Fact, fiction and friction – full disclosure.
Spurred by the success of a million little lies….
One of the first tasks I did was fact-check some of my upcoming material. I had an opening quote that didn’t look quite right, and sure enough, I had a typographical mistake in it. The big stink over the one author, turns out he had fictionalized his memoir, that was what prompted me to look over the new material with a careful eye.
I recall, only happened twice with one brand-name set of horoscopes, and then, once on another “free” horoscope site, when a planet was incorrectly placed. Plus, it’s not like I haven’t made the same mistake myself, but I do tend to catch those errors before they occur.
In some of the background material I looked at for the book in question, as it turns out, the manuscript was originally shopped as fiction. Didn’t sell. Didn’t garner any interest. But posited as a true story, it did well. That plus a healthy dose of publicity, via the previously referenced Oprah TV thing.
Another sound byte, clipped from some talking head to another, “Would you read another book by this author?” (The one who lied.)
No, actually, I wouldn’t. But I wold suggest picking the book up at a used bookstore, locally owned and operated, as the author makes no (more) money from that sale. However, the sale itself does benefit the local economy in a book-reading way.
When I ask a waitress what her birthday is, or when I see familiar face in crowd and identify that person by sign, rather than by name, I’m in the clear because no confidential information has been traded. And when I write a horoscope that points to a particular instance, oftentimes, this might come as a shock, but the names and sometimes the signs, are switched.
There’s an upcoming scope where the person in question, a fishing buddy, is credited with being one sign, when in fact, he’s another sign. However, I happen to know that his rising sign and therefore the horoscope matches.
But I don’t package my material as fact. It’s all fiction. Just because I happen to live in Austin, and I did happen to be walking Wednesday afternoon in the rain, and because I did have an exchange with a couple of neighbors, maybe someone at the post office, and that homeless guy on the street? Or that one girl at the store?
It’s covered in the fine print, “Any resemblance to a person or persons, living, dead or imaginary, is purely coincidental.”
Oh please, the issue should be dead by now. But wait, it lives. Instead of marketing it as a memoir, though, shouldn’t it be “based on a true story” kind of sale?
I’ve been reading and writing, particularly on the web, for a long enough time to realize that there’s usually a shred of truth in a tale, but sometimes, it’s just full of sounds and fury, told by an idiot.
The other question, publicity? They just printed another 100,000 copies? Even bad publicity is better than no publicity, I guess.
