My reader’s response will be over the article about Roxane Gay pulling her book deal from a major publisher because of Milo Yiannopoulos’s book.
In January 2017, famous feminist author Roxane Gay pulled her book How to be Heard (which was scheduled to be released in March) from publisher Simon & Schuster. Her reason for doing this was because the publisher had just made a deal with the controversial speaker and writer Milo Yiannopoulos to publish his book, Dangerous, also in March. Yiannopoulos was famously known for working as the tech editor at Breitbart, the alt-right conservative website, where he used his position to promote hate speech against feminists, African Americans, Muslims, and the LGBTQ communities just to name a few. “His unapologetic, politically incorrect and provocative online persona got him kicked off Twitter in July {2017}” and later FaceBook {2019} (O’Brien). Gay simply stated that she could not work with a publisher who supported Yiannopoulus’s type of speech and criticized them for making the deal.
Since this article was published in 2017, I needed to find out if these two books were eventually published and by whom. How to be Heard was published in 2019 by Harper and Dangerous was self published in 2017. Simon & Schuster ended up dropping Yiannopoulos’s book deal after much backlash from other authors and the public. Later Yiannopoulos sued the publisher, but then dropped the suit.
Many argue that this is a violation of freedom of speech which everyone knows is guaranteed in the First Amendment. However, there are some exceptions. In simple terms, Nilsson lists these as: obscenity, perjury, inciting violence, students’ speech, offensive, and expressing political views. It is clear that Yiannopulos’s speeches and posts on Twitter and Facebook were both offensive and possibly incentive towards violence. Gay was correct in pulling her book from Simon & Schuster because their deal with Yiannopoulos showed that they supported what he stood for and said (as mentioned above, they later withdrew, but only after much negative publicity). I remember when UC Berkley cancelled his event after violence broke out on campus protesting his visit; the same occurred one month earlier at the University of Washington where one person was shot after he gave a speech. The same happened later in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. A pattern seemed to have emerged that wherever Yiannopoulos went, there was violence. As Gay stated in the article when she pulled her book deal “she can afford to take this stand. Not everyone can. Remember that” (O’Brien). This is so true, because she had the financial means and connections, Gay was able to pull away from Simon & Schuster and sign with another publisher. Yiannopoulos was also able to do this, but because he was banned from several social platforms and controversial, no publisher was willing to take his book. So what did he do? He created his own publishing company in order to get his book out. With all the negative publicity, curiosity increased and Dangerous ended up on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today’s best sellers list for several weeks.
Works Cited:
Nilsson, Jeff (2017). The Saturday Evening Post. ‘6 Surprising Exceptions to Freedom of Speech’. Retrieved from https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/03/6-exceptions-to-freedom-of-speech/
O’Brien, Sara A (2017). CNN Business. ‘Bad Feminsit’ author Roxane Gay pulls book deal over Milo Yiannopoulus. Retrieved from https://money.cnn.com/2017/01/25/technology/roxane-gay-simon-schuster-milo-yiannopoulos/
Great prompt response! You did an excellent job researching this and including quotes and references. Like you said, Yiannopoulus still had free speech, he could afford to publish the book himself. Publishers don't need to promote authors who incite hate, bigotry, and violence unless they're willing to pay the price of less readership. Full points!
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