Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Books Media News

Publishers Say 'Fact-Checking Too Costly' 403

Mr. Ghost writes "Members of the book publishing industry say that profit margins are too small to fact check "non-fiction" books. Instead they rely on the "honesty" of the authors submitting the book. This has come to a head with the revelation from the author of "Million Little Pieces" that he lied about the accounts in his memoirs."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Publishers Say 'Fact-Checking Too Costly'

Comments Filter:
  • by Palal ( 836081 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:31PM (#14604120) Homepage
    AI programmers have another job to do.... since machine translation is moving along quite well, why not develop a fact checker based on a similar algorithm, that compiles things from various sources and then presents it to a human to do final checking?
  • by pHatidic ( 163975 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:31PM (#14604124)
    Shouldn't the headline read Publishers Admit Wikipedia is More Accurate Than Books?
    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @12:02AM (#14604313)
      This comment is funny, but unfortunately true. I have nothing against Wikipedia, but being a college student, I find myself going to Wikipedia to get information over my textbooks. Does it make sense to find my $200(USD) textbooks less informative and less accurate than a free website which is more like an informative graffiti board?

      I mean, come on, publishers. What are you doing with my $200 dollars? Last term alone I paid over $600 to book publishers, and you're telling me you can't guarantee their accuracy with this? That's sadly pathetic. I could hire someone to read the text for accuracy myself after a few terms making this kind of money.
      • Tell me about it. Once while in grad school I paid $85 for a shiny new textbook for a topology course. After thumbing through it for a couple of hours, I realized that it had less information than a Dover paperback topology text I had previously purchased for $7. I returned that new piece of crap for a full refund, and copied the homework problems from a classmate. I passed with an A.
      • by Znork ( 31774 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @06:48AM (#14605690)
        You're not paying $200 because it costs $200 for the most cost effective producer to produce the book. You're paying $200 because that's what the only legal producer of the book knows that enough students will pay when their only alternative is to go without the book.

        That's the essential difference between a free market and a monopoly. In a free market, competition will set the price near the cost of producing the book. In a monopoly market, the monopoly owner sets the price at the point where many consumers can just barely afford the product, because that's what maximizes total revenue. In one situation, the cost of production has something to do with the price, in the other it has nothing to do with the price.

        So, for all you know, and for all you can do, the publishers may be snorting coke for your money. It's not like you can legally obtain a version of that specific book from someone who's actually checked the facts, or who's selling it for $5 when all they're doing is paying for a print run.
        • "That's the essential difference between a free market and a monopoly. In a free market, competition will set the price near the cost of producing the book."

          In all actuality, this is NOT a monopoly situation, it a case of free market economics interfacing with copyright law. A teacher has to choose a single book, which is protected under copyright, once that is chosen, there are no alternatives. This might result in a textbook having a higher cost than anticipated, but I doubt it. The professor, however,
          • "Since I work in academia, let me state this for the record: The cost of textbooks is not a result of the publisher's desire to screw the student (at least not in the biological and physical sciences), it is due to the free-market ownership of individual photographs or charts, which must be paid for by the publisher for the right to publish it."

            As one who worked in both editing and academia, the cost of textbooks is the result of the publishers desire to get as much money from the student (purchaser) as pos
        • It's not like you can legally obtain a version of that specific book from someone who's actually checked the facts, or who's selling it for $5 when all they're doing is paying for a print run.

          Because if they didn't have to pay for the creation of the material, you believe they would pay for the fact checking? Or perhaps there would be a more expensive version, "with fact checking"? Take away the IP protection and the publisher has no choice but to create content the cheapest way possible, and that means n

  • Hopefully people like opra will at least fact-check stuff before hanging their credibility out to dry.
    • Re:Well (Score:5, Funny)

      by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:43PM (#14604216) Journal
      Hopefully people like Oprah will at least fact-check stuff before hanging their credibility out to dry.

