[Diane95]

Yet <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/books/04fake.html?hp" target="_blank">another memoir turns out to have been pure fiction</a>, and by most accounts, well-written fiction. So why sell it as a memoir in the first place? Why not have pitched it as a novel? Is it really that much harder to sell novels than memoirs these days? I'm just not quite getting it.<br><br>
Please discuss.

 

[intensebeet]

How much credance would you give a story about gang violence written by an upper-middle class white girl? It's a hard sell. These memoirs that are turning out to be fakes aren't happy stories, they're about trials and tribulations and really struggling against adversity the likes of which the audience reading these books is probably far removed from. As a memoir you are selling the triumph of overcoming obstacles to be able to survive and live to tell your story. As an author of a work of fiction you're just telling a story like thousands of other aspiring authors and you don't have a hook to get your foot in the door.<br><br>
Or at least that's my take on it...

 

[Diane95]

Yabut, people have written fiction about stuff they know nothing about for, gosh, centuries. What's changed?

 

[intensebeet]

The reading public? I'm purely guessing on this, but I think that memoirs are hot right now, right up their with self help books. I think it has something to do with the real person in the story triumphing and being able to live vicariously through them from your gated community of suburbia. That same person might not pick up a novel about the same topic by an unknown writer that Oprah hasn't endorsed.<br><br>
I feel like this entry sounds like I'm thumbing my nose at the general American public, but I don't think people read the same way they did centuries ago. Mostly though I'm going to lay the blame on the publishing industry as I said in my first post. Big industry doesn't want to take a risk on anything, they'd rather go with what they know will sell and memoirs sell well to the general public.

 

[Tim]

I am writing a fictional memoir. It's called: <i>A Thousand Points of Light: How I Lit Up Baghdad Like A Christmas Tree - My Story of War and Redemption</i>. It details much of what I would have imagined could have happened if I was part of the original taking of Baghdad.

 

[Tim]

Did you see that another memoir turns out to be fiction? It appears that Misha was not running with the wolves.<br><br><a href="http://www.mynews.in/fullstory.aspx?storyid=2921" target="_blank">http://www.mynews.in/fullstory.aspx?storyid=2921</a>