If you missed Terry Gross’ ”Fresh Air” interview of the always-fascinating Charles Ardai yesterday, you can check it out online. Although much of the information about the Hard Case Crime publisher was familiar to me from my own interview three years ago (I’m proud to say that Booklist recognized HCC’s potential appeal long before the mainstream media caught on), two things were new to me. One was that both of Ardai’s parents were Holocaust survivors, a fact that obviously had a huge influence on his life. And the other was that his forthcoming novel, Fifty-to-One, is a humorous tale about a character named “Charles” who happens to be the editor of a publishing concern called “Hard Case Crime.”

Metafiction: the hot new trend in crime fiction!

According to the CBC, the German publisher Bertelsmann AG is planning a print version of Wikipedia (”German publisher plans printed version of Wikipedia“). Well, the German part, and only the most-searched articles. Still, I hope shopkeepers are prepared for the people who show up with pens, scissors, glue, and alternate pages.

Signet is so over Cassie Edwards. From the Boston Globe (”Romance writer, publisher split up over plagiarism claims,” by Hillel Italie):

NEW YORK—Romance writer Cassie Edwards and publisher Signet Books have decided to break up after allegations emerged in January that in she lifted passages in several of her books from other sources.

“Signet has conducted an extensive review of all its Cassie Edwards novels and due to irreconcilable editorial differences, Ms. Edwards and Signet have mutually agreed to part ways,” the publisher said in a statement Friday.

“Cassie Edwards novels will no longer be published with Signet Books. All rights to Ms. Edwards’ previously published Signet books have reverted to the author.”

I seem to remember a book written by 13 authors…oh, yes: Naked Came the Manatee (1997). And, in fact, Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, et al appropriated the concept from a practical joke called Naked Came the Stranger (1969). Now there’s an Internet start-up that’s hoping to turn a hoax and a lark into a business model. According to Publishers Weekly (”WEbook Launches Collaborative Book-Writing Site,” by Lynn Andriani), WEbook “is hoping to do for novel writing what American Idol did for music and what Wikipedia did for information.”

Essentially, WEbook hopes that people will come to its site to write books and then vote on which ones should be published.

Within the site, there are dozens of (mostly nonfiction) subject areas where members can start writing. Members can designate their work as "private," which allows them to keep the rights and share it only with their friends, or make it "public," which is where WEbook makes its money: if a book garners enough votes from the WEbook community, WEbook copyedits, typesets and publishes the book, giving the author and contributors a 5% royalty on sales.

Their first book, Pandora, a thriller with 17 authors (but 34 total contributors), came out last month. Is it any good? Sample chapters are available at WEbook. Sample paragraphs:

Pandora took a deep breath. "You know I love you, but I can’t be with someone I don’t trust," she exhaled. "Is there something I should know?"

Chris shook his head in disbelief. How could the woman resting in the next room, a woman he’d only met twice, know something that only five other people in the world knew? How had she divined the secret Chris had carefully guarded since he was eighteen? What the hell was her secret?

Oh look, here’s another one: Naked Came the Phoenix (2001).

Yesterday, the New York Times reported on a real book with a fake author, but there’s no scandal involved. Last fall, as part of a storyline on All My Children, perfume magnate Kendall Hart decided to try her hand at a little novel writing. Two months later, the book, Charm!, was published on the TV show–and in real life, too. It’s sold over 100,000 copies to date. And, in a few days, you’ll be able to buy a perfume called “Charm,” too.

Amazingly, this synergistic ploy is a copycat (”The Book Is Real Enough. It’s the Author That’s Fake,” by Joanne Kaufman):

These are not the first instances of daytime drama brand extensions, according to Lynn Leahey, editorial director of Soap Opera Digest. Indeed, Kendall’s own mother, Erica Kane, who is played by Susan Lucci, produced the novel "Having it All" in 1997. It too was published in real life by Hyperion.

CBS has pulled the same stunt. In 2002, "Guiding Light" offered "Lorelei’s Guiding Light: An Intimate Diary," "which filled in the blanks of a character’s life during a period when she wasn’t with the show," said Ms. Leahey. In 2006, "As the World Turns" came out with "Oakdale Confidential," which dealt with the past of a character, Katie Peretti, who was credited on the cover as co-author.

