unauthorized biography meaning

The 6 Most Notorious Unauthorized Biographies

Nothing gets the brain buzzing like the words “unauthorized biography.” It immediately conjures up a sense of transgression, of trespass, instantly making any subject more interesting. But when applied to the story of someone’s life, when does consent stop being important? If someone writes a biography of a long-dead historical figure, after all, no one complains that it’s unauthorized, for the simple reason that there no one around to authorize it.That doesn’t mean the unauthorized biography isn’t exciting—as these six titles prove, sometimes writing the story of a famous person’s life without permission is the best way to create an memorable book. After all, when you’re not asking permission, you’re giving yourself permission to be completely, brutally honest.

His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra

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By Kitty Kelley

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His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra , by Kitty Kelley Perhaps the ultimate example of the notorious unauthorized biography. Kitty Kelley made her bones as a writer with biographies of people who would much rather not be written about. Taking on one of the most famously unamused and controlling celebrities, Kelley risked public attacks from his famous friends, threats of legal action, and pressure from the larger entertainment industry to write an unvarnished biography of Frank Sinatra, portraying him as a serial philanderer and cozy associate of organized crime. It’s publication was explosive, changing the way we perceive a legend.

Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography

Paperback $23.99

By Andrew Morton

Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography , by Andrew Morton There are few more private and controversial personalities today than Cruise, whose association with the Church of Scientology and often erratic public behavior are offset by a public and interview persona that is closed-off and superficial. Morton’s unauthorized biography is the origin of many revelations about Cruise’s relationships (including the assertion that Katie Holmes had to “audition” for her relationship with him), his importance to Scientology, his authority within the church, and his sexuality. Cruise and Scientology threatened lawsuits and launched a campaign to stop publication; when that failed, they sent out a tsunami of denials and accusations in an attempt to discredit the book.

Becoming Beyoncé: The Untold Story

Paperback $16.99

By J. Randy Taraborrelli

Becoming Beyoncé , by J. Randy Taraborrelli Queen B is easily one of the most powerful entertainers of the modern age. As she easily dominates the music charts and dabbles in film work, her brand is effortless cool. And as with most huge celebrities, her public persona is carefully managed. Taraborelli pulls back the curtain a bit, exploring the rumors of an affair between Rhianna and Jay-Z, the infamous elevator incident in which her sister Solange attacked Jay-Z physically, and rumors that their daughter Blue Ivy was secretly adopted while Beyoncé wore a prosthetic baby bump. No one in the Beyoncé camp wanted this book to come out.

Saban: The Making of a Coach

Paperback $18.99

By Monte Burke

Saban: The Making of a Coach , by Monte Burke You wouldn’t normally think being a college football coach, even for a powerhouse like Alabama’s Crimson Tide, would merit an unauthorized biography. But Nick Saban isn’t just any coach—he’s come to represent the modern way the game is played, organized, recruited, and sold. Forbes writer Monte Burke wrote a book to de-mystify the man who is as much disliked in the sport as he is successful, and Saban was not happy about it, hijacking a press conference on the day of its release to complain bitterly about “some person that you don’t even know trying to profit by your story or someone else’s story.”

The Lives of John Lennon

Paperback $22.95

By Albert Goldman

The Lives of John Lennon , by Albert Goldman John Lennon: musical genius, prolific songwriter, murderer. Wait, what? Goldman’s explosive 1988 biography of the former Beatle didn’t paint Lennon or Yoko Ono in a very positive light, alleging not only drug abuse but a violent temper that may have caused the death of original Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe (only one of several killings attributed to Lennon). Almost universally denied and decried by the people who actually knew Lennon, the book was a smash hit upon release but has faded over the years. Yoko Ono considered suing, but was advised that a lawsuit would simply be free publicity—a decision that appears to have been quite sound.

Anne Sexton: A Biography

Hardcover $23.76 $24.95

By Diane Wood Middlebrook , Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton: A Biography , by Diane Middlebrook Although not technically “unauthorized,” Middlebrook’s study of the poet Anne Sexton was controversial because Middlebrook had access to audio recordings of Sexton in session with her psychiatrist. It’s one thing to interview people about a subject, something else for her doctor to offer up supposedly private and confidential therapy sessions. This is made even more horrifying when you realize that Sexton killed herself while under that doctor’s care. The book was a huge bestseller, however, despite—or because—of this scent of gross misconduct.

Julian Assange - The Unauthorised Autobiography

Hardcover $26.75

By Julian Assange

HONORABLE MENTION: Julian Assange: The Unauthorized Biography , by Julian Assange and Andrew O’Hagan Finally, this nearly-impossible to find book wins some sort of award for weirdness. Originally fully authorized with a delighted Assange happy to talk to O’Hagan, Assange later apparently learned the definition of the word “biography” and disavowed it, claiming it was getting too “personal.” What kind of impersonal biography he imagined is a mystery, but when you read the book his sudden change of heart makes sense: the Julian Assange described in it is not a nice guy, or a hygienic guy. Not everyone is interesting enough to have their life story written out. And not everyone who is interesting enough is happy about it. Shop all biography >

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Kitty Kelley, Queen of the Unauthorized Biography, Spills Her Own Secrets

Her battles with the most powerful figures in Hollywood — from Frank Sinatra to Oprah — are the stuff of legend. Now 79, the grande dame of tell-alls looks back on a trailblazing career while peering ahead to her next target (Jeff Bezos, look out).

By Seth Abramovitch

Seth Abramovitch

Senior Writer

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There was, not that long ago, a name whose mere invocation could strike terror in the hearts of the most powerful figures in politics and entertainment.

That name was Kitty Kelley.

If it’s unfamiliar to you, ask your mother, who likely is in possession of one or more of Kelley’s best-selling biographies — exhaustive tomes that peer unflinchingly (and, many have claimed, nonfactually) into the personal lives of the most famous people on the planet.

“I’m afraid I’ve earned it,” sighs Kelley, 79, of her reputation as the undisputed Queen of the Unauthorized Biography. “And I wave the banner. I do. ‘Unauthorized’ does not mean untrue. It just means I went ahead without your permission.”

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That she did. Jackie Onassis, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan — the more sacred the cow, the more eager Kelley was to lead them to slaughter. In doing so, she amassed a list of enemies that would make a despot blush. As Milton Berle once cracked at a Friars Club roast, “Kitty Kelley wanted to be here tonight, but an hour ago she tried to start her car.”

Only a handful of contemporary authors have achieved the kind of brand recognition that Kelley has. At the height of her powers in the early 1990s, mentions of the ruthless journo with the cutesy name would pop up everywhere from late night monologues to the funny pages. (Fully capable of laughing at herself, her bathroom walls are covered in framed cartoons drawn at her expense.)

Kelley is hard to miss around Washington, D.C. She drives a fire-engine red Mercedes with vanity plates that read “MEOW.” The car was a gift from former Simon & Schuster chief Dick Snyder, who was determined to land Kelley’s Nancy Reagan biography.

“Simon & Schuster said, ‘Kitty, Dick really wants the book. What will it take to prove that?’ ” she recalls. “I said, ‘A 560 SL Mercedes, bright red, Palomino interior.’ ‘We’ll be back to you.’ ” She insists she was only kidding. But a few days later, Kelley answered the phone and was directed to walk to the nearest corner: “Your bright red 560 SL is sitting there waiting for you.” Sure enough, there it was. The “MEOW” plates were a surprise gift from the boyfriend who would become her second husband, Dr. John Zucker.

Ask Kelley how many books she has sold, and she claims not to know the exact number. It is many, many millions. Her biggest sellers — 1986’s His Way , about Frank Sinatra, and 1991’s Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography , began with printings of a million each, which promptly sold out. “But they’ve gone to 12th printings, 14th printings,” she says. “I really couldn’t tell you how many I’ve sold in total.” She does recall first breaking into The New York Times ‘ best-seller charts, with 1978’s Jackie Oh! “I remember the thrill of it. I remember how happy I was. It’s like being prom queen,” she says. “Which I actually was about 100 years ago.”

Regardless of one’s opinions about Kelley, or her methodology, there can be no denying that her brand of take-no-prisoners celebrity journalism — the kind that in 2022 bubbles up constantly in social media feeds in the form of TMZ headlines and gossipy tweets — was very much ahead of its time.

In fact, a detail from Kelley’s 1991 Nancy Reagan biography trended in December when Abby Shapiro, sister of conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, tweeted side-by-side photos of Madonna and the former first lady. “This is Madonna at 63. This is Nancy Reagan at 64. Trashy living vs. Classic living. Which version of yourself do you want to be?” read the caption. Someone replied with an excerpt from Kelley’s biography that described Reagan as being “renowned in Hollywood for performing oral sex” and “very popular on the MGM lot.” The excerpt went viral and launched a wave of memes. “It doesn’t fit with the public image. Does it? It just doesn’t. And the source on that was Peter Lawford,” says Kelley, clearly tickled that the detail had resurfaced.

While amplifying those kinds of rumors might not suggest it, in many eyes, Kelley is something of a glass-ceiling shatterer. “Back when she started in the 1970s, it was a largely male profession,” says Diane Kiesel, a friend of Kelley’s who is a judge on the New York Supreme Court. “She was a trailblazer. There weren’t women writing the kind of hard-hitting books she was writing. I’m sure most of her sources were men.”

But what of her methodology? Kelley insists she never sets out to write unauthorized biographies. Since Jackie Oh! , she has always begun her research by asking her subjects to participate, often multiple times. She is invariably turned down, then continues about the task anyway. She’s also known to lean toward blind sourcing and rely on notes, plus tapes and photographs, to back up the hundreds of interviews that go into every book.

“Recorders are so small today, but back then it was very hard to carry a clunky tape recorder around and slap it on the table in a restaurant and not have all of that ambient noise,” she says. To prove the conversations happened, Kelley devised a system in which she would type up a thank-you note containing the key details of their meeting — location, date and time — and mail it to every subject, keeping a copy for herself. If a subject ever denied having met with her, she would produce the notes from their conversation and her copy of the thank-you note.

So far, the system has worked. While many have tried to take her down, the ever-grinning Kelley has never been successfully sued by a source or subject.

Now 79, she lives in the same Georgetown townhouse she purchased with her $1.5 million advance (that’s $4 million adjusted for inflation) for His Way , which the crooner unsuccessfully sued to prevent from even being written.

Among the skeletons dug up by Kelley in that 600-page opus: that Ol’ Blue Eyes’ mother was known around Hoboken, New Jersey, as “Hatpin Dolly” for a profitable side hustle performing illegal abortions. Sinatra’s daughter Nancy Sinatra said the family “strangled on our pain and anger” over the book’s release, while her sister, Tina, said it caused her father so much stress, it forced him to undergo a seven-and-a-half-hour surgical procedure on his colon.

Giggly, vivacious and 5-foot-3, Kelley presents more like a kindly neighbor bearing blueberry muffins than the most infamous poison-pen author of the 20th century. “I seem to be doing more book reviewing than book writing these days,” she says in one of our first correspondences and points me to a review of a John Lewis biography published in the Washington Independent Review of Books .

She has not tackled a major work since 2010’s Oprah — a biography of Oprah Winfrey touted ahead of its release by The New Yorker as “one of those King Kong vs. Godzilla events in celebrity culture” but which fizzled in the marketplace, barely moving 300,000 copies. Among its allegations: that Winfrey had an affair early in her career with John Tesh — of Entertainment Tonight fame — and that, according to a cousin, the talk show host exaggerated tales of childhood poverty because “the truth is boring.”

“We had a falling out because I didn’t want to publish the Oprah book,” says Stephen Rubin, a consulting publisher at Simon & Schuster who grew close to Kelley while working with her at Doubleday on 2004’s The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty .

“I told her that audience doesn’t want to read a negative book about Saint Oprah. I don’t think it’s something she should have even undertaken. We have chosen to disagree about that.”

The book ended up at Crown. It would be nine months before Kelley would speak to Rubin again. They’ve since reconciled. “She’s no fun when she’s pissed,” Rubin notes.

