Guardian reporter Zoe Williams scores an interview with “Abby Lee”, the creator of “Girl With a One Track Mind,” which is exactly the Belle du Jour sort of blog it sounds like (except that “Abby” wasn’t charging for it). With Ebury Press putting out a print edition of her “diary of a sex fiend,” the blogger came under increased public scrutiny and was recently outed as Zoe Margolis. The photo at right actually comes from a Daily Mail rip-off of that story. On her website, “Abby” complains about the unwanted media attention and advises her fans, “I really have no interest in being in the public eye at all, so if you do spot my presence anywhere in the media, please know that it will be, most likely, a fictional piece written by an antagonistic journalist, and not printed with either my support, or my participation. So unless I announce an article here, and state explicitly that I had input in it, you can take it as read that it was written without any consent on my part.” She mentions the Guardian story, but not the Daily Mail, and all the quotes in the latter are lifted from the former; draw your own conclusions.
But talk about Hot Young Author Chick Syndrome: If press reports are to be trusted, Ebury (a division of Random House) bought “Abby’s” story for six figures, and the controversy has already made it a bestseller.