Perhaps Ms. Peretti was a role model for Marcie Walsh, the police department receptionist on ABC’s "One Life to Live," who two years ago was credited with "The Killing Club," a best-selling mystery that was published by Hyperion. (The actual author was the soap’s head writer at the time, Michael Malone. Later, a "One Life to Live" character known as Hayes bought a copy of "The Killing Club" on an episode of the show and began bumping off members of the local populace based on methods used in the book.)

In the wake of the most recent fake-memoir scandals, many people have asked why editors don’t do a better job of fact-checking potential frauds. Well, maybe it’s because (invoking Shatner here) those editors. Don’t. In fact. Exist!

Galleycat has done an excellent job of exposing this unethical practice.

But, one reader assures me, sending out rejection letters under false names, in the hopes of avoiding long, tiresome correspondence with would-be writers, really has happened - at at least one company. “I worked at a publishing house which used a ‘fake’ contact for slush submissions and rejections,” this woman emails. “The name used was the maiden name of the deceased mother of one of the editors.”

OK, so maybe it’s not really all that unethical–and, in some instances, it’s even kind of understandable. But still, shouldn’t publishing houses be setting a good example for their would-be authors?

I wasn’t not blogging yesterday because I was too busy reading the endless takes and updates on false memories, but that could easily have been the case. Whew.

Motoko Rich places Peggy Seltzer aka Margaret B. Jones as merely the latest in a long line of literary liars (”A Family Tree of Literary Fakers,” New York Times):

But the history of literary fakers stretches far, far back, at least to the 19th century, when a slave narrative published in 1863 by Archy Moore was revealed as a novel written by a white historian, Richard Hildreth, and into the early 20th, when Joan Lowell wrote a popular autobiography, "Cradle of the Deep," about her colorful childhood aboard a four-masted ship sailing the South Seas; in fact, she had grown up almost entirely in Berkeley, Calif.

Daniel Mendelsohn (The Lost, 2006) worries that, because of liars like Misha Defonseca, people won’t believe the holocaust stories that are equally amazing–but true (”Stolen Suffering,” NYT):

That pervasive blurriness, the casualness about reality that results when you can turn off entire worlds simply by unsubscribing, changing a screen name, or closing your laptop, is what ups the cultural ante just now. It’s not that frauds haven’t been perpetrated before; what’s worrisome is that, maybe for the first time, the question people are raising isn’t whether the amazing story is true, but whether it matters if it’s true.

Simon Dumenco asks a questions that a lot of people have asked lately, “How Did a Valley Girl Convince Times She Was a Ghetto Chick?“–but provides a different answer (Advertising Age):

There are people who are looking to extract object lessons from the “Love and Consequences” (ironic title!) fraud — about how publishers of both books and newspapers must do a better job of checking facts. Fine; that’s all very well and good. But I also believe that Seltzer and Albert are depraved and cunning megalomaniacs who sought a truly perverse sort of glory and reward through wannabe victimhood and self-debasement (”Hug me, I was raped as a child!”), which is, of course, sick. Crime can be reduced through better policing, sure, but it can never be eliminated because mental illness can never be eliminated.

David Treuer asks, “Why do writers pretend to be Indians?” (”Going Native,” Slate):

It’s easy enough to imagine what motivates literary fakers - their inventions are a way to win attention and acclaim for work that would otherwise be dismissed as pedestrian. But why pretend to be an Indian? What is so appealing about stripping off one’s own identity and donning a reddish one?

Louis Bayard (How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read, 2007) fact-checks some classics (”Attention, all you memoir fabulists!” Salon):

“The Adventures of Buffalo Bill Cody”

According to zoologists, the animals that Mr. Cody killed in excessive numbers are not buffaloes but bison. We recommend a global search-and-replace, up to and including author’s name.

Galleycat offers feedback from a book reviewer…

“I’m a critic who was assigned to review Love and Consequences,” says a reader who chose to email me anonymously for fairly obvious reasons. “I had my doubts about the book, but they were smoothed over by the requisite note that names had been changed, experiences conflated, etc… I ignored my instincts, though, because I don’t think it’s a critic’s job to vet memoirs, and the story was compelling and well-written.”

…and notes that others were willing to make Riverhead’s mistake:

Which is exactly what Riverhead did when they discovered Peggy Seltzer’s deceptions, too. Yes, I think McGrath should have asked tougher questions. But the problem with Love and Consequences didn’t come about because she’s an anomaly in her field - in fact, she delivered exactly what publishers want. If another house had come up with more money for Emily Davies or “Margaret B. Jones,” this weeklong celebration of schadenfraude (the joy of exposing somebody else’s phoniness, according to author Elizabeth Hand) would have some other editor in the spotlight, no doubt giving exactly the same responses.