Adds Kelley of Winfrey’s reaction to the book: “She wasn’t happy with it. Nobody’s happy with [an unauthorized] biography. She was especially outraged about her father’s interview.” She is referencing a conversation she had, on the record, with Winfrey’s father, Vernon Winfrey, in which he confirmed the birth of her son, who arrived prematurely and died shortly after birth.

But Kelley says the backlash to Oprah: A Biography and the book’s underwhelming sales had nothing to do with why she hasn’t undertaken a biography since. Rather, her husband, a famed allergist in the D.C. area who’d give a daily pollen report on television and radio, died suddenly in 2011 of a heart attack. “John was the great love of her life,” says Rubin. “He was an irresistible guy — smart, good-looking, funny and mad for Kitty.”

“Boy, I was knocked on my heels,” she says of Zucker’s death. “He hated the cold weather. He insisted we go out to the California desert. We were in the desert, and he died at the pool suddenly. I can’t account for a couple of years after that. It was a body blow. I just haven’t tackled another biography since.”

A decade having passed, Kelley does not rule out writing another one — she just hasn’t yet found a subject worthy of her time. “I can’t think of anyone right now who I would give three or four years of my life to,” Kelley says. “It’s like a college education.”

For fun, I throw out a name: Donald Trump. Kelley shakes her head vigorously. “I started each book with real respect for each of my subjects,” she says. “And not just for who they were but for what they had accomplished and the imprint that they had left on society. I can’t say the same thing about Donald Trump. I would not want to wrap myself in a negative project for four years.”

“You know,” I interrupt, “I’m imagining people reading that quote and saying, ‘Well, you took ostensibly positive topics and turned them into negative topics.’ How would you respond to that?”

“I would say you’re wrong,” Kelley replies. “That’s what I would say. I think if you pick up, I don’t know — the Frank Sinatra book, Jackie Oh! , the Bush book — yes, you’re going to see the negatives and the positives, which we all have. But I think you’ll come out liking them. I mean, we don’t expect perfection in the people around us, but we seem to demand it in our stars. And yet, they’re hardly paragons. Each book that I’ve written was a challenge. But I would think that if you read the book, you’re going to come out — no matter what they say about the author — you’re going to come out liking the subject.”

Kelley arrived in the nation’s capital in 1964. She was 22 and, through the connections of her dad, a powerful attorney from Spokane, Washington, she landed an assistant job in Democratic Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s office. She worked there for four years, culminating in McCarthy’s 1968 presidential bid. It was a tumultuous time. McCarthy’s Democratic rival, Robert F. Kennedy, was gunned down in Los Angeles at a California primary victory party on June 5. When Hubert Humphrey clinched the nomination that August amid the DNC riots in Chicago, Kelley’s dreams of a future in a McCarthy White House were dashed, and she decided a life in politics was not for her.

“But I remain political,” Kelley clarifies. “I am committed to politics and have been ever since I worked for Gene McCarthy. I was against the war in Vietnam. I don’t come from that world. I come from a rich, right-wing Republican family. My siblings avoid talking politics with me.”

In 1970, she applied for a researcher opening in the op-ed section at The Washington Post . “It was a wonderful job,” she recalls. “I’d go into editorial page conferences. And whatever the writers would be writing, I would try and get research for them. Ben Bradlee’s office was right next to the editorial page offices. And if he had both doors open, I would walk across his office. He was always yelling at me for doing it.”

According to her own unauthorized biography — 1991’s Poison Pen , by George Carpozi Jr. — Kelley was fired for taking too many notes in those meetings, raising red flags for Bradlee, who suspected she might be researching a book about the paper’s publisher, Katharine Graham. Kelley says the story is not true.

“I have not heard that theory, but I will tell you I loved Katharine Graham, and when I left the Post , she gave me a gift. She dressed beautifully, and when the style went from mini to maxi skirts —because she was tall and I am not, I remember saying, ‘Mrs. Graham, you’re going to have to go to maxis now. And who’s going to get your minis?’ She laughed. It was very impudent. But then I was handed a great big box with four fabulous outfits in them — her miniskirts.”

Kelley says she left the Post after two years to pursue writing books and freelancing. She scored one of the bigger scoops of 1974 when the youngest member of the upper house — newly elected Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, then 31 — agreed to be profiled for Washingtonian , a new Beltway magazine.

Biden was still very much in mourning for his wife and young daughter, killed by a hay truck while on their way to buy a Christmas tree in Delaware on Dec. 18, 1972. The future president’s two young sons, Beau and Hunter, survived the wreck; Biden was sworn into the Senate at their hospital bedsides.

After the accident, Biden developed an almost antagonistic relationship to the press. But his team eventually softened him to the idea of speaking to the media. That was precisely when Kelley made her ask.

Biden would come to deeply regret the decision. The piece, “Death and the All-American Boy,” published on June 1, 1974, was a mix of flattery (Kelley writes that Biden “reeks of decency” and “looks like Robert Redford’s Great Gatsby”), controversy (she references a joke told by Biden with “an antisemitic punchline”) and, at least in Biden’s eyes, more than a little bad taste.

The piece opens: “Joseph Robinette Biden, the 31-year-old Democrat from Delaware, is the youngest man in the Senate, which makes him a celebrity of sorts. But there’s something else that makes him good copy: Shortly after his election in November 1972 his wife Neilia and infant daughter were killed in a car accident.”

Later, Kelley writes, “His Senate suite looks like a shrine. A large photograph of Neilia’s tombstone hangs in the inner office; her pictures cover every wall. A framed copy of Milton’s sonnet ‘On His Deceased Wife’ stands next to a print of Byron’s ‘She Walks in Beauty.’ “

But it was one of Biden’s own quotes that most incensed the future president.

She writes: ” ‘Let me show you my favorite picture of her,’ he says, holding up a snapshot of Neilia in a bikini. ‘She had the best body of any woman I ever saw. She looks better than a Playboy bunny, doesn’t she?’ “

“I stand by everything in the piece,” says Kelley. “I’m sorry he was so upset. And it’s ironic, too, because I’m one of his biggest supporters. It was 48 years ago. I would hope we’ve both grown. Maybe he expected me to edit out [the line about the bikini], but it was not off the record.” Still, she admits her editor, Jack Limpert, went too far with the headline: “I had nothing to do with that. I was stunned by the headline. ‘Death and the All-American Boy.’ Seriously?”

It would be 15 years before Biden gave another interview, this time to the Washington Post ‘s Lois Romano during his first presidential bid, in 1987. Biden, by then remarried to Jill Biden, recalled to Romano, “[Kelley] sat there and cried at my desk. I found myself consoling her, saying, ‘Don’t worry. It’s OK. I’m doing fine.’ I was such a sucker.”

Kelley’s first book wasn’t a biography at all. “It was a book on fat farms,” she says, which was based on a popular article she’d written for Washington Star News on San Diego’s Golden Door — one of the country’s first luxury spas catering to celebrity clientele like Natalie Wood, Elizabeth Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

“On about the third day, the chef came out, and he said, ‘Would you like a little something?’ ” says Kelley. “He was Italian. I said, ‘Yes, I’m so hungry.’ And he kind of laughed. Turns out he wasn’t talking about tuna fish. I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ He said, ‘I have sex all the time with the people here.’ I said, ‘I should tell you, I’m here writing a book.’ He said, ‘I’ll tell you everything!’ I warned him, ‘OK — but I’m going to use names.’ And I did.”

The book, a 1975 paperback called The Glamour Spas , sold “14 copies, all of them bought by my mother,” she says. But the publisher, Lyle Stuart, dubbed in a 1969 New York Times profile as the “bad boy of publishing,” was impressed enough with Kelley’s writing that he hired her in 1976 to write a biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

The crown jewel of the book that would become Jackie Oh! was Kelley’s interview with Sen. George Smathers, a Florida Democrat and John F. Kennedy’s confidant. (After they entered Congress the same year and quickly became close friends, Kennedy asked Smathers to deliver two significant speeches: at his 1953 wedding and his 1960 DNC nomination.)

“It was quite explosive,” Kelley recalls of her three-hour dinner with Smathers. “He was very charming, very Southern and funny. And he said, ‘Oh, Jack, he just loved women.’ And he went on talking, and he said, ‘He’d get on top of them, just like a rooster with a hen.’ I said, ‘Senator, I’m sorry, but how would you know that unless you were in the room?’ He said, ‘Well, of course I was in the room. Jack loved doing it in front of people.’

“The senator, to his everlasting credit, did not deny it,” Kelley continues. “A reporter asked him, ‘Did you really say those things?’ And the senator replied, ‘Yeah, I did. I think I was just run over by a dumb-looking blonde.’ “

She followed that one, which landed on the New York Times best-seller list, with 1981’s Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star , which underwhelmed. Her next two, however — His Way and Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography (for which she earned a $3.5 million advance, $9 million in 2022 adjusted for inflation) — were best-sellers, moving more than 1 million copies each in hardcover.

Her 1997 royal family exposé, The Royals — which presaged The Crown , the Lady Di renaissance and Megxit mania by several decades — contained allegations that the British royal family had obfuscated their German ancestry.

“Sinatra was huge and Nancy was huge, but The Royals gave me more foreign sales than I’ve ever had on any book,” Kelley beams, adding that the recent headlines about Prince Andrew settling with a woman who accused him of raping her as a teenager at Jeffrey Epstein’s compound “really shows the rotten underbelly of the monarchy, in that someone would be so indulged, really ruined as a person, without much purpose in life.”

“Looking around,” I ask Kelley, “is society in decline?”

“What a question,” she replies. “Let’s say it’s being stressed on all sides. I think it’s become hard to find people that we can look up to — those you can turn to to find your better self. We used to do that with movie stars. People do it with monarchy. Unfortunately, there are people like Kitty Kelley around who will take us behind the curtain.”

Contrary to her public persona, Kelley is known in D.C. social circles for her gentility. Judge Kiesel, a part-time author, first met her eight years ago when Kelley hosted a reception for members of the Biographers International Organization at her home.

“What amazed me was she was such the epitome of Southern hospitality, even though she isn’t from the South,” says Kiesel. “I remember her standing on the front porch of her beautiful home in Georgetown and personally greeting every member of this group who had showed up. There had to be close to 200 of us.”

Kelley hosts regular dinner parties of six to 10 people. “She likes to mix people from publishing, politics and the law,” says Kiesel. When Kiesel, who lives in New York City, needed to spend more time in D.C. caring for a sister diagnosed with cancer, Kelley insisted she stay at her home. “She threw a little dinner party in my honor,” Kiesel recalls. “I said, ‘Kitty — why are you doing this?’ She said, ‘You’re going to have a really rough couple of months and I wanted to show you that I’m going to be there for you.’ People look at her as this tough-as-nails, no-holds-barred writer — but she’s a very kind, sweet, generous woman.”

For Kelley, life has grown pretty quiet the past few years: “It’s such a solitary life as a writer. The pandemic has turned life into a monastery.” Asked whether she dates, she lets out a high-pitched chortle. “Yes,” she says. “When asked. No one serious right now. Hope springs eternal!”

I ask her if there is anything she’s written she wishes she could take back. “Do I stand by everything I wrote? Yes. I do. Because I’ve been lawyered to the gills. I’ve had to produce tapes, letters, photographs,” she says, then adds, “But I do regret it if it really brought pain.”

Says Rubin: “People think she’s a bottom-feeder kind of writer, and that’s totally wrong. She’s a scrupulous journalist who writes no-holds-barred books. They’re brilliantly reported.”

Before I bid her adieu, I can’t resist throwing out one more potential subject for a future Kelley page-turner.

“What about Jeff Bezos?” I say.

She pauses to consider, and you can practically hear the gears revving up again.

“I think he’s quite admirable,” she says. “First of all, he saved The Washington Post . God love him for that. And he took on someone who threatened to blackmail him. He stood up to it. I think there’s much to admire and respect in Jeff Bezos. He sounds like he comes from the most supportive parents in the world. You don’t always find that with people who are so successful.”

“So,” I say. “You think you have another one in you?”

