I did an extended hourlong interview about writing autobiographical non-fiction and it's available free for your listening pleasure. CLICK HERE.

Here's the pre-interview I did:

Lisa: Greg, I know we’re going to cover this in more detail on our call, but what are some of the factors that make a best-selling memoir, like Eat, Pray, Love?

Greg: My theory is that the major factor that made it such a publishing phenomenon is that it embodied a compound fantasy. 1) That Gilbert had the house and relationship to begin with. 2) That she was willing to walk out. 3) To chuck it all and just go traveling (which is a fantasy because, she got paid to write the book so she wasn’t really chucking it all: she was doing a job plus getting to eat in Italy, pray in India and find love again).

Also, getting featured on Oprah. That really helps sell books.

Good food for thought about why to write and how to read memoirs from the New Yorker's review of "Memoir: A History" featuring Freud, St. Augustine, Rousseau and other hoidy toidy references you'd expect from the NYer.

They don't mention that right now it's next to impossible to sell a memoir in a publishing market that insiders are calling 'brutal'. Or that in the post-Kiss & Running With Scissors environment, you either need to be pretty famous or have a giant meat hook to hang your book on.

But they do offer a bonus podcast about phony memoirs and the enduring popularity of the form.