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Here are the 10 biggest publishing scandals:
1.
The Apple
Ebook Lawsuit – Apple and a number of large publishers were caught up in a
price fixing scandal which resulted in fines and repayments of over $450
million dollars.
2.
2012
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction – The final candidates for the 2012 Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction were down to Swamplandia!
by Karen Russell, The Pale King by
David Foster Wallace, and Train Dreams
by Denis Johnson. Unfortunately, the committee choosing the prize, upon
receiving the ranked list from the Pulitzer Prize Board, declined to choose a
winner and opted to award no prize. No explanation was given for their
decision.
3.
A Million Little Pieces – The memoir by James Frey about his
drug addiction. While presented as truth, nearly the entire book turned out to
be false.
4.
News
International phone hacking scandal – In 2011, members of the staff of News of the World were accused of police
bribery, intimidation, and the printing of false information.
5.
Amazon v.
Barnes & Noble – This scandal affects books being published on the
Amazon publishing platform (their imprint, not the self-publishing side).
Barnes & Noble has basically outright stated that they will not sell books
published by Amazon on their Nook devices.
6.
Textbook
Publishing – The textbook industry in the United States primarily funnels
through one area: A Texas review board. This board determines what books can be
used in what areas of the country and many other things. Many academics and
citizens staunchly disagree with this one sided process.
7.
Fake
research papers – One of the largest scandals in science publishing is the
existence of an entire industry based out of China solely for the purpose of
publishing fake research papers.
8.
Sokal
affair – This was an incident in 1996 in which a professor named Sokal
submitted a fake article to Social Text,
a journal focusing on postmodern cultural studies, just to see if they would
publish an article composed mostly of nonsense. They did exactly that.
9.
Machine
generated journal articles – Back to the world of science publishing, a
French researcher named Labbe discovered over one hundred journal articles that
were proven to be fakes generated by a computer. He published these findings in
Nature.
10. JT LeRoy – A supposed former male drug
addict and drag queen who authored a memoir and began appearing on radio talk
shows and doing interviews. The story turned out to be made up and the true
name of JT LeRoy was found out to be Samantha Knoop.
Every aspect of the publishing industry has seen scandal.
These scandals do nothing but promote mistrust and lower the profits of the
industry as a whole.
