by Kelly Viola
As technology allows for content to be published and consumed more quickly, many readers are finding that their books may not be as factual as they had hoped. A good example is the case of a A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, a memoir about a drug addict who struggles through rehab and successfully beats his addiction. After being fact checked by The Smoking Gun, James Frey's book is now considered a work of semi-fiction instead of a memoir, as most of the work was found to be a fabrication. How could a book go through the rigors of publication and not be recognized as a literary forgery? The answer is simple but unnerving: fact-checking among publishers is not a standard a practice.
Kate Newman in The Atlantic discusses how fact-checkers have never really been part of the publishing process, and their role has been shrinking. She indicates that many books actually go through the pipeline without much of a fact check at all and implies that this is mainly because fact-checkers do not bring profits back to the publisher. The risk of publishing a soon-to-be debunked work is minimal in comparison to the potential lost profits or market loss caused by a work that needs extra time for verification. Fast production and consumption nearly prohibit any additional time for verification unless it is in the best interest of the author and publisher for legal or licensing reasons. Additionally, she indicates some publishers may not have the budget to verify, but most publishers do not disclose their budgets or pre-publication processes. To compensate for the lack of support in the verification department, Newman states that some authors are taking matters into their own hands and hiring their own verification services.
How important is it to ensure that a work of fact isn't actually a work of fiction? Even though the fallout from James Frey's article was relatively minimal to the publisher, as Newman indicates, I think that the impact to the population is great. Readers lost faith in publishers after the Frey debacle. They also lost faith in the writers and perhaps the stories themselves. On a whole almost everyone involved in the process got a black eye. The authors and stories have recovered, but have the publishers? Publishers are having difficulty keeping their customers and authors as it is now. I am sure that negative press does not make it any easier. However, Newman makes a good point: no one buys a book based on publisher. Authors do choose where to submit their books. They also can choose whether to publish on their own. Both of these can impact the publisher's bottom line far more than the cost of fact-checking a manuscript.
Some can argue that from the histories of Herodotus all the way down to James Frey, we have been willing to take a good story and run with it, regardless of how true it was, but I think we need fact-checking. Additionally, the cost of fact-checking may be small on a single manuscript basis, but if fact-checking were to be part of the process for every manuscript, how would it be reflected in the cost of books? We live in a global community and anything published may become a source for something else. This is often the case with immediate consumption platforms, such as Buzzfeed, Twitter, CNN, or media news feeds. In the digital age, everything can be published faster and is more accessible. We should be making sure that it is right.
Click here for a link to the original article: Book Publishing, Not Fact-Checking
As technology allows for content to be published and consumed more quickly, many readers are finding that their books may not be as factual as they had hoped. A good example is the case of a A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, a memoir about a drug addict who struggles through rehab and successfully beats his addiction. After being fact checked by The Smoking Gun, James Frey's book is now considered a work of semi-fiction instead of a memoir, as most of the work was found to be a fabrication. How could a book go through the rigors of publication and not be recognized as a literary forgery? The answer is simple but unnerving: fact-checking among publishers is not a standard a practice.
Kate Newman in The Atlantic discusses how fact-checkers have never really been part of the publishing process, and their role has been shrinking. She indicates that many books actually go through the pipeline without much of a fact check at all and implies that this is mainly because fact-checkers do not bring profits back to the publisher. The risk of publishing a soon-to-be debunked work is minimal in comparison to the potential lost profits or market loss caused by a work that needs extra time for verification. Fast production and consumption nearly prohibit any additional time for verification unless it is in the best interest of the author and publisher for legal or licensing reasons. Additionally, she indicates some publishers may not have the budget to verify, but most publishers do not disclose their budgets or pre-publication processes. To compensate for the lack of support in the verification department, Newman states that some authors are taking matters into their own hands and hiring their own verification services.
How important is it to ensure that a work of fact isn't actually a work of fiction? Even though the fallout from James Frey's article was relatively minimal to the publisher, as Newman indicates, I think that the impact to the population is great. Readers lost faith in publishers after the Frey debacle. They also lost faith in the writers and perhaps the stories themselves. On a whole almost everyone involved in the process got a black eye. The authors and stories have recovered, but have the publishers? Publishers are having difficulty keeping their customers and authors as it is now. I am sure that negative press does not make it any easier. However, Newman makes a good point: no one buys a book based on publisher. Authors do choose where to submit their books. They also can choose whether to publish on their own. Both of these can impact the publisher's bottom line far more than the cost of fact-checking a manuscript.
Some can argue that from the histories of Herodotus all the way down to James Frey, we have been willing to take a good story and run with it, regardless of how true it was, but I think we need fact-checking. Additionally, the cost of fact-checking may be small on a single manuscript basis, but if fact-checking were to be part of the process for every manuscript, how would it be reflected in the cost of books? We live in a global community and anything published may become a source for something else. This is often the case with immediate consumption platforms, such as Buzzfeed, Twitter, CNN, or media news feeds. In the digital age, everything can be published faster and is more accessible. We should be making sure that it is right.
Click here for a link to the original article: Book Publishing, Not Fact-Checking