"Someone is going to replace Harry Potter," he recalls thinking. "Maybe it'll be me."

To do so, James Frey has basically set himself up as a "literary" (<--his word) Alloy Entertainment.

Oh, yes. This:

"...he only develops ideas that have serial book potential, as well as obvious film, TV, merchandising and digital marketability. In business about 18 months, he has 28 writers working on 27 book series."

just SCREAMS "literary" to me.

(via @stacylwhitman)

Comments

[:paula]

I felt a little bad confessing that I was NEVER going to read his YA book because I have personal feelings of detestation for the man... now I do not. He just achieved Nicholas Sparks-hood on the assholery spectrum.

[Emily]

This is just gross to me.

[LG]

Wow, this is disgusting. It's like the book version of fast food - get it done fast, make it tasty, and who cares about all the rest?

It's depressing thinking about what it must be like for the authors. Yes, you can say it's their own fault for agreeing to do the work, but, at the same time, I'm sure a lot of them are thinking that the exposure and experience is worth killing their souls. Ew.

[(monkey) steve]

Maybe I'm just a radical, but (1) I don't hate the guy because he passed off fiction as memoir, and (2) after reading the article, it kinda seems like an innovative model. Some of the ideas they talk about seem like things I'd like to read, and I don't think that it is violating some kind of trust to incorporate ideas from the film version into the novels.

[Leila]

Oh, you've always been a radical. :)

I think it sounds like pretty much like what the Stratemeyer Syndicate used to do, and exactly what Alloy already does, except that he's getting some big complaints from his stable of authors. (Then again, I feel like I remember some not-so-great-ness between Ann Brashares and Jodi Lynn Andersen re: Traveling Pants, but I might be misremembering.) It also sounds -- to me -- like the same model that James Patterson is using, actually, just minus Frey's name on the cover of every book.

If that makes sense.

I do think, from what's described, that calling it "literary" -- which is a term that I generally associate with something well-written, regardless of genre -- might be a stretch. This sounds more like a writing mill. If he puts out decent stuff -- which remains to be seen, for me, at least -- than yay for us as readers, and yay for the writers (who HOPEFULLY will get recognition/compensation -- but they're the ones who signed the contracts, so that's on them).

But this feels, to me (and again, just on the basis of this one article), like someone else jumping on the YA bandwagon to make a quick buck with books that will very possibly (if not probably) be mostly forgettable at best. I'm willing to be surprised, though.

As for his passing fiction off as memoir, I still think it was a crap move. Publishing a novel and noting that it was inspired by true events (or allowing the reader to make that leap by noting the connections in the author's bio) -- like Ned Vizzini's It's Kind of a Funny Story or Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried -- both covers the author's ass, preventing Oprah from throwing down AND keeps the reader curious/guessing.

[reader and writer]

EWWWWWW.

Pardon me. That gutteral noise you just heard was me, vomitting.

[Julie]

Auuuuugh, I think I just threw up a little.

And let me tell you, I read I Am Number Four not knowing he had anything to do with it, and I was not impressed. At. All.

I wonder if that Hughes guy will even have anything to do with the rest of the series, now that he's shown himself to be a bit of a troublemaker? Or at least as someone who doesn't want to put up with crap if he doesn't like it? I mean, with the series already established under a pseudonym they could very easily get some other downtrodden writer to submit to Mr. Frey's wishes.

This whole concept is disgusting to me, but Frey's attitude about it worst of all.

[reader and writer]

From the article:

"...Mr. Frey imagined a literary version of an artist's workshop, where one person with a vision employs others to execute it. "I have too many ideas," he says..."

Um, yes, that's otherwise known as, hey I don't want to learn how to write a children's book because I'm a lazy asshole, here, I'll hire other people to do it, and then take all the credit for being a visionary. And by "visionary" I mean an egomaniac Hollywood slut.

Everybody knows the ideas are the easy part -- getting them to work in a well executed manner is called WRITING, of which he'll be doing none.

I want him to FAIL HARD. Just my opinion. I feel better now, thanks. :)

[tanita]

Oh, I think there's another ending in -y word that Mr. Frey is, which is not literary. I think the word's mercenary. Or was it jackassery?

Have you read I Am Number Four yet? Just you wait. I, too, read it without knowing it was written by him. I made it to that fifty page mark, and read on -- mainly because I kept going, "there has to be a plot in here, somewhere..."

There wasn't.

[Liz B]

Both John Scalzi and Maureen Johnson have given insight into the "it's not the packaging, it's how it's done" contract aspect. Patterson's coauthors: included on jacket cover, no confidentiality provision, get advance and royalties (it's in a comment at Scalzi's post). Bottom line, he's paying much, much less with a contract that is not standard, even for packaged books.

Ideas don't equal good stories; look at all the "wah, I thought of wizards first, so JKR copied me." It's not the idea, it's how well written it is. That this is done with no concept, apparently, of YA -- just looking at it as "money money money" is what annoys me. That, and the one-sided contracts.