 What's shaking? My name's Cam. Welcome back to another video. Like most artistic careers, you can really get yourself in hot wilder for doing the wrong thing as an author. Sometimes it's a mistake. Sometimes it's a misunderstanding. And other times it is just the author being a bad person. I've done a video before talking about things authors have done in the past that give me a bad feeling in my tummy tum. Oh my god. But today I wanted to really focus in and chat about some specific cases where authors have caused an outrage. For good reason. This will be a tale of tragedy told in four parts. You may have heard of some of them. Some of them I've even talked about on this channel before. But if you settle in, make yourself comfortable. I think you'll be in for quite the ride. Especially the last one. Geez man. James Frey is the author of A Million Little Pieces. It's a book that came out in 2003. It described in devastating detail James's decades-long struggle with alcohol addiction and the crimes that came as a result of that. Not only that but also the death of someone close to him because of a similar addiction. Well the book did really really well. It was a wild success. A lot of people even said it changed their lives. It was number one on the New York Times bestseller list for three months. That's a heckin' long time my guy. In the midst of all this James was actually invited to be on Oprah and was featured in Oprah's book club. Which to be clear at that time was a huge deal. This all sounds pretty great right? A story about a guy overcoming an unimaginable struggle. I legitimately could only imagine how much catharsis that could give to people suffering in a similar way. But in 2006 the smoking gun released an expose on James Frey. They released details of a six week investigation they'd done into James Frey and the things that he said happened in his book and they had found that almost all of it had been completely fabricated. They spoke with the authorities in the areas where most of these very intense crimes that James described in his book were meant to have happened and they were told that they didn't. In fact what they found is all that James had on his record was a few parking tickets and a minor DUI. There was also a very worrying lack of evidence about the death of this person that was a central focus of the book itself. Now originally Oprah stood by James but as more information came out she obviously started feeling more and more responsible for what had obviously been lies. She actually ended up having him back on the show where they ended up having what today is kind of an infamous confrontation. Now ultimately the publisher Random House ended up having to issue a ton of refunds to basically anyone who felt that they had been defrauded by this book being sold as a memoir. You can still buy a million little pieces today and it still is quite successful but now it comes with an introductory note providing more clarification. Oprah and James ended up having another sit down where they kind of cleared the air between each other. Allswell ends well, it seems. So that's basically it, that's what happened with the James phrase situation. What's interesting to me is the kind of ethical conundrum that this creates because yes James lied in his book about these being true accounts but that doesn't change the fact that this book did genuinely help a lot of people. It probably still does. The issue I think is just the fact that it was blatant lying. If it was fiction I think it would have been a lot more acceptable because in marketing this book as a memoir and saying that these were things that actually happened to him you could make a case that an enormous profit was made off of the exploitation of a very serious topic. I don't know, it's what do you think? I probably don't need to spend too long telling you about Lenny Sarum. I've made videos talking about her exploits in grueling detail before and to be honest pretty much everyone in the book community knows what she did but with that said you can't really have a list like this and not mention Lenny Sarum because this whole situation is kind of iconic in the worst way. We'll run through it again pretty quickly but if you want all of the specifics and there are a lot I'll leave a card up here for you. Lenny Sarum had an idea for a movie and with what a lot of people would call questionable advice she decided to first make it a book series. The idea was simple and not a bad idea that they would first create a bit of a Harry Potter situation or a Hunger Games situation. Draw in a massive fanbase first before the movie by having these books come out. It was a fantasy of sorts called Handbook for Mortals. Now Lenny had no experience writing novels. She'd written scripts before but this was her first time working with a full-length narrative but she gave it a go anyway. Why not? It's worth a shot. On the day of release it was a New York Times number one bestseller and less than 24 hours later it wasn't. The problem was that up until this point no one had heard about it. Books that had been talked about in massive book blogs and in book communities for months years before coming out a lot of them wouldn't even make it to their number one