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    Will the January 6 report bring a second Christmas for US publishers?

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    Will the January 6 report bring a second Christmas for US publishers? Major imprints are racing to sell the committee’s work to the reading public, with help from reporters, panel members, David Remnick and even a former speechwriter to TrumpThe release of the final report of the House January 6 committee has sparked a deluge of publishing activity: seven editions of the 200,000 word document from six imprints, featuring contributions from the New Yorker editor, David Remnick, the House intelligence chair, Adam Schiff, plus six other journalists, another committee member, a former congresswoman and a former speechwriter to Donald Trump.January 6 report review: 845 pages, countless crimes, one simple truth – Trump did itRead moreThere are two reasons for this hyperactivity: the belief that the completion of the report is a significant historical event, and the conviction that here is a big chance to do well by doing good.The Mueller report sold 475,000 copies in various editions, according to NPD BookScan, so the book business is hoping it can do at least that well with the latest copy provided for free by the federal government.Harper Perennial says it is printing 250,000 copies of its version, which features a powerful introduction by Ari Melber, an MSNBC host, that reads like a smart prosecutor’s multi-part indictment. It helps that Melber’s marketing power is at least as great as his brain power. Pushing it on his nightly show, he has already gotten the book to the top of one Amazon bestseller list, long before it has reached any store.The lawyer turned TV personality does the best job of delineating the eight plots Trump and his allies pursued to try to overthrow the election, seven of which were clearly illegal or unconstitutional.“They attempted a coup,” Melber declares. “That is the most important fact about what happened.”Remnick and Jamie Raskin, like Schiff a committee member, teamed up to write an introduction and an afterword for the version being published by an imprint of Macmillan.Remnick gets straight to the heart of the matter: “Trump does little to conceal his most distinctive characteristics: his racism, misogyny, dishonesty, narcissism, incompetence, cruelty, instability, and corruption. And yet what has kept Trump afloat for so long, what has helped him evade ruin and prosecution, is perhaps his most salient quality: he is shameless.”Because so many of us have nearly lost our “ability to experience outrage”, Remnick concedes that “the prospect of engaging with this congressional inquiry … is sometimes a challenge to the spirit … And yet a citizenry that can no longer bring itself to pay attention to such an investigation or to absorb its astonishing findings risks moving even farther toward a disturbing ‘new normal’: a post-truth, post-democratic America.”Raskin sees the assault on the Capitol as the latest in a series of “systematic threats” to US democracy, including “massive voter suppression, gerrymandering of state and federal legislative districts, the use of the filibuster to block protection of voting rights, and right-wing judicial activism to undermine the Voting Rights Act”.His biggest goal is the elimination of electoral college, without any amendment to the constitution. That can be done through “the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement among participating states that gives electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the nationwide popular vote, and which has already been adopted by 15 states and the District of Columbia with 195 electoral votes, or 72% of the 270 votes needed” to put it into effect.Writing for Random House, Schiff excoriates Republicans for trying so hard to block certification of Biden’s victory even after the Capitol invasion – 147 Republicans including eight senators lodged objections early on the morning of January 7. But he is also careful to give credit to Republican witnesses who did so much to burnish the committee’s credibility.“These officials, Republicans all, not only held fast against enormous pressure from a president of their party but were willing to stand before the country and testify under oath,” Schiff writes.Schiff argues that the report is an undeniable brief for prosecution of Trump: “Bringing to justice a former president who, even now, advocates the suspension of our constitution is a perilous endeavor. Not doing so is far more dangerous.”For Skyhorse, the former congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, the only contributor old enough to have voted to impeach Richard Nixon, echoes Schiff on this point.“Having had to vote to impeach a president when I was in Congress, I am certain that [the January 6 committee] did not make its criminal referrals to the justice department lightly. In the same vein, the DoJ should not treat it lightly – and I hope and believe the American people will not let that happen.”The Hachette book has the largest amount of additional material, including a first-person account of the Capitol attack by a New York Times reporter, Luke Broadwater. After making it to a secure area, Broadwater found he was “much more angry” than “afraid”. So were other more conservative reporters, disgusted by senators who encouraged the myth of election theft. Broadwater recalls “one shouting to a Republican as he passed by, ‘Are you proud of yourself, Senator?’”All of these books are serious efforts to put the committee’s exhaustive findings in a larger political and historical context, including the one published by Skyhorse with an introduction by Holtzman. But Skyhorse also maintains its maverick reputation as a publisher famous for picking up books others have spurned (Woody Allen’s memoir, for example) by publishing two versions of the new report, one with Holtzman’s foreword and another featuring Darren Beattie, a former speechwriter for Trump and Steven Miller.Tony Lyons, the US publisher who picks up books ‘cancelled’ by other pressesRead moreBeattie was fired by the Trump White House after it was reported that he attended a conference with Peter Brimelow, founder of the anti-immigrant website VDare, a “white nationalist” who “regularly publishes works by white supremacists, antisemites, and others on the radical right”, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.Beattie is horrified that the January 6 committee describes the assault on the Capitol as an outgrowth of white supremacy.“Far from serving as an objective fact-finding body, the January 6 committee functioned as such an egregiously performative, partisan kangaroo display as to make propagandists in North Korea blush,” he writes – with characteristic understatement.Beattie provides more comic relief with his approach to the alleged election fraud which is one of the main subjects of the report.“It would take us too far afield to consider the election fraud allegations in detail on the merits,” Beattie writes.Then he gives a long explanation of why no one should think Trump really believed he lost the election, just because that’s what his attorney general and so many others told him.“For all of the committee’s fixation on the term ‘Big Lie’, the committee presents precious little if any evidence that Donald Trump didn’t genuinely believe that election fraud ultimately tipped the balance against him.“… The committee’s first televised hearing repeated ad nauseam a video clip of Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr referring to Trump’s election fraud theories as ‘bullshit’.“Apart from Barr, the committee referenced numerous Trump associates who claim to have told the former president his election fraud theories were wrong. The simple fact that some of Trump’s senior staffers may have disagreed with Trump on the election issue is hardly proof that Trump was persuaded by them, and that therefore Trump’s efforts to ‘stop the steal’ amounted to a deliberate lie and malicious attempt to prevent the legitimate and peaceful transition of power.Republican senator called Giuliani ‘walking malpractice’, January 6 report saysRead more“Barr’s additional remark that Trump was ‘completely detached from reality’ when it came to the 2020 election unwittingly undermines the committee’s suggestion that Trump was lying about the matter.”Primetime hearings sometimes reached as many 18 million viewers, a number Remnick notes was “comparable to Sunday Night Football on NBC”. In the midterm elections, many exit polls found that the preservation of democracy was a key factor in the decision of many swing voters to vote against Republicans. It seems clear the investigation bolstered American democracy in more ways than one.While a hearty minority obviously remain as far down a rabbit hole as Trump’s former speechwriter, the results of the recent election bolster my conviction that sane Americans still constitute a small majority of American voters.So, like most of the contributors to these volumes, I think there is much to be grateful for in the work of the most successful congressional investigators since the Senate Watergate committee of 50 years ago. Or, as Remnick puts it, “If you are reaching for optimism – and despair is not an option – the existence and the depth of the committee’s project represents a kind of hope. It represents an insistence on truth and democratic principle.”TopicsBooksJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesPolitics booksfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Bernie Sanders to publish book outlining vision for ‘political revolution’