      Maybe they'll spell check too
    • Re:Well (Score:3, Insightful)

      by flyingsquid ( 813711 )
      I was pretty pissed when Oprah said it didn't matter whether he was telling the truth or not. What is the #1 thing women claim they want in a man? Honesty. But when it turned out that this guy is a liar, a complete fraud, these women were falling all over themselves to defend him, including their self-appointed leader, Oprah herself.

      I'm glad she tore into him; he deserved that. Still, why wasn't that her first reaction? What do women really want, then? The cynic in me says that when women complain about fi

      • I'm glad she tore into him as well [oprah.com]. I actually ended up seeing it by accident and really got into it when she started asking all the big questions.

        Still, why wasn't that her first reaction?
        I think Oprah is just a naturally positive person. I also think that she thought the show's research team had done enough research on the book before she aired the original book club episode. I think she should be somewhat angry at her own research crew also; they should have been able to find out that the book wasn't
      • Two things we're all taught from a young age:
        1. Always tell the truth
        2. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

        Unfortunately, it took me a long time to realize that the truth does not = something nice.

        People love their illusions and hate the people who take them away.

        In Oprah's case, her hate/anger manifested itself when she lashed out at Frey and the publisher. Hopefully, she saved some of that hate/anger for herself, so that it will reinforce whatever lesson she learns.

      • Oprah? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by tkrotchko ( 124118 ) *
        "I'm glad she tore into him; he deserved that. Still, why wasn't that her first reaction? "

        Why does anyone care about what Oprah does or thinks? I'm fascinated why anyone considers her more compelling or important than say, Madonna, Prince Charles, or Winnie the Pooh?

        • Re:Oprah? (Score:4, Funny)

          by geminidomino ( 614729 ) * on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @01:06AM (#14604672) Journal
          "Money has a strong influence on the weak minded."
          --Oprah-Wan Kenobi.
        • Re:Oprah? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by c_forq ( 924234 ) <forquerc+slash@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @02:31AM (#14605029)
          Madonna
          Because Madonna keeps reinventing herself too much to keep a consistent fan base (she has always been able to keep a large fan base though). In addition Madonna doesn't seem nearly as active in confronting issues of every day Americans and increasing the literacy of average Americans.
          Prince Charles
          Unlike Charles she wasn't born into success, and not only did she work her way to where she is now but she did it while being black and a woman. She was born to an unmarried coal miner and housemaid and went from that to being a media mogul and controlling top selling book lists.
          Winnie the Pooh
          Unlike Winnie, she exists. Also she in not a Pooh, and I have yet to know someone that can relate to a Pooh better then another human.
      • Re:Well (Score:3, Insightful)

        I've got a lot to learn about women but I can't imagine lumping all females - nearly three billion of them - into one basket like this. Maybe many women want honesty, maybe some have other priorities. They're not a big club though, and they don't all think the same.
  • No incentive (Score:5, Informative)

    by ryanr ( 30917 ) * <ryan@thievco.com> on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:32PM (#14604129) Homepage Journal
    Standard author contract says that the author warrants that their writing is original, factual, etc... and that the author will pay for as many lawyers that the publisher feels their need should there be legal trouble. So there's not a lot of risk for th publisher, and not a huge amount of incentive to spend a lot of effort fact checking. There's still the risk that the author goes bankrupt, and the publisher is back to paying for their own lawyers still, I suppose.

    My publisher does some checking for plagarism, since that has come up a couple of times.
  • Too costly (Score:5, Funny)

    by ewg ( 158266 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:32PM (#14604135)
    I didn't even have time to fact-check this reply!
    • When asked to substantiate his claim that he "didn't have time to check [his] reply" the Slashdot poster known only as 'ewg' said, "Well, it's kind of like not being able to afford to", and quietly retired from public life, saying only that he (or she, or it) "Needed to spend more time on the talk show circuit".

