1:DZDMBS5MY5NINHPDTWJXQJFXCTOKWC4Z
<urn:uuid:de59f368-a7d6-4e4d-abf0-782bdc6fcc2e>
https://jennirl.com/2010/09/30/so-snooki-got-a-book-deal/
response
<urn:uuid:6f63d911-6740-44a6-a93b-2f660e185b1b>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-232-173-31.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-26
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for June 2018
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf