If Prince Harry’s publishers had their way, it seems the world would only learn about the contents of his autobiography when the book goes on sale next Tuesday.
Instead, a leak to the Guardian and premature sales by Spanish bookstores have resulted in a flood of media coverage before a copy of Spare has even been sold in the UK or the US. Details of events including the prince losing his virginity behind a pub, him asking his father, King Charles, not to remarry, and his final visit to Queen Elizabeth II have been revealed.
The wave of coverage began with Harry and Meghan’s Netflix docuseries, followed by some small hints dropped in some of last Sunday’s papers, and a series of short publicity clips from planned television interviews with Harry – all well before the Guardian published a short account from the book on Wednesday night, in which Harry alleged a physical attack by his brother, Prince William.
Hours later journalists in Spain had clocked that copies of the book – retitled En la Sombra, or “In the Shadow” – had been accidentally put on sale in some bookshops. British newspapers phoned local reporters and freelancers, urging them to rapidly retranslate the book back into English in order to obtain more revelations – including Harry’s comments about killing 25 people while serving as a soldier in Afghanistan.
Philip Jones, the editor of the industry publication the Bookseller, said that while publishers were officially opposed to leaks, they would be aware some extracts had piqued the public’s interest before publication.
He said: “Lots of books come out with lots of pre-publication coverage and serialisations and it doesn’t seem to do any damage to sales. There’s always more in a book than the media can reproduce. If you’re a Harry fan or a Harry watcher you’re still going to want to read it in his own words.”
Part of the issue is that Harry’s publishers appear to have decided not to sell the book’s serialisation rights, the process where a newspaper or magazine pays a fee to run excerpts in advance of publication. In part, this might be due to the lack of suitable outlets given Harry is currently in legal battles with the parent companies of the Sun, the Times, Daily Mail, Express, and Mirror. But it also left a void that was due to be filled by a handful of TV interviews.
The early leaks allowed the newspapers who loathe Harry and Meghan to have their royal cake and eat it, writing dozens of stories about the prince’s claims while also decrying him for having the audacity to publish such material.
The Daily Mail, whose parent company is fighting Prince Harry in court, described the book as the “excruciating” work of a “grudge-toting manbaby” – before urging readers to buy its print edition for 17 pages of coverage about what he had written. In an indicator of how they might fight their legal battles, the Mail also highlighted the juxtaposition between Harry writing a tell-all memoir and the legal cases he is bringing against British newspapers for invasion of privacy and phone hacking.
Other outlets managed to move the story on, with the Daily Telegraph quoting a Taliban official demanding Harry is sent to an international court, after he wrote about killing individuals while serving as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan.
Jones said that in some ways it was impressive that the embargo lasted until just a few days before publication, given the sheer number of people involved in bringing the book to market, including the translators, the staff recording the Prince Harry-voiced audiobook, and the global book distribution network shipping hundreds of thousands of print copies around the world.
Bookshops in the UK reported having to sign lengthy non-disclosure agreements with the publisher Transworld – part of Penguin Random House – which pledged not to put the book on sale before Tuesday.
But Jones suggested the publishers may now be tempted to let Spare go on sale a few days early: “It’s not rocket science, the books will either be in bookshops now or in transit, so it’s not difficult for a publisher to say: ‘Go for it guys.’ Either way it’ll be next week’s bestseller.”
