James Frey’s Fiction Factory | Hacker News Reader

James Frey’s Fiction Factory

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18 pointstricky16 comments

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I can't wait for Frey to get some competition. On the other, he's actually a pretty good commercial writer (competing with him will be pretty tough on that front) and I almost hope he branches out into the kind of formulaic, Oprah-bait adult fiction that mostly fills bookstore shelves - the stuff that's actually insufficiently pretentious (yes, that is possible). It's practically genre fiction already; why not have somebody drive the point home?

This practice has been alive in various forms of art (ghostwriters on songs, apprentice painters, writers-for-hire, etc.) for the last several decades (at least).

As others have mentioned, the work often provides little creative value, but builds huge cult followings and massive profits for the artists. Koons' art regularly sells for $10-25mm and one of Hirst's auctions generated $198mm in 2008. Likewise, musical artists who employ ghostwriters often make it to the top of the charts, and authors like Frey can reap millions from their hired "co-writers."

Using "assistants" has been around for many years, and it's not going away anytime soon - there's still money to be made. One of the best examples of the absurdity occurring in the creative world is Banksy's Mr. Brainwash character in 'Exit Through the Gift Shop.' Highly recommended to all.

"He was looking for young writers to join him on a new publishing endeavor—a company that would produce mostly young-adult novels. Frey believed that Harry Potter and the Twilight series had awakened a ravenous market of readers and were leaving a substantial gap in their wake. He wanted to be the one to fill it."

"In exchange for delivering a finished book within a set number of months, the writer would receive $250 (some contracts allowed for another $250 upon completion), along with a percentage of all revenue generated by the project"

And of course, the authors are depending upon Frey to be honest with his accounting.

...without proof he can deliver sales yet only a $500 advance? Wow that's... ballsy. I know he's known for his books on writing but still, this seems an odd play and without prior proof hard to buy into.

He did sell "I Am Number Four" to Spielberg.

Was that someone else's work? I know he can sell his own stuff, at least to publishing houses.

yes, the series was conceived and written by a Columbia mfa

Interesting. Though not sure I'd call selling to one person (Spielberg) the same as publishing (selling to the masses). But it's a lot better credential than only selling your own stuff.

This sounds really close to what Mark Kostabi did (does?) with his art: He hires fresh or recent art-school students for basically teenage McJob wages and "collaborates" with them (basically affixes his signature on their work) and sells the canvas for US$10000-50000 each.

There is a market for this teen/young adult genre-crossing stuff, and it will _certainly_ get saturated at some point. Whether that some point is when Frey starts his Warhol/Kostabi factory or not is the key question.

He strikes me as being, for the printed word, what Jeff Koons is for sculpture and portraiture, all buzz and little value.

Is this the Y-Combinator of books?

funny. that's what I submitted as my original title but thankfully it automagically changed to be less link baity.

Only if Y Combinator took total control of your idea, how it was sold, put only their name on it, and dealt with all the money coming into your business. So no, not really.

What is up with all the terms around pseudonym's and substituting the author's name and such? I get having terms that move a lot of the risk to the young writer, but I don't get why you'd be so malicious as to demand that they can't be associated with a book they've written.

It's pretty simple. If a book succeeds, the author's name acquires "brand equity." Frey wants to retain total ownership of all the equity. The real author knows it's a fraud; but with a confidentiality clause, they can't tell the world. It's an extremely nasty clause, designed to keep the author beholden to Frey. Sadly, this type of control freakism and greed are common in the murkier echelons of both the music and film business. To be fair, Frey is not alone. Any big shot who suddenly "writes" a memoir most likely had help; and a standard part of such ghostwriting arrangements is that the real author remain exactly that: a ghost.

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