      When and if contacted for comment, Oprah Winfrey -- by her own account an "American TV presenter", whatever that may be, and who cares, and not me -- said she could neither confirm nor deny anything
  • by Nato_Uno ( 34428 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:33PM (#14604140)
    Filing taxes is a big pain, too, so maybe I'll just give that one a miss this year and see how that turns out...

  • by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:33PM (#14604143) Journal
    The only people who believed Frey wanted to be fooled: Glory to Dr. Dolan, as they say. [exile.ru]
    • Hey slashdot readers -- follow the link in parent! This guy is Hil-arious!

      A snippet: "At first I was puzzled by the fact that most of Frey's fans were women. Once again, I was deluded by all that Berkeley nonsense, assuming that women would object to the gross misogyny in Frey's novels, his habit of killing off women characters for cheap tears, his atavistic Hemingway swagger, his inevitable conclusion (in My Friend Leonard) that chicks are chapters while men are books-that only homoerotic friendships betw
  • Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thewldisntenuff ( 778302 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:33PM (#14604144) Homepage
    Screw honesty or even decent reporting - to hell with all that! It's too "costly". What happened to the day when it was more important to be right and honest than to sell tons of books/magazines/newspapers?

    Disgusting...
    • Re:Ha! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Xiroth ( 917768 )
      What happened to the day when it was more important to be right and honest than to sell tons of books/magazines/newspapers?

      That day was over as soon as it cost more to fact-check a book than the projected profit. Or, more cynically, perhaps when it was calculated that the expected loss from erroneous facts was less than the cost of fact-checking. Either way, publishers are not a public service; they are a for-profit business, and typically not a particularly high-margin business. What would you prefer: A p

    • What happened to the day when it was more important to be right and honest than to sell tons of books/magazines/newspapers?

      That day was way before we sold tons of books/magazines/newspapers.

      Greed supersedes all lesser sins or higher morals.

    • Re:Ha! (Score:3, Funny)

      by FiberOPtic ( 547213 )
      "when it was more important to be right and honest than to sell tons of books/magazines/newspapers?"

      Think of the poor shareholders ...

      think

      .

      ---

    • A friend of mine had a story published recently in the New Yorker -- a *fictional* story, about a street family sniffing glue (among other things) in Nairobi, Kenya. They ran into problems with it for awhile during the editing process because it was difficult for them to verify that the slang, the setting, the food, everything -- was valid and realistic. Was the brandname of glue actually available in Nairobi? Etc.. He would find them contacts who turned out to be basically unreachable, etc. etc..

      True,
  • irony (Score:4, Insightful)

    by icepick101 ( 901550 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:34PM (#14604151)
    The more people make a big deal of this guy, the more money he makes from publicity. Stop buying his stupid book.
  • by pahoran ( 893196 ) * on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:34PM (#14604158)
    I don't know about yours, but my mother taught me not to believe everything I read / hear / see on TV.

  • by topham ( 32406 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:34PM (#14604159) Homepage

    While I think the publishers of a scientific journal bare some responsibility when it turns out an article was entirely bogus I don't understand why people want to blame the publishers of an Autobiography.

    Had the publishers known the book was faked, contrived or otherwise bogus they should have refused publishing it as an autobiography. I see no reason for them to go out of their way to prove, or disprove it though.

    People take some things far too seriously.
    • I agree with you on the publishers initial take. It seems, however, that even after a large number of discrepencies arose and were subsequently acknowledged by the publisher, they continued to push the book as a factual account. Actually, if you believe the facts as pushed in this article by slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2135069/?nav=tap3 [slate.com], the publisher could have called BS on the book as far back as 2003, which is way before Oprah recommended the book. The problem here isn't just check facts, but also
    • While I think the publishers of a scientific journal bare some responsibility when it turns out an article was entirely bogus I don't understand why people want to blame the publishers of an Autobiography.

      Had the publishers known the book was faked, contrived or otherwise bogus they should have refused publishing it as an autobiography. I see no reason for them to go out of their way to prove, or disprove it though.