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      Bernie Sanders to publish book outlining vision for ‘political revolution’It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, out next year, will argue the world needs to ‘recognise that economic rights are human rights’ Former presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is to publish a book outlining “a vision of what would be possible if the political revolution took place”.It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism will be published by Penguin Random House in February 2023.The book, said the publisher, will look at what happens if “we would finally recognise that economic rights are human rights, and work to create a society that provides them”.Publishing director Thomas Penn said It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism was a “scorching denunciation of a system that is manifestly failing the vast majority of people along with the planet itself”.“But there is, he says, another way: if we are prepared to call out uber-capitalism for what it is, together we can bring about transformational change,” Penn added. “Humane, clear-eyed and – yes – angry, this is a vital book for our times and for our future. We are thrilled to be publishing it.”It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism has editorial contributions from John Nichols, an award-winning progressive author and journalist who works as a national affairs correspondent for the Nation magazine.‘They haven’t tried’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ economic messagingRead moreSanders is currently serving his third term in the US senate after 16 years in the House of Representatives and is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. He is the chairman of the budget committee where he helped write the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.In an interview with the Guardian before the mid-term elections earlier this month, Sanders was keen to highlight the financial difficulties people were facing.“People are hurting,” he said. “You got 60% of our people living paycheck to paycheck, and for many workers, they are falling further behind as a result of inflation. Oil company profits are soaring, food company profits are soaring, drug company profits are soaring. Corporate profits are at an all-time high.”Sanders has often been critical of the Democratic party, saying in the interview that they “haven’t tried” to communicate to voters the threat of corporate profiteering to the cost of living.Sanders has run for the Democratic party presidential nomination twice, in 2016 and 2020, garnering huge support and raising large amounts of money, but both times ultimately failing to secure the nomination.TopicsBooksBernie SandersUS politicsPublishingPolitics booksnewsReuse this content More

