Alert students will often tell teachers and university lecturers that there is sometimes a significant discrepancy between the same historical characters, settings or incidents in historical fiction and nonfiction. An illustration of this point arises with hugely successful author Bryce Courtenay's work of historical fiction, The Potato Factory (1995), and a subsequent work of nonfiction, which sought to put the record straight on Isaac (Ikey) Solomon, one of the principal characters in Courtenay's novel. Judith Sackville-O'Donnell, a Melbourne author, challenged Courtenay's depiction of Ikey Solomon, who was also believed to be the model for Charles Dickens's fictional villain Fagin.

Sackville-O'Donnell's The First Fagin: The True Story of Ikey Solomon (2002) sold about 1500 copies. While a commendable publishing feat, this fares very poorly in comparison with Courtenay's The Potato Factory, whose sales exceeded manyfold that of The First Fagin: ‘The Potato Factory was last year [2003] listed by Angus & Robertson as 17th on Australia's 100 favourite books. Gold Logie-winner Lisa McCune was among the stars in a TV miniseries based on the novel’ (Schwartz, 2004).

This is just one example of where a dedicated and motivated professional historian can take issue with the historicity of a piece of historical fiction. Clearly, if the sales of The Potato Factory are an index to the success of the novel then the demonstrated warping of historical fact does little to offend the reading public.