Wednesday, May 20, 2009

In the clink

I have a high-profile prisoner who wants to write an autobiography. Would there be a market for this sort of thing in Australia?

It depends on the prisoner and what he did (I'm presuming it's a 'he' - we don't have that many high-profile female prisoners). If it's Ivan Milat, forget it. If it's one of the Snowtown murderers, DEFINITELY forget it. If it's a white-collar crook who can dish dirt on corporate shenanigans, maybe. But it's a hard thing to sell to publishers and the public - people will assume that any autobiography would be an attempt to place blame elsewhere rather than accept responsibility. The story would need to be really amazing to get past that. I wouldn't personally buy the autobiography of a high-profile prisoner but I read a lot of true crime, so maybe I just like to read about that stuff at one remove from the perpetrator. You should also bear in mind that if your prisoner is still in gaol, he's not going to see any moolah from a book deal, even when he's out of gaol.

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