• 
  Victor Ganzi, Hearst CEO—Ganzi quit this week, in a move that came as a shock to some. Though Hearst is not doing poorly, signs are there that it may be on the decline. Ad page counts at its top magazines are creeping downwards. Ganzi may have seen the writing on the wall.



• 
  Jack Kliger, Hachette CEO—Kliger lasted nearly a decade at Hachette, but stepped down this week. He leaves a company with an unsure future—layoffs, a questionable digital strategy, and stagnant ad growth will go down as big parts of the legacy of the end of his reign.



• 
  Jane Friedman, HarperCollins CEO—Friedman was sent packing from the publishing giant earlier this month, replaced by a man more than 20 years her junior. She spent nearly 30 years at Random House before coming to HarperCollins in 1997, and had a good deal of early success. But she was done in either by corporate infighting, or poor performance.



• 
  Peter Olson, Random House CEO—the book-loving, erudite bean counter was replaced last month by Markus Dohle, a robotic numbers guy who many feel will focus on earnings at the expense of "the romantic idea of literature." Uh, yea.

• Previously: Nor did Olson call the shots at home

The New York Times reported the 58-year-old Olson had been "distracted and unavailable" since falling ill in November. But the newspaper didn't explain quite why he couldn't be reached. Candice Olson—known as Candice Carpenter when she ran the iVillage website for women—commandeered all his communication devices, according to a friend. After she left the internet business, Candice Olson decided that she wanted to do something else with the rest of her life. ''I personally came to the conclusion that being a C.E.O. is hell,'' she said in an interview. By some combination of poor results at Random House, pneumonia and a domineering wife, Olson has had the same decision made for him.

The Olsons have five children, two adopted from Eastern Europe; and Candice was still attempting another natural pregnancy at the age of 50. This is the couple's first-encounter story. When Candice met the Random House chief executive in 2001 at a party—only three months before marrying—he heard her explain what she was doing after retiring from business. Mrs. Olson recounted to the New York Times: "I said I was trying to be the best mommy on Park Avenue. That's what captured Peter's attention.'' So the clichéd explanation for so many corporate exits—the desire to spend more time with one's family—may actually hold true in this instance.

But that's quite enough generosity for the departing executive, who acknowledged himself that he was a "pariah" in the literary reaches of the publishing industry. His critics remembered smirking relish with which he fired Ann Godoff and other editors who viewed publishing as an art rather than a business. Wandering around a book fair at the time, he told an interviewer: ''I recognize hundreds of people here. Many of them worked for me. Many of them I fired personally.'' He did not seem upset by this; in fact, he seemed amused, observed the Times' Lynn Hirschberg ''I fired him,'' Olson said as two men passed by. ''There are so many people here that I've fired that we could have a reunion.''

Full letter:

I do know that I wrote the book as a kind of wake-up call — a plea to the citizens of our country, that they might reconnect to literature, and awaken their hearts from a long moral slumber ... People spend more and more time in front of screens, letting the shiny abs and fake death wash over them. This is precisely what corporate America wants: they want young people who consent to the myth that happiness can be purchased via credit card.

The author of Sin in the Second City is a feisty Philly girl named Karen Abbott, who used to work at the same alt-weekly in Philadelphia that I did, and so I immediately felt the kind of kinship with her that you feel when you meet someone who was, like, at the same POW camp as you were, even though your time there didn't overlap? Like, we totally had the same jailer! Karen lives in Atlanta now with her husband, a very nice man named Chuck Kahler, and is tan and really kind of hot, which her editor said was helpful in promoting the book. (Well, duh!) Karen is also the type of person who seems to say whatever is on her mind, propriety be damned, which is another thing I liked about her. For example, when her editor and the host of the party, Water for Elephants author Sara Gruen (Sara and Karen met years ago in an online writing group, which must have been some writing group!), were giving toasts, Karen said a few words, including about how great her editor, Julia Cheiffetz, is, because Julie was more than an editor, she was also a friend and, it seems, a sort of remote therapist, and would advise Karen to sleep, go to yoga, and take a Xanax when she felt stressed out, which sounds like a smart combination.

