Two Million Little Pieces

It occured to me that I hadn't been negative enough towards Oprah in my first post. I was just going to let it go. Then I read this article in the Wall Street Journal tonight. Ok I'll admit I had to look up what excoriated meant. Still the 90% of the blame gets pointed at James Frey for "duping" the publishing industry. Wait didn't they say he offered this book as a novel and was shot down? The article goes on to say that there isn't enough money in the publishing industry to check facts any longer.

Here's where my math gets fuzzy. Three million copies of James' novel in publication. Going price for the book at Chapters.ca right now is $12.60. That's $37.8 MILLION (CDN) dollars in gross sales.

Now in six weeks, The Smoking Gun was able to basically fact check the entire novel. Now lets assume that someone was actually getting paid to fact check this novel. Now, I don't know much about the publishing industry so bear with me for a minute. Let's say this fact checker has just risen out of the mail room and is ready to prove themselves in the publishing industry. I'm going to say they make $15/h. Lets say all they do at work for six weeks is fact check James' book. Forty hours a week, six weeks, $15/h. $3600. It would have cost $3600 to fact check this book. I think you can see where I'm going with my math on this one.

Of course the publisher had no idea they were sitting on a gold mine when they greenlighted the novel, but I'm going to find it safe to assume that they thought they'd make at least $3600.01 off the novel. If James wants to publish his next novel will his publisher demand money upfront from him to check the facts of his book?

The vast majority (ok all 5 of you) who read my previous passage have all come out in support of James. Sure he told a few lies, but then who hasn't. Heck people even get to write memoirs about telling lies.

Anyone have a copy of "My Friend Leonard" they want to lend me? I'm sure this story isn't over yet.