      They should've made a reasonable effort to verify that the book they were representin

  • Well hell... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by east coast ( 590680 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:38PM (#14604174)
    I can't expect honesty from my nightly news let alone a biographical book.

    Before anyone worries about the standards of Oprah's latest gem we should have something in place to hold "news" publicists/broadcasters responsible for their tripe.
  • I thought it was up to the writer to substantiate facts with proof and have his peers review the book. It seemed the publisher's job was to keep themselves from being sued for libel and that's it. It it so shocking that a book can actually be incorrect?

    There's plenty of books contradicting eachother's "facts" and books later proven to be incorrect, so what exactly has changed since A Million Little Pieces? There's a lot more dangerous books than some junkie's fantasy adventure.
  • Who does this "submitter" thing he "is" with all these "quotes," "Bennett Brauer?"
  • Not a new thing. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Irvu ( 248207 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:38PM (#14604183)
    The "Million Little Pieces" incedent is minor as far as I am concerned. The lack of real fact-checking has gotten so bad that there is a whole industry of debunkers and debunker-debunkers. Take Ann Coulter for instance. Her grasp of reality (or at least the difference between truth and fiction) is minimal at best. A whole army of coulter-debunkers have grown up who devote time to debunking her claims (my favorite is The Daily Howler [dailyhowler.com]. In turn a whole army of Coulter Defenders has grown up to attack these debunkers.

    At first I was annoyed by this phoenomenon, and then bored by it. Initally I assumed that the people who publish Coulter would care that her lies slandered their good name. And then I realized that they didn't care. They were making money off of her and the people both defending and attacking her. And, at the end of the day most people only believe those that say what they want to hear anyway.

    While I was initially inclined to see this as bad publishing I now see this as a bigger problem.
    • Initally I assumed that the people who publish Coulter would care that her lies slandered their good name. And then I realized that they didn't care. They were making money off of her and the people both defending and attacking her.

      Actually, Coulter has had her article de-syndicated from a variety of publications. And that's on top of the occasional speaking engagement that gets canceled.

      But your main point still holds. I think the main difference between now and the past is that it takes a lot more to "cro

    • Well my thoughts on this is that no-one really believe's their opinion anymore- they take sides for the sake of having a point of view to argue from and then to get air time and make money for themselves.
      Just like in HHGTTG and the whole debate over turning on Deep Thought, ya know.
    • by stonedonkey ( 416096 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @02:19AM (#14604987)
      The "Million Little Pieces" incedent is minor as far as I am concerned.

      Step into the $2.55 million dollar Manhattan penthouse [thesmokinggun.com] he bought with his lies and you might just change your mind. There's also mention of a summer home in cozy Amagansett.

      It also almost got him a screenplay based on the book, and another based on the Hell's Angels. Look him up on IMDb.
    • by typical ( 886006 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @02:30AM (#14605025) Journal
      Take Ann Coulter for instance. Her grasp of reality (or at least the difference between truth and fiction) is minimal at best.

      I doubt that. I put Ann Coulter in the same bin as professional wrestlers. I have no doubt that Ms. Coulter is indeed a neoconservative (social conservative, fiscal liberal), but when she gets on TV and makes outrageous claims to tick some people off and gratify others, she is being an actor and an entertainer. The majority of what she says is extreme hyperbole. She can make a career off of exaggeration, and is doing exactly that.

