Entries Tagged 'book business' ↓

You remember James Frey, right? The guy who wrote a “memoir” about his drug addiction? And sold five million copies? And was praised and lauded by Oprah? Of course, Winfrey — and others — took it all back when it was discovered that Frey faked a lot of the details in A Million Little Pieces.

His then-publisher, Random House, offered to buy back books from any reader who felt cheated. Less than 2000 copies were returned.

Frey has returned to the literary scene, and with a work that is admittedly fiction. And two weeks after the launch of Bright Shiny Morning, the title is already on The New York Times bestseller list.

The story of Frey’s climb back to the top is fascinating. You can read more about it at The Independent.

A recent New York Times article quoted stats from a National Endowment for the Arts report that stated 53 percent of Americans who participated in the NEA survey did not read a single book in a year’s time. As the NYT reporter Rachel Donadio writes, this is “a state of affairs that has prompted much soul-searching by anyone with an affection for (or business interest in) turning pages.”

The article continues with some interesting stats about the book business, such as an increase from 300,000 titles published in 2006 to 400,000 titles published in 2007. The bulk of the article is about the self-publishing phenomenon and how it is affecting the publishing industry.