spot and all of a sudden Handbook for Mortals which 99% of the book community didn't know about was right there. Not only that but it also topped the hate you give which was immensely popular and important book. Simply put this book's rise to success boggled everyone. Well some very clever people did a lot of investigating and found that Lenny Sarum and her business partners had bought copies of her own book basically to inflate the figures. Now this is a big no-no on the New York Times bestseller list and can get you a little dagger next to your book as a mark of shame. Now Lenny says it was because of pre-orders but again most people are pretty skeptical that 18,000 people pre-ordered this book and no one was talking about it. It doesn't help that despite all of this shadiness the book itself has been deemed by pretty much everyone as being very poorly written. The protagonist is almost to the last hair follicle described as looking like Lenny. The general consensus is just that it was a really dodgy self-insert fantasy. But sadly that's not all. I'm having major deja vu right now even talking about this. She copied the book cover as well so the cover was allegedly plagiarized from an existing art piece and the original artist had not been contacted or credited in any capacity. Look like I said there are a lot more details here that make this story even crazier. I've had to do two whole videos on it because there's just so much. But again I've left some cards up there for you if you want to check out the whole thing. I have also done a video on this author as well but you probably haven't seen it. I expect you haven't seen it because pretty much as soon as it went public YouTube yeeted it into the sun simply for having the s-word in it. You know the drill. Card above. Richard Britton wrote a fantasy story called The World Rose. It's being called creepy in its own right because allegedly it was written with a fictional character as the love interest that had an eerie resemblance to someone a girl in real life that he had been giving a lot of unwanted attention to. Now that in itself is pretty iffy but not a huge deal. What is a big deal is that after receiving what I believe was a pretty politely worded negative review Richard used social media to track down said reviewer made a very very long trip to go find this person at their place of work mind you with the intention of confronting them for leaving a book review but at the last minute decided you know what I'm just gonna bust him in the head with a bottle the victim a teenage girl was leaned over stacking shelves at the time and Richard hit her in the head with a full wine bottle something that may as well have been a brick she went to hospital he went to jail based on the information from when he went to jail he should actually be out now but he kind of wrote this I don't even know what you I don't know what you would call it he wrote this little article thing about his time in jail and about how that time changed him it is bizarre but that's that's a whole other thing so if you want to hear about that part of the story you can check out the other video have you heard about Daniel Mallory if you haven't oh my god Daniel Mallory has a pen name and it's a name that I imagine you've heard of that name is AJ Finn yep that's right the guy who wrote The Woman in the Window which mind you is still an immensely popular book that's still being recommended to everyone and spoken about with nearly nothing but praise his book even became a movie with a star-studded cast including Gary Oldman who was literally one of the best actors ever round of applause for Gary Oldman and the reason this is so crazy to me and maybe I've just been living under a rock but I'd never heard about any of this I think I I think I saw an article once that said something about uh AJ Finn but I must have assumed it wasn't anything big because the guy is still lining up book and film deals like he's the literary Dwayne Johnson anyway if you haven't already make yourself comfy settle in because you're in for one hell of a ride that's what she said so Mallory was an editor at a major publisher when he got his book published The Woman in the Window and some very interesting interesting things have happened between now and then but the really juicy parts are everything he did leading up to that moment everything that got him from where he was to having the opportunity to have this massive book release Ian Parker over at the New Yorker did a very long expo say just last year actually and it is one of the craziest reads I've had in a long time I'm obviously gonna link it below because I just I simply can't cover everything everything that he discusses in his expo say but bear with me I am going to do my best to tell you everything that Mallory did allegedly in a list form I'm just gonna fire him off because trust me it's a long list while he was on the promotional circuit after the release of his book here are a few claims he made that have been proven to be false he got a doctorate from Oxford JK Rowling's thriller book The Cuckoo's Calling was published on his recommendation it wasn't he said that he worked on editing and polishing Tina Facebook and at a later date Tina's team said