Public misled about O.J.'s If I Did It: Montreal publisher

The Canadian publisher seeking to release the O.J. Simpson book If I Did It, Here's How It Happened says that the public has been misled about the controversial title.

Montreal-based publisher Barclay Road Inc. announced this week it was considering releasing the Simpson title, which HarperCollins cancelled in November amid a public furor.

"It's a story that has been told mostly in the media and on the internet without anyone actually knowing what was in the book," Barclay Road CEO Herbert Becker told CBC News on Wednesday morning.

"I have seen enough to know that we, as the public, were misled by the reports in the media and on the internet about what exactly this book was about," he said.

"When there's a book with great interest, then it's a publisher's obligation — if that's what they want to do — to publish it."

If I Did It was billed as a hypothetical musing by Simpson about the killing of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

According to Becker, Simpson did not write the book, a project that was spearheaded by former HarperCollins publisher Judith Regan. Becker echoed rumours that the book was actually written byLos Angeles-based screenwriter and ghostwriter Pablo Fenjves.

"The book is a book of fiction," Becker said.

"Barclay Road is looking to publish a book [that] is in fact a fiction, regarding the possibility of a murder. It's no different than an Agatha Christie novel."

Becker said his company is currently "just trying to figure out who actually owns the manuscript."

Once that is sorted out, however, he plans to go ahead and try to pursue publishing rights, albeit with a different cover and title.

"The [original] title and cover looked as if it was written by O.J. Simpson. It wasn't, and I think that was a large part of the misrepresentation," he said.

In November, HarperCollins and its parent company, News Corp., cancelled the release of If I Did It, Here's How It Happened and acorresponding Fox TV special,in which Regan was to interview Simpson. The decision followed an outcry from the public, the publishing community, book critics and the families of the victims.

HarperCollins officials said at the time that all copies of the book would be destroyed, including some that had already been shipped to stores. However, copies have since turned up for sale on the internet and several book critics have published reviews of the cancelled title.

Regan was subsequently fired from HarperCollins and her ReganBooks imprint folded into another operation.

Simpson was acquitted on criminal charges of murder in 1995, but later lost a civil suit for "wrongful death" in the killings. He was ordered to pay the Goldman family $33.5 million US.