Amy Alexander consults the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (”Truth and Consequences,” The Nation):

 I wanted to see if Margaret Seltzer, aka Margaret B. Jones, the 33-year-old author of Love and Consequences, fits the description of someone with “anti-social personality disorder,” more commonly known as a sociopath.

Motoko Rich questions not the foundations of Seltzer’s story, but the foundation in her story (”Foundation Is Questioned after Memoir Is Exposed,” NYT):

The author 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."

And Steve Huff uncovers a primary source–Seltzer’s dry run (”Seltzer Honed Homegirl Hosejob on AOL,” Radar):

By the time Seltzer set about hoodwinking her editor at Riverhead, Sarah McGrath, she’d already practiced her story on an AOL journal titled “berious b”, which appears to have been created four years ago. “Berious b” was “jus some basik thoughts and perspectives, bree style without apology.” There weren’t many entries, but what Bree - screen name “blastedagronaut” - did post was interesting. Like her “All About Me” section on the right side of the page, which began “im jus a gurl…a simple one at that. i was a soldier once, but i think i am semi-retired now. dont doubt that i am doing my work still, only what that work is has changed…”

And, on Slate, which clearly wants to own this story, Christopher Beam offers “The Fake Memoirist’s Survival Guide“):

Specificity is your enemy. Write with passionate vagueness. Avoid precise dates; don’t get more exact than the year if you can help it. Better yet, the decade. One scholar challenged the authenticity of Misha Defonseca’s memoir based on her claim that her family was deported from Belgium in 1941 - in reality, the Germans didn’t deport Belgian Jews until 1942. Frey was undone when the Smoking Gun discovered he had spent only a few hours in jail, not three months. When in doubt, go with “awhile.”

Also on Slate, Ben Yagoda says the system is working (”Believe It or Not“):

But is it such a terrible thing that so many lying memoirists have been exposed? On the contrary: It’s evidence that the system works.

Also on Slate, Gabriel Sherman updates the Ishmael Beah brouhaha (”The Fog of Memoir“):

Just how did this whole brouhaha start in the first place?

And, FINALLY, on Slate V, a “sneak peek at Volume 2 of Margaret B. Jones’ memoirs.”

More free-book madness. For the next month, you can read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for free–as long as you don’t mind sitting at a computer with a live internet connection. On Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow (Overclocked) gives it a bad review (the interface, not the book). Gaiman responds to that and another charge, as well:

I was surprised by a few emails coming in from people accusing me of doing bad things for other authors by giving anything away — the idea being, I think, that by handing out a bestselling book for nothing I’m devaluing what a book is and so forth, which I think is silly.

…

This is how people found new authors for more than a century. Someone says, “I’ve read this. It’s good. I think you’d like it. Here, you can borrow it.” Someone takes the book away, reads it, and goes, Ah, I have a new author.

Libraries are good things: you shouldn’t have to pay for every book you read.

(Read Booklist’s review of American Gods.)

February must be Give Away a Book Month. Why, here’s another one: Charles Bock’s Beautiful Children (Random House). But is free publicity worth a potential drop in sales? And did I really just display their whole ad in my blog post? Why, it must be worth it!

Giving something away for free in order to help you sell it surely seems counterintuitive to publishing’s old guard, but we’re living in Seth Godin’s age of souvenirs now:

As he pointed out, he’s not in the business of selling books; the books are the souvenirs for the ideas people pick up from his blogs and his speaking engagements. But not everyone was convinced: As the guys behind me in the lunch line commented later that morning, “he’s not in the business of selling books, but we are.”

…has been announced. Visit the Bookseller.com to vote for your favorite.

In the Guardian, Sarah Crown has words from the delightfully named Horace Bent on the prize’s raison d’etre (”Shortlist announced for the year’s oddest book titles“):

“I confess, I have been anxious that as publishing becomes ever more corporate, the trade’s quirky charms are being squeezed out,” he said. “But happily my fears have been proved unfounded: oddity lives on.” He also paid homage to those titles that just failed to make the shortlist, with honourable mentions going to Drawing and Painting the Undead, Stafford Pageant: The Exciting Innovative Years 1901-1952, and Tiles of the Unexpected: A Study of Six Miles of Geometric Tile Patterns on the London Underground. “All sound like they are positively thrilling reads,” said Bent. “I do hope that the authors will try again next year.”