I wonder why Mikhailova needs to point out the fact that it is actually in the interest of Ebury/Random House (or simply anyone who gets a percentage of sales) to confirm that Abby Lee is indeed a real woman and not (as everyone has secretly suspected) a gay man or a team of Notting Hill housewives venting their pent-up desires through a fictional character:
Ebury Press, a Random House subsidiary, is believed to have paid a six-figure advance for the book. Much of its commercial value depends on readers believing it is the true account of a sexually liberated woman.Mikhailova is saying two things here: 1) The publisher has an investment premised on readers believing Abby Lee's account. 2) Belle's publishers, agent, etc. managed to keep her identity secret, but Abby's publishers and/or her agent failed to do the same - in fact, it's positively convenient for them that this information comes out. Exactly 3 days after the book hit the stores, too.
The publishers of Belle de Jour, the account of life as a high-class London prostitute, went to extreme lengths to protect the identity of its author, amid speculation that it was concocted by a jobbing writer. Despite numerous attempts, her true identity has not been conclusively established. [Sunday Times]
Is she unwittingly ratting on a source here?
Of course this may all be a coincidence, and it's really due to the persistency and resourcefulness of Mikhailova, digging deep into the murky underworld of London publishing.
In short, the interesting story here is not Abby Lee's identity, but rather who fed her name, address, and home phone to the press, and why.
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24 comments:
I agree, poor Girl.
Once you have a name it is incredibly easy to get an address and phone number - there are things such as the electoral roll for example. Any hack worth their salt should be able to track someone down in a couple of hours. I have done it scores of times.
This is why I hate the British press.
This really sucks.
The Girl is one of the reasons I started my own blog and I can't believe some wanker (at her publishers) has revealled to the press who she is and where she lives.
I hope she's ok.
Anonymous, you're right, but why did Mikhailova use two paragraphs to point out that this outing would be of direct benefit to those who have money riding on the sales of the book?
That's a horrible, cheap and disrespectful thing to do to an author that is about to make them a lot of money!
It could be dangerous for her, in so many ways. If she signed a contract wherein they said they would protect her identity, she should sue.
That's a dangerous thing, stalking begins that way. I think Abby needs a lawyer. At the least, she should have it out with her agent. Is it in her contract anywhere that her identity is to be protected? Probably not, but maybe it should've been.
I feel for her anyway. She wrote with anonymity in mind, and probably had she known she'd be outed she may not have been quite so free with her words.
Outing Abby was a despicable act. Abby is obviously the principal victim, but all of us who enjoy her blog and others like it, and who write their own blogs, have lost something as well. Anonymity may allow the malevolent and the foolish to dump their crap in public, but it also allows courageous bloggers like Abby to share some of their experience with the degree of honesty and wit that Abby has always displayed. If only there were some way to publicly humiliate the outers...
"courageous bloggers"?
There's nothing courageous about writing anonymously. It's the very antithesis of it. Real courage would be using your own name and standing up for your words.
I think the Girl's level of blogging was damned courageous. Just to put those words in print, to reveal that degree of personal truth, is courageous. It can be HARD to say those things out loud about oneself. But she did.
She took an enormous gamble by publishing this book and risking her anonymity, and that's courageous, too!
I am pissed off that she got outed, and though it's kind of silly, it's almost like my own feelings are hurt. The Girl feels like a friend to me, or at least someone I care about on a genuine human level. There's so much honest, basic humanity in her blog that I don't see how any regular reader could not be touched by her.
I love that none of her loyal readers has referred to her by her publicized given name. I optimistically choose to see it as a sign of solidarity enforcing her right to her courageously earned anonymity.
May it be returned to her as soon as possible.
CharlieGirl76
Steve, I'd like to agree, but I don't: courageous is exactly the word for some of the more honest and explicit bloggers out there, because it's tough to tell the truth - tough enough without having to do it under your name all the time.