      Michael Moore does the same thing (though he tends to stick more to specifically attacking Bush and friends than Coulter, who has a habit of attacking this vast and twisted monster that she's built called "the liberal"). He's making a good living doing what he's doing.
  • by OgreChow ( 206018 )
    Of course it should be up to the author to decide whether his/her book is fiction or nonfiction, and that author should be held accountable for it. The publisher takes the risk of looking bad if they invest in a disreputable author. What's the problem here? Exactly how many people do you expect to hold your hand through life? Next we'll be quibbling over whether the Bible is fiction or non-fiction.
  • by SirFozzie ( 442268 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:40PM (#14604195)
    From TFA

    Late Friday afternoon, plaintiff's attorney Marc Bern said he filed a lawsuit against Random House and its Doubleday imprint in U.S. District Court in Manhattan charging that the publishers misrepresented that book as nonfiction. His client, California resident Karen Futernick, alleges in the suit that she purchased "A Million Little Pieces" on that basis but that the defendants "failed to conduct a reasonable investigation or inquiry regarding the truthfulness or accuracy" of the material. Mr. Bern said that he will seek more than $50 million in damages for the plaintiffs. "Nobody can get away with profiting with a product that you represented as something that it is not," says Alan Ripka, another partner in Napoli Bern Ripka LLP, the New York City law firm that filed the suit.

    Ayup. $50 Million dollars because she bought a book marked as non-fiction that was actually fictional. If she ever went into the Boston Public Library, we could clear the national deficit just from the Natural Sciences section alone!
  • This is nothing new. Two classic examples of recent vintage are James Hatfield's Fortunate Son and Michael Bellesiles' Arming America.

    Fortunate Son was withdrawn from the publisher because A.) The author was utterly unable to provide a single shred of proof for the only new, "bombshell" revelation in the book, i.e. that George W. Bush was once arrested for cocaine possession, and B.) The author turned out to be a liar and convicted felon. He was an ex-con on parole for attempted murder, had pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $34,000 in federal housing funds, none of which he happened to mention to St. Martin's while pitching the book. Plus he was caught making up stories about his background; as a science fiction writer, I especially liked the one about how he was recipient of "the prestigious international Isaac Asimov Foundation Literary Award for Outstanding Biography," which, oddly enough, doesn't exist.)

    Michael Bellesiles' Arming America was another demonstrable (although initially more believable and well-crafted) fraud that argued gun ownership in early America was rare. Researchers following up on his work found that some of his source material said the exact opposite of what he claimed [nationalreview.com]. That eventually got Bellesiles fired from his university position, and even had the Bancroft prize committee not only rescind the prize it had awarded him, but ask for the prize money back!

  • Oprah publicly lashed out at the liar(author) and the publisher on her show. This is simply a case of CYA. Oprah's production company was approached by mutliple credible people discounting the book's story long before this scandal took place. Her production company has many resources. Considering the volume of sales they do, there is no reason for her production company not to do a little fact checking on their own.
    • There was a time when I respectec Oprah. When she continued to support Frey long after the facts came out, I lost all respect for her. Her self-serving savaging of Frey has done nothing to rehabilitate her for me. From now on, her reccomendation of a book or cause not only won't make me buy or support it, it will make me suspicious of it. I wonder how many others feel the same way?
  • by Anonymous Coward
    This also must mean they also don't fact check the fiction!

    There may very well have been popular works of fiction that may actually have been non-fiction! I bet if Smoking Gun digs a little, they might get something on Stephen King.
  • by johansalk ( 818687 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:43PM (#14604219)
    What do Americans think of seeking $50m in "damages" for the California resident who bought a copy of the book?
  • Mixed opinions (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Donniedarkness ( 895066 ) <{Donniedarkness} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:44PM (#14604223) Homepage
    I'm kinda mixed on this... I mean, I think the fact that he lied and said that the book was factual was wrong.

    On the other hand, it's a damn good book, and wouldn't have been as good if I thought it was fake. My girlfriend's English professor went to college with him, and said that the guy was definately a tortured soul. When he spent that 2 nights in jail (which he claimed was 5 years in his book), it really tore him up; for him, it was 5 years.

    Regardless, this didn't hurt his book sales too badly! It's still on the top 5 sellers list!

    As far as publishers fact-checking: Do we really expect these guys to do this? That could take some digging for them, and we all know how publishers can be.

