51 Comments

Thank you for sharing your perspective on the Noem situation and the publisher's responsibility. I've often found it infuriating that "free speech" comes without checks and balances or meaningful consequences (i.e. recalls) for political books with easily discoverable inaccuracies. I've also found it infuriating when publishers distance themselves from authors when books go awry and have wondered how & why publishers who have had FULL visibility of the story before printing seem to be hands-off when readers, booksellers, reviewers, etc. have negative feedback. Is it that they are 'blind' to the issue ahead of printing, is it a risk calculation to print anyway, or is it some kind of general industry principle that once the book is printed, it's 100% the author's responsibility for any negative outcome (or a mix of all of these, or another reason or five)? Thanks for the enlightenment!

Expand full comment

And CONGRATS on your graduation, Kathleen Schmidt, MBA!

Expand full comment
author

Thank you!

Expand full comment
founding

I can't say what Hachette's editors were thinking, but generally the division of labor between the publisher and author is that publishers handle the business side of things because that's their expertise, and authors handle the content - because that's their expertise. Authors sign a contract promising that they will be truthful and take all the necessary precautions to protect others' intellectual property, just as the publisher commits to following ethical business practices within their industry. Publishers do have influence, but unless there's something they KNOW is a problem, they're most likely to defer to the author - especially when it comes to memoir and the author is (supposedly) telling the story of their own personal experiences. Only they can be the authority on that.

Expand full comment
author

Hachette definitely had the manuscript legally vetted, but that’s not the same as fact-checking. The falsehoods lie squarely on Noem’s shoulders, but now the publisher knows & distancing themselves isn’t quite right IMO.

Expand full comment

Best line on Substack this week and it's only Monday: "I just finished rewatching every season of Sex & the City, which I consider a form of self-care."

Expand full comment

I think of myself as a reasonably informed person, and yet until I became a writer a few years ago I had no idea non-fiction books weren't fact-checked. That's incredible to me, and I believe publishers should make this clear in the opening pages. (Perhaps they already do and I've never noticed).

The excellent If Books Could Kill podcast goes in on popular books which spread misinformation or distorted data, and that's been revelatory in how I think about all non-fiction books.

Expand full comment

Mazel Tov on your graduation! A huge accomplishment!

Expand full comment

Yes. Why not recall, reprint with corrections, and charge the costs to any royalties due the author. If the author wants to take that to court, let her.

Alternatively, publishers should pay to have their books fact-checked. Disseminating known lies is a bad business decision for the publisher and bad for the book industry. It’s also unethical but that, unfortunately, is apparently unimportant.

Expand full comment
author

There is so much that needs to happen for them to hire fact-checkers. It SHOULD happen, though. I am shocked they didn't recall the books. That is something.

Expand full comment

Yes. It is. The cynic in me thinks the publisher must think it's good for business to leave the mistake in there. They don't respect actual facts so why bother? Also, her fist publisher had her remove the information about killing her puppy, and the 2nd publisher left it in. I'm glad so many people were appalled by it.

Expand full comment

Whoops. I was wrong about the publisher. They obviously care. They are putting the blame on her for lying to Them.

Expand full comment
founding

Hoooooboy. I really do pity her editor. I've been in the position of having to make the call to remainder books in stock because of a serious error on the author's part - it is SO hard to do, and yet, like you said, it's the right thing to do.

Expand full comment

I have had experience with a "conservative" (read far right wing) publisher. They were the only ones who said yes to the proposal for my book "The Bridgebusters" (which is a World War II history, that they picked up in 2014 - before everything got so "stark" - because they were going to do a history section to their publishing; when the editor said "we're doing it because there's no controversy over World War II," I knew there were going to be problems). Okay, it's Regnery, so now you know. They were very "slapdash"; they didn't do a lot of the things my English publisher who does all my books since to "take care" about quality. Talking to the editorial staff, they had a real contempt for the intelligence of their audience, something I have noted with other elements of Conservatism Inc., that they don't really much believe the BS they're pushing. I will also note I have seen a real difference between "conservative" audiences and "not conservative" audiences. They're much less informed (there was a study done about six years ago that showed that someone who got all their news from Faux Snooze knew less about contemporary events than someone who didn't watch any news), and far more willing to swallow a whopper without question. (There's a reason why Dennis Miller, who was never very funny, went over to that side - he needed to find an audience dumb enough to think he was good). So Noem's book is about the "quality" one would expect to find over in moron land.

(Funniest thing about the whole experience. The radio interviewer who absolutely loved the book, had me on twice, and I thought he had memorized it, he liked it so much, was Steve Bannon, about two months before he became the "Steve Bannon" we all detest)

Expand full comment

I was aware that there was something going on but I appreciate your break-down. Still, I'm giving a side eye to the conservatives as on one side, there are book bans and on the other, there are blatant "inaccuracies" in a book by a conservative leader.

I'm so happy to be living on an island far, far away, lol

Expand full comment

In reading about Noem's fictions, I thought of Charles Barkley who, in 1993, claimed that he'd been "misquoted" in his own memoir.

Expand full comment
author

At least social media didn’t exist then.

Expand full comment
founding

that’s a good one 😂

Expand full comment
founding

“will also remove the passage as soon as technically possible from the e-book and audiobook editions.” - It's like when a teenager says he'll take out the garbage, like, right now, okay? Like right after I complete this Zelda level, I swear!

Expand full comment

Mazel Tov for your massive accomplishment and graduation! Whoo hoo!

Expand full comment

Congratulations on your graduation! So exciting. I just finished GRIEF IS FOR PEOPLE last week!

Expand full comment
author

Thank you! Grief is for People reminds me of the fun we used to have in publishing. Inappropriate fun, but still. It really hit me.

Expand full comment

Father's Day is coming up. Last year, one of my son's gave me the gift of writing a book through "Storyworth." I took a year and compiled a wonderful collection of adventurous short stories of my life for my four sons. Anyone looking for a great gift for dads this June should consider this.

Expand full comment

I was a resident of South Dakota from 2013-2018. Kristi Noem was in the state legislature during those years and was popular enough with SD voters to win the Governor seat in 2019. Most people who voice an opinion about her haven't read her books or know the amazing things she has done for the state of South Dakota. “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Expand full comment

The Atlantic quoted @Kathleen Schmidt’s Substack in its musings on books, factual accuracy and what the false Kristi Noem-Kim Jong Un incident in her memoir might mean for the weight we normally give to the industry: “We tend to believe a book’s contents by virtue of their vessel…Maybe this latest incident will spark a change in the publishing industry—but it probably won’t (and we’ll all start to regard books as fallible as anything else).”

Expand full comment

Also congrats

Expand full comment

I was honestly unaware that publishers don't have a fact checker for memoirs and political books.

Expand full comment