Private Parts (1993)

Private Parts is the first book by American radio personality Howard Stern. It was released on October 7, 1993, by Simon & Schuster and edited by Larry "Ratso" Sloman and Judith Regan. By mid-1992, Stern's radio show The Howard Stern Show had become the number one morning program in New York City and had hosted the Saturday night television show The Howard Stern Show on WWOR-TV, since 1990. After development on a feature film for New Line Cinema fell through, Stern secured a deal with Simon & Schuster in early 1993 to write a book.

Private Parts was an instant commercial success upon release. It debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list and remained there for five weeks. After five days, it became the fastest selling title in Simon & Schuster's history. A paperback edition with extra material was released in 1994. The autobiographical chapters of the book were adapted into the 1997 feature film Private Parts, which starred Stern and his radio show staff playing themselves. This release was supported with a second paperback print of the book.

Background

By 1993, Stern had been the host of his morning radio show, The Howard Stern Show, at WXRK in New York City for over six years. In January of that year, the show was syndicated to ten markets and had become the first to be number one in New York City, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia simultaneously. Stern had also landed success in television as the host of The Howard Stern Show on WWOR-TV and The Howard Stern "Interview" on E!. However, development for a feature film with New Line Cinema based on his Fartman character was delayed and ultimately fell through in 1993.

In February 1993, the press reported that Stern had entered talks with publisher Simon & Schuster to write a book. Stern was approached by the publisher and found the project an attractive one as it would help strengthen his self-proclaimed title of "King of All Media". He believed that they wanted him following the success of The Way Things Ought to Be, the first book by popular conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, which generated strong sales and became a success on The New York Times Best Seller list. Stern accepted, partly for the "great advance" that was offered, which was estimated to be worth over $1 million, and that Simon & Schuster was a prestigious company. On March 23, 1993, Stern held a live press conference on his radio show to announce the deal and aimed for a release in October of that year. A major factor for Stern to write a book was due to his dissatisfaction with the number of times he had been misquoted or paraphrased in print or television, itself a reason why he resisted in granting press interviews. By writing a book himself, Stern said that "it will at least be my words." Stern added that he wanted to write a book that dealt with honest opinions because it was something that people "don't deal with honesty any more." He cited honesty as the reason why audiences respond to him, yet thought the book would reveal a side to him that his fans were not familiar with. At this time of the book's announcement, Stern had considered to dedicate the book to singer Cher.

When Stern announced the book, he said that his initial suggestion of Mein Kampf: Settling Accounts, a spin on Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, for the book's title, was rejected by the publisher as it would be unpopular with Jewish readers. Another early title of Sort of the World According to Howard was reported in the following month.

Writing

Stern wrote the book in approximately six months. He thought it was going to be easy to produce at first, but he looked back on the project as the most difficult of his career at the time. He saw the temptation in taking "three or four of my old bits" and adapting them into a book for a rush release, but he aimed for a quality product with strong material that would help him gain new fans. A typical day saw Stern return home from doing his radio show and write until dinner or around 8 p.m. He predicted that he could complete the book in three months, but he only managed to produce an outline of the book in that time. Stern wrote the book with assistance from editors Larry "Ratso" Sloman and Judith Regan. Regan lived in Stern's guest house for six weeks over the summer of 1993 with her then two-year-old daughter and nanny to help complete the book on time. Sloman also stayed over at Stern's house on weekends. One of the researchers hired to work on the book transcribed segments of Stern's radio show and interviews with his parents to produce around 10,000 words of text for Regan to go through. She assured that despite her input, "the words are Howard's". Stern described Sloman's involvement as a "collaborator" and worked on selecting the best material for the book. Sloman suggested to have one sponsor for each chapter of the book, an idea that Stern liked but fell through.

Around the time of the book's announcement, Stern attempted to find his writing voice by sketching initial ideas onto paper and teaming with his radio show producer Gary Dell'Abate to retrace his career, emphasising on stories and anecdotes from behind the scenes. He later said that he approached the book in the same way as his radio show, talking like "I'm sitting around with a bunch of guys." Stern wrote the majority of the book in his basement office at his home on Long Island, New York, using his computer or dictating passages into a tape recorder. Stern later found out that his wife would enter his office when he was asleep and read some pages, offering encouragement or complaints to what he had written. Stern was able to complete the book using a computer archive that he had a friend start nine years earlier, which indexed each radio show by subject matter and scans of every newspaper article about him.

Each chapter of the book features a different girl holding a card indicating the chapter number. Stern shaved off his body hair for the photo shoot.