The Bookseller.com

7th January 2009

Katie Allen is The Bookseller's Media Reporter

The doom mongers

21.11.08

There has been much conflagration in the press this week about the phenomenon that is, as the Mail dubs it, "misery porn", brought about by the ongoing court case between Constance Briscoe, author of uber-seller Ugly (Hodder), and her mother, who is claiming that the accusations of abuse made against her in the book are false.

It is not the first time that the veracity of a misery memoir has been questioned, but it is the most high profile case of recent years, and various publications have been questioning the entire genre of misery memoir, and whether it is falling out of favour, at last.

Back in February last year, The Bookseller reported the relatively new trend of misery memoirs—A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer, generally seen as one of the first mis mem titles, was published in 2000. It coined the, as it turned out, successful combination of the story of an abusive childhood with a redemptive ending, and, of course the now ubiquitous jacket of white background, cursive font and photograph of a plaintive child. At the time five to 10 mis mem titles were being published each month, and even then there was a worry that the market was being over-saturated.

In August this year The Bookseller reported "an element of slowdown" in the market, with the top 20 titles in the genre in 2008 showing numbers down by more than 30% in comparison with the equivalent titles last year, on a full seven months of sales.

And this week, the Times has argued under a heading of "Misery memoirs: the final chapter?" that "the genre has become a joke and its days are therefore numbered", citing the publication of  parody My Godawful Life: Abandoned. Betrayed. Stuck to the Window by Sunny McCreary (Boxtree).

So why is the misery memoir apparently so doomed? I doubt whether it is the sort of moral squeamishness that the Mail does so well, describing the titles as "veer[ing] between dangerously obsessive and the plain grubby", that is putting readers off. The reasons behind the dip are manifold—perhaps the market has been over-saturated, or perhaps there is a diminishing number of sufficient harrowing stories—and decent writers.

Yet people will always be interested in others' stories, the more turbulent the better, particularly if there is some kind of truth learnt or eventual happiness achieved, whether that story is written by Kerry Katona or enacted on "Big Brother". HarperCollins has recently added a vote of confidence to the appetite for real life stories with new imprint HarperTrue, with an emphasis on "Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives".

So what do the figures say? Comparing the market between last year and this, the numbers tell a stark story. Total volume sales of the top 30 mis mems this year to date is 1,391,3221, while last year's was 2,123,829,  a drop of nearly 35%, according to Nielsen BookScan. If we look at the bestselling titles, last year's Don't Tell Mummy by Toni Maguire (HarperElement) sold over 300,000 copies, while this year's top book, Not Without My Sister by Kristina Jones (also HarperElement) has cleared about 152,000 so far.

However, despite the downturn, the market is certainly not as ‘dead' as some have announced. Misery memoirs, whether dubbed ‘painful' or ‘inspiring lives' are still worth over £10m.  Last year the overall biography and memoir market was worth just under £145m, which means mis mems accounted for at least 10-15% of that figure, not bad in a year that included Russell Brand and Richard Hammond's bestselling efforts.

There could be life in this genre yet.

 

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