"Celebrity authors" are everywhere you turn these days, hogging up media and multimedia space as well as bestseller lists, but "author celebrities" are a rare species. Famous authors? Dime a dozen. Authors aspiring to be famous? I'm sure there are a few hundred. David Budbill's mischievous "Dilemma," one of my favorite poems from his collection Moment to Moment (Copper Canyon Press), begins:
famous
so I can be
humble
about being
famous.
It's a poem that makes me smile. Famous happens all the time, but only a chosen few authors ever qualify to be a "celebrity" beyond the borders of our reading world, even if we factor in the increasingly devalued meaning of the word. When we say "celebrity author" now, we're all too often referring to book-like substances by reality show stars or beneficiaries of "my five minutes of fame" syndrome. 
I started thinking about this yesterday morning when I read a Bangor Daily News story about the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation's work with two local radio stations (owned by the author) to raise $140,000 in fuel assistance funds for low-income residents in the wake of federal funding cuts.
"We'll match up to $70,000 of the amount raised," King said. "This economy is terrible and Tabitha and I both worry so much about Bangor because it truly is a working-class town and we are always looking for ways to help, and right now this is a great need." King may be a mega-celebrity bestselling author, but in Maine he's also a local boy who made good: "We still come back," he added. "Our children grew up on West Broadway and that is still where they want to be during the holidays. We don't forget how cold it is in Maine in the winter."
This was a nice little news item, a small-town New England story easily read, easily forgotten. Many other writers do great work for their communities and other organizations. Sometimes we pay a little more attention; often we don't.
Within hours of King's fuel fund announcement, however, the news had gone international, picked up by media outlets ranging from BusinessWeek to Reuters, CBS News to the Guardian. This is the aftershock effect an "author celebrity" generates. Many people who have never read King's books, or anything at all, can still tell you he's that famous scary dude. They know his movies, or maybe they saw him as "Bachman" in an episode of Sons of Anarchy on TV last year. I suspect even Snooki--who recently said she didn't know who J.K. Rowling or Maya Angelou are--would recognize Stephen King's name.
On the few occasions when our paths briefly crossed, King struck me as a relatively, perhaps remarkably, normal guy, especially when you factor in his preferred fictional subject matter and the intense passion of his fan base.
I first met him in 1994 at the Northshire Bookstore, where he launched his Harley-riding, coast-to-coast Insomnia promotion tour in support of indies. At an event after-party, he was low-key, courteous, even played some guitar with the band. He seemed exactly like the kind of guy who would care about what happens to his home region, as he does. His books are much scarier than he is, and that's the weird, mysterious aspect of the author celebrity. King is the genuine item, and I'm not sure why.
How does this "author celebrity" thing happen anyway? Plenty of authors have sold as many books as King has, but their $70,000 heating fund donations would not be headline news worldwide. "Author celebrity" is like winning the lottery for famous writers, with all the attendant rewards and nuisances.
Any of us can make an impressive list of "famous" authors who act like celebrities, and celebrities who act like authors, but how long is the list of author celebrities? Not long at all, I suspect. Even in this golden age of social networking and shameless self-promotion, you can't really lobby your way to the position.
But if you are one of those authors doomed to be merely a famous, there is still a bright side. Fran Lebowitz offers this tidbit of solace: "The best fame is a writer's fame. It's enough to get a table at a good restaurant, but not enough to get you interrupted when you eat."--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)