Joan Collins - Books

Books

Collins has also established herself as an author. In addition to her bestselling novels (Prime Time, Love & Desire & Hate, Infamous, Star Quality, and Misfortune's Daughters) she has written six lifestyle books (The Joan Collins Beauty Book, My Secrets, My Friends' Secrets, Joan's Way: The Art of Living Well and "The Joan Collins Cook Book") and memoirs (Past Imperfect, Katy: A Fight for Life and Second Act). To date she has sold over 50 million copies of her books which have been translated into 30 languages.

In the 1990s, Collins was embroiled in a high-profile legal battle with the publisher Random House, which was televised daily on Court TV. Collins had signed a two-book deal with the company for $4 million and they had given her a $1.2 million advance. In September 1991 Collins delivered a 690-page manuscript of a novel entitled The Ruling Passion to Random House. However, the publishing firm deemed the manuscript to be of such poor quality that they demanded the return of the $1.2 million advance they had paid to Collins, claiming she had failed to deliver completed books as per her contract. Collins countersued, arguing that her contract required her only to submit a "complete manuscript" not an "acceptable" one. Since she had turned in two novels to the publishing company, A Ruling Passion in 1991 and a second novel, Hell Hath No Fury, in 1992, as her contract stipulated, she felt Random House owed her the rest of the $4 million. She also contended that Random House had not provided the editorial assistance she had expected.

Her Random House contract, negotiated by agent Irving Lazar, required that she was to be paid even if her completed manuscripts were not published. When the case was finally heard in February 1996, a court determined that Collins could keep the advance given to her plus a further $1 million for the first completed manuscript, but that the publisher did not have to pay for the second manuscript since it was essentially a reworking of the first. The Guinness Book of World Records cites Collins as holding the record for retaining the world's largest unreturned payment for an unpublished manuscript.

Memoir

• Past Imperfect: An Autobiography (1978)
• Katy: A Fight for Life, A Memoir (1982)
• Second Act: An Autobiography (1996)
• A Passion For Life: An Autobiography (2013)

Non-fiction

• The Joan Collins Beauty Book (1980)
• Portraits of a Star (1987)
• My Secrets (1994)
• Health, Youth and Happiness: My Secrets (1995)
• My Friends' Secrets (1999)
• Joan's Way: Looking Good, Feeling Great (2002)
• The Art of Living Well: Looking Good, Feeling Great (2007)
• The World According to Joan (2011)

Fiction

• Prime Time, a novel (1988)
• Love and Desire and Hate, a novel (1990)
• Too Damn Famous, a novel (1995) retitled Infamous for US (1996)
• Star Quality, a novel (2002)
• Misfortune's Daughters, a novel (2004)

By other authors

• Joan Collins by John Kercher, Gallery Books (1984)
• Joan Collins, Superstar: A Biography by Robert Levine, Dell Publishing (1985)
• A Touch of Collins by Joe Collins, Columbus Books (1986)
• Inside Joan Collins: A Biography by Jay David, Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc. (1988)
• Hollywood Sisters: Jackie and Joan Collins by Susan Crimp and Patricia Burstein, St. Martin's Press (1989)
• Joan Collins: The Biography of an Icon by Graham Lord, Orion (2007)