“I hope so,” Kelley says. “I know you’re going to end this article by saying … ‘Look out!’ “

This story first appeared in the March 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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Legal Challenges Of Writing Unauthorized Biographies

Biographies are grouped into two categories: biographies written with the subject’s permission and cooperation, aka authorized biographies, and biographies written without the subject’s permission and cooperation, aka known as unauthorized biographies.  The former tends to suggest a puffy publicity piece. The later tends to suggest a forbidden sense of controversy, like a “kiss and tell” book written by a former employee, paramour, or confidante of the biography’s subject.  In the words of Kitty Kelly, the author of the controversial biography “Oprah,” the label unauthorized biography “sounds so nefarious, kind of like breaking and entering. But that’s what biography is. It does break and enter a life.”

And with that sense of transgression or trespass, also comes a few significant legal risks that authors of unauthorized biographies might encounter — like a lawsuit for libel, invasion of privacy or misappropriation of the right of publicity. Some of the most notorious biographies garnered a heap of legal attention. Just read up on the news thicket around these examples: His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra, by Kitty Kelly; Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography, by Andrew Morton; and Becoming Beyonce, by J. Randy Taraborrelli.  Should an author lose such a lawsuit, the end results could be not only monetary damages, but an injunction preventing publication of the unauthorized biography or further distribution.

If you intend to write an unauthorized biography, here are the legal challenges you might encounter and what you can do to lessen your level of risk. In general, anyone can write a biography of someone without their approval as long as it is accurate and you don’t run afoul of the following legal principles: libel, invasion of privacy, misappropriation of the right of publicity, copyright infringement or breach of confidence.

We usually hear the legal term libel when a gossip rag damages a celebrity’s reputation by printing false rumors of a derogatory nature like a sexual escapade, or an ex-paramour’s heroine addiction. But libel can happen in biographies too.

Libel is the publication of a defamatory statement that injures a person’s reputation (as opposed to slander, which covers the verbal form of defamation). A libelous statement must be false about some statement of fact (as opposed to an opinion). The defamed person must be living and need not be identified by name. The real person need only be identifiable to readers via the information provided. Business entities and small identifiable groups (like a lacrosse team) can be defamed too.

To avoid a defamation claim, your best defenses would be truth, opinion, or parody/satire.

• Truth is a complete defense to a defamation claim. No false statement equals no libelous statement. Even if minor inconsequential facts are incorrect, libel does not exist if the overall statement is true.
• Opinions are protected (because opinions are neither true or false). This defense, however, can be tricky to navigate. Just because you say it is your opinion will not keep the statement from being defamatory. Merely implying a false statement can be enough. “In my opinion, she is an alcoholic” is just as defamatory as “she is an alcoholic.” These issues often arise with biographical works. The best way to utilize this defense is for the writer to provide in their work the underlying facts on which the opinion is based, like, “She was convicted of a DUI, and then went to rehab.”
• Parody and satire genres exaggerate material for comic effect, which is not considered to be true or a statement of fact.

Thankfully, for writers and publishers, the success rate for defamation suits tends to be low. Why? Because courts tend to require the author to be negligent in publishing the defamatory statement and, if the subject of the biography is a celebrity or public figure, that the author acted with malice, i.e. they had actual knowledge the statement was false and published anyway. If the subject is not well-known, the courts tend to give them more protection against libel acts, so there is no need to show negligence or malice.

In short, stick to the facts when writing an unauthorized biography. If you have support for those facts, then you’ve preserved the accuracy of the life story you’re writing about and will be on solid ground to avoid a libel cause of action.

2. The Right of Privacy

People have the right to be left alone. Privacy is invaded when private facts not in the public’s interest are publicly disclosed. While the truth can deflect a defamation claim, often the truth when disclosed can be the basis for an invasion of privacy claim.

Usually, invasion of privacy occurs when:

• Private facts that are not of public interest are disclosed;
• There has been intrusion into a person’s private life; and
• Someone is portrayed or misrepresented in a false light, i.e. highly offensive to a reasonable person.

The injured person must be living (unless you want to dig up the casket and that is an invasion of another kind). The disclosure of private facts must cause harm to the person’s reputation (personal or professional). Mere embarrassment usually is not enough. The injured person must have a reasonable expectation the disclosed fact was to remain private. So, if facts occurred in a public setting, then most likely there is no expectation of privacy.

Often the most crucial point in a right to privacy claim is whether the disclosure was of public interest, which public figures and celebrities are. Fortunately, writers have had luck in persuading courts that the disclosure of private facts is of public interest when it illuminates the human condition. But a third-party telling someone else’s story about a child born from an incestuous relationship that was never made public and the crime never reported has been held to violate the right of privacy. The facts were newsworthy; yet revealing the identity of the victim was not a matter of public interest.

For unauthorized biographies about a celebrity or public figure, rarely are they successful on an invasion of privacy claim. They are after all public people, and with that comes the sad truth that intimate and personal facts about their lives could be revealed to the public. Just remember, if the subject of your unauthorized biography is not a celebrity or public figure the the law will give greater protection to the disclosure of intimate and personal facts of their personal lives.  If this is your subject, I’d suggest getting permission from the subject before you publish private or embarrassing facts about them.

3. The Right of Publicity

Misappropriation of the right of publicity is using someone’s name, likeness, or identifying characteristics for advertising, merchandising, endorsements, promotional, or commercial purposes without permission. The law normally applies to the living, although some states will extend the right of publicity posthumously. And it only applies to a person who makes money from who they are (i.e. famous people).

Normally, if you don’t have permission, you wouldn’t want to use someone’s name or likeness for commercial purposes. Just because you spilt a cocktail on Liza Minnelli at a party, you would not put her picture on the cover of your memoir to boost sales. Nor would you add Lee Child’s endorsement on your book if he hasn’t given one. But, if you written a biography about a famous person, permission is not required because the right of publicity yields to the First Amendment.

That said, don’t claim an unauthorized biography of Madonna was authorized or you’ll be asking for trouble. Not only would this be a misappropriation of the right of publicity, but it could also lead to an unfair competition claim against you and your publisher. For an unfair competition claim to stick, the author must have intended to mislead the public into believing the subject either authorized the biography or assisted in writing it.

4. Copyright Infringement

The US Copyright Office defines copyright infringement as occurring when a “copyrighted work is reproduced, distributed, performed, publicly displayed, or made into a derivative work without the permission of the copyright owner.” ( United States Copyright Office. “Definitions.” copyright. gov . ) Usually when copyright infringement arrises in the context of an unauthorized biography, the author has used without permission excerpts of letters or papers by or oral conversations with the subject. Just remember, if you’re using the subject’s own words, whether published or unpublished, copyright law requires permission before publication unless the words are in the public domain or fair use applies. Here are two articles about fair use if you need more information:  US Copyright Office  and  Stanford University , or see my earlier article on Permissions .

5. Breach of Confidence

Breach of confidence is a common law tort in the United States that protects private information conveyed in confidence. This claim usually requires the information to be of a confidential nature, communicated in confidence and made public to the detriment of whoever is claiming the breach.

Proving a breach of confidence requires some breach of a duty of confidentiality or a fiduciary relationship, so the relationships of the parties is important. Often a duty of confidentiality exists between employers and employees, a patients and physicians,  and banks and clients. If the subject and author of the unauthorized biography entered into a contractual relationship that prohibits the disclosure of information about the subject’s life then a breach of confidence claim could be warranted. It all depends on the scope of the contract.

If you intend to write an unauthorized biography, a little upfront organization and legal scouring will save you hassles in the long run. Before publication, consult a lawyer to vet the manuscript and provide advice on how to minimize risk. If you are publishing traditionally, use your publisher’s legal department; if self-publishing, hire your own publishing lawyer. A lawyer will explain what is acceptable and what is not. The last thing you want is for your creative work to meet an untimely death from these legal challenges.

Photo Credit: pedrosimoes7 | Visual Hunt | CC BY

Legal Disclaimer: This information is provided for educational purposes only. Consult a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction for all legal opinions for your specific situation.

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Anthony Bourdain and the farce of the ‘unauthorized’ biography

Senior Fellow, McCormack Graduate School, UMass Boston

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“The agents of reticence,” wrote the English poet Ian Hamilton in “ Keepers of the Flame ,” “have no truck with the agents of disclosure.”

Thwarted by J.D. Salinger as he tried to write the story of the novelist’s life, Hamilton was out for revenge when he penned this work on literary estate management and mismanagement. The title “Keepers of the Flame” was a reference to those in Victorian times who attempted to preserve pure images of the departed.

That was 30 years ago. Little has changed, as a new biography of chef, writer and television travel star Anthony Bourdain has demonstrated.

Written by journalist Charles Leerhsen, “ Down and Out in Paradise ,” which publisher Simon & Schuster has deemed the “first unauthorized biography” of Bourdain, has already elicited controversy.

The book’s publication has moved forward despite the best efforts of Bourdain’s brother, Christopher, and other friends and family members to torpedo Leerhsen’s work. According to The New York Times , Christopher Bourdain called for Simon & Schuster to halt publication until the book’s “many errors were corrected.” The publisher refused, responding, “With all due respect, we disagree that the material in the Book contains defamatory information, and we stand by our forthcoming publication.”

As a seasoned biographer , I’m not surprised by any of this. What gets my biographer’s goat, though, is the positioning of this battle as one conducted between “unauthorized biography” on the one hand and “authorized” biography on the other – the publisher, for hinting at scandalous content by casting the work as “unauthorized,” and the aggrieved, to think they have any power to “authorize” whether the biography gets published in the first place.

No need to ask permission

Biography traces its origins back to Classical times – and to the Roman historian Suetonius , in particular.

His “ Lives of the Caesars ,” which recounts the biographies of 12 Roman emperors, from Julius to Domitian, offered Romans a stunning cornucopia of imperial tales, chronicling the rulers’ rise to power and their achievements, murders, assassinations, family troubles, frivolity, suicides and sexual perversions. It’s small wonder Seutonius was eventually banished from Rome .

As long as there has been biography, there has always been pushback to writers’ prying into their subjects’ lives.

Among living subjects of biography, such a response is all too common. In the 1990s, the feminist Germaine Greer, author of “ The Female Eunuch ,” lambasted a fellow Australian writer, Christine Wallace, for daring to try to write a biography of Greer without her permission. Greer decried Wallace as a “parasite” and a “brain-dead hack.”

Eventually, however, Greer – a professor of literature – accepted that she was powerless to prevent herself from being written about.

After all, there exists no such thing as “authorized” or “unauthorized” biography, as both the “ Encyclopedia of Life Writing ” (2001) and “ The ABC of Modern Biography ” (2018) attest.

The lost cause of libel

Bourdain died while working in France in 2018. He was 61 years old when he took his life in the bedroom of his hotel room.

The circumstances of Bourdain’s death were bound to arouse curiosity. Given the tales of dysfunction and substance abuse that Bourdain revealed in his bestselling memoir, “ Kitchen Confidential ,” what more secrets are there in his life that might help explain his death? What secrets might his family try to suppress?

As Shakespeare noted in “ Othello ,” a reputation is everything. And since good biography must critically examine its subject’s reputation, biographers are destined to find themselves on a collision course with those looking to protect the image of the subject.

If the book presents as distorted a life as Bourdain’s brother claims, could Bourdain’s family and associates go after Leerhsen for libel?

In short, no.

More than 50 years ago, Alabama police commissioner L.B. Sullivan sued The New York Times for defamation. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled in favor of the Times and overturned existing libel laws , making it significantly more difficult for public figures to successfully sue for defamation during their lifetimes.

Furthermore, the protections of libel law end with death – and Bourdain is dead.

Throwing sand in the gears

Of all the other legal rights of defense, there is one that biographers most fear, whether in life or after death of the subject: copyright, or the law of “intellectual property,” which extends for 70 years after death . Bourdain’s legal heirs have the power to grant or deny use of the deceased’s written and spoken words.

For biographers, the quoting of a subject is as crucial as water to fish. How else is a biographer to bring that individual – a real individual, not a fictional one – back to literary life on the page?

