The New York Times is running a story about Love and Consequences, yet another memoir published by a mainstream publishing house that has turned out to be entirely fiction.

My first reaction as I began the article was to think that perhaps this had become a new tactic on the part of publishers to generate book sales, considering the industry's generally lagging performance, and the way James Frey's book sold a few years ago after it was determined to be fiction. First, call the book a memoir, and when it's revealed to be a fake, there's a huge amount of publicity, and sales go through the roof because everyone wants to read it to see for themselves. Controversy sells books.

However, the publisher, Riverhead Books (owned by Penguin), according to the Times article, has pulled all 19,000 copies of the book, so that seems to scotch that theory. I imagine the author will still have income potential as media organizations want to interview her. I wonder if Riverhead will sue her; I guess it depends on what her contract said.

I'm sure each of the authors who has been caught in a forged memoir has had his/her own motivations, but I find I'm curious about them. It seems probable that these authors thought their work wouldn't sell as fiction, and I guess that makes sense. In this case, a white woman from an affluent family was writing about living in a foster home and running drugs for a gang. A fiction editor would justly wonder how realistic a novel could be coming from a writer with such a different background. 

From what I've learned about the publishing world in the process of getting Practically Shameless published, it is somewhat easier to get a nonfiction book published and reviewed. Fiction is also more difficult to assess than fiction: you have to read an entire novel to know how good it is. With a nonfiction book, you can get an idea of its quality by scanning it more quickly.