Because It Wouldn't Sell

Will publishers never learn?

Here's a way to get published. Make up a story, fill it with sensational anecdotes, and market it as your memoir.

That's what Nicolai Linin did.

His English-language publisher put together quite a long string of adjectives to sing the book's praises, but they must have drained the budget because there wasn't anything left over for fact-checking. That was supposed to be done by Einaudi, the original publisher based in Italy.

Einaudi says they published a novel, and if anyone believed half of what happened in the book, they're nuts. So no, they didn't fact check. It's fiction, as far as they're concerned.

The author doesn't care how the book is catalogued. He readily admits that he more than embellished his story so he could sell more books. And why not?

After all, he'd found some success by faking another memoir about his life. So much success that the movie rights were sold and John Malkovich is slated to star.

What comes next? Lawsuits by disgruntled book buyers who believe they've been had? Lawsuits from the publisher, to recoup the advance because the publisher's been had? Lawsuits from the movie people because they can't market the film as real life anymore because the author's been outed as a fraud?

Send a query letter to a literary agent and they'll send you a rejection letter that notes how tight the fiction market is. Publishers aren't buying much fiction, they say. Maybe you should be pushing a memoir, instead of a novel.