Also, Karen said that if she had known that Random House editor Will Murphy was going to be there, she would have made it a cash bar. Ha! The truth of this statement was borne out as the party slowly wound down to its inexorable end. You know that point? It happens at every party, and it's when things start to get weird. Like, all of a sudden, off in the corner, Will Murphy is sucking face with a very tall, very skinny publicist from Wiley in a way that causes one person to remark, "That is the most un-sexy making out I've ever seen." Other people are imploring the bartender to pour them one last drink. And through it all, the hors d'oeuvres—spring rolls, fried dumplings, some goat cheese and endive thing—never stopped coming.

Jason Pinter's The Man In Black
For the non-nerds: Dooced [Urban Dictionary]
Earlier: Starbucks Better At Pimping Books Than Oprah?

Dear Random House Employee or former Employee:

I write to inform you about a matter of concern that came to our attention recently. In 2003, Bertelsmann engaged the services of the consulting firm Towers Perrin to work on a project on behalf of all Bertelsmann companies in the United States, including Random House. For the purposes of this project, Towers Perrin had access to employee data, including names, Social Security numbers, addresses, dates of birth and other information related to your employment, but no bank or credit card information.

Bertelsmann was recently informed by Towers Perrin that computers which may have contained this data were stolen from their offices on approximately November 27, 2006. The suspect, an employee of Towers Perrin, has subsequently been arrested, but the computers themselves have not yet been retrieved. As an employee of record at Random House in December 2004, your employee information may have been included in this data on the stolen computers. Only individuals who may have been affected by this incident are receiving information regarding the possible data loss.

Update: All Amex employees apparently received a near-identical memo yesterday; one suspects that "there's more to this than they're letting on" (fwiw).

[Image Source]

The note will be placed in already-printed editions but, really, it's just easier to read it all online. Silly Random House: by putting this stuff on their site, we really don't have any reason to ever touch the book again. Maybe they just threw in the profit-making towel.

A Note to the Reader

A Million Little Pieces is about my memories of my time in a drug and alcohol treatment center. As has been accurately revealed by two journalists at an Internet Web site, and subsequently acknowledged by me, during the process of writing the book, I embellished many details about my past experiences, and altered others in order to serve what I felt was the greater purpose of the book. I sincerely apologize to those readers who have been disappointed by my actions.

Dude, you're not even going to name-check The Smoking Gun? Harsh. After the jump, the rest of the note — which, we assume, has been embellished for dramatic purposes.

I first sat down to write the book in the spring of 1997. I wrote what is now the first forty pages of it. I stopped because I didn't feel ready to continue to do it, didn't think I was ready to express some of the trauma I had experienced. I started again in the fall of 2000. I had been working in the film industry and was deeply unsatisfied with what I was doing. I had wanted to write books and was writing films. I saved enough money to give myself eighteen months to write the book.

I didn't initially think of what I was writing as nonfiction or fiction, memoir or autobiography. I wanted to use my experiences to tell my story about addiction and alcoholism, about recovery, about family and friends and faith and love, about redemption and hope. I wanted to write, in the best-case scenario, a book that would change lives, would help people who were struggling, would inspire them in some way. I wanted to write a book that would detail the fight addicts and alcoholics experience in their minds and in their bodies, and detail why that fight is difficult to win. I wanted to write a book that would help the friends and family members of addicts and alcoholics understand that fight.