Interviews with surviving witnesses are potential silver, certainly, but they will always be secondhand. By contrast, the words of biographical subjects are gold. They do not confer truth necessarily – often they confer the opposite, lies – but they do convey authenticity, without which the reader cannot judge fairly the account and portrait that is composed.

In “Down and Out in Paradise,” the “most revealing material,” The New York Times points out , “comes from files and messages pulled from Mr. Bourdain’s phone and laptop, both of which are part of the estate.”

The executor of Bourdain’s estate – his ex-wife, Ottavia Busia-Bourdain – could have attempted to restrict the use of this material. But for mysterious reasons, she didn’t.

Either way, copyright control confers no legal right of “authorization” for a biographer’s work – there is no requirement to obtain permission from him or his heirs, beyond copyright permissions to quote authentic words.

In a perfect world, publishers wouldn’t resort to this advertising gimmick, so that the public – especially students – won’t be misled regarding the rights of biographers in our democracy. But I won’t insist.

Life’s too short.

And I have a biography to write.

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Privacy Protection and Copyright: The Legal Side of Writing a Biography

Home » Blog » Privacy Protection and Copyright: The Legal Side of Writing a Biography

PRIVACY PROTECTION AND COPYRIGHT: THE LEGAL SIDE OF WRITING A BIOGRAPHY

Biographies are perennial bestsellers. Depending on the subject, biographies can turn an author into a household name almost overnight.

However, a biography can also leave an author with serious legal issues if they don’t approach the project in the right way. Authors also need to be objective in separating fact from opinion as they are accountable for the information they share.

Indeed, writing a biography is no easy task and must be done right, to avoid any problems along the way.  

In this article, we will focus on the relevant privacy and copyright issues that may arise when writing both authorized and unauthorized biographies.

Biography Basics

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a biography is “a usually written history of a person’s life.” This definition encompasses accounts of a person’s life based on first-hand or second-hand information.

Moreover, biographies belong to the domain of non-fiction unless the events and characters surrounding actual events are fictional.

When it comes to biography sources, second-hand opinions, anecdotes, and experiences must come with documentation. For instance, interviews, videos, or even legal paperwork can substantiate claims.

Additionally, opinions must be carefully marked as such to ensure they do not constitute an attack on an individual’s character or reputation. After all, a biography should aim to tell an unbiased account of a person’s life.

Biographies can depict the lives of both living and deceased individuals.

Biographies of long-deceased historical figures often contain information extracted from previous works or otherwise in the public domain. In these cases, the risk for legal challenges is rather slim.

However, biographies of living or recently deceased figures may represent a legal challenge as there may be privacy protection and copyright issues involved.

Authorized vs. Unauthorized Biographies

There are two main types of biographies: authorized and unauthorized.

Authorized biographies have the consent of the book’s subject or their family or, at the very least, some collaboration from the subject or their representatives.

Unauthorized biographies, on the other hand, do not have the consent of the subject in question. These types of works often have salacious leanings, focusing on selling books first and the subject’s reputation second. Depending on the material's information, the author may face legal action by the subject or their representatives.

Legal Authorization for Writing a Biography

Ideally, authors would set about writing a biography with the full consent of the subject or their estate. Doing so provides the author with the confidence of knowing they will not face legal challenges once the work reaches publication.

Obtaining legal authorization generally involves writing material that has the subject’s seal of approval.

It is worth noting that authorized biographies usually require the author to paint the subject in a favorable light. While this isn’t always the case, subjects may require authors to remove certain events or information from the material if it is too salacious.

In the words of New York Times columnist Matt Knight , an authorized biography “suggests a puffy publicity piece.” As such, readers often view authorized biographies as skewed toward favoring the subject.

According to Writer’s Digest , a leading writer resource publication, in an authorized biography, “the author typically holds interviews with the subject of the book, the subject’s family members, and friends, co-workers, etc. The author is privy to information only attainable from the subject of the book.”

Thus, authorized biographies have an added layer of credibility that unauthorized ones do not.

Additionally, authorized biographies may require the author and publisher to share a portion of the revenue with the subject. In the event the subject is deceased, profits would be shared with their heirs or estate. As such, it is often more difficult to get authorization from a living subject than an estate.

To quote renowned literary critic Leon Edel:

“The secret of a biography resides in finding the link between talent and achievement. A biography seems irrelevant if it doesn’t discover the overlap between what the individual did and the life that made this possible. Without discovering that, you have shapeless happenings and gossip.”

Indeed, an authorized biography has a greater degree of credibility as it allows the author to portray the real person and not a public persona surrounded by gossip and hearsay (as long as the real person doesn’t have too much dirty laundry).

As far as publishing goes, traditional publishing houses generally require consent from the subject before the publication of a biography. Generally speaking, this position is due to credibility issues.

This makes it essential for authors to ensure they are providing accurate information. Otherwise, readers may dismiss the book due to false or inaccurate claims.

Risk is also an important consideration for both publishers and authors. Although the First Amendment covers authors in the United States, inaccurate information or misrepresentation of an individual can lead to serious legal consequences.

Therefore, authorized publications provide the safest means of producing a biography. Overall, this gives the book greater credibility while ensuring legal protection for all parties involved.

Writing an Unauthorized Biography

The heading for this section could easily read: “Proceed at your own risk.”

As its name suggests, an unauthorized biography does not have the official blessing from the subject or their representatives. As such, the author must proceed with caution as they would most likely have no cooperation whatsoever from the person who would otherwise be the primary source for their project.

Consequently, the author may have no way to corroborate the information presented in the book directly, which is the main reason why unauthorized biographies tend to contain information based on unreliable second-hand sources such as “insiders” or “people with knowledge.”

Critics point out that unauthorized biographies tend to have a sensationalist tone meant to generate buzz surrounding the topic at the expense of the subject’s reputation. To quote renowned biographer Kitty Kelley :

“Whether authorized or unauthorized, a good biography is nuanced and complex, because that is the way most people are. Being imperfect, most of us are messy and mixed-up in our private lives, inconsistent in our intentions, misled in our motives, and contradictory in our actions. Powerful public figures seem to have even more exaggerated faults and frailties, probably because their legions of publicists have spent years bleaching out the stains. The most authentic parts of a life are often quirky and filled with secrets that might startle the admissions committees of colleges and country clubs.”

Indeed, an unauthorized biography frequently paints the subject in an unfavorable light. While this assault may not have explicitly malicious intent, the point is to sell books, even if it is at the subject’s expense.

There are three main concerns when it comes to writing an unauthorized biography.

First, there is the question of libel. Libel is the use of information, usually hearsay or gossip, that damages an individual’s reputation.

Generally speaking, this information emanates from undisclosed sources or unsubstantiated information. Therefore, the publication of such information is defamatory and can lead to a lawsuit.

Authors may argue that personal opinions are factual. However, this defense is vague, especially if the overall statements are false or unsubstantiated.

While libel cases do not generally go far in court, such cases may damage the author’s reputation and hurt sales as a result.

Next, unauthorized biographies may constitute an invasion of privacy. If the author obtains information for the book using duplicitous or illegal means, the subject may have a legitimate court claim.

For example, if the information obtained emanated from hacked email accounts or bribed staff, such information would constitute an invasion of privacy. However, if the author obtained the same information lawfully via public record, an invasion of privacy claim would not be valid.

Lastly, the subject of an unauthorized biography may claim misappropriation of their likeness and any of their trademarks and copyrights. This claim occurs when authors and publishers use the subject’s name and likeness directly to promote the work, including trademarks and copyrights.

For instance, unauthorized biographies cannot use pictures of the subject on the cover unless the photographs are in the public domain. Moreover, authors and publishers need to include a disclaimer indicating the subject did not cooperate to create the content.

Biographies and PrivacyProtection

Privacy protection is a significant issue for public figures. After all, it is hard to define the extent to which a public figure’s life is public and what should remain private.

In general, intrusion on a person’s privacy is the result of obtaining information through unlawful means. While intrusion itself is not a crime, any false or fraudulent activity used to gain access to private information could be prosecuted as a felony.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, once said, “ The question isn’t ‘What do we want to know about people?’ it is ‘What do people want to tell about themselves?’ ”

Indeed, privacy is about what individuals want to tell others about themselves instead of what other people wish to know.

This implied breach of privacy is the reason why public opinion considers unauthorized biographies unethical as they profit from commercializing unflattering personal details.

Even if you can lawfully obtain this type of information, popular opinion considers it inappropriate to benefit from the more personal struggles a public figure might go through, including divorces, addictions, and other similar scandals.

Furthermore, copyright infringement is a serious matter. For example, the use of content extracted from quotes, letters, writings, emails, books, interviews, and so on, without the copyright owner’s consent, can lead to serious legal consequences.

Copyright holders almost always contest the use of images, brands, names, and likenesses without permission. As such, authors and publishers face the risk of being sued if they are not extremely careful with their content.

It is worth stating that the fair use principle does not apply if the author and publisher use personal information or copyrighted materials for commercial purposes.

And even First Amendment rights are moot if the intent to profit from a publication is apparent.  

In these instances, the subject of the unauthorized work may seek fair compensation, particularly if their reputation suffered as a result of its publication.

One key consideration in this discussion is breach of confidence. This phenomenon occurs when an individual is privy to information on a public figure and then discloses it without consent.

Disclosure of confidential information is illegal in cases where doctors, lawyers, or employers reveal personal information about an individual. In professional circles, these types of actions generally result in a revocation of a professional license.

Is It Worth the Trouble?

At this point, it’s fair to ask, “Is it worth the trouble writing an unauthorized biography?”

The answer depends on the intent of the author and the publisher.

Unauthorized biographies for strictly commercial purposes are generally not worth the risk of legal action. On the other hand, an unauthorized work for entertainment or informational purposes may not trigger a lawsuit but may damage the reputations of the author and the publisher.

It is best to take into account potential privacy and copyright matters before publishing such a work.

Whenever possible, content with the subject’s consent is the best option. However, if an author or publisher feels compelled to publish an unauthorized account, they should proceed at their own peril lest they risk facing severe legal challenges.

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6 Takeaways From Melania Trump’s Unauthorized Biography

“Free, Melania” gets into the first lady’s relationship with Ivanka, “Be Best” and that “I really don’t care” jacket.

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By Elisabeth Egan

Where the first lady, Melania Trump, is concerned, theories abound .

From morning-show hosts to Twitter pundits to protest poster artists, everyone has an opinion : Mrs. Trump is a prisoner in her own home. Mrs. Trump rules the roost . Mrs. Trump is complicit, clueless, estranged from her husband, advises her husband, loves Washington, hates Washington, just wants to be left alone. If the current administration is a Rorschach test, the first lady is a splash of ink across the White House.

A member of the White House press corps focused on the first lady and the Trump family, the CNN reporter Kate Bennett may be uniquely qualified to weigh in. Now she shares her own theories in an unauthorized biography, “Free, Melania,” which comes out this week.

The book does not include an explanation of the comma in its title, nor any discussion of the Trumps’ 13-year-old son, Barron, except as a factor in his mother’s decision-making . (In an author’s note, Bennett writes, “I don’t believe being born to public figures should render a child fair game for public scrutiny.”) But “Free, Melania” does provide insight into the first lady’s life, opinions and relationships (she is well liked by her staffers, with Bennett describing the East Wing as “the White House’s tightest ship”). Here are six of Bennett’s revelations.

There are no coincidences when it comes to the first lady’s clothing. This includes outerwear.

“Having covered her for as long as I have, each thing she does has meaning to it, even the clothing she wears,” Bennett writes.

First there was the pink pussy-bow blous e Mrs. Trump wore to an October 2016 debate after the release of the “ Access Hollywood ” tape where her husband bragged about grabbing women’s genitals. Then there was the white pantsuit at the 2018 State of the Union (Bennett writes, “I have a theory that when the Trumps are unhappy with each other, Melania wears menswear — because Trump notoriously likes to see women in tight, short, ubersexy and feminine dresses”); and the eye-catching millinery — the colonial-style pith helmet in Nairobi , the white hat in England .

