Frey Fallout Continues
Posted on January 30, 2006
It looks like the fallout from the James Frey/Million Little Pieces controversy is continuing. After Frey admitted he lied or exaggerated a lot of his so-called memoir, A Million Little Pieces, he then went on the Oprah Winfrey Show and got absolutely skewered by Oprah and various journalists for being a very bad boy. But it's not over yet. His publisher has had to apologize to readers, and his two other book contracts are being "reconsidered."
A Million Little Pieces publisher Doubleday, still smarting from its initial defense of Frey's best-selling book, is running an advertisement in today's USA TODAY apologizing to readers. And Riverhead, the publisher of Pieces sequel My Friend Leonard, is trying to distance itself from Frey. Riverhead is reconsidering a contract with Frey for future books and is referring inquiries about the authenticity of events in My Friend Leonard to the author.Well, that's what happens when you lie to Oprah.*****
Meanwhile, Doubleday is attempting to "bear responsibility" for its culpability in the Million Little Pieces scandal. The ad in today's USA TODAY, which also will run in the Feb. 6 edition of Publishers Weekly, says that future book editions will have notes from the publisher and from Frey himself and that the jacket will indicate the change. Doubleday will not publish new copies until Frey submits his "author's note."