Here's a newsflash for you: Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in publishing. The talk show host may even have more influence over what readers read and publishers publish than Jane Friedman, Phyllis Grann and Carolyn Reidy. Maybe even more than B&N's fiction megabuyer, Sessalee Hensley.

So it should hardly have been a surprise that after publicly flogging James Frey on her show last Thursday, the next sinner led up to Oprah's stocks was publishing itself, in the body of Nan Talese. "Isn't it your job to verify that what you tell us is true?" Oprah asked her in a number of different ways. Talese tried hard: she explained that book companies don't fact check memoirs but instead vet them for libel. While acknowledging that Frey crossed a line, Talese held firm to her idea that "a memoir is an author's remembrance."

It was a nice effort, but one that, I'm afraid, won't do much for publishing's image in the marketplace. As "gatekeepers" of culture, publishers—especially deep-pocket, big-house publishers—have always been suspect, especially by the legions of would-be authors who don't understand why that guy John Grisham got his book published when they didn't. But Talese's decrying the public's misunderstanding of the scope of memoir—as I myself did in a previous editorial (April 24, 2005)—and Oprah's suggestion that editors better be alert to "red flags" underscored the disconnect between what publishers do and what readers want.

The subsequent public reaction, that publishing is somehow in cahoots with liars and that editors don't care about what's in their books as long as they sell, is as unfair and illogical as some of the fabrications in Frey's book—and perhaps more cynical. Yes, memoirs sell better than novels—sometimes—but the success of A Million Little Pieces would never have happened without Oprah. Do people really believe Talese and acquiring editor Sean McDonald and/or the whole Random House enterprise colluded with a minor screenwriter to defraud the public? The whole sad story seems more to me like a case of a guy who told a really, really big fish story and then got everybody tangled up in the line.

Still, Oprah is right: something has to change. While it's unrealistic to suggest that houses hire fact checkers for every book—unless we also publish far fewer than the 175,000 titles released every year (now, there's an idea!) —publishers would be wise to pay closer attention to the details in memoirs, especially when they take on such enormous and powerfully personal subjects as recovery. Surely, more and more books will be getting the fine-tooth comb. Will America care as much about factual accuracy in political memoirs, sports bios, diet books and—dare I say it?—rationalizations for war?

Let's face it: we can never completely insulate ourselves from hoaxters, any more than the government can ever completely protect us from terrorists. But publishing could learn something from Frey. "If I come out of this experience with anything, it's being a better person and learning from my mistakes and making sure that I don't repeat them," he said to Oprah.

Does he mean it? Who knows? But publishers—and readers—now need to pick up the million little pieces and move on, wiser and warier.

Agree? Disagree? Tell us at www.publishersweekly.com/saranelson