An autobiography: the story of someone's life

If you take a look at the best-selling books in the UK these days, it is almost certain that there will be a handful of autobiographies in that list. Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, actor Michael J Fox and rapper 50 Cent have all written them.

An autobiography is the story of a person’s life, written by that person. It is usually a very famous person who might tell us all about their childhood, how they became famous and any other interesting things that have happened in their lives.

Traditionally, someone would write an autobiography when they were older because they had had a long, successful life. However, these days there are many celebrity magazines with stories and photos of the stars which sell very well. Reality TV shows are extremely popular and lots of people become famous very easily just from being on the TV rather than having a particular talent like singing or acting. As a result, people become famous very quickly and as soon as they are famous, a lot of money can be made from writing an autobiography, even if they are very young.

So now you can find an autobiography from almost everyone who is in the public eye. Even though we can follow the lives of the stars very closely on TV or in magazines nowadays, we maybe don’t know how they live their lives from day to day. Autobiographies often reveal the information we never knew about the stars. The British public are very curious to find out more so they are very keen to read autobiographies.

Not every star wants to write though. Sometimes celebrities employ writers to write their life stories for them. The writer will interview the star, listen to everything they want to say, record interviews and then write the book based on their words. David Beckham did this with his book ‘My Side’.

Not everyone likes to read fiction regularly but they might like to read about the lives of stars. Autobiographies are helping to get more British people reading books. About 100 million autobiographies are sold in Britain every year. More stars depend on them for extra income and as more of these books appear in the shops, more people are sure to keep buying them.