As I wrote, I worked primarily from memory. I also used supporting documents, such as medical records, therapists' notes, and personal journals, when I had them, and when they were relevant. I wanted the stories in the book to ebb and flow, to have dramatic arcs, to have the tension that all great stories require. I altered events and details all the way through the book. Some of those include my role in a train accident that killed a girl from my school. While I was not, in real-life, directly involved in the accident, I was profoundly affected by it. Others involved jail time I served, which in the book is three months, but which in reality was only several hours, and certain criminal events, including an arrest in Ohio, which was embellished. There has been much discussion, and dispute, about a scene in the book involving a root-canal procedure that takes place without anesthesia. I wrote that passage from memory, and have medical records that seem to support it. My account has been questioned by the treatment facility, and they believe my memory may be flawed. In addition, names and identifying characteristics of all the treatment patients in the book and all of the facility's employees, characteristics including occupations, ages, places of residence, and places and means of death, were changed to protect the anonymity of those involved in this period in my life. This was done in the spirit of respecting every individual's anonymity, which is something we were urged to do while in treatment, and to continue to do after we left.

I made other alterations in my portrayal of myself, most of which portrayed me in ways that made me tougher and more daring and more aggressive than in reality I was, or I am. People cope with adversity in many different ways, ways that are deeply personal. I think one way people cope is by developing a skewed perception of themselves that allows them to overcome and do things they thought they couldn't do before. My mistake, and it is one I deeply regret, is writing about the person I created in my mind to help me cope, and not the person who went through the experience.

James Frey's Author's Note [Random House]
Frey Says Falsehoods Improved His Tale [NYT]

They'll be adding a publisher's note and an author's note to all future editions, they'll add a line to the cover announcing the presence of the notes (but not, God forbid, announcing that the book is a lie), and they won't print any more copies until the notes and announcement have been added.

They will not, however, be giving you your money back.

Suckas.

The full statement is after the jump.

News from
Doubleday & Anchor Books

The controversy over James Frey s A MILLION LITTLE PIECES has caused serious concern at Doubleday and Anchor Books. Recent interpretations of our previous statement notwithstanding, it is not the policy or stance of this company that it doesn t matter whether a book sold as nonfiction is true. A nonfiction book should adhere to the facts as the author knows them.

It is, however, Doubleday and Anchor s policy to stand with our authors when accusations are initially leveled against their work, and we continue to believe this is right and proper. A publisher s relationship with an author is based to an extent on trust. Mr. Frey s repeated representations of the book s accuracy, throughout publication and promotion, assured us that everything in it was true to his recollections. When the Smoking Gun report appeared, our first response, given that we were still learning the facts of the matter, was to support our author. Since then, we have questioned him about the allegations and have sadly come to the realization that a number of facts have been altered and incidents embellished.

We bear a responsibility for what we publish, and apologize to the reading public for any unintentional confusion surrounding the publication of A MILLION LITTLE PIECES.

We are immediately taking the following actions:

• We are issuing a publisher s note to be included in all future printings of the book.

• James Frey is writing an author s note that will appear in all future printings of the book.

• The jacket for all future editions will carry the line With new notes from the publisher and from the author.

• Although demand for the book remains high, we are not currently reprinting or fulfilling orders until we make the above changes.

• The publisher s note and author s note will be posted prominently on the randomhouse.com website.

• The publisher s note and author s note will promptly be sent to booksellers for inclusion in previously shipped copies of the book.

• An advertisement concerning these developments will appear in national and trade publications in the next few days.

David Drake
VP and Director of Publicity
Doubleday Books
xxxx@randomhouse.com
212/782-XXXX

Russell Perreault
VP and Director of Publicity
Anchor Books
xxxx@randomhouse.com
212-572-XXXX

January 11, 2006
Contrary to erroneous published reports, Random House, Inc. is not offering a special refund on A Million Little Pieces.
It has long been standard Random House Inc procedure to direct consumers who want a refund on any of the tens of thousands of books we publish back to their retail place of purchase, unless they purchased the book directly from us in which case we refund it. Yesterday we had 15 calls to our customer service line specific to A Million Little Pieces and fewer than that today.

Also breaking: CNN doesn't give a shit.

Company News [Random House]
CNN