that they had never worked with him but now let's jump back a bit let's talk about all the stuff he did leading up to this release all of the lies and manipulation that got him the opportunities he needed to get the next opportunity to get filthy rich basically again it it's crazy to me that more people aren't talking about this when studying at Oxford Mallory wrote an essay for his professor that resulted in his professor giving him a pretty significant career boost in his essay he noted to great detail about his struggles with his mother having cancer and subsequently dying from cancer the thing is she didn't die after that he applied to Princeton with a note quite similar to that essay we mentioned where he talked about his struggles with his mother's cancer and how that makes him a worthy pick Mallory has later revealed that when he was rejected for his application the Princeton he wrote a letter to the dean saying and I quote you heartless what kind of ladder day Stalin refuses admission to someone in my plight not that I have ever seriously considered gracing your godforsaken institution with my presence you should be so lucky but I'm nonetheless relieved to know that I won't be attending a university whose administrators opt to ignore oncological afflictions perhaps if I'd followed the example of your prized student Lyle Menendez and killed my mother things would have turned out differently at a later time he used his mother's cancer again and claims of himself having cancer to get a job at Random House or specifically an imprint of Random House at a later time after leaving that job he would refer to his time at that job as being an editor for Random House despite the fact he had only been an assistant at one of their imprints he made claims of the director of the movie Final Destination having begged him to polish the script the director later said that that never happened and he didn't work on the script in any capacity when talking about his book The Woman in the Window Mallory had at times said that he wrote it based on his own struggles with agoraphobia and then later still said that he had never had agoraphobia but one time he had been accidentally locked in a bathroom for 24 hours so close enough I guess he claims to have done two phd's in medical research and no one can find any evidence of that for some reason he used a made up job offer from a competitor publishing company to get a promotion at the one he was currently working at this is a really crazy one he had claimed to have had a tumor on his brain and took extensive time off from work among many other perks to get surgery to have the tumor removed then Mallory's dad revealed that Mallory had never had cancer or a tumor after being exposed for all of this um Mallory or AG Finn whatever you want to call him basically blamed all of his lying and manipulation on having bipolar 2 disorder despite many health professionals in that field saying that bipolar 2 disorder would not be a sufficient explanation for that degree of blatant and active and compulsive acts of manipulation so yeah that's the high lines I guess I mean there's quite a lot of other stuff but you can find the link to the article in the description below and I know what you're thinking you're thinking what the I am right here with you my guy what the heck look I'm not trying to cancel the guy or anything that's not what this is it just seems pretty obvious to me that uh Mallory only got to the position he's in where he has this monumental amount of success because of a very long history of pretty harmful deceit and manipulation if you like the story that's absolutely fine of course I've had a lot of good things about the story itself it's apparently very well written and Mallory may very well be a fantastic writer but I do think it's important as well to be aware of the people who are writing those words and the things they've done I'm a strong believer in giving people second chances and believing that they can become better people but they first have to take responsibility so there it is uh treat this video as the blueprint of what not to do should you ever blow up but if you watch this far I really really do appreciate it um hopefully I can keep you here for just a few seconds more I really do never really do this at least anymore and I mean you'll know that if you've been watching my videos for a while now but if you do like my videos and you want to see more of me in any way it would mean a lot to me if you subscribed and liked the video I legitimately never asked this but um maybe even hit the bell if you really like me God help you look the thing is and the reason I'm asking uh to be honest I'm not going to do this in every video the only reason I'm asking is because very recently I have been having to really battle YouTube to stop my videos from being age gated as soon as I upload them as much as I hate being the I care about views guy it really does hurt when you put a lot of effort into just all of these videos I'm talking like hundreds of hours of work and then they stop getting suggested to people simply because the algorithm busted you saying the naughty word for poo poo anyway sorry to go baby mode on you there hope you enjoyed the video catch you