But no single item of clothing has inspired more discussion than the $39 army-green Zara parka Mrs. Trump wore on a June 2018 trip to the border — the one with the words “ I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U? ” printed on the back. There have been many takes, but Bennett’s is that it was directed at the president’s daughter, Ivanka. “I believed, and still do, that the jacket was a facetious jab at Ivanka and her near-constant attempts to attach herself for positive administration talking points,” Bennett writes.

About that relationship with Ivanka …

“Cordial, not close,” is how it was described to Bennett by “someone who has spent ample time with both women.” Bennett takes issue with the way, early on in the administration, Mrs. Trump was labeled by the media as a “vapid-model trophy wife” while Ivanka got to be a “savvy career mom.”

Bennett writes that Ivanka’s international travel rankles her stepmother: “The trips were, according to a source, too close for comfort for Melania, who thought Ivanka was invading her turf.”

‘Be Best’ isn’t really a thing

Mrs. Trump unveiled her child-focused kindness campaign, “Be Best,” over a year ago. Here is Bennett’s assessment of the first lady’s signature initiative : “To this day it has no publicly stated framework, timeline or markers for progress … The likelihood that it will ever have the impact of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign or Nancy Reagan ’s Just Say No is slim to none.”

Mrs. Trump’s hospital stay was no joke

According to a trusted source, Bennett writes, “ Melania’s medical issue was indeed not minor — and that an embolization of a growth of some sort, small or large, when attached to the kidney, as hers might have been, made for a dangerous and complicated procedure.”

Bennett adds: “Couple that with the amount of pain she had apparently been in, according to close friends, and how long she had been in pain prior to the surgery, and there was concern that if her recuperation was not careful and extended, her type of condition could possibly result in the loss of her kidney.”

Mrs. Trump and Karen Pence are not close

At one point Bennett was sitting in the back section of a C-32 military jet that Mrs. Trump and Karen Pence, Vice President Mike Pence’s wife, were also taking. From that vantage, Bennett remembers “watching someone who looked a lot like Karen Pence , moving from the section ahead of ours, typically where aide and advance teams sit, and head toward the back lavatory.”

Mrs. Trump did not bring Mrs. Pence into her spacious cabin, nor did she remove her four-inch heels when the two landed in Texas; as a result, the first lady towered “almost comically” over the second lady. (Mrs. Trump usually wears a low heel or flat when walking or being photographed with someone of modest stature.)

The first lady has a room of her own at the White House

While the president sleeps in the master bedroom on the second level of the White House residence — he requested a lock for his door — Mrs. Trump stays on the third floor, in the two-room space formerly occupied by Michelle Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson , Bennett reports.

Mrs. Trump also has a “glam room,” where she does her hair and makeup, and a private gym with a Pilates machine.

Follow New York Times Books on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram , sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar . And listen to us on the Book Review podcast .

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

As book bans have surged in Florida, the novelist Lauren Groff has opened a bookstore called The Lynx, a hub for author readings, book club gatherings and workshops , where banned titles are prominently displayed.

Eighteen books were recognized as winners or finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, in the categories of history, memoir, poetry, general nonfiction, fiction and biography, which had two winners. Here’s a full list of the winners .

Montreal is a city as appealing for its beauty as for its shadows. Here, t he novelist Mona Awad recommends books  that are “both dreamy and uncompromising.”

The complicated, generous life  of Paul Auster, who died on April 30 , yielded a body of work of staggering scope and variety .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

Unauthorized Biographies, Pre-Order Problems, Getting Reviews, and More Questions Answered by Michael La Ronn and Sacha Black in our Member Q&A Podcast

• March 17, 2023

What are the legal implications of publishing an unauthorized biography? That is one of the topics covered in this month's AskALLi Member Q&A with Michael La Ronn and Sacha Black.

Other questions include:

• Help! Amazon canceled my preorder!
• How do I get reviews for my books?
• Are Scrivener or Jutoh suitable apps for indie authors?
• If my poems are printed in the local paper, does that make them “previously published” for other submissions or contests?

Find more author advice, tips, and tools at our self-publishing advice center . And, if you haven’t already, we invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. You can do that at allianceindependentauthors.org .

Now, go write and publish!

Listen to the Podcast: Unauthorized Biographies and More

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Subscribe to our Ask ALLi podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Player.FM, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or Spotify.

OR, sign up to get notified via email right  when a broadcast is about to go live on Facebook and when a new podcast is published (#AskALLi advice on Fridays and indie inspiration on Sundays).

Watch the Video: Unauthorized Biographies and More

About the hosts.

Michael La Ronn is ALLi’s Outreach Manager. He is the author of over 80 science fiction & fantasy books and self-help books for writers. He writes from the great plains of Iowa and has managed to write while raising a family, working a full-time job, and even attending law school classes in the evenings (now graduated!). You can find his fiction at www.michaellaronn.com  and his videos and books for writers at  www.authorlevelup.com .

Sacha Black is a bestselling and competition winning author, rebel podcaster, speaker and casual rule breaker. She writes fiction under a secret pen name and other books about the art of writing. When Sacha isn't writing, she runs ALLi's blog.  She lives in England, with her wife and genius, giant of a son. You can find her on her website , her podcast , and on Instagram .

Read the Transcripts: Unauthorized Biographies and More

Michael La Ronn: Hello and welcome to the AskALLi Self-Publishing Advice and Inspirations podcast.

I am your host, Michael La Ronn, joined with my lovely co-host, Sacha Black. How are you, Sacha?

Sacha Black: Hello! Hello! I'm back, I missed you last month.

Michael La Ronn: Yes. Well, okay, so the question is, how was your vacation?

Sacha Black: Paris was lots of fun. Disney was definitely the best part of Paris, I think, but yeah, it was good, it was fun. We did very typically touristy things, if I'm honest.

Michael La Ronn: Yeah, well it's good to get away, especially when it's gloomy and cloudy, probably, in England. It's nicer weather in France, I imagine.

Sacha Black: Absolutely. Yeah, like a little bit, but yeah, we're trying to hold off the snow here. We had snow last week and snow on my birthday, which I was very upset about because I don't really like snow, but this week we are just about holding it off. So, I'm hoping for better weather.

Michael La Ronn: Well, we got like six inches where I live a couple of days ago.

Sacha Black: You poor thing.

Michael La Ronn: Yeah, exactly. But hey, we'll stop talking about depressing weather. Glad you're back, we got the band back together again.

So, the point of this podcast is to answer your most burning self-publishing questions. We've got a good number of questions lined up today. The first question, it's actually, there are two questions that are very similar, and we're just going to kind of lump them together.

What can you do if you’re having problems with your Amazon author account?

That question is, what to do when you have issues with Amazon?

So, the first question was around someone who had a 70+ author charity for Ukraine, and they had a lot of pre-orders going on, and lo and behold, whatever the circumstances were, their pre-order's been cancelled by Amazon, and they're in a position of trying to get Amazon to refund the pre-orders and restore their pre-order capability for their account.

The second question was around some issues that happened with Amazon thinking that this person was or was not, involved in some fraudulent activity, and having some issues just getting Amazon to even respond to their questions.

So, the general tenor of this question is, there are going to be things that happen with Amazon, what do you do when this happens, and how do you get them to communicate with you and get your account back?

Do you have any thoughts, Sacha?

Sacha Black: I mean, it depends whether or not you are locked out of your account, but if you're not locked out of your account, then the first instance is to always go through the contact help desk and to submit any evidence that you've got, any evidence of ownership over things, any sort of justifications you've got, ISBN accounts, those kinds of things, to prove your rights.

If you're in America, you are more likely to have copyright filed, and so if you have filed copyright, you can and send those things.

But other than that, I'm not entirely sure. Most of the issues that I have had, I have managed to deal with inside of the dashboard.

I think it's different if your account's been cancelled.

Michael La Ronn: Yeah, I mean, I think that the best thing that you can do is just continue to write to them and make your case, and if you're an ALLi member, we do have a service where you can certainly write us in confidence and explain your issue, via our contact form.

There's no promises, but certainly we could do our best to try to advocate for your behalf, or at least try to move the situation to a resolution. I think that's a great perk of ALLi membership, but again, you really want to rate the terms of service and just make sure that you've complied with everything that needs to be complied with, and that you continue to communicate with them and try to figure out what the root cause of the problem is. But that is certainly an option for ALLi members.

Sacha Black: Yeah, because nine times out of 10 it is something very small, the user error honestly, I've done it myself and they give very little detail. So, if you can go through a process of elimination, you can usually find the cause and if you can correct it, they will nine times out of 10 restore anything that was taken away.

What counts as ‘previously published’ when submitting to contests or magazines?

Michael La Ronn: Yep. Agree. Okay, next question is from member Sharon, and she asks, if my poems are printed in the local newspaper, does that make them previously published for other submissions or contests?

So, to give some background, if you're wanting to submit your poems or short stories off to other literary magazines, magazines often have a requirement that you cannot have a story that has been previously published, because they want the right to exclusively publish work in their magazine.

So, the question is, if it's a local newspaper that is probably not going to have a whole lot of circulation in terms of reach or people seeing it, does that count as previously published?

Sacha Black: I mean, technically, yes. As far as I'm aware, published is published, which is why you always have to be careful with giving away the first rights, the first print rights.

There's a certain terminology, I can't remember quite, it's first something or other.

Michael La Ronn: It's your serial rights.

Sacha Black: Yeah, and then you have to look at the terms and conditions on the competitions, because sometimes they'll take second or previously submitted, but published is published.

So, even things like on people's blogs or websites, that is technically published. It depends if they're talking about print publications, then that wouldn't necessarily count, but you do have to be very careful because published is published.

Michael La Ronn: Yeah, that's exactly right. I would also say that I think most magazine editors would say the same thing. They would say that unfortunately, yes, published is published. It's the same as self-publishing it or publishing it on Patreon, even. Patreon is also a place where you're going to be considered published when you publish work there, even though it's behind a paywall.

Okay. So unfortunately, I know Sharon, probably not the answer you wanted to hear, but we would probably consider that to be published. But when in doubt, ask the magazine editor.

How often can I use the IngramSpark discount code?

Okay. So, the next question is, I think this is an important question, it's from June, and I'll just read the question in its entirety, and that's that Ingram Spark account holders can use each monthly promo code up to five times per month, with an annual maximum of 50 uses per IngramSpark account based on the anniversary date. What is the anniversary date? Is it the date that you joined ALLi, or is it the date that you joined IngramSpark?

All right, so I have to caveat this question and just precede it with just saying that this is just our interpretation of the IngramSpark guidelines. I think when in doubt, go to Ingram and ask them this question.

But our understanding of the anniversary date is that it is the date that you first use your IngramSpark code. So, if you join ALLi, and then on February 1st you use an IngramSpark code, then it's going to reset on March 1st of the following month.

Now, again, don't quote us on that. That's just our understanding of how this works, but we would really highly recommend that you verify that with Ingram. I'm sure that if you sent an email to them, they would be happy to clarify and answer any additional questions that you have on that.

Does putting a poem on Facebook count as it being ‘published’?

Sacha Black: Yeah, there's been a clarification come through in the comments asking, what if you put your poem on a Facebook page, does that mean previously published? My answer remains the same, published is published. So, if you are putting it anywhere where either customers, audience, or members of the general public can see it, then it is published. Arguably, that's a digital version of publication, but this is why we're saying you have to check the rules, and there are definitely some competitions that will be much more flexible and others that aren't.

So, it's no good asking us, really, you have to ask the award committee or the competition committee to get clarification from them. If it were me, and I were on the committee, published is published. So, I know that's a tough stance to take, but published is published, and so this is why.

Michael La Ronn: Yeah, you don't want to irritate editors, because if you screw this up, your editors are not going to forgive you for it, you're going to go on a blacklist, and the community is very small, so you don't want to have to deal with that.

Sacha Black: The one caveat I might give to that is, if you had, for example, a 50-line poem and you shared one line, I would say that would be fine. But if you are sharing the whole poem, then it's published.

