Combined with the Internet, that provided massive sources and easy contact, the PC created an explosion of celebrity books beginning in the early 1990s.
It can be a very profitable sideline and for some small publishing houses it is an important supplemental source of revenue that keeps them afloat in the highly competitive book market.
Statutes in the United States and other countries prohibit libel lawsuits for anything written or said about a deceased person and some celebrity biographers have taken advantage of this to make questionable assertions.
In certain egregious cases, respected book reviewers such as Publishers Weekly have gone out of their way to caution readers by noting that the subjects are "conveniently for legal purposes, are deceased."
In response, McGilligan, who had written unauthorized biographies on film personalities James Cagney, Jack Nicholson, and Fritz Lang, told the Associated Press that "He (Eastwood) has sued people religiously" and "He's made a career of suppressing dissidence."