Why Don’t Publishers Fact Check?
Submitted by mwilliams on Wed, 2008-03-05 16:59.In light of the rash of fake memoir confessions these days, it’s a fair question. The answer? 1) It’s not economically feasible—unless you feel like paying $100 for a book. 2) They don’t have to. Publishers aren’t legally responsible for the accuracy of the books they publish. 3) The author as a contractor makes representations and warranties that the material is original.
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Bigtime. Like all marks, these guys believed the con because they wanted to. They could have protected themselves, but they didn't. Now others are making excuses for them. Utter crap.
If it was too good to be true, it probably wasn't. However if you pretend you had no doubts, acted in good faith and had no reason to even try looking up the facts or actual events, you cannot be held responsible. It's financially wiser to pretend ignorance and innocence than doing the hard work of finding a *real* story.
True dat!
But... as this phenomenon becomes more widespread, there's a great opening for publisher marketing. "Memoirs R Us — Guaranteed True Biography!" They'd make a killing!
Rat's Reading - http://reading.kingrat.biz/
Yeah, we could get an independent house that certifies every detail in them. Sadly, we'd still have the problem that people usually have boring lives, and with no chance to spice 'em up we'd have to contend with the lameness.
"It was Monday. I trudged downstairs and plunked myself into the kitchen chair. The box of cornflakes mocked me openly. Was it all a dream that followed me downstairs, or was it a nearly clinical lack of caffeine? Sure it was the latter, I pulled my ass out of my chair to start the coffee maker. God, I hate Mondays."
(lather, rinse, repeat)
Obviously, you are plagiarizing from my daily blog!
Rat's Reading - http://reading.kingrat.biz/
I think the real question after this "rash" of fake memoirs should be: why would authors feel the need to pretend the story is a personal one, whatever happened to the concept of a good fiction story?
Are they all pathological liars, or has it become the only way to get published and make a mint?
Today I think, the only thing publishers seem to be good at selling are "true stories".
If they were not so dependent on some PR hooks to sell a book, maybe we could go back to a clean way of selling a good story, which in itself is probably harder, but in an era of instantaneous information, probably less risky.
I'm not saying that there aren't people in this world with interesting personal stories and that memoirs are a dead genre.
But rationally, there are probably more fictional writers out there, with better IMAGINED stories, even if inspired from others' lives, than there are potential memoirs authors.
Publishers, do your jobs: foster and shepherd fiction stories, and SELL THEM, instead of going for the cheap tricks, the "oprah" effect, the "gasp, you mean it's all true, it's so sad" thrill that makes people buy ANYTHING.
trsh3r, part of the problem is that non-fiction writers can get a contract after pitching nothing more than an idea; fiction writers need to have a finished work already completed. In the case of Ms. Seltzer, she had 3 years of time with an editor and other consultants plus $100,000 advance. None of this would have been showered on a work of fiction.
The difference is that of slaving away in private for months to produce just what they are looking for versus being paid to join a team to develop whatever the team wants. It's a massive difference.
Is the public really that hungry for memoirs, or is it an artifact of the incentives built into the industry? I think the latter is a massive force, meaning that the publishing industry is a bit delusional, again. Why would someone play into this delusion? I think the scale of the incentives speak well to that.
Combine these incentives with a group of marks that are easily conned, and you have a really big problem.
That's an interesting point wabbit, I hadn't though of that aspect - I'm an avid reader, and a marketing professional, but must admit I'm unaware of the 'behind the scenes' of the "litterary industry" as they say (though it should be a contradiction in terms).
Going back to the original topic of this item: obviously, in that whole context, fact-checking would be somehow wasting the "easy money" they are looking to make by going mostly with "non-fiction" (if that still really exists anymore)
If it's going to be as hard selling memoirs as original fiction, what's the point?
One could hope this would be the solution to its own problem (meaning either publishers would start fact checking, or give up on the memoirs "push" all together), but let's not be naive...
Even though we can bet the next memoirs published will be under the scrutiny of dirt-digging (and bored) journalists, this will blow over in a matter of weeks, and the masses can then resume their avid feeding on others' misery, be it real or purely fictional "non-fiction"
I won't disagree with you at all, and I do think that memoir readers also read fiction, so there's a lot of cross-over. But consider this:
The industry spends a lot of money on promotions. Let's assume that they actually get something for that, and drive sales at least partially how they want. That means that when one genre gets "hot", it's not necessarily because readers really *want* that genre. In other words, it's entirely possible that the memoir thang has been entirely invented.
Given this thought experiement, ie that "hot" genres aren't necessarily popular genres, what other side effects would you expect? One would be overall declines in book sales, I would think, as readers are turned off gradually. And we have this.
I don't think that people really want memoirs, necessarily. They want good reads and probably very few people are bound by any one genre. Readers tend to go for what their friends recommend to them, based on my survey.
My hunch is this: Publishers should spend a lot less time worrying about what is "hot" and spend more time looking for quality, especially in works that are genuinely new. They spend far too much time following trends, which is to say each other, and very little time enticing or querying readers.