Agree. When in doubt, I think be conservative. It's better to treat it as published than to not treat it as published and then irritate or anger an editor, because it's hard enough to get accepted into literary magazines.

So, you go through the process and then all of a sudden you get accepted, oh my gosh. It's like winning the lottery and then, oh, nope, sorry, you can't actually get the poem published. I don't recommend it.

Does ALLi have any discounts for Scrivener or Jutoh?

Okay. Next question is from Ben, and the question is, do you have any discounts available for Scrivener or Jutoh for drafting or formatting eBooks?

Okay, so I did my due diligence and I logged into the member website, which is allianceindependentauthors.org, and I navigated approved services and then discounts and deals, because I wanted to check. On the day that I checked, which I believe was about a week ago, we didn't have discounts for Scrivener or Jutoh, I think that's how you said it.

Michael La Ronn: Yeah, Jutoh, it's formatting software.

Sacha Black: Yeah, so we didn't, but what I would say is that discounts and deals are being added and removed all of the time. So, your best bet is actually on the day that you are looking for that discount or deal, or wanting it, go and check, because there are things being added and removed all of the time. So, I would just go and check.

Michael La Ronn: Yeah, absolutely, and that was going to be my answer. Unfortunately, we don't have discounts for those at this time, but who knows, when you're listening to this, you could be listening a year or two years from now, maybe there will be something.

How do I get more reviews for my books?

So, good stuff. Okay, next question is from Barbara. Barbara asked, when I upload both my paperback and eBook to Ingram Spark, I never got any reviews or never knew how reviews would come to me once I sold to bookstores, the only thing I got was a royalty. How do I get the information around reviews that are coming through my book on Ingram?

Sacha Black: Okay, so, this is an interesting question, because I did read this and they were also concerned that they didn't know who their books have been sold to, and unfortunately, when you don't sell direct, that is not data that you can get hold of. Amazon are the distributor and the sales platform. Therefore, the customers are Amazon's customers, not yours. The only way that you can get sales data is when you sell directly from your website. So, if you sell an eBook or a paperback, you will have customer information.

Now, in terms of the reviews, the only information that you're able to get is what is posted onto Amazon's site or Goodreads, or any of the rest of it.

So, none of us know. We are all subject to the whims and fancies of all of the distributors. So, I think the real question is actually, how do you get reviews? And that is in one of a plethora of different ways. What I would recommend is that you read the free guide that ALLi has if you are a member, or you can purchase a copy in our bookstore, but the guide is called Your First 50 Reviews.

You will get lots and lots of advice, because ultimately the way that you get reviews is to have more people read your book. There's an often-quoted statistic, I don't know how true it is because I haven't done the statistical analysis on it, but what I would say is that for every 100 sales of your books, you are likely to receive about one to two reviews, and that is something that we tend to see as a metric that people share. Of course, there are people who get more than that, but that's an average.

Lots of methods that people use commonly to get reviews are to build a street team, so to build a group of readers who read in your genre, to send them an early copy of your book before it's published and ask for them to leave an honest review.

You cannot control their opinion of your book. You hope that they'll enjoy it, but there are no guarantees, and actually you don't want all five-star reviews anyway, because it makes your book look unbelievable.

Other things that you can do are do a free run or a discount on your book, and then try to drive traffic to your book through things like paid newsletters AMS ads, Facebook advertising, that will generally increase the number of sales, which obviously then by default increases the number of reviews.

If your book is free, you are likely to get a considerable number of reviews if you can drive traffic to that page, but also bear in mind that you are then capturing a wider audience, and so the quality of the reviews or the number of people who love the book are likely to be slightly less.

But the summary is that, in order to get reviews, you need to market and sell your book. So, you've got to do the hard bit.

Michael La Ronn: Yeah, the hard bit, that's the million-dollar question, right? That's the challenge, but no, you answered that perfectly.

What are the legal implications of publishing an unauthorized biography?

So, we can move on to the next question, which is from Jenny, and the question is, what are the legal implications of publishing an unauthorized biography?

I can take this one if you want, Sacha.

Sacha Black: Oh yes, please.

Michael La Ronn: Okay. So, here's the problem with biographies. There are three, well, in my opinion, there are three types of books that can get you in the most legal trouble as an author.

The first is True Crime, so writing books on crimes that actually happened. The second is memoirs, and then the third is biographies, which happens to be the subject of this question.

They're so risky to write that if you ever wanted to purchase insurance for your writing endeavours, these would be the first questions that insurance companies would ask you, do you write any of these three books? And if the answer is yes, you're probably not going to be able to get insurance coverage.

So, these three types of books scare the crap out of insurance companies because people put things in these types of books, true crime, memoir, and biographies, that sometimes people don't want out there, and you can get sued for libel.

So, libel is your biggest potential exposure, and again, this is not legal advice, but sometimes things that you don't think would be libelist, could end up being libelist. So, even if you keep it positive, even if you stick to the facts, you could still find yourself looking at a lawsuit.

So, when you're talking about an unauthorized biography, this is a biography that is not authorized by the person you're writing about. So, if that person is still living, they didn't authorize this biography, and there could be materials in there that could potentially be a legal risk to you. So, I think that is your number one exposure.

Sacha Black: What happens if the person's dead?

Michael La Ronn: If the person is dead, it gets more complicated, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't be sued.

Sacha Black: Right, okay.

Michael La Ronn: Just because somebody's dead, yeah, I mean, there's the adage that you can't slander, or you can't defame the dead. That's typically bandied about, but I don't know, I think clever lawyers would be able to disagree with you because it depends on the details.

So, there's always a risk when you're writing an unauthorized biography and so what I would tell people to do is that, if you are considering this, I would highly recommend talking to an attorney just to verify what your exposures are, how you can handle it, and some best practices, because there, there may be stuff where your attorney says, no, don't write that, don't put that in the book, take it out.

So again, it's not to scare people, but just to give you a very realistic understanding of what you could potentially get yourself into.

What’s the best mailing list strategy for children’s books?

Okay. Next question is from Steven. Steven is currently working on publishing books number three and four in his children's book series while working on improving his newsletter and reader magnet strategy, and he says, I'm having trouble figuring out if the same strategy, which applies to non-fiction and fiction, would apply to children's books. What is the best strategy to build a list for a children's book author?

Sacha Black: So, I am not a children's book author, so this is educated conjecture essentially, but what I would say is that a mailing list is always beneficial, always. But what you need to remember is that the mailing list you're building is the parents, it's not the children.

So, that may change your strategy and the type of content that you're sharing. You may also be able to send less or fewer emails because the parents aren't necessarily going to be getting any, unless you have, I don't know, helpful content that you are helping parents to come up with fun games for their kids, or you are helping them with reading techniques with their kids.

Unless you are going to spend a ton of time doing content marketing through your mailing list, you are probably able to do less work on your mailing list, and just send launch information and a little bit more, than somebody who's writing in a fiction genre that has adult readers.

But always have a mailing list, definitely. It's also harder, I would say, to build your mailing list. I would say that you are likely to find it harder to build.

But one of the other best bits of advice I can give you is to read our children's advisor, Karen Inglis's book, and I believe it's How to Self-Publish and Market a Children's Book by Karen Inglis. It's fantastic.

She recently, I say recent, time is a lie, I feel like it was last year, it might not have been last year.

Michael La Ronn: It was recently enough, let's put it that way.

Sacha Black: Yeah. She redid a second edition, and it is a chonky book. So, there is stacks of advice in there.

Michael La Ronn: The official title is Self-Publishing Children's Books: ALLi's Guide to KidLit Publishing for Authors.

Sacha Black: That's Ally's guide. Karen also has a book herself. So, there's two books there that you could go and read. There's ALLi's book and then Karen's.

Michael La Ronn: Karen's individual book as well. So yeah, choose your own adventure.

Okay. Yeah, I would say that parents being the customers is the big thing. That's a hard thing to get around, and I'm sure Karen has probably got some good information in her book about how to think about that.

Sacha Black: Yeah, and if you have kids, if I were to put myself in that position, what would I sign up for? If you want strategies or ideas, what would I be willing to give my email address for? Well, it would be things like somebody who collected together. I don't know, the best children's books in particular genres, or discounts and deals. So, it's actually not that dissimilar to a normal mailing list, but it would be tailored to that market. So, let me make it easier for you to read with your kid. That's what I would want somebody to do as a parent if I'm going to sign up. That's the kind of thing I'm after.

But you know your audience, if you write humorous children's books, maybe you're going to send parents jokes or funny things for the kids. So, just think about your audience and your brand, and tailor the mailing list around that.

Michael La Ronn: Yeah, because that's the thing you've got to do.

I mean, I'm thinking of, what is it, there was some commercial or it was a call to action, and whoever it was, like a cartoon, but the narrator said something like, be sure to tell your parents to go to blahblahblah.com and sign up for the mailing list.

Because the kid is going to be reading the book, so it's kind of weird that the parents are the customers, but the call to action almost has to go to the kids to let the parents know that your mailing list exists, so that when you have a new book your mom can go out and buy it, or your dad can go out and buy it.

It's definitely an interesting problem, but I'm sure there's a solution, and I'm sure that Karen Inglis and some other children's authors have figured out a way around the problem.

What are the downsides to running pre-orders for my book?

Our next question is from Vicky, and the question is, I'm thinking about offering a pre-order for my third in series via Amazon. From ALLi's experience, is there any reason I shouldn't do this? I'm aware they need to be organized and intend to schedule it, but just want to know what the downsides potentially are.

Sacha Black: So, there's a couple of things to understand. Amazon deals with pre-orders differently to the other stores, and in fact, each store deals with it just a tiny bit differently, and a lot of that is down to how far in advance you have to upload the final files.

What I would say is that for Amazon, if you are after a bestseller little orange flag on Amazon specifically, then having a pre-order isn't necessarily going to help you do that, because on Amazon's store the day that, let's say you publish on the 1st of January, and that's the day your book goes live. If you've got pre-orders running from the 1st of December and people buy on the 1st of December, the 2nd of December, the 3rd of December, that's the day that the sale counts, that's the day that your rank will change because of that pre-order. So, when the books all get de delivered to the readers on the 1st of January, you're not going to see any benefit from that, other than the royalty coming in. So, it depends on your goal.

The other thing that I would say is that pre-orders on the wide stores are often more beneficial because they almost count it twice for you. So, the day that the pre-order is made, it will count in terms of your ranking, exposure and visibility. And then on your day of launch, it will count again. Obviously, you only receive one sale per pre-order, but in terms of your ranking, it will count again.

So, pre-orders are really beneficial for people who are wide and less beneficial for people on Amazon.

The other thing that I would say is that, added to that, if you are in Kindle Unlimited and so you are exclusive to Amazon, then you are even less likely to be able to secure pre-orders, because people who are members of Kindle Unlimited cannot pre-order a book, they can only purchase a sale of that pre-order, so they can't borrow it in advance and it won't deliver to their Kindle. So, they only want to download on the day of launch or afterwards. So, a lot of authors who are in KU do very short pre-order periods just for those readers who aren't in Kindle Unlimited.

But in terms of any reasons for not doing it, only if your goal is to get a bestseller tag, and you don't have a massive audience, then your best chance of doing that is to just go live and announce.

Michael La Ronn: Yeah, and you said it, Sacha, Amazon does pre-orders differently than everybody else. So, if you're a wide author, and maybe your goal is to be a bestseller, but you don't care about the orange tag, you want to go after one of the big lists, then a pre-order maybe could help you.

Or it could help you get sticky at the other retailers a little bit sooner than you would otherwise. I know that other retailers tend to like pre-orders a little bit more than Amazon does.

Sacha Black: Yeah, although the USA Today's gone now, and that was the big one that most indies got.

Michael La Ronn: Yeah. So, that's not probably viable anymore. So, to me, I think if you're going to do a pre-order, you probably should do it for the fact that you want to do a pre-order and get the book out there, as opposed to trying to hit a particular profit goal.

