It's that time of the year when I start to get piles. Don't worry, fans (both of you), it's not a medical condition, I'm referring to piles of press releases publicising Christmas comedy tours and Christmas comedy DVDs. What I've noticed recently, though, is the increasing releases plugging Christmas comedy books. Not just the inevitable Mitchell & Webb/Harry Hill TV tie-ins, but big weighty library-style tomes that are mainly words with a few pictures thrown in for on-the-toilet browsing fun. 

Ever since Peter Kay's autobiography gave Dan Brown a run for his money publishers have been looking for comedians with a story to sell, sorry, tell. What is interesting now is that they are looking beyond the stadium filling acts to shift books. And also they are looking for other types of books rather than straightforward "I-was-born-in-a-stable-and-now-I'm-loaded" rags-to-riches stories.

Dara O'Briain and Alan Davies have both taken a sideways perspective on life in their first books. O'Briain's Tickling The English is an Irishman's on-the-road perspective on Albion, from drinking and animals to patron saints – the Irish have the best saints of course. Davies. meanwhile, looks at his childhood heroes in My Favourite People And Me, so we get essays on a wide range of cultural icons from John Belushi to Bertold Brecht via Harry Redknapp. 

These are clearly canny moves, leaving the authors space for candid autobiographies at a later date if they fall on hard times. Not that publishing your autobiography need hold you back anyway, just don't blow the whole story in one go – Saturday Night Peter is Mr Kay's second volume in what could turn out to be an entire shelf-filler.

What puzzles me though is that publishers seem to be a little too optimistic about sales prospects of books by other  less household-name comedians than those previously mentioned. One can only assume that the theory is that if they dish out a lot of small advances some of them will result in books that really take off. Shappi Khorsandi's A Beginner's Guide To Acting English must have sounded like a good idea at the time – the comedian's life has featured death threats and eating disorders, which both make a good read.

But let's be honest, Khorsandi is no Kay, Paul O'Grady or Frank Skinner if popularity is the key to sales success. Or Frankie Boyle, who has also just published his autobiography. Though I'm intrigued to see how that does. Jo Brand also has a book out. And Jack Dee's story is eagerly awaited. Khorsandi is a great stand-up, but surely does not have the kind of profile to shift huge numbers. Which may explain why it is currently number 1884 in the Amazon sales ranks. 

To cap it all, just as I was about to sit down and write about this every-comic-has-a-book-in-them phenomenon I heard that Simon Day has just signed a deal to write his autobiography. Now Simon Day is a lovely bloke with a smart, offbeat sense of humour and great taste in wine, but to paraphrase an old gag about Ringo Starr, he's not the funniest man in comedy. Or even the funniest man in The Fast Show.

Yet the publishers are bigging Day up, promising a vivid tale of truancy and fruit machine addiction. It's hardly drugs and debauchery, but what do I know? Maybe Day's book will make JK Rowling quake in her boots. And if it is a hit, where will publishers go next in their quest for hidden hits? Look out for My Story by the bloke who played Alan Partridge's Geordie mate. Or the biog of the man who played Private Godfrey in Dad's Army. Oh sorry, that one has just come out.