Category: publishing

“One of the fascinations of literary scholarship is its hold on writers of our own time. Contemporary poets read Shakespeare almost as if he were a rival, or some sort of perennial vade mecum of technical forms and approaches. Even without the expanding needs of modern education, Shakespeare would be with us in hundreds of studies year by year. What remains to be said that is new?”

“Italy’s decree governing the rights of authors was updated for the first time in 66 years Wednesday, creating more transparency in how writers are compensated but allowing for more time before payment for acquiring rights to a work is made.”

Margaret Seltzer, “who confessed this week to making up her memoir, ‘Love and Consequences,’ about growing up as a foster child in gang-ridden South-Central Los Angeles, appears also to have made up a foundation that she claimed was helping ‘to reduce gang violence and mentor urban teens’.”

“This is a revolutionary period. And as with all revolutionary periods, it’s one of enormous opportunity – I don’t think there’s ever been a greater period of opportunity for writers, for literary work. I think the transition for writers (from print to digital) is painful because it’s new. But the opportunities are enormous.”

If the publishing world ever wants to get away from the seemingly perpetual literary frauds that have left it with egg on its face over the past several years, says Bob Thompson, it simply must get past the silly idea that fact checking is too cumbersome a process for publishers to engage in. If your memoirist is claiming to have lived with a pack of wolves to escape Nazi oppression, for instance, you might want to make a phone call or two.

“One day after the author of ‘Love and Consequences’ confessed that she had made up the memoir about her supposed life as a foster child in gang-infested South-Central Los Angeles, the focus turned to her publisher and the news organizations that helped publicize what appeared to be a searing autobiography.”

“The basic answer is that it’s not practical. Publishers release hundreds of books each year, most of them several hundred pages long. A publisher simply can’t afford to fact-check all of those books to the standards of, say, the New Yorker, where a fact checker essentially re-reports each story.”

“Impostors have always stalked publishing, and the embellished recovery memoir is merely the latest specter to haunt the industry–trading, partly, on readers’ willingness to turn a half-blind eye if they feel that the fabrications smack of emotional truth. Given this, what should a publisher do, if anything?”

The author of “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed autobiography about growing up among gangbangers in South Los Angeles, acknowledged Monday that she made up everything in her just-published book.

“A quick scan of the Yellow Pages lists more than 100 bookstores in the Las Vegas area — but that list gets skinnier by half when you filter out the adult bookstores. If you count out the specialty stores — children’s books, comics, religious, recovery and self-help, and gambling — you’re pretty much left with a handful of the big chain bookstores Borders and Barnes & Noble.”