Sacha Black: Yeah, I think pre-orders are always better or, I take the word better back, I think pre-orders are useful for later books in the series. It's less useful for book one, but it's more useful if you are releasing book two or three or four, because then you are securing that sale from readers who have already read the first book.

Michael La Ronn: It doesn't even have to be a book and a series. I mean, just pre-ordering for books for readers that already know you I think is helpful.

So, I mean, pre-ordering your first book is probably not going to be that helpful in the grand scheme of things, but once you've got multiple books out, even if it's a different series, it might not hurt to pre-order a book one, if you've got existing readers.

Can I market my print on demand books as eco-friendly?

So, the next question is from Michelle, and the question is, can I put an eco-friendly label on my print on demand books from KDP print, for example, since they create less waste than traditional publishing?

Sacha Black: I don't think so.

Michael La Ronn: Yeah, I wouldn't do that. Just to be honest, a blunt, honest answer, what does eco-friendly mean, and how do you really know that print on demand services are more eco-friendly than traditional?

I mean, maybe that is true, but I don't necessarily know that you can prove that. I just think putting that label on your book raises more questions than it potentially answers.

Sacha Black: Yeah, that would be like saying that Bitcoin is eco-friendly just because it's digital, when we all know that the carbon emissions are huge for it. Unless you are a hundred percent assured of that fact, which I don't think any of us are, then I don't think that's something that we can say.

Michael La Ronn: Well, it's like saying natural flavours I've got natural flavours on my food. Natural flavours in some respects can be worse than artificial flavours. So, you don't want to generate those types of questions in reader's mind. I think I understand the intent behind it, and I think it's a noble intent, but I just think it doesn't work.

Sacha Black: Too risky.

Michael La Ronn: It doesn't work for what we're trying to do as authors.

Where do I start if I’ve never self-published before?

Let's see. Next question is from Jim, and this is actually our last question, and it's that, my wife is writing a specialized niche cookbook. I'm a graphic designer who's designing it. I'm looking for any kind of advice on self-publishing companies, distribution, marketing. I am not on Facebook, so I can't use the ALLi forum. So, to generalize this and put a bow on the question, where do you start if you have no prior knowledge of self-publishing?

Sacha Black: Yeah, so we have a guide, that I can't remember the specific name of, but it's about using partner services and we will get the name for that.

Michael La Ronn: Choosing a Self-Publishing Service.

Sacha Black: Choosing a Self-Publishing Service. Oh, look at that, aren't we a great team?

Michael La Ronn: Yes, we are, and that is an ALLi guidebook, by the way. So, ALLi members can get that free.

Sacha Black: Yes, by logging into allianceindependentauthors.org and navigating to publications. So, that's the first thing that I would say is to look in that book, read that book cover to cover.

The other thing is that we have a partner directory, which again, if you log into the member site, you're able to navigate to approved services or also the partner directory where you can search for a service. You can be assured that anybody that you find in there has been vetted by the watchdog in order to even appear on that list. So, you can be assured that they are legitimate and they're not going to scam you.

So, those are probably the two biggest bits of advice, really, is to read the book, which explains everything, expectations, how to work with them, and then use the partner directory, because that's what it's there for, it is there to give you a listing of high-quality service providers.

Michael La Ronn: Yeah, that's exactly it, and I was just grabbing the names and stuff so we can put those in the resources. But yeah, our guidebooks really should be your first port of call because, we've put those together as ways for people to develop shortcuts.

I also wrote a book for ALLi, it's another free guidebook. It's called 150 Self-Publishing Questions Answered. That will also answer some questions that you might have about working with an editor, or what to do when you run across issues with editors, or what should the distribution decisions for your books be?

John's book is going to teach you how to choose a self-publishing service, but what about where you publish your book? How should you price your book? These are all things that are answered in that as well. So, we'll make sure that we include links to these resources in the show notes for anybody who wants to look those up and engage with them further.

Sacha Black: Superb.

Michael La Ronn: All right. Well, Sacha, that's another episode, can you believe it?

Sacha Black: I can't, I can't believe it.

Michael La Ronn: Yeah. So, we'll be back in April to answer any other questions that folks have, but in the meantime, this has been the Self-Publishing Advice and Inspirations, Member Q&A podcast, and we will be back next month. Take care everybody.

Author: Howard Lovy

Howard Lovy is an author, editor, journalist and Content & Comms Manager for the Alliance of Independent Authors.

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Ben Folds Five's 'The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner': 15 thoughts on 15 years

Fifteen years ago today, Ben Folds Five released their third album, titled The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner . It is by no means a masterpiece (though it is ultimately underrated), and had to have been considered a commercial disappointment after the group’s previous effort, 1997’s Whatever and Ever Amen , went Platinum on the back of the breakout single “Brick.”

But Reinhold Messner is also deeply wonderful in its strangeness, and it stands as one of the ballsier post-crossover albums a one-hit wonder ever produced. (And make no mistake: BFF is a one hit wonder—Folds had solo success after the band broke up, but their impact as a collective begins and ends with “Brick.”) To celebrate the album’s 15th anniversary (an off-kilter number, I acknowledge), here are 15 thoughts about an album that I literally think about every day.

1. As mentioned above, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner was the first album crafted by Ben Folds Five after their breakout single “Brick” became an inescapable smash in the early part of 1998. That song is undoubtedly the best song ever written about getting an abortion, and despite the band’s whole gimmick being the grand piano Folds lugged around the country, “Brick” was actually written on guitar. According to Folds, he was having trouble finishing the song and found it to be far too earnest until drummer Darren Jesse wrote the chorus. The success of “Brick” landed the turtlenecked Folds in heavy rotation on MTV and sent Whatever and Ever Amen to million-sold status.

2. Whatever and Ever Amen must have been a weird listen for anybody who used “Brick” as the entry point, as while there are plenty of other heart-wrenching, knee-bucklingly beautiful ballads (namely “Smoke” and “Evaporated”), there are also a lot of songs that traffic in Folds’ particular sense of humor, including the album-opening, rage-filled “One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces” and the potty-mouthed “Song For the Dumped.” In fact, in a feat of staggeringly inept sequencing, “Song For the Dumped” (with its chorus “Give me my money back, give me my money back/ You bitch”) comes right after “Brick” on the album. It’s a jarring, bizarre tonal shift that was only a problem when people still listened to albums in sequence.

3. When it came time to record The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner , the band hired producer Caleb Southern, who had also produced Whatever and Ever Amen . A platinum record could have bought them anybody, but they stuck to the guy they knew. The strange thing is that Reinhold sounds nothing like Whatever— it’s richer, deeper, and more varied sonically than its relatively lo-fi predecessor. Though Ben Folds Five probably didn’t spend all that much more this time around, Reinhold Messner sounds expensive in a way that Whatever didn’t.

4. The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner was released on April 27, 1999. I bought it the Tuesday it came out at the Record Express in Bloomfield, CT, along with Mobb Deep’s Murda Muzik (which arrived in stores the same day). It debuted at number 35 on the Billboard 200 , essentially making it dead on arrival.

5. That bummer of an opening was due primarily to the first single “Army,” which was not particularly good. In fact, like a lot of Reinhold Messner , it struggles with finding a tone that works for it, vacillating between Folds’ cheeky goofballery (a tone he would perfect on his solo album Rockin’ The Suburbs ) and crippling ennui (the last verse has a the killer-sad couplet “My peers they criticize me/ And my ex-wives all despise me”). That pull between poles makes this a quintessential sophomore album, even though it was their third release. The question of what to do now that they’re a little bit big and have a lot more opportunity haunts every corner of Reinhold Messner , and especially “Army.” It does have a great opening line, though: “Well I thought about the Army/ Dad said, ‘Son, you’re f—ing high.'”

6. Though Reinhold Messner is a real person (he was one of the greatest mountaineers in history, famous for making the first ever solo climb up Everest without the assistance of an oxygen tank), the title actually references the fake ID that drummer Darren Jessee used to have as a teen (he once noted that there were always a handful of Reinhold Messners trying to buy booze in the Houston area where he grew up). This was in the era before a Google search was the first step for anybody doing research, and in 1999, it’s entirely possible the real Messner’s Internet footprint wasn’t all that large. Still, it’s crazy to think that the legal department at Sony didn’t blanche at the idea of putting Messner’s name in the title. Nowadays, the vague potential over a lawsuit would have sent Folds scrambling to choose a new title.

7. The opening track is a shape-shifting piano-prog epic called “Narcolepsy.” In what may or may not be a meta-commentary, it opens with a very simple piano line that sounds an awful lot like the opening notes of “Brick.” Suddenly, a single Robert Sledge bass note crashes through the placid atmosphere like a meteor, and the song shifts into a swooping, string-kissed space-rock overture. It’s as grand a statement of purpose as any track one, announcing that the band you’ve grown to know is morphing into something bigger and weirder. There’s not really a chorus, but the climax—which finds Folds shouting “Save me/ Wake me up!” as the track falls apart around him—is thrillingly cathartic.

8. That level of catharsis on “Narcolepsy” is unusual for the rest of the album, as most of Reinhold Messner seems to be about an utter inability to break out of a cycle of depression. “Don’t Change Your Plans,” which follows “Narcolepsy,” has more of a pop-centric structure (though it does have a weird French horn interlude that is straight out of the Burt Bacharach playbook) and could have easily fit on Whatever and Ever Amen . But from its title on, “Don’t Change Your Plans” is dripping with bittersweet conflict, ending with Folds crooning “All I know’s I gotta be/ Where my heart says I oughta be/ It often makes no sense/ In fact, I never understand these things I feel/ I love you, goodbye.” That could be read as a resolute statement about following your dreams, but it comes across as the sad manifesto of a man who has lost control of his direction in life.

9. The lyrics to “Don’t Change Your Plans” also include the second reference to Folds moving to Los Angeles (he makes one in “Narcolepsy” as well), which suggests that there is a narrative thread running through The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. In yet another nod to the album’s prog influences, there are a number of lyrical ideas and musical motifs that repeat throughout the record: “Army” has a lyric about Folds’ “redneck past,” and the very next song is “Your Redneck Past”; the end of “Army” resolves into the opening chord of “Regrets,” which doesn’t appear until a few songs later; “Mess” and “Regrets” also seem to be apologizing for some of the same things; death via hospital seems to link “Magic” and “Hospital Song.” There doesn’t appear to be an overarching narrative (at least not one with a traditionally cinematic structure), though it’s obviously meant to be consumed as an entire 40-minute experience rather than as individual tunes.

10. That’s not to say that there weren’t some missed opportunities for singles on Reinhold Messner . “Magic” is a knee-buckler of a ballad, featuring totally earned timpani bursts and one of Folds’ most lovely vocals. It is, however, a brutally earnest song about death—Folds is singing about somebody whose corporeal life has ended so she can become “the magic that holds the sky up from the ground.” Still, there are some Beatles-y “Sha la las” in there, providing just enough sugar to make everything go down smooth. For what it’s worth, “Mess” could have also been a dark horse single, as it has a jaunty bounce to it, though again it may have been derailed by its soul-confronting refrain: “I don’t believe in God, so I can’t be saved/ All alone as I’ve learned to be in this mess I have made.” That’s not exactly radio-friendly.

11. For all its weirdness, the strangest track on Reinhold Messner is “Your Most Valuable Possession.” The vocal, such as it is, was provided by Folds’ father via a half-asleep voicemail. He riffs about John Glenn, whether or not you can exercise in space, and what effect space travel has on the mind. The band crafts a sort of lounge jazz haze around him, and the result is bizarre and slightly creepy. I always pressed the “Skip” button whenever this track came up, though now I recognize it as a fascinating prelude to Folds’ work on William Shatner’s 2004 album Has Been .

12. “Jane” is a pretty good song, though like a lot of these songs it doesn’t have a chorus, and it’s not as good as the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane,” Jefferson Airplane’s “Jane,” Jane’s Addiction’s “Jane Says,” Bob Dylan’s “Queen Jane Approximately,” the Rolling Stones’ “Lady Jane,” or Cypress Hill’s “I Love You Mary Jane.” It is better than Barenaked Ladies’ “Jane,” however, so that’s something.

