James Frey's Writing Factory: Will It Work?

GalleyCat:

Writer James Frey has launched Full Fathom Five, a company focused on producing commercial young adult novels co-written with a team of aspiring writers. A New York magazine feature explored the fiction factory, and one writer declared: "It's a crappy deal but a great opportunity."

Read the whole story: GalleyCat

Comments

[01202009]

10:57 AM on 11/15/2010

Why not just buy a thousand computers and hire a thousand monkey's to pound on the keyboards?

http://tomorrowwilltakecareofitself.blogspot.com/

[TheWM]

02:55 PM on 11/15/2010

A million little monkeys...

Actually, 01202009 -- can I call you 01? -- what you're describing is pretty close to what Frey is doing, imho.

http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/

[01202009]

05:05 PM on 11/15/2010

Call me anything you like--some folks just call me numbers :). F&F

[maxfax]

07:03 PM on 11/14/2010

Money makes the world go 'round.

[bmc0718]

02:40 PM on 11/14/2010

Well, I suppose this only goes to show - once a crook, always a crook...

[MaggieDR]

01:19 AM on 11/14/2010

Read a very excellent blog about how blatantly awful this contract is here: http://www.maureenjohnsonbooks.com/2010/11/13/the-james-frey-problem/

[Tartfuel]

09:09 PM on 11/13/2010

This guy should be blackballed by the publishing community. First his "memoir" was fabricated in all the important and poignant parts, now he's trying to exploit young writers like some hustler. All of the grad-schools with writers programs should alert their students and all publishing houses should be alerted. This guy is a grifter.

[TheWM]

11:08 AM on 11/14/2010

You seem to think that the "publishing community" has standards or something. Have you taken a look at a bestseller list lately? Publishers care about money. Frey sells a lot of books. Publishers will shun him when he stops selling, or when Hell freezes over, whichever comes first.

http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/

[pbnyc59]

05:24 PM on 11/13/2010

Frey is a con artist who should be the scorn of the publishing world.

[an]

06:40 PM on 11/13/2010

agreed. i just posted the same thing, and it somehow it censored by huffpo.

[TheWM]

02:52 PM on 11/15/2010

HuffPo is moderated by Sybil. I wonder whether this will get posted. As always -- there's no way to know!

http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/

[piuvodku]

03:07 PM on 11/13/2010

More horrid adolescent fiction? Exploiting young artists? Taylorizing creative work? How could this not work?

[Lev Raphael]

02:00 PM on 11/13/2010

OMG, I just figured something out! Frey ghosted the George Bush memoir! Who better to write fiction than the author of A Million Little Lies?

[AudsMom]

10:07 AM on 11/13/2010

People let it go. It's a book. He screwed up. Move on.

[TheWM]

10:22 AM on 11/13/2010

As this "writing factory" shows, it wasn't just that book. And as far as that book goes: it wasn't as if he'd just written a bad book -- he lied his ass off to the world at large. It wasn't criminal fraud, but it wasn't something entirely different either.

http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/

[robjh1]

12:20 PM on 11/13/2010

He screwed up big time, but the people who marched lock and step behind him praising his book about the deviance of the human behavior and window of redemption if you can call it that. I am undone.

[diannaa]

09:30 AM on 11/13/2010

NyMag just posted the contract, in full. The clauses that really get me are the ones that detail that it's only HALF of the $250 that you get up front, and then you get the rest after you finish the book, assuming, of course, that you have "incorporate[d] in the book all notes, instructions, additions and/or changes (collectively known as "Notes") as the Company may request." ALL of them, even if they're crappy. There is no creative say over your own work, which I guess makes it ok that the contract also says they don't have to use your name. Clause 12 also refers to "exploitation of the work." I think they left the "er" off that last word.

[Vivian Alicia Evans]

11:12 PM on 11/12/2010

Ah the guy who was on Ophah and then it turned out he had lied about his experiences in his book "A Million Little Pieces." So how exploiting others doesn't sound like a stretch for him.

[TheWM]

10:30 AM on 11/14/2010

Next, maybe a "reality" game show, sort of a cross between "Fear Factor" and "The Apprentice," in which contestants eat filth and crawl through broken glass and such, and the winner gets to be Frey's unpaid intern assistant. ("Yeah, there's no salary, but think of all the contacts you could make!" Indeed: just think of all the creeps, hacks, illiterates and other powerful publishing figures you could meet while fetching James Frey's coffee...)

http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/

[MrClean]

10:17 PM on 11/12/2010

There's absolutely no truth that James Frey was George W. Bush's ghost writer.

[pbnyc59]

05:27 PM on 11/13/2010

You do realize that was a joke, not as funny as anyone considering Frey to be a writer.

[MrClean]

07:23 PM on 11/13/2010

You do realize that I WAS joking...right?

[TheWM]

09:17 PM on 11/12/2010

Frey. What a tool. I honestly don't know whom to despise more, him or the schmucks working for him for sharecropper wages. (Then again there are also his readers, and those writing about him -- aaarggh! I'm one of them! I've written about Frey! Ewww! Get it off me!)

http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/

[FlaviaDeLuce]

01:36 PM on 11/12/2010

$250 to write a book isn't much