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      Ted Cruz’s campaign may have spent $150,000 on copies of his book

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      BooksTed Cruz’s campaign may have spent $150,000 on copies of his bookFollowing One Vote Away’s publication, the Republican senator’s campaign spent large sums of money at US chain Books-A-Million Alison FloodWed 18 Aug 2021 10.17 EDTLast modified on Wed 18 Aug 2021 10.25 EDTTed Cruz’s campaign spent more than $150,000 at US book chain Books-A-Million in the months after the Texas senator’s book was published, Forbes has reported.Cruz, who was prominent among the Republicans trying to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election, published One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History in September. A financial disclosure he filed on Monday, reported on by Forbes, shows he received almost $320,000 as an advance in 2020 from the book’s publisher Regnery Publishing.Ted Cruz threatens to burn John Boehner’s book over criticismsRead more“With a simple majority on the Supreme Court, the left will have the power to curtail or even abolish the freedoms that have made our country a beacon to the world. We are one vote away from losing the Republic that the Founders handed down to us. Our most precious constitutional rights hang by a thread,” says Regnery of the title. “In One Vote Away, you will discover how often the high court decisions that affect your life have been decided by just one vote.”The end-of-year report from Cruz’s committee, filed with the Federal Election Commission, reveals that two weeks after One Vote Away was published, his campaign spent $40,000 at Books-A-Million. Shortly afterwards, it spent a further $1,500, and in December, another $111,900. All of the purchases are described by the campaign as “books”, and Forbes speculated that they may have been used to boost his book sales, quoting Brett Kappel, a lawyer specialising in campaign finance, who said that “the FEC has issued a long series of advisory opinions allowing members to use campaign funds to buy copies of their own books at a discount from the publisher, provided that the royalties they would normally receive on those sales are given to charity”.Forbes previously reported what three other US senators had made from book deals in 2020: Elizabeth Warren earned $278,000, Tom Cotton $202,000, and Tammy Duckworth $382,000. All three used campaign funds to buy books, but Forbes said that their purchases were all under $20,000.A spokesperson for Cruz’s campaign told the magazine that the senator “has not received one cent of royalties in connection with any One Vote Away book sales”, but declined to reveal which books the campaign had spent more than $150,000 on.When Donald Trump Jr published Triggered in 2019, it made the New York Times bestseller list, but the newspaper’s charts included a dagger beside the book to indicate that “some retailers report receiving bulk orders”. The Republican National Committee denied making bulk orders at the time, and Trump Jr was angered by the suggestion that his sales had been artificially boosted, retweeting Republican strategist Andrew Surabian’s claim that “Don did multiple book signings where he sold 1,000+ books apiece. BookScan data will show he sold more books than the #2 and #3 books combined. Media/Dems want to pretend otherwise, but he was #1 on merit.”TopicsBooksUS politicsTed CruzTexasPublishingnewsReuse this content More

