Frey Adds Apology To Book

Memoir Author Made Famous By Oprah Repents, In Print

(CBS)  There's a new chapter in the saga of James Frey, who has admitted fabricating details in his best-selling memoir, "A Million Little Pieces."

As The Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith reports, new copies of the book will include three additional pages: an apology from Frey.

Smith calls it "a novel approach" to a memoir, a foreword that says, "I sincerely apologize to those readers who have been disappointed by my actions."

"He told a fish story, and it got bigger and bigger and bigger," observes Publishers Weekly Editor in Chief Sara Nelson.

It al began, Smith points out, when Frey wrote a book about his addiction and recovery.

Oprah Winfrey picked it for her book club, and it shot to the top of the bestseller list.

But then, "The Smoking Gun" Web site revealed Frey might have fibbed.

"What he did," says Smoking Gun Managing Editor Andrew Goldberg, "was he went out and sold these fabricated, falsified stories as his own story."

Frey went on "Larry King Live" on CNN, admitted embellishing, but insisted the story was true. Oprah even called in to defend him, saying, "What is relevant is that he was a drug addict."

But Oprah had a change of heart and brought Frey back on her show, where she laced into him.

Frey was saying, "Since that time, I've struggled with the idea of it..." when Oprah interrupted him, saying, to loud applause, "No, the lie of it! That's a lie. It's not an idea, James, It's a lie."

Now, Frey has said he's put an apology in print, saying in part, "My mistake, and it is one I deeply regret, is writing about the person I created in my mind to help me cope, and not the person who went through the experience."

But the final chapter, Smith notes, may be yet to come.

"He's been flogged in the public court of Oprah," says Publishers Weekly's Nelson, "and he's repented, and he will come back. It's a great scenario that Americans love."