Simon & Schuster US is facing a $10m lawsuit from the controversial right wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos following the publisher’s decision to cancel publication of his memoirs Dangerous earlier this year. The publisher took the decision following comments the author made in a radio interview.
The author has said he will now self-publish the title under his own imprint Dangerous Books. He commented: “I am going to spend the next year making the name Simon & Schuster synonymous with censorship.” He added: “I am going to take not just all Simon & Schuster’s best authors but all of the best authors of all the conservative imprints in this country and launch my own imprint called Dangerous Books. We are going to publish every mischievous, dissident, hell-raising guy you have ever heard of…”
For the publisher the lawsuit comes just when S&S felt it had successfully extricated itself from the negative publicity garnered by its original decision to publish the author. It also follows some good results for the first quarter of 2017, which saw revenue rise 11% to $161m. S&S CEO Carolyn Reidy said that all four of the company’s divisions – including Salaam Reads, which focuses on Muslim characters and stories – performed well in the quarter, and singled out the audio group for particular praise.
Despite the impending lawsuit, Reidy added that she was optimistic for 2017, with new titles coming from some of its biggest authors, among them Stephen King and Walter Isaacson, who wrote the biography of Apple founder, Steve Jobs.
