The Regnery Racket

So you may have heard about this right-wing mini-scandal, in which outraged authors are suing Regnery for selling their books through its own sister companies (like the Conservative Book Club) and paying them a pittance, rather than the higher royalties they're entitled to when books get sold through bookstores. What's interesting to me about the whole mess is that I had always understood the whole Conservative Book Club angle to be part of the appeal of signing a book deal with Regnery. I've had several in-the-know D.C. types explain to me over the years that if you're writing a conservative political book for the money, rather than the prestige (or the careful editing), you should do it through Regnery because their book club links - as well as their connections to the talk radio outlets that can help pump up a right-wing book's sales - enable them to more or less create best-sellers at will, in a way that other conservative imprints just can't match. But of course it rather defeats the purpose of picking a publisher for the money if their method of making you a best-seller doesn't net you very much, um, money. And you would think that someone would have picked up on this before now ...

Comments

Of course the subtext of Ross' post is that Regnery's publishing outfit is all about skimming money from gullible conservatives who will buy these books rather than making a serious contribution to the marketplace of ideas.

Having looked through a few of these tomes, I have seen nothing to contradicts this.

Aren't conservatives who write books for Regnery, and conservative websites and media outlets that shill for the books, basically telling us that we shouldn't take their ideas seriously?

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 7, 2007 8:38 PM

No, no, Regnery is all about skimming money from gullible conservatives who will write these books. I mean if you bought one of their books, I'd venture you knew exactly what you were getting into; if you've written a book and you're getting ripped off, that's months of your life you put into it.

Posted by Bo | November 7, 2007 9:54 PM

Or at least a couple hours.

Posted by larrold | November 7, 2007 11:48 PM

I can't say I feel any sorrow for disgruntled participants in the Great Right-Wing Circle Jerk. These are scumbags for the most part - animals who support war crimes and liars and defecating on the Constitution.

Where's the tragedy if they don't make money from these activities?

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | November 8, 2007 1:46 AM