While Hollywood continues to gaze navelward in response to the recent revelation that certain too-juicy-to-be-true hit literary memoirs were precisely that, the flake-averse East Coast publishing world has perhaps unsurprisingly taken a much harder-edged, pragmatic approach to the matter: Namely, the fucker lied, so you get your $24.95 back.

Random House will offer a refund to readers who bought James Frey's drug and alcohol memoir "A Million Little Pieces" directly from the publisher, a move believed to be unprecedented, after the author was accused of exaggerating his story.

Readers calling Random House's customer service line to complain on Wednesday were told that if the book was bought directly from the publisher it could be returned for a full refund. Those who bought the book at a bookstore were told to try and return it to the store where it was bought. [...]

Publishers Weekly Senior Editor Charlotte Abbott called the Random House refunds unprecedented, and said neither she nor her colleagues "had ever heard of something like this before."

Considering the New York media world loves to throw their fibbing darlings into virtual stocks look what became of Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair look for Frey to be spending a lot more time out our way in the coming months, in the open, loving arms of his lie-rationalizing Hollywood buddies. If he thinks he'll find undying loyalty from them, however, he might want to think again. No, at this point, the best Frey can hope for is that the entire scandal will be immortalized in a low budget indie feature, with a woefully miscast Hayden Christensen in the lead and a jarringly unclever pun (Freyed Edges?) for a title.

• Readers offered refund for controversial memoir [Reuters]
• Previously: Frey/LeRoy Scandals Create Hollywood Philosophers [Defamer]

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