You know, I was thinking that yesterday too. It doesn't surprise me. And I suspect that, in the end, The Girl (I just prefer her old name) will be better-off for being outed. She can be more comfortable with her family and friends because she's no longer concealing anything from them; she doesn't have to explain why she is suddenly solvent; and now she is out enough to get more work on the back of her writing, but not so out that she's a household name.
Personally I would like to see her write a book of erotic fiction - like Linda Javin or Tobsha Lerner - she has the talent for it - and she could also write a magazine or newspaper advice column. Being outed has opened the window to a new career for her.
My reaction to the outing article, when my wife read out excerpts to me, was one of almost disappointment that now I knew who she was. (I was also puzzled why someone with such an interesting name would call herself Abby Lee as a pseudonym - maybe she was sick of being interesting.) I think most readers will simply not care, and it won't surprise me if most readers continue to think of her as Abby, or The Girl.
I don't know Mon, I do it under my name.
May I just add: my wishing to remain anonymous was not because I'm embarassed or ashamed of any of the things I have done or written about. The reason I have not blogged under my real name is because I have wanted to uphold the right to privacy of the people who had interactions with me: they deserve this.
Now that I have been 'named' in the public sphere, that has completely gone out the window. I'll admit that perhaps I was a little naive, in that I thought I would be able to remain anonymous; I certainly didn't think that details of my - and by their connection with me, others - life would be displayed all over a national newspaper and that even as I write this, photographers are waiting to get a shot of me outside my home.
So aside from having to tell my family and all my friends just what I have been up to in my most private, intimate, sex life, I am also having to contact a few lovers who I worry might recognise themselves in my writing (though I attempted to disguise their identities as much as possible).
What's happening right now is no fun, believe me.
I was not going to comment here, but Anonymous, proper blog etiquette just might be to credit me with the entire post you copied from my blog, Lusty Lady: http://lustylady.blogspot.com/2006/08/boo-hoo-all-way-to-bank.html
Maybe that's not how you credit blog posts, but it's how I do it.
I don't condone plagiarists, so I've deleted the anonymous comment Rachel refers to. Here's her take on things, which someone felt compelled to copy wholesale: http://lustylady.blogspot.com/2006/08/boo-hoo-all-way-to-bank.html
Surely it is not a co-incidence that the newspaper which outed Abby and the newspaper which had been publishing extracts of her book were one and the same? Journalists are dirty, dirty bastards. I love Abby's blog and I hope she continues writing it in the same open way, despite the fact that her 'true' identity has been revealed. I agree with Damian, I don't think her readers will care who she really is - it's the writing and the shared experiences that matter.
By going on about the 'benefit' of being outed, the journalist tries to weasel her way out of the moral dog turd that she's in. That's the reason.
Writing anonymously is more than just about protecting your privacy and that of those you refer to … there are lots of crazy people out there (I’m sure we’ve all had scary “fan-mail”), and I certainly wouldn’t want some stranger to pop up in my garden.
I agree with you guys: Girl should take some legal action.
Oh just one more thing ... do you know what happened to Anakalia? Her blog seems to have vanished.
xx
Good lord, I take a break and come back to this? Despicable!
And it's so very easy for people to talk about how they're so brave to blog under their own names. However, some of us have to deal with reality - as in a world where children can be removed from homes where a mother keeps a sex blog and freaks send you threatening calls and harass your partner or your children. Reality means that your identity, especially when you write any kind of sexual material as a woman, can be used to hurt you. It can be used in all sorts of other ways regardless of your gender.
My real name isn't what makes a blog interesting, it's WHAT I write and how I write it. Any blog should stand or fall on that. The Girl's real name has nothing to do with courage, Steve.
More like Abby Lee exposed herself.
I imagine it was a friend of hers who spilled the beans. I mean, Abby must have told someone she had a publishing deal. And then the friend blabbed to someone else until it got to the ears of a journo. I feel sorry for her, but if nothing else, she has taught us a valuable lesson: if you want to protect your anonymity don't publish a book.
The Girl doth protest too much
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