Simon & Schuster Defends Milo’s Book Deal

Vanity Fair reports:

Book publishing company Simon & Schuster caused a stir earlier this week when it was reported they’d struck a deal with “alt-right” provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, whose anti-immigration, anti-Islam writing for Breitbart News has made him something of a cult figure within the resurgent white nationalist movement. (The Donald Trump supporter is perhaps best known for getting himself banned from Twitter after he encouraged racist harassment of SNL star Leslie Jones.)

Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, offered Yiannopoulos $250,000 to write the memoir, entitled Dangerous. While those offended by Yiannopoulos’ advocacy of “trolling” as political expression were appalled at the publishing company’s decision, Simon & Schuster is standing by the deal.

“We do not and never have condoned discrimination or hate speech in any form,” the company said in a statement released Friday. “At Simon & Schuster we have always published books by a wide range of authors with greatly varying, and frequently controversial opinions, and appealing to many different audiences of readers. While we are cognizant that many may disagree vehemently with the books we publish we note that the opinions expressed therein belong to our authors, and do not reflect either a corporate viewpoint or the views of our employees.”

Last night author Danielle Henderson, who has a memoir due from Simon & Schuster in 2018, made her twitter account private “so I can get drunk w/friends instead of blocking trolls all night.” Henderson had drawn the ire of Milo’s troll army by tweeting, “I’m looking at my @simonschuster contract, and unfortunately there’s no clause for ‘what if we decide to publish a white nationalist.’” At this writing Milo’s book stands on #4 on Amazon’s best-sellers list after spending two days at #1.