Attack of the Fake Memoirs: Is Your Favorite Real Story Really Real?

In more innocent time, you could pick up a work of nonfiction and believe every word. With a tell-all biography, you might sprinkle a little salt on the work, thinking the author might be painting his subject in the most negative possible light.

What about an autobiography? Certainly that has to be true, right? The most reliable story of a person must be the one written by the author himself, even if he tries to paint himself in the best possible light.

Yet we have now seen two cases in which an autobiography has been found to partially or entirely untrue.

The first case was that of James Frey, who wrote a tale of addiction and redemption called "A Million Little Pieces." Oprah Winfrey loved it and made it a Book Club selection. Of course, it rocketed to the top of the book charts in 2005, selling more than 1.7 million copies.

However, the Smoking Gun website found that many elements of Frey's story were untrue or embellished. Frey admitted to Oprah that he made up parts of his tale. An embarrassed Oprah asked Frey why he did it.

"In order to get through the experience of an addiction, I thought of myself as being tougher than I was, badder than I was," he said. "It helped me cope. When I was writing the book, instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image." - CNN.com

You would think such a huge breach of literary trust would cause book publishers to hire a few more fact checkers. You would be wrong, because it just happened again.

Margaret Setzer (writing as Margaret B. Jones) wrote a book called "Love and Consequences" about her time as a foster child dealing with gang life in South Central Los Angeles. The problem is, she grew with her biological parents in the cozy California suburb of Sherman Oaks.

Now, Riverhead Books has pulled thousands of copies of "Love and Consequences" off the shelves. The New York Times was also duped, as it ran a profile of Setzer before the scandal broke.

How could this have happened?

Publishers need to remember that their reputation rides on everything that bears their name.