  • by toupsie ( 88295 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:51PM (#14604260) Homepage
    Oprah ran lies about Hurricane Katrina on her show and she never retracted them. She allowed Mayor Ray Nagin on September 5th [oprah.com] claim that "They're murdering people in there (the Superdome)." Louisiana National Guard and State health department officials said no one had been murdered [nwsource.com] inside the stadium. So what's worse? A book about an addict that was spiced up or a public official using Oprah's airwaves to promote false news to a nation that public policy might have been based off?
    • (a) That it's disgusting that Oprah ran lies on her show; and
      (b) That the US government would be dumb enough to base policy on what they saw on Oprah
    • Do you know for certain that they were deliberately lying? Or were they simply relaying false news, which one might reasonably expect in an emergency on the scale of Katrina.

      Unless you know for certain that Oprah and Nagin were conspiring to lie to and decieve the public, you are a hypocrite. You are deceiving the public using the same technique you denounce.
      • by karmaflux ( 148909 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @12:30AM (#14604474)
        The mayor of the fucking city has more than a slight responsibility to figure out what is going on in his city before he goes to hang out with Oprah and spread bullshit. If some wild-eyed nutjob hobo claims murder in the Superdome, it can be safely ignored. When the primary governmental authority in New Orleans claims murder in the Superdome, he had damn well better be sure it happened. That's called "responsibility," and it comes with the job. This isn't some international crime ring. It doesn't require James Bond. Either there was murder in the Superdome or there wasn't, and if Ray Nagin can't be bothered to find out which it is before he shoots his mouth off on national syndication, then he's not doing his job.
      • by Chmarr ( 18662 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @12:32AM (#14604483)
        Most 'news' nowadays is just repeating what other people say, rather than doing original research. After all, if all your news is just "so and so said", then you can't be sued for telling lies, since "so and so DID actually say this, we never said it was true or false."

        THAT is the reason I don't bother with MSM anymore. It's all worthless PR.
      • Do you know for certain that they were deliberately lying? Or were they simply relaying false news, which one might reasonably expect in an emergency on the scale of Katrina. Unless you know for certain that Oprah and Nagin were conspiring to lie to and decieve the public, you are a hypocrite. You are deceiving the public using the same technique you denounce.

        Oprah and Nagin were walking in the Superdome during this episode. They had first hand knowledge what happened in there by their very presence and

    • by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @01:20AM (#14604746)
      Oprah will believe anything. She exists to frighten stay-at-home midwestern housewives and, simultaneously, sell them a new brand of bleach. If Oprah didn't have her bizarre lies and scaremongering, then the frightened masses would stop watching. As it is, they _have_ to watch, otherwise they might miss the latest news about dangerous shady characters who kidnap little boys from school, mail them to Thailand in small parcels, and sell them into slavery in the broomstick rape industry.

      DON'T MISS IT! THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOUR CHILD!
  • by aeoo ( 568706 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:54PM (#14604275) Journal
    In other words, non-fiction books are a worse source of information than Wikipedia, which is constantly open to peer review (unlike dead tree media, which is unalterable once printed).

    So, maybe now people constantly slamming Wikipedia for its lack of "fact checking" will stop?

    It's only a matter of time before fact checking becomes a pay-for extra even in science journals.
  • Man, I wish I could use that excuse to get out of copyright infringement/IP messes. "Sorry, it was too costly to check with every surviving actor and the estates of the dead ones...," "Sorry, it was too costly to check if this CD was in the public domain or not...," etc.
  • by dilvish_the_damned ( 167205 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:58PM (#14604292) Journal
    I will forgo the usual bad joke for this thought:
    Someone should pick this up as an opportunity to create a commercial certification such as in MSA, UL, or to a much less and more stupid extent, A+. e.g. Certified to be factual by Sarlon (its made up I hope). With that they get the right to put the big ol' Sarlon stamp on the cover and in the publishers disclaimer.
    As with all certifications, whose without are obviously sub-par and not to be trusted.
    I am only partially joking.
  • by bLindmOnkey ( 744643 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @12:03AM (#14604317)
    just take Gulliver's Travels, for example. It was originally published as Non-fiction travel literature. Come on, did you really think publishers really planned on going to see if 6inch Liliputian people and horse-people Houyhnhnms really existed? No, Swift's claims were so unbelievable people probably thought they had to be believable. Not to say that anyone bought his stories while they were published as non-fiction, but it doesn't come as much of a surprise that publishers wouldn't check facts.
  • by jesterzog ( 189797 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @12:03AM (#14604321) Journal

