Sean Penn intrusion??

So if Sean Penn were to intrude on my publishing project....

Needless to say it would be a bit strange, but it could happen in various ways:

For instance, why does Simon & Schuster advertise that Sean Penn read the Bob Dylan book Chronicles? What does this have to do with the book sale industry? How much do celebrity endorsements affect readers' purchases of books?

Or we could look at Sean Penn's biography by Richard T. Kelly entitled Sean Penn: His Life and Times. How much more popular are celebrity biographies than works of literature or fiction? Is society more geared toward "reality," more interested in the lives of real celebrities than they are in works of literary art?

Sean Penn's film Into the Wild is demonstrative of the blockbuster novel, as the movie is based off of the book by Jack Krakauer. It exemplifies the idea of turning a book into a hollywood hit. Because of the great success of movies such as Into the Wild or Harry Pottery, publishers seem to be selecting books to publish depending upon their blockbuster potential, and as a result, authors seem to be catering to their profit-oriented practices in order to get rich quick. I wish to investigate whether this is really true, whether such a system is really in place in today's publishing industry? Was Into the Wild written with the intention of being a blockbuster? Or was it simply admired by a director after it was already written?