13. The only time I ever saw Ben Folds Five in concert was on the tour for Reinhold Messner . The band played in the gymnasium at the University of Hartford, which was not a venue that usually booked concerts. I remember it was pretty sparsely attended, and they made a point of not playing “Brick.” When Folds sat behind his piano and said, “It’s time to play the hit,” the band busted out a cover of the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” instead. I thought that was pretty punk rock at the time, though now I’d be pretty bummed that he denied the audience the thing that undoubtedly galvanized them. Still, Folds worked his ass off, especially on “Narcolepsy,” which featured an animated call-and-response section where he repeatedly shouted “Not tired!” and an ending that featured Folds tossing his piano stool against the keys over and over again to achieve maximum rhythmic punch (it was the piano rock equivalent of smashing a guitar). Most of the Reinhold Messner songs came off well but slightly incomplete, as they were missing the thickness provided by strings and such. The tunes that stuck with me were the ones from the band’s self-titled debut, including the awesomely jaunty trio of “Philosophy,” “Best Imitation of Myself,” and “Underground.”

14. The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner ends with a song called “Lullaby,” which is an interesting thematic bookend to an album that opens with a song called “Narcolepsy.” It’s a sweet little song that actually acts as a lullaby and ends with the line “Goodnight, goodnight/ Let the moonlight take the lid off your dreams.” That was the end of Ben Folds Five as a band for a long time. They gave an outtake called “Leather Jacket” to No Boundaries: A Benefit for the Kosovar Refugees (the same album that featured Pearl Jam’s cover of “Last Kiss”), recorded a Steely Dan cover for the soundtrack to the forgettable Jim Carrey vehicle Me, Myself, and Irene , and that was it. Though they attempted to record a follow-up to Reinhold Messner in mid-2000, they announced their break-up in October. “We got along fine, but it had become a business. And that wasn’t how it started,” Folds told EW in 2001. “I had to ask, ”How much does this pay, and does it pay enough for me to bastardize my music?” and I said, ”Well, f— it” and threw in the towel.” Folds wasn’t gone for long, as his debut solo album Rockin’ The Suburbs arrived on September 11, 2001. In fact, I was listening to my burned copy of Rockin’ The Suburbs (specifically “Fred Jones Part 2” ) on my DiscMan as I walked home to my NYU dorm and watched One World Trade Center disappear into nothing. The album has been hard to go back to for personal reasons, but it’s probably Folds’ finest work as a songwriter, though the sound is significantly more pop-friendly than Reinhold Messner .

15. Folds got the band back together in 2008 for a MySpace-sponsored full-album performance of The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner , which even included Folds’ father reading the text of his voicemail for “Your Most Valuable Possession.” The recorded three new tracks for a career-spanning Folds retrospective, then dropped their fourth album The Sound of the Life of the Mind in 2012. Every time I press play on that album, I wish it was better than it actually is. It certainly sounds like a Ben Folds Five album, but it’s missing something that I can’t quite put my finger on. Perhaps it’s because my attachment to the first wave of Ben Folds Five records are so thoroughly tied into my own life: Folds’ arc writing smart, funny, literate, sad alt-pop songs lined up almost exactly with my high school experience, where I was developing my personality as a smart, funny, literate, sad guy. Folds took bold chances with Reinhold Messner as I was trying to make bold choices about school, relationships, and the future. I can’t help but stand up for songs like “Your Redneck Past” and “Narcolepsy” because they are so deeply entwined with my own narrative. For me, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner is the ultimate nostalgia album, as I objectively acknowledge its weaknesses but actively turn a blind eye to them because the songs mean so much in context. I heard The Sound of the Life of the Mind as a professionally objective adult, and I judge it as such. It’s not Folds’ fault that I don’t unfailingly adore his work any more, and being able to recognize that sad disconnect is a sign of growing up.

Related Articles

stringsAsFactors: An unauthorized biography

Recently, I was listening in on the conversation of some colleagues who were discussing a bug in their R code. The bug was ultimately traced back to the well-known phenomenon that functions like ‘read.table()’ and ‘read.csv()’ in R convert columns that are detected to be character/strings to be factor variables. This lead to the spontaneous outcry from one colleague of

Why does stringsAsFactors not default to FALSE????

The argument ‘stringsAsFactors’ is an argument to the ‘data.frame()’ function in R. It is a logical that indicates whether strings in a data frame should be treated as factor variables or as just plain strings. The argument also appears in ‘read.table()’ and related functions because of the role these functions play in reading in table data and converting them to data frames. By default, ‘stringsAsFactors’ is set to TRUE.

This argument dates back to May 20, 2006 when it was originally introduced into R as the ‘charToFactor’ argument to ‘data.frame()’. Soon afterwards, on May 24, 2006, it was changed to ‘stringsAsFactors’ to be compatible with S-PLUS by request from Bill Dunlap.

Most people I talk to today who use R are completely befuddled by the fact that ‘stringsAsFactors’ is set to TRUE by default. First of all, it should be noted that before the ‘stringsAsFactors’ argument even existed, the behavior of R was to coerce all character strings to be factors in a data frame. If you didn’t want this behavior, you had to manually coerce each column to be character.

So here’s the story:

In the old days, when R was primarily being used by statisticians and statistical types, this setting strings to be factors made total sense. In most tabular data, if there were a column of the table that was non-numeric, it almost certainly encoded a categorical variable. Think sex (male/female), country (U.S./other), region (east/west), etc. In R, categorical variables are represented by ‘factor’ vectors and so character columns got converted factor.

Why do we need factor variables to begin with? Because of modeling functions like ‘lm()’ and ‘glm()’. Modeling functions need to treat expand categorical variables into individual dummy variables, so that a categorical variable with 5 levels will be expanded into 4 different columns in your modeling matrix. There’s no way for R to know it should do this unless it has some extra information in the form of the factor class. From this point of view, setting ‘stringsAsFactors = TRUE’ when reading in tabular data makes total sense. If the data is just going to go into a regression model, then R is doing the right thing.

There’s also a more obscure reason. Factor variables are encoded as integers in their underlying representation. So a variable like “disease” and “non-disease” will be encoded as 1 and 2 in the underlying representation. Roughly speaking, since integers only require 4 bytes on most systems, the conversion from string to integer actually saved some space for long strings. All that had to be stored was the integer levels and the labels. That way you didn’t have to repeat the strings “disease” and “non-disease” for as many observations that you had, which would have been wasteful.

Around June of 2007, R introduced hashing of CHARSXP elements in the underlying C code thanks to Seth Falcon. What this meant was that effectively, character strings were hashed to an integer representation and stored in a global table in R. Anytime a given string was needed in R, it could be referenced by its underlying integer. This effectively put in place, globally, the factor encoding behavior of strings from before. Once this was implemented, there was little to be gained from an efficiency standpoint by encoding character variables as factor. Of course, you still needed to use ‘factors’ for the modeling functions.

The difference nowadays is that R is being used a by a very wide variety of people doing all kinds of things the creators of R never envisioned. This is, of course, wonderful, but it introduces lots of use cases that were not originally planned for. I find that most often, the people complaining about ‘stringsAsFactors’ not being FALSE are people who are doing things that are not the traditional statistical modeling things (things that old-time statisticians like me used to do). In fact, I would argue that if you’re upset about ‘stringsAsFactors = TRUE’, then it’s a pretty good indicator that you’re either not a statistician by training, or you’re doing non-traditional statistical things.

For example, in genomics, you might have the names of the genes in one column of data. It really doesn’t make sense to encode these as factors because they won’t be used in any modeling function. They’re just labels, essentially. And because of CHARSXP hashing, you don’t gain anything from an efficiency standpoint by converting them to factors either.

But of course, given the long-standing behavior of R, many people depend on the default conversion of characters to factors when reading in tabular data. Changing this default would likely result in an equal number of people complaining about ‘stringsAsFactors’.

I fully expect that this blog post will now make all R users happy. If you think I’ve missed something from this unauthorized biography, please let me know on Twitter ( @rdpeng ).

Unauthorized biography

Biography written without the subject's permission or input / from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, dear wikiwand ai, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:.

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An unauthorized biography sometimes called a kiss-and-tell , or a tell-all , is a biography written without the subject's permission or input. [1] The term is usually restricted to biographies written within the subject's lifetime or shortly after their death; as such, it is not applied to biographies of historical figures written long after their deaths. [2]

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Definition of unauthorized adjective from the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary

unauthorized

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Definition of biography

Did you know.

So You've Been Asked to Submit a Biography

In a library, the word biography refers both to a kind of book and to a section where books of that kind are found. Each biography tells the story of a real person's life. A biography may be about someone who lived long ago, recently, or even someone who is still living, though in the last case it must necessarily be incomplete. The term autobiography refers to a biography written by the person it's about. Autobiographies are of course also necessarily incomplete.

Sometimes biographies are significantly shorter than a book—something anyone who's been asked to submit a biography for, say, a conference or a community newsletter will be glad to know. Often the word in these contexts is shortened to bio , a term that can be both a synonym of biography and a term for what is actually a biographical sketch: a brief description of a person's life. These kinds of biographies—bios—vary, but many times they are only a few sentences long. Looking at bios that have been used in the same context can be a useful guide in determining what to put in your own.

Examples of biography in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'biography.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Late Greek biographia , from Greek bi- + -graphia -graphy

1665, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Dictionary Entries Near biography

biographize

Cite this Entry

“Biography.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biography. Accessed 15 May. 2024.

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Meaning of U.B.R. (Unauthorized Biography of Rakim) by Nas

In Nas' thought-provoking song "U.B.R. (Unauthorized Biography of Rakim)," the overall theme revolves around paying homage to the legendary rapper Rakim and chronicling his influence on the hip-hop industry. The song can be seen as a tribute to a true rap pioneer and his impact on shaping the genre, but it goes beyond that to explore deeper themes intertwined with Rakim's journey.One standout lyric that helps develop a theme is, "The melody they created was the first burst on the scene 1986, with clap to this." This lyric highlights the innovative and groundbreaking nature of Rakim's collaboration with Eric Barrier. It symbolizes the birth of a new era in hip-hop, where lyrics became more intricate and poetic. The theme here could be the power of collaboration and the emergence of new art forms through the fusion of different talents.Another intriguing lyric is, "From leather coats to shell toes to the Stan Smiths, to Dapper Dan kicks." This line reflects the fashion evolution within the hip-hop community and how Rakim played a significant role in shaping its style. The theme that emerges is the transformative power of self-expression through fashion and how it can serve as a symbol of identity and cultural influence.Moving forward, a thought-provoking lyric is, "How has Rakim's flow made Christians convert with Islamic ways?" This profound line delves into the idea of the universality of art and the power of music to transcend religious and cultural barriers. The theme it explores is the ability of music to bridge divides and create a sense of unity among diverse communities.Furthermore, the line, "Tension spread, and I quote, 'Smack me and I smack you back', sounded like the answer to the 'I Ain't No Joke' track," uncovers the theme of resilience and the notion of standing up for oneself when faced with adversity. It portrays Rakim's strength and confidence in his abilities, emphasizing the importance of self-belief and the ability to overcome obstacles.Lastly, the lyric, "Walk with me now," serves as a call to action, urging listeners to join Rakim and Nas on this journey through time and the evolution of hip-hop. This lyric develops the theme of shared experiences and the interconnectedness of individuals within the hip-hop community. It highlights the importance of unity and collective understanding in appreciating the rich history of the genre.Overall, the song's overarching theme of homage to Rakim encompasses various sub-themes that celebrate the transformative power of collaboration, self-expression through fashion, the universality of art, resilience in the face of adversity, and the significance of shared experiences in hip-hop. Through these imaginative and unexpected themes, Nas encourages listeners to reflect on the profound impact and influence of Rakim's legacy on the genre. So, let's take a step back in time and walk with Nas and Rakim as we delve into the unauthorized biography of an icon.

Meaning of Ugly by Nas

Meaning of twilight by nas.