\n<\/p>\n
In the run-up to the release of his blockbuster autobiography earlier this year, Prince Harry sat down with \u201c60 Minutes\u201d \u2014 and \u201cCBS Mornings,\u201d \u201cABC News Live,\u201d \u201cThe Late Show With Stephen Colbert\u201d and others. Paris Hilton did \u201cThe View\u201d and spoke with the BBC. Kerry Washington appeared on NPR\u2019s \u201cFresh Air\u201d and \u201cGood Morning America.\u201d Arnold Schwarzenegger opted for Kelly Clarkson and Howard Stern.<\/p>\n
But for Britney Spears, the endlessly sought after and speculated about pop star who released her memoir,<\/a> \u201cThe Woman in Me,\u201d this week, there was mostly Instagram.<\/p>\n To gin up excitement about one of the most anticipated celebrity memoirs of the year, there were prerelease excerpts in People<\/a> magazine, but no face-to-face interviews, which Spears has avoided since 2018, when she was still in the conservatorship that strictly controlled her life and career. (In the book, Spears writes of mentioning the arrangement in a 2016 interview, only to have it edited out.)<\/p>\n Now legally cleared to do and say what she pleases, however, Spears has held back, essentially throwing out the playbook for promoting a celebrity tell-all. The singer and her team are instead letting the book do the talking, with its gossipy nuggets and condemnations of the 13-year conservatorship feeding a steady churn of press coverage and social media chatter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Her reluctance to be interviewed, stemming in part from a distrust sowed by decades of insensitive coverage<\/a>, does not seem to have affected early sales: The book reached No. 1 on Amazon\u2019s best-seller list; complete sales data will not be available until next week. But the lack of any significant promotional or public appearances by Spears, 41, has been obvious to professionals in the worlds of publishing and public relations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThis is completely out of the ordinary,\u201d said Eleanor McManus, a former booking producer for CNN\u2019s \u201cLarry King Live\u201d who now works as a crisis manager. McManus said she was watching TV on Monday morning to find out which shows would be teasing a conversation with Spears. \u201cI was thinking, \u2018Who got the first interview?\u2019\u201d she said, before realizing that the answer was \u201cno one.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe only time you recommend not doing interviews is if you can\u2019t control what the subject would say, or if what he or she would say would damage their brand,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n But some experts suggest Spears\u2019s robust social media following may be all she needs for a successful book launch. At a time when celebrity memoirs are booming, subjects may not need to engage with traditional media as they once did if they have a substantial audience of their own, said Madeleine Morel, an independent literary agent who represents ghostwriters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe whole thing is about the size of your platform,\u201d Morel said. \u201cCan you bring an audience to a book?\u201d<\/p>\n Spears is indeed known for communicating these days almost exclusively through her free-associative and often cryptic social media posts. Her most significant commentary on \u201cThe Woman in Me\u201d has come not in Vogue, with Oprah or even a cheeky appearance on \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d but via social media, where she has shared messages about the book that were alternately grateful, scarred and conflicted to her more than 100 million followers across platforms.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not like the traditional media was not interested. Spears said in a since-deleted voice message posted to Instagram last year that after her conservatorship was terminated in late 2021, she had been approached by all manner of outlets.<\/p>\n \u201cI have offers to interviews with Oprah and so many people, lots and lots of money, but it\u2019s insane,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t want any of it.\u201d<\/p>\n A representative for Spears declined to comment and the memoir\u2019s publisher, Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, did not respond to requests for comment about their nontraditional strategy to secure promotion.<\/p>\n So far, Spears\u2019s traditional media engagement has been limited to the excerpts in People magazine \u2014 including the bombshell that Spears had an abortion<\/a> during her relationship with Justin Timberlake \u2014 accompanied by emailed quotes attributed to the singer and a cover photo, which captured Spears smiling on a beach in Tahiti, sourced to \u201cBritney Brands\u201d rather than a photographer for the magazine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The publisher also helped to organize an international rerelease of the 2002 movie \u201cCrossroads,\u201d starring Spears. That rollout has featured interviews by its director, Tamra Davis, who has generated her own wave of news<\/a> tidbits<\/a> about Spears.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In Spears’s own recent comments on the book, she has chided the media<\/a> for focusing on her past, though the memoir is essentially a retelling of her life story.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t like the headlines I am reading \u2026 that\u2019s exactly why I quit the business 4 years ago !!!,\u201d she wrote on Instagram<\/a>. \u201cMy motive for this book was not to harp on my past experiences which is what the press is doing and it\u2019s dumb and silly !!! I have moved on since then !!!\u201d<\/p>\n She went on to briefly deactivate her account, only to return soon after with a picture of a cake<\/a> that said \u201cSee you in hell.