Ethics Newsline®

CHICAGO
A case that raised questions of intellectual ethics on a national platform may result in fundamental changes in the way publishing houses do business, as many editors are expected to begin asking the “James Frey Question,” according to press reports last week.

Frey, the disgraced author of “A Million Little Pieces” — a memoir that was embraced by the self-help industry but turned out to be largely fabricated — was publicly rebuked last week by Oprah Winfrey, whose original endorsement sent his book to the bestseller lists.

Although she had originally defended Frey, Winfrey scolded him on her television show, saying “I feel duped,” according to a report in the New York Times. “But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers.”

As the Chicago Tribune reported, many predict that the incident will change the landscape of U.S. publishing. “From now on,” said Morgan Entrekin, president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic, “it would be a very slow-witted publisher who wouldn’t ask the James Frey Question: ‘What exactly have you done with the truth in this memoir?’ “

But others in the industry say economic forces will probably maintain the status quo. “Publishing companies run on pretty tight budgets, and there’s just not enough time to check every book,” Viking associate publisher Paul Slovak told the Associated Press. “But it is possible that somebody might look at these books with a slightly more alert eye.”

Frey’s memoir began to unravel after a website checked claims made in the book against police records and found that many were fabricated or exaggerated. Later, it became known that Frey had originally written the work, which relates how he says he overcame alcohol and drug abuse, as a novel, but changed it to a “memoir” on the advice of his agent, who told him that memoirs tended to sell better.

The case poses some other question to the publishing industry, especially since sales do not seem to be slowing — will the book be on fiction or nonfiction bestseller lists? The publishing trade journal Editor & Publisher noted that the editors of the New York Times bestseller lists as well as some bookstores are considering re-categorizing the work as fiction.