On January 7, one day after the Capitol riot, Simon & Schuster announced it was canceling the publication of Senator Hawley’s book, The Tyranny of Big Tech, planned for June 22. A Republican and Trump supporter, Hawley challenged the results of the election and has been accused of helping incite the mob that stormed the Capitol. The publisher said in a statement, “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.” Hawley immediately criticized the decision on Twitter, calling it “not just a contract dispute” but a “direct assault on the First Amendment.” He threatened to sue, although nothing has been filed yet in court.
It’s likely that Hawley’s Simon & Schuster contract includes a morality clause. Such clauses allow publishers to cancel book contracts if authors misbehave or damage their reputation in some way. It’s become—from the publisher’s viewpoint—a necessary precaution in our current era. You can learn more about such clauses from our item in 2018; everything we reported then remains true today. Our longtime readers might also recall that Simon & Schuster was sued by provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos when they canceled his book. He eventually had to withdraw his suit.
By Jan. 18, Hawley had found a home for his book elsewhere, at conservative publisher Regnery, which publishes Ann Coulter and Senator Ted Cruz. However, Simon & Schuster is the distributor of Regnery titles (since January 2018) in all markets and territories, including the US. Regnery does handle its own US sales for major accounts, but not for gift and specialty retailers, where Regnery had no prior exposure. Either way, wholesalers and retailers are directed to Simon & Schuster reps to place orders. Publishers Weekly noted consistent sales increases for Regnery after the distribution deal was struck; its sales grew by 7 percent in 2019.
When news broke, some accused Simon & Schuster of being duplicitous and playing a cynical shell game—that perhaps they had planned for their client Regnery to take the book all along. While it’s true they might have been able to foresee such an outcome (even The New York Times called Regnery and got them on the record as saying they were interested in the book after its cancellation), Simon & Schuster has no realistic control or say over that outcome. Regnery operates as an independent publisher; it relies on Simon & Schuster only for warehousing, shipping, and fulfillment of orders, as well as some types of sales.
So who is Regnery? Established in 1947, it’s a well-known publisher of conservative books, especially those the Big Five have sometimes decided they can’t reasonably publish or stand by. Salem Media Group, another company with connections to conservative media, purchased Regnery in 2014. In 2007, some of Regnery’s authors accused it of diverting sales away from retail outlets and to its own subsidiary organizations, although that was when the company was owned by Eagle Publishing. The authors did not win their suit. A decade later, Regnery remains well-known for facilitating bulk sales, and its 2019 sales growth appears partly responsible.
But Regnery sells plenty through retail—and for those sales, Simon & Schuster would almost certainly get a cut as distributor. In standard arrangements, distributors take a percentage of the invoices processed. For example, IngramSpark takes a 15 percent cut of all sales from self-published titles it distributes—and that’s probably as low as a distributor cut would ever get. According to A People’s Guide to Publishing by Joe Biel, distributors take a 27 percent cut of each invoice for compensation; Biel notes that distributors “are never losing money on a sale—though you may be.” Regnery’s titles regularly appear on bestseller lists from Publishers Weekly, The New York Times (despite Regnery’s claim to have severed ties with the paper), and ebook retailers. And the books get stocked in Barnes & Noble, Walmart, and Costco.
Clearly, distribution relationships can prove awkward. Last year, Dennis Johnson of Melville House Press wrote an op-ed expressing dismay at the potential acquisition of Simon & Schuster by Penguin Random House, saying that it threatens the values of the book business. But in the same piece, he had to add a caveat: “I do business with PRH (it distributes Melville House’s books) and have found it to be not only very, very good at what it does, but filled with, individually, the friendliest, hardest-working, most book-loving people.”
Bottom line: While people inside the book publishing industry know the ins and outs of distributor relationships and that Simon & Schuster can’t simply cherry-pick titles from Regnery’s catalog, the optics of the situation remain terrible. Simon & Schuster appeared to take a stand on principle and stated they would not support Hawley’s book. To the average person, distributing that book and earning a cut on copies sold still constitutes support. If pressure does mount on Simon & Schuster to take action, the most logical step would be for it to drop Regnery as a distribution client. That seems unlikely while the company is in the process of being acquired by Penguin Random House.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
