The birth of celebrity babies used to mean famous parents went home from the hospital not just with their new bundle of joy — but with a bundle of cash as well.
Celebrity baby photos once had the power to wield big bucks from tabloids wanting exclusive rights. In 2008, photos of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s twins, Knox and Vivienne, sold for a whopping $14 million to People magazine in the U.S. and Hello in the U.K. The large sum reportedly went to charity.
But People magazine reportedly only paid Jessica Simpson $800,000 — a small sum in celebrity land — for exclusive photos of daughter Maxwell in May of this year, and the issue didn’t exactly fly off the newsstands.
The July 15 arrival of the youngest Kardashian, Penelope Scotland Disick, daughter of Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick, was also met with little fanfare.
“Kourtney’s second child isn’t such a big deal,” an anonymous magazine editor told The Huffington Post. “If it were Kim’s baby, it might be different, but with the exception of hardcore fans no one is waiting to see what Penelope looks like.”
Now, celebrities are using social media to show off their newborns — perhaps to deflect paparazzi from scoring the first photos of a celebrity kid.
Rumors of a large payout to Beyonce and Jay-Z for photos of Blue Ivy swirled for weeks after she was born in January, but the parents decided to post the first photos of their daughter on Jay-Z’s personal website instead of cashing in.
“It’s been a long time since paying to secure exclusive images of a celebrity baby guaranteed huge sales,” the editor told HuffPo.
Another magazine editor told HuffPo that Kourtney will be “lucky” if she gets $20,000 to $30,000 for photos of baby Penelope. “The Kardashian craze has been over for some time now,” the editor said.
The Kardashian craze is over? Now that’s news.