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It was inevitable that Stephen Glass's first novel would be based on a true story. That it is his own is what makes it unusual.

Glass was the young, hotshot journalist who fell from grace in 1998 when he was fired by The New Republic after his editors discovered he had been more of a creative writer than a reporter: 27 of his articles included sources, quotations and details that he had invented. Now Glass is purporting to tell a fictionalized account of his side of the story in his book The Fabulist, due to be released in North American bookstores on Tuesday.

The book promised to be a juicy roman à clef about the foibles of a young, ambitious journalist who turns to fraud; just enough to ensure a heady amount of buzz in literary circles. Journalists such as Glass and others, including Janet Cooke, who was stripped of a Pulitzer Prize awarded to her Washington Post piece that contained fabricated elements, serve as morality tales for the media.

The publishers of The Fabulist, Simon & Schuster, opted for a "stealth marketing" campaign. They haven't listed the book by name in any of their catalogues, and when the company sent letters to bookstores offering the novel, it didn't include the author's name or even a synopsis of what the book was about. Instead, it merely promised The Fabulist was "a rollicking, riveting tour de force that does for the media business what Primary Colors did for politics," in reference to the thinly veiled novel about President Bill Clinton written by an anonymous author, later unmasked as Newsweek columnist Joe Klein.

The only press Glass -- who went to law school after his dismissal from The New Republic -- is currently slated to do is an appearance on 60 Minutes this Sunday.

With an estimated 55,000 copies to be released in the United States, and an unconfirmed number in Canada, Simon & Schuster will likely capitalize on any publicity for a movie from Lions Gate Entertainment about Glass due in cinemas this fall. Shattered Glass was filmed in Montreal and stars Hayden Christensen, the young Darth Vader in Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace. The director, Billy Ray, calls it "a cautionary tale -- a story about the difference between being a good reporter and being a hot one." The film was made without any input from Glass.

But The New York Times and The Washington Post managed to capitalize on Simon & Schuster's stealth campaign. The papers obtained copies of The Fabulist from a New Jersey bookstore that broke the embargo of next week's sale date.

According to an article in yesterday's Times, the book is "a first-person account of an ambitious young journalist who slips from truth into reckless fraud, even concocting bogus notes and voice-mail messages to deceive editors and fact-checkers."

Glass lays full blame on the main character, also named Stephen Glass, focusing "on the young journalist's unmasking and disgrace rather than on his editors' hunger for vivid, behind-the-scene details."

The author's note acknowledges Glass's regret for his real-life "misconduct."

"While this novel was inspired by certain events in my life, it does not recount the actual events of my life," the note reads. "This book is a work of fiction, a fabrication, and this time, an admitted one."

Simon & Schuster's spokespeople are currently declining to comment on the broken embargo.

Still, some are finding Glass's book to be a little too truthful.

"The creep is doing it again," Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, told The New York Times. "Even when it comes to reckoning with his own sins, he is still incapable of non-fiction. The careerism of his repentance is repulsively consistent with the careerism of his crimes."

With a report from New York Times Service