Senator Hawley finds new publisher after being blacklisted over Capitol riot… and his old publisher will have to distribute it
US Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), who lost his book deal with Simon & Schuster after supporting President Donald Trump’s allegations of election fraud, has landed a new publisher for ‘The Tyranny of Big Tech.’
Independent publisher Regnery Publishing, which has put out books for such conservative authors as Michelle Malkin, Ted Cruz and Ann Coulter, has stepped up to work with Hawley. Regnery president Thomas Spence wrote in Monday’s Wall Street Journal that he will proudly publish Hawley’s tome after Simon & Schuster’s decision to blacklist the senator made the book “more important than ever.”
“We don’t have to agree with everything, or anything, Mr. Hawley does,” Spence said. “We ask only if his book is well crafted and has something true and worthwhile to say. The answer is yes.”
Ironically, Regnery has had a global distribution agreement with Simon & Schuster for all of its titles since 2018, so the publishing giant will have to distribute Hawley’s books in overseas markets. Regnery distributes its own books domestically.
Simon & Schuster had planned to publish ‘The Tyranny of Big Tech’ in June but abruptly canceled the agreement on January 7, citing Hawley’s “role in what became a dangerous threat” in the January 6 US Capitol riot. The senator called the move “Orwellian” and said it was a “direct assault on the First Amendment.” He vowed at the time to take the publisher to court and “fight this cancel culture with everything I have.”
Hawley also has faced a petition by alumni of Yale Law School, his alma mater, to disbar him and other Republican senators whose allegations of fraud in the November 3 presidential election “incited” the Capitol riot.
Spence said about 250 employees of publishing houses have issued a statement demanding “No book deals for traitors.” By “traitors,” he said, they mean any participant in Trump’s administration.
“Readiness to silence someone because of who he is or whom he associates with is often called the cancel culture, but I prefer an older term, blacklisting, whose historical associations expose the ugliness of what is going on,” Spence said. “Not so long ago, publishing professionals would have been horrified to be accused of it. Today they compete to see who can proclaim his blacklist with the fiercest invective.”
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