Memoirs We Wish Existed

Currently I am working with Rick D. Niece, Ph.D., the President of the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Ark., whose memoir, The Side-Yard Superhero, just hit the bookshelves on Sunday.

His poignant memoir captures his childhood adventures as a paper boy in small-town America. Not that I was a paper boy, but being from a small town myself, the story was right up my alley. Which got me thinking, what other memoirs should I be reading. Or better yet, what other memoirs need to be written?

Here are just few I wish would hit the bookshelf:

Former President, George W. Bush – We’ve seen Oliver Stone’s take, now I want to hear from the man himself. Tell me about growing up as a Bush, what your 8 years as President of the United States was like and what you think your greatest achievements were?

Thriller hitmaker, Michael Jackson – We’ve read The Enquirer and watched your Barbara Walter interviews. Now I want to know what your daddy was really like, your fascination with monkeys and how many plastic surgeries you’ve actually had?

CBS Late night host, David Letterman – You’ve been a late night talk show host for years and worked with some of the most talented. Who is truly your favorite guest, do you and Oprah really hate each other and why won’t you marry your son’s mother?

Speaking of Oprah – She has her own talk show, magazine and radio show, why not her own book? I need more Oprah, we love you!

Our material girl, Madonna – Now that you’re single and dating again. I want to know what went wrong with Guy Richie, what life was like without a mother and how your 3 kids changed you from that pointy bra wearing woman.

Those are just a few of my wishes, which memoirs have been your favorites? And whose memoir would you most want to read?

Life after being debunked

Remember when James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces was discovered to be a collection of "a million little lies"? The story was everywhere in the summer of 2006. Since then, several other memoirs have been discovered as being not quite factual. Other authors have been accused of plagiarism. Is there literary life after you’ve been caught?

Possibly. But it’s difficult.

A couple years after the Million Little Pieces debacle, James Frey released his first novel, Bright Shiny Morning, last May to reviews that didn’t really pan the novel, but didn’t really call it the next great American masterpiece either. Former Publisher’s Weekly editor-in-chief Sara Nelson wrote in her review: “Yet the guy has something: an energy, a drive, a relentlessness, maybe, that can pull readers along, past the voice, past the stock characters, past the clichés. Bright Shiny Morning is a train wreck of a novel, but it’s un-put-downable, a real page-turner—in what may come to be known as the Frey tradition.” The novel went on to appear on the Times’ best seller list. By all accounts, Frey is currently at work on his next novel.

In March 2008, Margaret B. Jones was caught fabricating a memoir of life as a foster kid in south central Los Angeles. Her sister tattled on her to her publisher, Riverhead, after seeing a feature story in The New York Times. Jones’ book, Love and Consequences, ceased production. Her book tour was canceled.

These cases weren’t enough to deter another author from trying his hand at inventing his autobiography. A couple of months ago, Herman Rosenblat’s tale Angel at the Fence was discovered to be a hoax. The jig was up when reporters at The New Republic asked Holocaust historians to verify Rosenblat’s claims. It didn’t take long for his story to crumble. No telling where he’ll go from here.

Finally, this week’s edition of Newsweek has an update on the new life of Kaavya Viswanathan. In 2007, Viswanathan was accused of plagiarizing pieces of her novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, from various sources including Chick Lit authors Megan McCafferty and Sophie Kinsella. The similarities were tough to blame on happenstance. Viswanathan lost her publishing contract, the book was pulled from shelves and DreamWorks dropped their plans to make a movie based on the book. Two years later, she’s now a law student at Georgetown and seems to have put her literary aspirations to rest for good. Maybe she’s studying copyright law?

Generally, Americans love a come back story. However, I think it’s safe to say that if you’re writing a memoir, it’d be best not to put yourself in a situation where your credibility may be compromised. Members of the media are growing increasingly weary of memoirs, so much so that an author of ours built a website called "A Million Little Proofs" to prove all the claims he made in his memoir of being an orphan were real. The website was a great place for us to direct media members when we were pitching his book.

As publicists, we spend a good deal of time trying to build credibility for our authors with members of the media. Once that credibility is put in jeopardy, it can be difficult to get it back. Even Frey was slammed by various media outlets when Bright Shiny Morning came out. If you’re working on a memoir, tell the truth, check your facts and be honest with your publisher. And remember: you can still write a compelling story, even if it’s not your personal biography. Just make sure you’re writing your own thoughts.

Writing a memoir? Prove it.

In this day and age, publishing a memoir is a tricky business. Amidst the fall-out of authors such as Margaret Jones, James Frey, JT LeRoy and others, the industry has become somewhat jaded with memoirists. In other words, the proof is no longer in the pudding…it’s in the recipe.

The challenge for memoir writers lies in every stage of the game. From writing to editing, publishing to promoting, authors must go through extensive lengths to prove the validity of their life stories.