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      Michael Wolff to publish third exposé of Trump, covering last days in office

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      Michael Wolff’s third book about Donald Trump, focusing on the final days of his presidency, will be published in July under a provocative title: Landslide.Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote and by 306-232 in the electoral college – a result he called a landslide when it was in his favour against Hillary Clinton in 2016.Trump has pursued the lie that Biden’s victory was the result of electoral fraud – a speech on the subject fuelled the deadly attack on the US Capitol in Washington on 6 January, leading to a second impeachment trial.Though Trump told Fox News on Wednesday night he “didn’t win” and wished Biden well, he also said the election was “unbelievably unfair”.Wolff published his first Trump tell-all in January 2018, rocking the White House when the Guardian broke news of the book, Fire and Fury.Trump sought to block publication, calling Wolff “a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book”. The reading public ignored him: the explosive exposé sold 1.7m copies in its first three weeks.In 2019 Wolff published Siege, which looked at a “presidency under fire”, tackling topics including Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference and ties between Trump and Moscow.Wolff no longer enjoyed unfettered West Wing access but he did produce a bombshell, again first reported by the Guardian: that Mueller’s team had prepared and shelved an indictment of the president, on three counts of obstruction of justice.Wolff said he obtained the documents from “sources close to the Office of the Special Counsel”. The special counsel rejected his claim, a spokesman saying: “The documents that you’ve described do not exist.”Amid such controversy, and with competitors having flooded the shelves with reportage on the chaotic Trump presidency, Siege did not sell as well as Fire and Fury.Like its predecessor, Siege used Steve Bannon as a major source. By then, however, the far-right provocateur was no longer a White House strategist or even, thanks to his cooperation for Fire and Fury which enraged the president, a major figure in Trumpworld.On Thursday, Wolff’s publisher said he had interviewed the former president. It also said Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency, would focus on his “tumultuous last months at the helm of the country”.Out on 27 July from Little, Brown in the UK and Macmillan in the US, the book is based on what the publishers called “extraordinary access to White House aides and to the former president himself, yielding a wealth of new information and insights about what really happened inside the highest office in the land, and the world”.Trump has claimed to be writing “the book of all books” himself. In a statement last week, he claimed he had “turned down two book deals, from the most unlikely of publishers”, adding: “I do not want a deal right now. I’m writing like crazy anyway, however.”After major publishers said they would not touch a Trump memoir, he insisted “two of the biggest and most prestigious publishing houses have made very substantial offers which I have rejected”.“That doesn’t mean I won’t accept them sometime in the future,” he said. “… If my book will be the biggest of them all … does anybody really believe that they are above making a lot of money?”Possibly to Trump’s chagrin, those who served him in office have found publishers eager to release their memoirs – and to pay a lot of money to do so.Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, has a “seven-figure”, two-book deal – despite a staff rebellion at Simon & Schuster.Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has a deal for a “definitive” account of the Trump presidency. Broadside Books, a conservative imprint at HarperCollins, has said the book will come out in early 2022. The price of the deal was not disclosed.Last November, shortly after Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden, Barack Obama published the first volume of a projected two-part memoir that was sold to Penguin Random House with books by his wife, Michelle Obama, for a reported $65m. The former president’s book, A Promised Land, sold strongly.Another former president, Bill Clinton, has moved into fiction. The President’s Daughter – his second thriller, in this case about a president who also happens to be a former Navy Seal – is again written with James Patterson. This week, it debuted at No1 on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestsellers list. More

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      Mike Pence’s publisher refuses to cancel memoir after staff protest

