Publishers assume that the general book-buying public will purchase enough copies to justify the generous offer. If not, there's all those other authors selling books that bring in profits and their deals are nowhere near as lucrative.
Not all celebrities can lay claim to a large publishing contract, however.
There has to be something scandalous, something titillating, to entice the buying public.
Jennifer Hudson has quite a story to tell. She'd like $1 million to tell it.
Her agent, Mel Berger, has been making the rounds, but the publishers want that nugget of inside information, the personal story about Ms. Hudson's family and how she coped with the murder of her mother, her brother and her nephew.
Ms. Hudson is not interested in trading on the prurient interests of the curious. She, or her agent, believes that her tale of struggling with her weight is worth one million.
Yet there are countless weight loss books on the market, some of them written by celebrities who know fuck all about biology but spout nonsense cloaked in scientific mumbo-jumbo just the same. Yet another famous person waxing prolific about weight loss isn't the stuff of which best-sellers are made.
What might Ms. Hudson have in her book that would distinguish her from all the rest on the shelf? The publishers know that people would buy her book if they could learn how she coped with a horrific crime.
No revelation, no publishing contract.
They've made offers, but those offers are based on their best estimates of what yet another diet book would yield in profits. Nowhere near the asking price, however, because the mid-list authors can't generate enough income for the publisher to cover the spread.
Ms. Hudson says the memories are too raw for her to examine that part of her past. Until the wounds heal, then, Mel Berger won't be getting his percentage of the million dollar pay-out.
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