Three weeks ago, TMQ said "this year's literary fraud" was a fabricated book about the Hiroshima bombing. I spoke too soon! This year's literary fraud seems to be "A Journey," former British prime minister Tony Blair's volume of self-praise. The book's key scene is all but word-for-word identical to a scene from the 2006 movie "The Queen" -- a scene the screenwriter says came entirely from his imagination. Blair wants us to believe the scene actually happened, and now stands accused of "plagiarizing [his] fictionalized self," which does sound a rather modern offense.

What's troubling here is not so much the revelation of yet another political phony seeking easy money. Recall that former CIA director George Tenet's 2007 book, "At the Center of the Storm," sold to readers as true, begins with a dramatic scene Tenet later admitted he fabricated. What's really troubling is that Knopf, the U.S. publisher of the Blair book-like object, doesn't seem to give a fig whether the content is genuine, so long as the book-like object is selling.

As TMQ noted three weeks ago, increasingly publishers don't even try to verify whether a book's claims are accurate, because "the publisher is off the hook if the publisher never checked to determine whether the book was true." If you know there is a weak tree on your property, then you are liable if that tree falls and smashes the neighbor's car. If you don't know about the tree, you're in a better position legally. Similarly, when aspiring celebrity authors hand in manuscripts containing scenes that are hard to believe but have talk show appeal, publishers simply don't ask if the material is honest. They hope, of course, the celeb won't be caught. But if this happens the publisher's defense is, "We had no idea whether the author's claims were truthful."

How sad to see a former British leader involved in the cheapening of books. Winston Churchill, a fine writer and a man with a deep love of books, must be rolling over in his grave to hear of a British P.M. producing a book-like object that treats the written word as nothing more than a self-promotion device. But publishers may have themselves to blame should books fall out of existence.

In the 1970s, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein found that writing about national leaders in screenplay-like "reconstructed" dialogue made them a lot more money than straightforward reporting. Woodward and Bernstein imagined what Richard Nixon and others might have said, then placed it between quotations as if the quotes were factually known. They cheapened writing by changing the meaning of quotation marks from "this is what was said" to "the story sounds better if we pretend this is what was said." Rather than insist that material in "nonfiction" books be scrupulously factual, publishers went along with this cheapening, which Stephen Colbert memorably called truthiness.

It's been downhill since. In Woodward's books that followed "All the President's Men," and in their many imitators, composite characters and made-up conversations are sold as "nonfiction." Readers have no clue what's been fabricated and what's factual. Other bestsellers presented as "nonfiction" dropped Woodward's insistence that at least the basic outline be true, and veered into pure fiction. The 1994 best-seller "The Hot Zone" -- "a terrifying true story!" -- contains extensive elements that are completely fake, along with nonexistent characters presented as real people. The reader is given no hint that the fake has been swirled together with the real. This year's best-seller "Game Change" continues the cheapening, presenting gossip as fact without the slightest hint of sourcing, as well as placing within quotation marks dialogue that could not possibly be accurate unless tape recorders were hidden in walls. "Game Change," offered to readers as nonfiction, is the first draft of a bad novel. But "true story!" sells better than "bad novel!" If publishers and authors don't care whether books are true, why should readers care about books?