    I find it quite irritating that some books are out to trick their readers, and there are many I'd prefer had never been written simply because it means I spend more time having to argue with and correct people on certain topics if they've been taking rubbish sources seriously. But the thought of non-fiction books having to be factually correct seems quite far-fetched. If publishers and authors could be sued for providing factually wrong books in a non-fiction category, then categories such as "New age" would be illegal, simply because authors who publish in them tend to be out to swindle their readers in one way or another by definition, and the publisher's probably in it for the sales. (Okay, I see New Age as fiction, but many book shops, publishers and people don't.)

    Some of the best satire can come from effectively lying to an audience, and I don't see how you could cleanly distinguish it. Peter Jackson is just an example of someone who's done this, having faked an historical documentory (see Forgotten Silver [imdb.com]) and lied about its origins to get it on TV. He had a lot of gullible people thinking they were seeing actual history, including the TV network, before he revealed it was all made up. What's the difference? Could he have been sued by the network? Possibly, but he took that chance and he wasn't, and now Forgotten Silver is considered a work of art.

    As sad as I think it is that there are some really crappy books out there, and people who believe them, I'm not sure how rules could be made to fairly place responsibility on a publisher. Personally I think that fact checking should come from peers after publication, and it should be the responsibility of the reader to check if the facts have been checked. Hopefully anything that's actually important enough and relied on by enough people will have its facts checked, resulting in either confirmation, or a very embarassed author and publisher. There are always reputations to go on. In the case the article speaks of, the publisher is hopefully now being made to look more than a little stupid, and I'd like to think that Oprah's Book Club reputation is probably suffering a bit more than it was previously if its followers ever cared about this sort of thing. I've never followed her book club myself, but that's for good reason.

  • Once, houses like MacMillan, Knopf, and others could be trusted. Only rarely was their a problem with quality. Nowadays, it's difficult to know which house owns what; the publishers are actually little LLCs owned by bigger houses to reduce liability should something nasty happen. The lawyers have pushed liability out past the point where the public is protected, only the publisher. Indemnification is a shell game now. ./

    It's also quantity game. Quality is how much you can pimp your book at ABA, or find clev
  • by edunbar93 ( 141167 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @12:11AM (#14604368)
    Some books, well, you really have to wonder if they're actually intended to be non-fiction in the first place. Biographies - especially unauthorized ones - are sometimes pretty unbelievable. And sometimes you just have to wonder what the hell the editors (yes, plural) were thinking. At some point in time, you'd expect that common sense would kick in and they'd say "Oh come on, that can't be right..."

    But no. Time after time, you see all manner of media go through at least three levels of possible sanity checking and bullshit filter, and still somehow the real stinkers get through.
  • Over the last 10-15 years there's been a huge increase in the numbers of self-help books being published. Most of them are "chicken soup for the soul" type of stuff, and I don't have a problem with that.

    What I do have a problem with is books that push a controversial viewpoint about (say) medicine. The best example is Kevin Trudeau [wikipedia.org] and his book Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About.

