The costs of bargain basement publishing

So what’s it worth to you — in dollars and cents — to retire to a comfy chair with a book with pages you can turn? We’re about to find out, as even some of the most commercially successful authors experiment with free digital downloads.

A few weeks ago, the trade newsletter Publishers Lunch reported that Suze Orman’s upcoming book, “Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan,” will be launched with an appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” and a free download of the book for a week, beginning Friday through Jan. 15. A Spanish version also will be available.

Paperback print editions are selling for a suggested retail price of $9.99. According to publisher Spiegel & Grau, the book covers such topics as credit, real estate, investing for retirement, paying for college, spending, saving and protecting your family. Orman’s Web site, www.suzeorman.com, will also feature updates on the new policies of the new Obama administration.

Last February, during an “Oprah” show, Orman offered free downloads of “Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny,” which at the time had been on the market nearly a year. In less than two days, there were more than a million downloads. And that was without so much economic trouble.

Spiegel & Grau, by the way, is part of Doubleday, which is being eliminated as a division of Random House Inc.

Another free promotion of a book on finances, Robert Kiyosaki’s new title, “Conspiracy of the Rich: The New Rules of Money,” will be available for free online, a chapter at a time, at some point this winter before a print edition later in the year.

As for slacking standards amid economic turmoil in the publishing industry: Questions arose over representations in a new biography on media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, published by Doubleday.

Author Michael Wolff’s “The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch” includes several jabs at Judith Regan, a controversial former editor at Murdoch-owned HarperCollins, who was fired over plans to publish the original release of O.J. Simpson’s “If I Did It.”

There is a long-standing spat between Wolff and Regan, and their personal issues don’t matter to the reading public. However, nonfiction is supposed to carry the stamp of reasonable reporting and editing.

Wolff’s book reports that a top Murdoch lawyer accused Regan of making anti-Semitic remarks. Far less prominently, in an endnote, Wolff acknowledges that parent company News Corp. later apologized to Regan and accepted that she didn’t make the remarks.

In another reference, Wolff says that Roger Ailes, Fox News Channel president and Regan’s nemesis in the Murdoch empire, once went on a date that Ailes later described as “the scariest three hours of my life.” Both Regan and Ailes told Newsday that they never dated, but once had dinner to discuss business.

According to Ailes, Wolff’s book is “laced with inaccuracies, and you can add this one to the list.”

In an interview with a blogger on the Web site of the New York Observer, Wolff questioned Regan for commenting publicly now and not earlier.

If Regan (or Ailes) is an easy target, it doesn’t matter. Regan didn’t owe Wolff an interview. However, authors of nonfiction — and their publishers — do owe readers a reasonable effort to tell a true story.

What can we expect as more book editors get laid off?

XDiane Evans is a former Knight Ridder columnist and is president of DelMio.com, a new interactive online magazine on books for writers and readers.

SCrt 2008, DelMio.com