It looks like the fallout from the James Frey/Million Little Pieces controversy is continuing. After Frey admitted he lied or exaggerated a lot of his so-called memoir, A Million Little Pieces, he then went on the Oprah Winfrey Show and got absolutely skewered by Oprah and various journalists for being a very bad boy. But it's not over yet. His publisher has had to apologize to readers, and his two other book contracts are being "reconsidered."
A Million Little Pieces publisher Doubleday, still smarting from its initial defense of Frey's best-selling book, is running an advertisement in today's USA TODAY apologizing to readers.
And Riverhead, the publisher of Pieces sequel My Friend Leonard, is trying to distance itself from Frey. Riverhead is reconsidering a contract with Frey for future books and is referring inquiries about the authenticity of events in My Friend Leonard to the author.
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This month, Riverhead announced it had contracted with Frey for two more books, the first of which was to be a novel. Now, [Marilyn] Ducksworth says, "the ground has shifted. It's under discussion."
Stephen Sheppard, a New York attorney who regularly deals with book contracts, says that all contracts with authors "contain provisions" and that publishers have "very extensive discretion in what they want to accept."
Meanwhile, Doubleday is attempting to "bear responsibility" for its culpability in the Million Little Pieces scandal.
The ad in today's USA TODAY, which also will run in the Feb. 6 edition of Publishers Weekly, says that future book editions will have notes from the publisher and from Frey himself and that the jacket will indicate the change. Doubleday will not publish new copies until Frey submits his "author's note."
"He's currently working on it," Doubleday's David Drake says. "And we'd like to have it as soon as possible."
Drake said Friday that the author's note would be published on the Random House website, randomhouse.com, as soon as Frey submits it. It had not been posted as of Sunday night.
