Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

NPR this morning discussed the fake memoir and the online previews of books. The acclaimed but fake memoir of Margaret B. Jones aka Peggy Seltzer came under attack by writers who actually did live the gang life. Needless to say, the writers feel disrespected by Seltzer’s attempt to profit off of their lives. But more importantly, Seltzer was successful because so much of the publishing white elites are unfamiliar with the gang culture experience that the “scroll of cliches” did not register.

Thanks JillF.

It only took a week to debunk supposed memoir Love and Consequences by Margaret B Jones. L&C was a story about Margaret’s “life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.”

The author, Margaret Seltzer, is a) all white b) grew up in a ritzy neighborhood with c) her bio family. She didn’t even graduate from the University of Oregon.

How can publishers not catch this? It’s quite irksome that publishers have so little regard for the public that they continually put out books from a known plagiarist and continue to publish memoirs that are fake. Why should the reading public take these so-called gatekeepers seriously? These actions make me think that publishing is no more than a giant corporate conglomerate out to take as much money as possible, in as underhanded a way as possible, as it can. There is no lofty ideal.