Take Rob Mitchell for example. Abandoned by his parents at age 3, raised in the American orphanage system and homeless at 17, Mitchell is now one of the country’s top financial advisers. He knew that if he ever wrote a book about his life, he’d have to make an extra effort to show skeptics that the events of his life were true to the core. And that’s exactly what he did.

In his memoir, Castaway Kid (Tyndale), Mitchell relives his troubled childhood as one of the last “lifers” in the American orphanage system. He spent months researching his personal time-line, digging up official documents to support his memoir. He even produced a website to prove its validity. The site includes documents from his case file at the children’s home; psychiatric reports on him, his mother and father; letters from people involved in his life; and recorded interviews.

As Mitchell's publicist, I think this was a wise move. Recently, I was pitching Mitchell for an interview opportunity on an NPR program to talk about his life growing up in an orphanage. The producer immediately responded to my pitch expressing her genuine interest in the interview, but she also said she couldn't help but feel weary about having a memoir writer on the program in light of all the negative attention swirling around falsified memoirs.

Thanks to Mitchell's research on the front end, I was able to offer his website, http://www.amillionlittleproofs.com/, as a resource to secure the producer's interest. She requested the book along with a press kit, and I'm still awaiting word on a follow through.

For those authors out there interested in writing a memoir, I'd advise you to take my client's lead. You never know when you'll be asked to prove it.

Memoirs and literary publicity

My role at P&P involves fielding new submissions from authors interested in learning more about the PR potential of their book and introducing them to the often muddled up world of publishing and literary publicity. In recent months, I’ve seen quite an influx of authors looking for publicity for their memoir or autobiography. This trend has been mirrored in the publishing industry at large over the last year or so, with a number of great success stories. For example, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love is absolutely unstoppable at this point. It has been at the top of every best seller list in the known universe, with this week marking a full year on the New York Times Best Seller List—at number 1, nonetheless. There has also been Tony Dungy’s Quiet Strength, Eric Clapton’s ultra successful autobiography Clapton and Alan Greenspan’s tome The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World. The common thread among all of these memoirs: they were written by very famous people. Even Gilbert was a pretty well-known essayist prior to the Eat, Pray, Love juggernaut. It’s true—promoting a memoir is often easier when you’ve got a big name attached to it.

One of our most successful memoirs of the past few years was Jack’s Life: The Life Story of C.S. Lewis by author and film producer Douglas Gresham (B&H Publishing Group, 2005). Gresham’s memoir of life as C.S. Lewis’ stepson offers an intimate perspective on one of the 20th century’s most beloved Children’s authors and Christian theologians. The book was released on the heels of the 2005 feature film “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,” to which Gresham was a lead producer. We spent much of the campaign fighting Disney for his time—we wanted him promoting the book and they wanted him pushing the film. Throughout the campaign, our team was able to capitalize on Gresham’s family ties to Lewis and use the universal appeal of Lewis’ stories to generate hits in both Christian and general market media outlets.

What can you do if you haven’t lived a life of Super Bowl victories, rock n’ roll excess or US economic policies?

Of course you think your life has been very interesting thus far, but you have to find ways to make readers believe this as well. Many publicists treat memoirs from unknown authors like the plague because they are typically extremely hard to promote and for the most part, that’s true. However, there are ways to connect a relatively unknown author’s memoir to a larger market.

Two words: newsworthy hooks.

To effectively connect your story to a larger group you have to relate it back to a broad topic and trend by making the pitch less about you and more about the issues or experiences you lived through. In other words, it can’t just be the story of a housewife in Topeka, KS who dealt with an abusive husband; it has to be pitched as a first-hand account of what happens behind closed doors for housewives around the country that deal with domestic violence. By tailoring the pitch to a broader trend and even connecting it to a timely hook, like domestic violence awareness month in October, a publicist can broaden the appeal of this message.

Another example might involve an author with an even more normal, Middle American upbringing. When she graduated from college, she became a teacher at one of the toughest high schools in the country. Through her hard work and determination, she was able to make a significant impact on the school’s dropout rate by setting up after school programs and finding new incentives to get the students to study. She brought student’s reading levels up. After twenty years in the school system, she penned an uplifting and inspiring memoir about her experiences as a teacher. When a publicist looks at such a book they think not about this author’s specific story, but how it can be related to broader issues of education and public schooling in the US (especially during an election year). The author might be pitched as an expert source on the long term effects that the “testing era” will have on education or how policies could change based on who wins the election this fall (and what it will mean for students). These expert source opportunities are a great way to leverage exposure for the memoir.

Obviously, in either case there is definite potential for human interest stories. When packaged correctly, and coupled with the right news cycle, a memoir from a less than famous author can garner solid media attention. For authors looking to promote a memoir right now, think about what you’ve seen in the news and in pop culture lately and how you can connect it to your own story!