Category: publishing

Oprah Winfrey says she still supports James’ Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces”, even if not all he events depicted are true. “I am disappointed by the controversy surrounding ‘A Million Little Pieces,’ because I rely on the publishers to define the category that a book falls within.” In other news of the Frey, publisher Random House denies it is offering refunds on the book.

Author James Frey defended his memoir Wednesday night on Larry King. Frey, 36, told King that only 18 pages of his 432-page memoir were in dispute, an “appropriate ratio for a memoir.” He said there was a “great debate on what a memoir should serve: the story or some kind of journalistic truth. I’ve been shocked by the furor that’s erupted. I don’t know any memoir in the history of publishing that’s been so carefully vetted so long after publication.”

A list of the top-selling books of 2005…

America’s magazines are generally color-deficient, reports the New York Observer. The mastheads for major magazines are notably lacking in diversity. “The magazine industry is probably the least diverse of any of the media. They’ve taken a real pass.”

“James Frey, the author of ‘A Million Little Pieces,’ which has been the best-selling book in the country since Oprah Winfrey selected it last fall for her television book club, said on ‘Larry King Live’ on CNN last night that he never expected his memoir to come under such close scrutiny. But he maintained that what he believes is the essence of the book is true: that he was an alcoholic and drug addict who overcame his addiction.”

After charges of fakery, James Frey’s publisher began offering refunds. “Readers calling Random House’s customer service line to complain Wednesday were told that if the book was bought directly from the publisher it could be returned for a full refund. Those who bought the book at a bookstore were told to try and return it to the store where it was bought.”

James Frey is being attacked online over charges that his best-selling memoir is full of fraud. “On the message boards at Oprah.com (where the book is highly publicized and promoted as the most recent pick of the talk show queen’s popular book club), sentiments were largely of anger, betrayal and confusion. While some who joined the fray supported Frey claiming, as one did, that “true or untrue, [the book] is a great read.” Others called the author a “fraud” and a “liar” who presented fiction as fact for personal and financial gain.”

“A film version of James Frey’s best-selling addiction memoir ‘A Million Little Pieces’ could need a rehab of its own after a story posted Sunday on the muckraking Web site the Smoking Gun raised serious questions about the veracity of the author’s gritty true-life account.”

Critic Julia Keller never liked Jonathan Swift back in college, when his “lofty sarcasm [and] misanthropic superiority” seemed at odds with her vision of what literature ought to be. The wonderful thing about graduating from college, of course, is that you’re no longer required to delve into the work of writers you hate. But Keller is diving back in, auditing a Swift course at a Chicago university in order to “engage in an intellectual arm-wrestling match with Swift, my old nemesis, and report on the results.” Vegas oddsmakers are currently laying 3-to-2 odds on Swift.

A copyright dispute appears to have broken out between Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam and the publisher of a collection of “luxury magazines” aimed at high-end consumers in cities across the U.S. Beam first wrote about the company and its magazines last September, and he was more than a bit derisive. But now, the publisher appears to have pulled a few select quotes from Beam’s article to use as promotional material for the magazines, an action which Beam calls “blatant copyright infringement,” especially since the references to Beam’s column “omitted what we call the lead, which referred to [the] magazine as ‘a 352-page doorstop’ filled with ‘puffy, party-oriented proto-journalism.'”