Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Publishers Encounter Political Storms in Turn to Right

Milo Yiannopoulos, an editor at the conservative news site Breitbart News, received a six-figure publishing contract from Threshold Editions, a conservative imprint at Simon & Schuster. The move prompted criticism from some of Simon & Schuster’s authors and calls for a boycott. Credit Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Milo Yiannopoulos — the infamous internet troll, Donald J. Trump supporter and editor at Breitbart News — has compared Islam to cancer, mocked transgender people and suggested that women who are harassed online should stay off the web. Last July, he was permanently barred from Twitter for violating the platform’s rules against hate speech and harassment.

So when Threshold Editions, a conservative imprint at Simon & Schuster, gave him a six-figure publishing contract, the blowback was swift and furious. There were calls for a boycott of all of the company’s books, a vast catalog of some 2,000 titles from 50 imprints. Some of Simon & Schuster’s authors — including Karen Hunter, Danielle Henderson and Bradley Trevor Greive — denounced the publisher on social media. The Chicago Review of Books said it would not review any of the company’s books this year.
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