Is 48 hours for Michael Jackson: Moonwalk in Paradise the record for a celebrity biography?

By Vicki Kellaway on Jul 13, 09 11:08 AM in New Releases

I love a good race and the race to release Michael Jackson's biography was always going to echo the madness of the past week.

Apparently, according to this story in The Guardian anyway, the Chinese are leading the way with a book completed in just 48 hours.

Now the various criticisms of the Chinese and their attitude to human rights and terrifying work ethic is not something we need to discuss in a book blog.

But what a buzz it must have been to turn around the book so quickly.

Naturally, British publishers are in hot pursuit.

Good for them - the book industry needs to sieze as much cash as it can at times like these and industry chiefs are always reminding us that the money from celeb biographies and autobiographies allows them to take more risks on new fiction.

So, the authors of the Chinese version (Jiang Xiaoyu and Xing Han) claim they existed on a diet of coffee and cigarettes so they could get all 130,000 words of Moonwalk in Paradise on the shelves just nine days after the 'King of Pop' left this fair world.

Of course, our British lot haven't sacrificed their health for their art in quite the same way.

Most of the books we will see here are apparently going to be picture-led commemorative style efforts and some publishers are just going to re-issue their previous works.

But fair play to the publishers Headline and Carlton who have begun the duel.

Carlton will publish Michael Jackson: The King of Pop in July.

Headline will publish Michael Jackson: Life of a Legend in July.

The race is on!