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      Simon & Schuster has said it will not pull out of a seven-figure book deal with Mike Pence after some of its employees called for the contract to be scrapped, stating that “we come to work each day to publish, not cancel”.An open letter circulated by staff at S&S said that the publisher had “chosen complicity in perpetuating white supremacy by publishing Pence”, in a two-book deal struck earlier this month and reported to be worth $3-4m (£2.1-2.8m). The letter, which did not reveal how many members of staff had signed, said that the former vice-president had “made a career out of discriminating against marginalised groups and denying resources to BIPOC and LGBTQA+ communities”, and demanded his book deal be cancelled.“By choosing to publish Mike Pence, Simon & Schuster is generating wealth for a central figure of a presidency that unequivocally advocated for racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Blackness, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism, islamophobia, antisemitism, and violence,” says the letter. “This is not a difference of opinions; this is legitimising bigotry.”Though in January S&S pulled out of publishing Republican senator Josh Hawley’s book over his part in the Capitol riot, S&S president Jonathan Karp told staff on Tuesday that the publisher would not cancel Pence’s deal.“As a publisher in this polarised era, we have experienced outrage from both sides of the political divide and from different constituencies and groups. But we come to work each day to publish, not cancel, which is the most extreme decision a publisher can make, and one that runs counter to the very core of our mission to publish a diversity of voices and perspectives,” wrote Karp. “We will, therefore, proceed in our publishing agreement with vice-president Mike Pence.”The employees also called for the publishing house to refrain from signing any more book deals with former members of the Trump administration, and demanded S&S stop distributing books for Post Hill Press. An independent publisher which focuses on “conservative politics” and Christian titles, Post Hill hit the headlines last week when it announced it would be publishing a book by by one of the police officers who shot Breonna Taylor, officer Jonathan Mattingly. While S&S subsequently announced it would not distribute Mattingly’s book, staff at S&S pointed to Post Hill titles which S&S still distributes, including embattled Republican congressman Matt Gaetz’s Firebrand.“We impart to you the sad and unfortunate truth that we are actively making history right now,” says the open letter. “People will look back on this one day, and see that through our complicity, we chose to be on what is clearly the wrong side of justice.”Karp said the decision not to distribute Mattingly’s book was “immediate, unprecedented, and responsive to the concerns we heard from you and our authors”. But he added that S&S has “contractual obligations and must continue to respect the terms of our agreements with our client publishers”.Post Hill confirmed last week that it would go ahead with publishing Mattingly’s book without S&S, and declined to comment further.Karp described the publisher’s role as “to find those authors and works that can shed light on our world — from first-time novelists to journalists, thought leaders, scientists, memoirists, personalities, and, yes, those who walk the halls of power”.“Regardless of where those authors sit on the ideological spectrum, or if they hold views that run counter to the belief systems held by some of us, we apply a rigorous standard to assure that in acquiring books, we will be bringing into the world works that provide new information or perspectives on events to which we otherwise might not have access,” he wrote.“When we allow our judgment to dwell on the books we dislike,” he added, “we distract ourselves from our primary purpose as a publisher – to champion the books we believe in and love.”Pence’s currently untitled autobiography is set to be released in 2023. More

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      Amazon to stop selling books that frame LGBTQ+ identities as mental illness

