Big Ang releasing new book
You’d think after growing up in a mob family, the scariest thing about you would be say, your AK47 or, worse, the fear that you could turn on your friends faster than Sammy the Bullsh---er.
Who’d guess the most frightening thing about you would be your giant fake lips and catastrophicly gigantic double JJ’s.
I’m talking about VH1’s plastic surgery nightmare poster girl Big Ang, the breakout star of “Mob Wives” who now has a spinoff show of her own, called, yes, “Big Ang.”
Even though Big can’t put together a grammatical sentence (or Italian for that matter), she has just written, no kidding, a book.
(While the book displays only her name as author, if you look at the very last line in the book you’ll see a thanks to Valerie Frankel. Bingo!)
Her book “Bigger Is Better,” which is due out on the inauspicious date of Sept. 11), is filled with Big Ang’s advice on style (help me, Jesus!), life (as in existence and not “Oh, he got ‘life’ ”) and recipes for living large .
Like? Like how one Sunday her family ate 75 meatballs. That kind of large.
Big Ang follows a growing number of reality show “authors” (most of whom pretend to write their own books). Some have hit the best-seller lists and some have fallen flatter than Ang’s boobs without implants.
But trust me, Ang’s book will hit the lists because 1) it’s funny and 2) more importantly, because her fans simply can’t get enough of her.
She grabs you with the opening words: “Nine years ago I was under house arrest for a drug conviction. Two years ago, I was $100,000 in debt. And now, I’m about to move into a mansion, I’m on TV, and people from Saudi Arabia come to my bar to meet me.”
OK, it’s not “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” although her story kind of is.
I asked a few editors who specialize in celebrity books why in hell people buy books about style by women no one really wants to look like.
Lisa Sharkey, senior vice president at HarperCollins (which, like The Post, is owned by News Corp.) has a roster of celebrity best sellers and just signed “Real Housewives of New Jersey” star Caroline Manzo for an advice book.
“Fans like to read their words, want to meet them at signings,” Sharkey says, “People look up to people on TV.
“We now have readers who wouldn’t dream of cracking a book who will go to the store, buy it and read it. How great is that?”
Kathryn Huck, executive editor of St. Martin’s Press which published both Karen Gravano’s best-selling “Mob Wives,” and the K kids’ “Kardashian Konfidential,” says “the fan base for both ‘brands’ is just enormous, and they offered a real insider’s look into their worlds.
“Also their shows promoted the books heavily, even as far as writing the book into the shows.” That’s not something legit authors can ever offer up.
“Other books though, like Mike the Situation, the Countess, and Jill Zarin — really didn’t work, probably since they offered little that was fresh and they lacked a universal likability factor that those other folks have. “
Well, Big Ang certainly has a likability factor — in an older, bigger Snookie kind of way —although by all accounts Snookie’s career as an author was lacking the likability factor of having a lot of sales.
Who’d guess the most frightening thing about you would be your giant fake lips and catastrophicly gigantic double JJ’s.
I’m talking about VH1’s plastic surgery nightmare poster girl Big Ang, the breakout star of “Mob Wives” who now has a spinoff show of her own, called, yes, “Big Ang.”
Even though Big can’t put together a grammatical sentence (or Italian for that matter), she has just written, no kidding, a book.
Angela "Big Ang" Raiola
Her book “Bigger Is Better,” which is due out on the inauspicious date of Sept. 11), is filled with Big Ang’s advice on style (help me, Jesus!), life (as in existence and not “Oh, he got ‘life’ ”) and recipes for living large .
Like? Like how one Sunday her family ate 75 meatballs. That kind of large.
Big Ang follows a growing number of reality show “authors” (most of whom pretend to write their own books). Some have hit the best-seller lists and some have fallen flatter than Ang’s boobs without implants.
But trust me, Ang’s book will hit the lists because 1) it’s funny and 2) more importantly, because her fans simply can’t get enough of her.
She grabs you with the opening words: “Nine years ago I was under house arrest for a drug conviction. Two years ago, I was $100,000 in debt. And now, I’m about to move into a mansion, I’m on TV, and people from Saudi Arabia come to my bar to meet me.”
OK, it’s not “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” although her story kind of is.
I asked a few editors who specialize in celebrity books why in hell people buy books about style by women no one really wants to look like.
Lisa Sharkey, senior vice president at HarperCollins (which, like The Post, is owned by News Corp.) has a roster of celebrity best sellers and just signed “Real Housewives of New Jersey” star Caroline Manzo for an advice book.
“Fans like to read their words, want to meet them at signings,” Sharkey says, “People look up to people on TV.
“We now have readers who wouldn’t dream of cracking a book who will go to the store, buy it and read it. How great is that?”
Kathryn Huck, executive editor of St. Martin’s Press which published both Karen Gravano’s best-selling “Mob Wives,” and the K kids’ “Kardashian Konfidential,” says “the fan base for both ‘brands’ is just enormous, and they offered a real insider’s look into their worlds.
“Also their shows promoted the books heavily, even as far as writing the book into the shows.” That’s not something legit authors can ever offer up.
“Other books though, like Mike the Situation, the Countess, and Jill Zarin — really didn’t work, probably since they offered little that was fresh and they lacked a universal likability factor that those other folks have. “
Well, Big Ang certainly has a likability factor — in an older, bigger Snookie kind of way —although by all accounts Snookie’s career as an author was lacking the likability factor of having a lot of sales.
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