How hard can it be. Another celeb book. Another deal made by a big agency with another publisher hoping to cash in. The paradigm is nauseating. Again and again. Money talks. Hand over fist. Grab it and run, baby.

The only real question when it comes to these trash heaps has to do with publishing's assumptions around who and what the reader is.

The puff thing itself -- as a book -- is totally ephemeral. In the scheme of things, they don't matter. It's the marketing paradigm that matters.

These Manhattan agents, editors, publishers, and publicists all cling precariously to the idea that the average reader is an idiot.

The bookstores are to blame, too. And (gasp) so is the reader.

Seriously. I've been there to see and hear the insiders slap their thighs and laugh. At the third-grade-reading-level that these books are aimed at.

No one complains. Certainly not the reader. Who cannot envision he is being patronized because it would simply never occur to him he's being made the butt of a marketing joke.

The formulaic equation has publishers knowing exactly how many copies of this kind of celebrity-drek will sell. It's not exactly a gamble. Long live CNN.

These books are not even so much as an afterthought. Reviewers love them. Crank that copy out, another dog and pony show; a book you don't have to read.

Because you know what's in there. How hard can it be. Do you REALLY think reviewers read ALL the books they review. A puff book gets a puff piece like this one. Book review editors (like the one who lives here) can fill their space with toilet paper so soft it flies in the wind.

And we are so happy as a piece of pie to have you at this table.

Do you really think Charlie Rose has anyone at his banquet that is smarter than Charlie Rose.

The interview game pretends there's something here to chew on. We can't all be Jack Welch or his wife.

The ghost writers (I know many of them) are happy for the paycheck, and they team with the celebrity to do a write-down which is a prescribed convention where no one and nothing gets challenged, no big words, and all questions get answered with a paragraph. Not every writer can do it. It takes a lot of talent to grind your teeth. No question poses another question. Just a knee-jerk. The status quo does not change its spots.

Other writers understand that it puts food on the table for the ghost. But it does more than this. It keeps the ghost from being a player in a game where very few have access because they're kept out by the gatekeepers.

Like Charlie Rose.

Who will scream he's not a gatekeeper. Just a player giving them what they want.

Yeah, I'm a junkyard dog, too, and a better whore than Charlie Rose. Let's see what sells today.

The book even as an idea whether it's on a computer screen or on the printed page (the venue is meaningless) is just a marketing campaign we pretend is real.

About something. It's not about anything.

So everyone wins. The publisher makes his money. The editor can buy another pair of Manolos. The celebrity can invite himself to be a guest on his own show. Charlie Rose gets the leftovers. The ghost can feed his family. The agent takes their skim. The publicist can nominate the celeb for a another mindless literary award. It's a done deal.

No, masturbation is not a crime. But it's not exactly a new idea either.

Everyone doesn't win. These celeb books are dead corpses consumed on delivery. They may be disguised as cotton candy but eating a corpse is problematic for a culture fundamentally based on greed that has decided there will only be so much to go around which provides jobs for gatekeepers (most of whom have failed as writers) and a certain cynicism (employed by people like me who find these books exactly what is wrong with publishing) that the reader can ignore.

The problem is that the publisher might be right. I fight tooth and nail this bad idea. But what if the reader really is an idiot who's willing to shell out thirty bucks for a piece of puffy nothing.

Snake oil. Smoke. Mirrors.

My eyes to the sky. I hate it when publishers might be right. As an ex-editor (now tastefully retired), I would refuse point blank to touch such an offensive project. The mass-slime alone would stick. But today, the editors need their le jobs and they'll do whatever the publicist (who do you think really holds the power here) tells them to do. How high do I jump, honey. Even the author's tour is a preordained agenda to make long lines of readers into vacuous cows go moo.

I have been sent on them. It's like sleepwalking. There ARE no apple carts to upset. Why bother. The problem is one of gravitas and cash. And then we wring our anxious hands that no one can really read and let's blame it on the black male who needs to take three steps back into special ed before we dust him off to jail. Get thee to thy prison house.

It's all his fault. Education sucks. If he wasn't dealing drugs maybe johnny could learn to read.

Learn to read what.

No one ever points a finger at the publishing houses for a culture that is essentially a vacuum. It would be too rude. You will NOT get on Charlie Rose, and you will give your publicist hives. If you were a part of the problem (it's called speaking the le truth, isn't that what you claim you value, America), you would be thrown out of the business on your ear. If you went as far as to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that publishing itself is evil (did he say evil I think he did), you will have your butt kicked out the door.

These books are the perfect example of what is wrong with a business that is downright evil and stupid, too. Together stupidity and evil are dangerous.

Gulp. Inhale, Tim, no exhale. No one wants to hear, no one wants to see, no one wants to speak to the reality that Johnny might not read because he's bored and there's not all that much worth reading out there.

As contemporary product.

Let's invest in computer games. Microsoft does. Bill Gates talks plenty from one side of his le mouth about how we need to change education.

Make education accountable. Yadayadayada. The lips move but the brain is numb. The party line wins again. It's rhetoric. Accountable to who.

But no one talks about changing the sacred cow of publishing. How can an entire herd of cows all wear the same high heels. Trust me. A drek-business that manufactures drek. Is this too complex to see? Can you get it.

In a business where only a few choice celebrities even bother to write their books (the word book being far too generous) there's only so much slick to spread around, and real writers don't even come close to making the kind of big bucks that go into one of these well-funded babies, and the notion that these things nudge the rest of us pornographers along (like the prostituted cripples we are) is simply about as disingenuous as it gets. The real writers don't get offered the real money because publishers and agents can get away with it.

The book covers and the jackets and the PR campaign are all formulas. It keeps the reader in his place.

Like an intellectual grunt who's not even smart enough to comprehend he's been had by the great machine.

You WANT creativity? Do not pass go. No hotels on Park Place for you. Do not collect two hundred dollars. WHAT creativity. JK Rowling is right. No one dares speak its name.

"We're only giving them what they want." The tired refrain these high heels in publishing will whine.

But I wonder.

If the publishers are right, and the typical consumer of a mass-project is a fool bordering on the illiterate, how can we jump from this to a culture than can actually read. Simple: we can't. It's a chorus of snakes eating their tails and their high heels and their panty hose.

How do we get a literate society.

We don't.

But we might be getting exactly the society we so richly deserve.

Tim Barrus
Prague
http://le-too.blogspot.com