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      Amazon will no longer sell books that frame gay, lesbian, transgender and other sexual identities as a mental illness.
      The company made the announcement public in a letter sent to Republican senators who had asked why Amazon had stopped selling When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, a book by the conservative academic Ryan Anderson, best known for his opposition to same-sex marriage.
      In the letter, first obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Amazon writes: “As a bookseller, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable.
      “That said, we reserve the right not to sell certain content. All retailers make decisions about what selection they choose to offer, as do we. As to your specific question about When Harry Became Sally, we have chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”
      The letter came in response to criticism from the rightwing senators Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, Mike Braun and Josh Hawley who wrote to the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, criticizing the book’s removal and calling it a signal “to conservative Americans that their views are not welcome on its platforms”.
      The move will have a significant impact on books that frame LGTBQ+ identities as mental illnesses. Amazon accounts for 53% of all books sold in the US and 80% of all ebooks, according to Codex Group, a book audience research firm.
      The decision comes at a moment when Republicans and the conservative movement are increasingly focused on so-called “cancel culture”. Republicans have recently criticized the decision by Dr Seuss publisher to stop publishing six of his books because they portrayed people of color “in ways that are hurtful and wrong”.
      “Everyone agrees that gender dysphoria is a serious condition that causes great suffering,” Anderson and Roger Kimball, publisher of Encounter Books, which published the book, said in a statement given to the Journal.
      “There is a debate, however, which Amazon is seeking to shut down, about how best to treat patients who experience gender dysphoria,” they added. “Amazon is using its massive power to distort the marketplace of ideas and is deceiving its own customers in the process,” they said.
      A spokesperson for LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD said: “There’s an antiquated and shameful history of equating LGBTQ identity to mental illness, and Amazon’s decision to stop selling books that falsely equate the two is a positive step in ending the misinformation campaign against LGBTQ people, especially trans youth, meant only to cause harm.
      “This book is dangerous and harmful to trans kids, and those who are looking for information about trans identity should not look to resources written by someone who has made their livelihood by publishing screeds against the trans community.” More

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      Open letter calls for publishing boycott of Trump administration memoirs

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      Five-hundred American authors and literary professionals have signed a letter calling on US publishers not to sign book deals with members of the Trump administration, saying “those who enabled, promulgated, and covered up crimes against the American people should not be enriched through the coffers of publishing”.Put together by the author Barry Lyga, the letter, which is continuing to add names, has been signed by bestselling writers including Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere, Holly Black and Star Wars author Chuck Wendig. Titled “no book deals for traitors”, it opens by stating that the US “is where it is in part because publishing has chased the money and notoriety of some pretty sketchy people, and has granted those same people both the imprimatur of respectability and a lot of money through sweetheart book deals”.Lyga told Publishers Weekly: “Traditionally, members of an outgoing administration can – and do – rely on the cushion of a fat book contract with a healthy advance. In the case of the Trump administration and its history of outrages, lies, and incitement to insurrection, we cannot allow this to stand. No one should be enriched for their contribution to evil.”Endorsed by a range of editors, authors, booksellers and publishing staff, the letter goes on to state that “no participant in an administration that caged children, performed involuntary surgeries on captive women, and scoffed at science as millions were infected with a deadly virus should be enriched by the almost rote largesse of a big book deal”, and that “no one who incited, suborned, instigated or otherwise supported the 6 January 2021 coup attempt should have their philosophies remunerated and disseminated through our beloved publishing houses”.In November, the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid the New York Post claimed that Trump was “being bombarded with book and TV deals that could be worth a staggering $100m”, although his son, Donald Trump Jr, chose to self-publish his most recent tome.Lyga’s letter comes in the same week that rightwing Missouri senator Josh Hawley was forced to find a new publisher for his book The Tyranny of Big Tech, after it was dropped by Simon & Schuster over his backing of baseless claims that the election was stolen. America’s National Coalition Against Censorship has spoken out against the cancellation of Hawley’s deal, saying that while it shares “the outrage of our fellow citizens” over the attack on the US Capitol, it was deeply concerned about Simon & Schuster’s decision to drop the book. “Cancelling the book weakens free expression … It is crucial that publishers stand by their decision to publish, even when they strongly disagree with something the author has said,” said the free speech organsiation. “Cancelling a book encourages those who seek to silence their critics, producing more pressure on publishers, which will lead to more cancellations. The best defence for democracy is a strong commitment to free expression.”The debate comes in the midst of a reckoning for big publishers about the titles they release. In November, staff at Penguin Random House Canada protested over the press’s decision to publish a new book from Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, the self-styled “professor against political correctness”. Hachette dropped Woody Allen’s memoir last year after a staff walkout, and Hachette imprint Little, Brown in the UK cancelled a contract with Julie Burchill to publish Welcome to the Woke Trials after it said she “crossed a line” with her comments about Islam on Twitter to the journalist Ash Sarkar.Tony Schwartz, who ghostwrote Donald Trump’s 1987 memoir The Art of the Deal, was given the nickname Dr Frankenstein by his former editor for the gloss his book brought to the man who would become president. Schwartz spoke out about how “staggeringly dangerous” he felt a Trump presidency would be in 2016, saying: “Oh my god, I’ve contributed to creating the public image of the man who is sociopathic and people don’t realise it.”Lyga’s letter points to Son of Sam laws, which prevent criminals from benefiting financially by writing about their crimes. “In that spirit, those who enabled, promulgated, and covered up crimes against the American people should not be enriched through the coffers of publishing,” say the publishing professionals, adding: “We believe in the power of words and we are tired of the industry we love enriching the monsters among us, and we will do whatever is in our power to stop it.”Lyga told the LA Times that each signatory to his letter “will act to the dictates of their conscience and to the extent they are able to effect change”, pointing to the Hachette walkout which led to the cancellation of the Allen memoir. “We are committing to doing what we individually can when and if the time comes,” he added.“To those who believe this is censorship, I can say only this,” he wrote on Twitter. “If the first amendment guarantees book deals, then there are some publishers who turned down books of mine in the past who now owe me money.” More