    Honestly, there is really nothing stopping me writing a book claiming that "prescription medicine is CAUSING DISEAS
  • The WSJ article is worded to make it sound like a slimy lawyer is trying to get a $50 million pay-day for one buyer:
    • Late Friday afternoon, plaintiff's attorney Marc Bern said he filed a lawsuit against Random House and its Doubleday imprint in U.S. District Court in Manhattan charging that the publishers misrepresented that book as nonfiction. His client, California resident Karen Futernick, alleges in the suit that she purchased "A Million Little Pieces" on that basis but that the defendants "failed t
  • here's a cheap, easy solution.

    make another category of book...

    fiction
    non-fiction
    and partial-fiction

    or some other catchy title.

    simple, non consumer-deceptive solution. this category simply means that facts weren't checked.
  • I'm one of the few people who believe that the book in its current form is a dead medium in the long run. The books I am currently working on will be completely free in e-book format in exchange for creating a market for my services. There is no margin in this case, pure promotional and marketing value.

    In the long haul, even if books continue to have staying power, the Internet is all you need to fact check. Book publishing costs are way down but distribution and marketing costs are way up. If an author
  • Mark Twain was a writer of impeccable character who would be proud that we take our stories so seriously these days.

    I hear he too might be coming out with an autobiography.
  • http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385507755/104-3 3 57512-8407954?v=glance&n=283155 [amazon.com]

    They still want to rake in the big bucks. Rather than dumping this liar they'll just put a bandaid on it and keep raking it in.

    Amazon.com News from Doubleday & Anchor Books The controversy over James Frey's A Million Little Pieces has caused serious concern at Doubleday and Anchor Books. Recent interpretations of our previous statement notwithstanding, it is not the policy or stance of this company that it does
  • Mmmm...$15 for 400 pieces of paper, those are razor thin margins to be sure. Last I checked a ream of paper was $2.99 and laser toner is about a penny a page. And that's if I do it. Maybe they should just put the books online for free and let us bear the costs of printing? It would certainly be cheaper.

  • by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @01:42AM (#14604850) Homepage
    We need much better fact-checking on bibles.

    Richard Dawkins, the well-known Oxford biologist, has been pushing for this lately. His two-hour series on Channel 4 in Britain, investigates religion the way 60 Minutes investigates scams. Part I, "The God Delusion" [onegoodmove.org], includes a visit to a US megachurch in which the interviewer asks the preacher some tough questions. He also visits Lourdes, and asks questions about the reported miracle cure rate and the types of miracles recorded. It's consumer activism applied to religion.

    (The audio of the show is available on the site above, and plays fine. The video is available on BitTorrent [mininova.org] but seems to have some formatting problems.)

  • by FishandChips ( 695645 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @08:43AM (#14606010) Journal
    Some things cannot be fact-checked in any worthwhile way. Their power to move us is precisely that they are an "imaginative re-creation" of something that happened, and by this they show us a greater spiritual or emotional truth than the bald facts baldly stated. On the basis of literal, scientific truth, I'm afraid that any publisher's fact-checker would be duty-bound to reject the US Constitution and demand cuts or rewriting of 90 per cent of the New Testament, including the retitling of the Letters of St Paul to "Letters by an Unknown Author". The miracle of the feeding of the 5000, for example, cannot literally be true, but to its original listeners the story would have contained some very powerful truths.

    I'm not sure which is the more nauseating. That the Opera crew (and sundry attorneys and greed-crazed readers) should have failed to notice that "A Million Little Pieces" could not possibly be true in any literal way; or that having had this pointed out to them, they should blame others for their own stupidity then seek to profit from it.

    I doubt we'll hear Oprah calling up an archbishop and demanding the withdrawal of the New Testament any time soon. Maybe, shock horror, the world of 2000 years ago had a much more sophisticated understanding of truth and fiction that we do today.

    FWIW, I didn't think much of "A Million Little Pieces". It fails to engage. And, yes, publishers are mostly a two-faced, puffed-up crowd, prattling about literature while paying freelance editors and proofreaders not much more than burger-flipping rates then blaming them for foobars that a Harvard professor might easily have missed.

Life is a healthy respect for mother nature laced with greed.

Working...