News All right for some...? 'Celebrity' book publishing and/or the old boys' network

[E G Logan]

From The Times (London) today, speaking of former British PM Boris Johnson:

"Johnson ... is yet to meet his commitments to write two books — a memoir about his time in Downing Street, for which he received a £510,000 advance in January 2023, and a biography of Shakespeare that he signed up to write in 2015."

Johnson is not a noted Shakespeare scholar. His degree, from Balliol College, Oxford, is in Classics.

The Times article reported that Johnson was withdrawing from his earlier announced television presenting in order to spend more time with his writing. He had previously committed to working as a presenter and pundit covering the forthcoming British election for GB News.

 

[Jonny]

Doesn't surprise me his attitude to delivering work on time is on a par with the rest of his shambolic self-serving attitude in other endeavours.

 

[E G Logan]

I expect the normal limits for when publishers give up on a writer and a book – and maybe even on an advance – could be exceeded here, too.

I once nudged, sweet-talked, cajoled and finally threatened an academic contributor to the publication I was running to 'produce the goods', in terms of an article to be taken from a forthcoming book.
It was only a warning from the publisher that the book risked not being published that finally galvanised him, more than two years late. And he was a well-known authority in his field – with something interesting to say.