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      Josh Hawley: publisher cancels book in wake of Capitol attack

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      Publishers have cancelled a planned book by Senator Josh Hawley, who objected to Joe Biden’s presidential election win and backed baseless claims that the vote was stolen.Thousands of Trump supporters gathered in Washington on Wednesday and many ended up storming into the Capitol building and occupying it for hours, resulting in four deaths and delaying the certification of Biden’s win. A widely seen photo, taken before the occupation, shows Hawley raising a fist in solidarity to the crowd.In a statement on Thursday, Simon & Schuster announced: “After witnessing the disturbing, deadly insurrection that took place on Wednesday in Washington DC, Simon & Schuster has decided to cancel publication of Senator Josh Hawley’s forthcoming book, The Tyranny of Big Tech.“We did not come to this decision lightly,” the publisher added. “As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: at the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom.”The Missouri Republican called the decision “Orwellian” and vowed to fight it in court. Hawley has often cited as a possible future presidential candidate and his book was an intended forum for a favourite theme: the undue power of Google, Facebook and other internet companies. Soon after news broke that his book was dropped, Hawley tweeted, and tagged his comments directly to Simon & Schuster, that he was being unfairly censored and punished: “I was representing my constituents, leading a debate on the Senate floor on voter integrity, which they have now decided to redefine as sedition.“This could not be more Orwellian … Let me be clear, this is not just a contract dispute. It’s a direct assault on the First Amendment … I will fight this cancel culture with everything I have. We’ll see you in court.”Simon & Schuster quickly issued another statement: “We are confident that we are acting fully within our contractual rights.”Simon & Schuster has had numerous clashes with Trump and his supporters. It called off a deal with the far-right writer and commentator Milo Yiannopoulos and published several anti-Trump best-sellers, including niece Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough and former national security adviser John Bolton’s The Room Where It Happened.New York publishers had already expressed wariness about taking on a post-presidential memoir by Trump, whose book Crippled America was published by a Simon & Schuster imprint in 2015, and this week’s events make a deal with them far less unlikely.A Simon & Schuster spokesman declined comment on whether the publisher would be interested in a new Trump book. Messages left with Penguin Random House, publisher of Trump’s bestselling The Art of the Deal, and HarperCollins Publishers were not immediately returned. More

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      Trump is trying to block publication of John Bolton's book. What's he scared of? | Lloyd Green

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      Trump is trying to block publication of John Bolton’s book. What’s he scared of? Lloyd Green The memoir reportedly depicts Trump as caring more about re-election than US national security. No wonder he wants to quash it ‘Bolton’s the guy who keeps copious notes.’ Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images On Tuesday, the Trump administration […] More