There’s a fight going on in the publishing industry and I was briefly part of the dust-up. Perhaps you are aware of writer James Frye who wrote a best-selling memoir of his life on drugs, in prison and other unsavory experiences which led to the New York Times best-seller list and a spot on Oprah’s couch. The only problem was, much of his book was fiction and he was verbally spanked throughout the publishing world and almost literally spanked by Oprah. Fiction is fiction and memoir is memoir or so it would seem. Not so fast. Since the new millennium began, memoirs have been flying off bookstore shelves (okay, not literally flying, but being purchased, so the essence of the sentence is still true) hundreds of times faster (a slight exaggeration perhaps, but still mostly true) than fiction books. Got a book to write? Memoir is the key if you have dollar signs in your eyes. Or, in my case, if you couldn’t write fiction even if a publisher put an Uzi to your head. Okay, a slight exaggeration but still true.
What do You think about For Frying Out Loud (2016)?