\u201d On the book\u2019s release day, she shared a single promotional post<\/a> reading: \u201cMy story. On my terms. At last.\u201d (She later deleted the post from Instagram.)<\/p>\n Most celebrities with books to sell still combine more old-fashioned media appearances, like the \u201cToday\u201d show and the late-night circuit, with a dedicated social media strategy and newer, friendly outlets like the podcasts Armchair Expert<\/a> and On Purpose With Jay Shetty<\/a>, the lifecoach and influencer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The actress Jada Pinkett Smith, who released a memoir<\/a> this month, did all of the above, plus more. Her deluge of media appearances even became the subject of a joke<\/a> on \u201cS.N.L.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSorry if I seem a little tired,\u201d said the comedian Ego Nwodim, who played Pinkett Smith. \u201cI\u2019ve been on the \u2018Today\u2019 show 14 times in three days.\u201d<\/p>\n The writer Neil Strauss, who has worked on books with M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce, Marilyn Manson and Jenna Jameson, said that celebrities could run the risk of making themselves bigger than the book with overexposure. \u201cSometimes by talking about it, you can only hurt it,\u201d he said, adding that Spears \u201cseems like she has a lot of trauma around the media.\u201d<\/p>\n In her memoir, Spears describes the press as having been unfairly focused on her body as a rising pop sensation and on her fitness as a mother during a series of public struggles in 2007 and 2008 that ultimately led to her father, James P. Spears, being granted control of her personal life and finances.<\/p>\n She wrote that she felt exploited in 2003, when her father and her management organized an interview with Diane Sawyer following her breakup with Timberlake. \u201cIt was completely humiliating,\u201d Spears writes. \u201cI wasn\u2019t told what the questions would be ahead of time, and it turned out they were 100 percent embarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Strauss, the celebrity collaborator, said, \u201cShe\u2019s just analyzed and scrutinized beyond the level that any human should have to be.\u201d Still, he acknowledged, echoing others in the industry, it was \u201chighly unusual\u201d for someone of Spears\u2019s stature to do no interviews. Even Bob Dylan, a notorious media antagonist for most of his career, promoted<\/a> his memoir<\/a> in 2004.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Paul Bogaards, a veteran book publicist<\/a> who has led campaigns for best-selling memoirs by Bill Clinton and Andre Agassi, said that the power of a celebrity speaking publicly about their book tends to be greater than the media mining it for a news story.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce they\u2019re out there in the world talking about their book, it becomes a 24-7 coverage-palooza,\u201d Bogaards said, adding that most publishers required contractual agreements about promotion. \u201cYou want them to be visible in a significant way,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to defend taking on a multimillion dollar advance in the absence of those kinds of agreements.\u201d (Published figures put the price tag for Spears\u2019s memoir, which was announced last year, between $12.5 million<\/a> and $15 million<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Another major selling point for celebrity memoirs tends to be the subject\u2019s own voice on the audiobook edition, but in this case, Spears has largely opted out as well. In a short introduction to the audiobook version of \u201cThe Woman in Me,\u201d Spears said she had chosen to read only a short snippet of her 275-page book because the process of reliving its contents had been \u201cheart-wrenching.\u201d Apart from a minute and a half, the rest of the book\u2019s five-plus hours is read by the actress Michelle Williams.<\/p>\n Spears\u2019s most loyal fans see no issue in her letting the work speak for itself. For years, the mantra for many supporters has been \u201cleave Britney alone,\u201d especially after the singer upbraided fans<\/a> earlier this year for calling the police with concerns about her well-being when she temporarily deactivated her Instagram account. She voiced her objections<\/a> again last month when another emergency call was made in response to a video of her dancing with what appeared to be kitchen knives. (Spears said they were props.)<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the sentiment in the book are these instances where she was forced to do things against her will,\u201d said Jordan Miller, the founder of the Spears fan site BreatheHeavy.com, which helped start the \u201cFree Britney\u201d campaign that brought more public attention to conservatorship.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s cool that she\u2019s going in the opposite direction of what the status quo is in terms of conventional promotion,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018Here are my words, you can read these. Here are the photos that I want you to see. I\u2019m going to have approval of all of this.\u2019 In the context of everything that\u2019s gone on, that is super refreshing.\u201d<\/p>\n But a celebrity memoir with an eye-popping purchase price may need to reach more than just superfans in order to be seen as a phenomenon worth its investment, experts said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a major release, but I think that they could be doing more to make it a real moment that sticks around,\u201d said Anthony Bozza, an author who has written books with Slash, Tracy Morgan and Artie Lange.<\/p>\n If not, he added, \u201cYou\u2019re just going to be a blip in the cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n