Pure comedy gold.

I love that these authors delude themselves into believing people would actually pay for their books. The only reason they have good sales numbers is because of the wheeling & dealing their publisher does. They give the books away.

I love it! SOmebody needs to ask these less-than-notable "authors" hwo they feel about frivolous lawsuits, redistribution of wealth and tort reform.

I love it! Perhaps they will now form a union?

It's just a wonderful example of the power of the individual against a large corporation which is essentially a monopoly. There is one book publisher that will publish rightwingnut Nazi screeds, and that is Regnery. If you are a rightwingnut Nazi with a book, that's your publisher. So, it is using the monopoly power of its position to the max.

I just love it!!!

Presumably these authors signed a book contract, and they agreed to the terms. If they didn't want to accept the contract, no one was forcing them to. This is just basic contract law.

I've got a great idea for a new book for Regency, something supporting tort reform to prevent lawsuits from authors who suddenly decide they don't like their book deals.

Someone with time on their hands should get these clowns to form a union. It wouldn't be called a union. It would be called an "author's working group" or "author's club". It would have dues only upon publication, and the club would have a "leader" who would talk to Regnery. The club would have secret documents which indicated that it was a union, but not in name.

Once it was up and running, the cover would be pulled off. Meetings would be taped, and various "dog-whistle" union statements would be uttered by the union "leader". Since these clowns are totally clueless, they would not recognize the union statements, but everyone would be encouraged to endorse them.

Sounds like a book to me.

Did you think your publisher was printing your books purely out of the goodness of his heart? He wants to make money off you. And he's a conservative, too; you should have expected that he'd try to cheat you of your royalties. That's what conservative free market economics is all about!

Of course, when you're the one getting the short end of the stick, the situation is entirely different! Suddenly the lack of regulations in the free market doesn't seem so yippy-skippy and wonderful when you have to hire a lawyer to get your fair payment from your publisher.

"Presumably these authors signed a book contract, and they agreed to the terms. If they didn't want to accept the contract, no one was forcing them to. This is just basic contract law."

I agree. However, what Regnery apparently does is act in bad faith, not against the contract. There probably is nothing in the contract about giving away books (IANAL). Thus, instead of making $5/book, they make $.05/book, and did not expect that.

After years of treating people like shit, they're getting shafted right back.

Karma's a bitch, ain't it?

When they stop mis-cataloging their books as non-fiction I will start to feel sorry for them.

Think of it as karma in action.

Obviously, your publishers read your books.

Proof positive (once again) that conservatives always see themselves as the elite-who-are-entitled-to-exploit-everyone-else. They can't fathom being exploited because that's what the "little people" are for. Eheheh...

Hmmmm... Seems to me that a few rightwingnut writers are suffering from delusions of grandeur. Really now. Jillions of dollars. Do you really think that there are that many people reading your rabid drivel? Accept it. Your sales are most likely hovering around a roll of toilet paper!

Maybe they need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and start taking some personal responsibility. That's what they've been advocating all along, right?

Has no-one told these people that sometimes you have to go with the publisher you've got, not the publisher you wish you had?

In the meantime, here's hoping that they stop worrying and learn to enjoy the expropriation of surplus value! Who could have predicted that the publishers would act in their interest, not the interest of the writers? Next thing you know, these "authors" (typists?) will be alienated from the means of production.

One can hope, anyway.

John Edwards, perhaps?

Within the publishing world, it has often been observed that conservative books that hit the bestseller list often do so because of so called "bulk sales." The New York Times bestseller list states in its fine print: "A dagger (†) indicates that some bookstores report receiving bulk orders." The general belief is that these bulk sales are a way that conservative activists artificially pump up sales of right-wing books in order to make the radical conservative viewpoint seem far more mainstream than it is. However, the downside for the author is that a lower royalty is paid on bulk sales than is paid for normal sales in the retail market. The rationale is that since the profit margin for each book is lower, the author needs to accept a lower royalty to make this practice profitable for the publisher; the argument is that what the author is losing in per-copy royalty he is making up in sheer quantity of copies sold. This is simple economics. The irony is that it's likely that these authors wouldn't even be bestselling authors if the bulk sales that they are suing over had never happened.

Classic! I hope the assorted tort "reforms" the wingdings have been pushing over the years bites them on the ass in this case. Oh, those litigious reactionaries, with their frivolous lawsuits!

Thanks for the laugh this morning, Mr. Leonard! As ever, we can't expect shame or consistency from the right wingdings on this, or any other matter. Theirs is ever the politics of opportunism.

I would bet that Coulter et al actually dictate their work. So the proper term, of course, would be Dictators.

Perhaps one of them will come out with a book about this experience called 'My Struggle'.