Publishers Encounter Political Storms in Turn to Right

Publishers Encounter Political Storms in Turn to Right

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Most mainstream publishers try to claim partisan neutrality and publish books across the political spectrum. (Simon & Schuster, for example, published Hillary Clinton’s memoir and campaign book, as well as Mr. Trump’s “Crippled America.”) But occasionally, publishers get dragged into a political scrum.

This past weekend, Broadside Books, a conservative imprint at HarperCollins, became embroiled in a controversy involving a CNN investigation that found that one of Broadside’s authors, the conservative radio host and columnist Monica Crowley, had plagiarized numerous passages in her 2012 best seller, “What the (Bleep) Just Happened.” Ms. Crowley was recently selected by Mr. Trump to serve in a senior communications role at the National Security Council.

In defending Ms. Crowley, the Trump transition team called the plagiarism charges “a politically motivated attack,” and described HarperCollins as one of “the largest and most respected publishers in the world,” invoking the company’s stature and reputation as way to lend credibility to the author. But on Tuesday, HarperCollins announced it was withdrawing the digital edition of the book until Ms. Crowley revises it with proper attribution, placing the publishing house in the awkward position of being at odds with the incoming administration.

Conservative books have been a blockbuster category for publishers for decades, dating to the rise of right-wing radio and cable in the 1980s. The genre exploded during Bill Clinton’s presidency and has thrived in the last eight years, under President Obama, as right-wing writers forged a united front as ideological underdogs.

Regnery, a conservative publishing house, is courting voters who backed Donald J. Trump with books like “How Trump Won.”

For publishers, the books have been reliable cash cows. Bill O’Reilly’s historical “Killing” series has more than 17 million copies in print. In the weeks leading up to the election, the best-seller lists were dominated by partisan polemics by Dinesh D’Souza, Michael Savage, Edward Klein and Gary J. Byrne, whose anti-Clinton book “Crisis of Character” sold some 247,000 hardcover copies, according to Nielsen.

But now, without conservatives filling the role as the voice of opposition, the urgency and potency of right-wing books will almost certainly be diminished. And with the political principles that conservative writers have advocated — the repeal of Obamacare, a crackdown on immigration and the dismantling of environmental regulations — set to become the policy goals of a Republican-led government, the commercial future of conservative publishing looks far more unsettled.

Publishers are proceeding cautiously. After the election, many editors quietly scrapped plans to publish books attacking Mrs. Clinton and canceled other sober reflections on the future of the Republican Party in the wake of a Trump defeat. Some are planning to release fewer titles in 2017. Others are returning to safer topics, like Ronald Reagan or the founding fathers.

“Conservative publishing is always a better business when the other side is in power,” said Adam Bellow, the editorial director of a new political imprint at St. Martin’s Press.

At the same time, the ideological identity of the right is murkier than it was before Mr. Trump became the nominee and then the president-elect, making it harder for conservatives to reach a broad readership. Will books that hold Mr. Trump accountable to his campaign pledges alienate his supporters, and will mainstream Republican politicians and pundits appeal to or repel his base? Will voices from more extreme wings of the Republican Party find a bigger foothold in publishing, further cementing their place in mainstream political discourse?

In a way, it’s not surprising that a major publisher wants to appeal to Mr. Yiannopoulos’s base of young conservative followers.

Mr. Bellow, who read Mr. Yiannopoulos’s proposal but did not bid on the book, said he was open to publishing other new voices from the so-called alt-right at St. Martin’s.

“Donald Trump has brought into politics a lot of people who were previously excluded, and the boundary of political speech has shifted to the right,” Mr. Bellow said. “This is a new force in American politics, and they deserve to be heard.”

Simon & Schuster was far from alone in its willingness to embrace Mr. Yiannopoulos, according to his literary agent, Thomas Flannery Jr., who said “virtually every major conservative imprint expressed interest.” Threshold — which has published books by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and, recently, Mr. Trump — was appealing to Mr. Yiannopoulos because “they don’t shy away from publishing controversial figures,” Mr. Flannery said.

“Guilty as Sin,” a book that took Hillary Clinton to task, made the best-seller list during the run-up to the presidential election.

But the fury Simon & Schuster has encountered underscores the perils publishers face as they tailor their publishing plans to reflect volatile new political realities.

Mr. Yiannopoulos, who is gay and describes himself in interviews as more of a cultural figure than a political one, is unlikely to appeal to older or more religious conservatives. His book “Dangerous” — which will address his relationship to the alt-right, his self-proclaimed role as a free-speech crusader and his banishment from Twitter — is more of a memoir than a new conservative manifesto.

Marji Ross, the president and publisher of Regnery, a conservative publishing house, said she considered Mr. Yiannopoulos’s book proposal but did not pursue it because she felt it would be too polarizing among mainstream conservatives.

“Some of our market would have loved it, and some of our market would have been very uncomfortable with it,” Ms. Ross said.

It is a dilemma many conservative writers and editors are now facing. As the political ideology of the right has been injected with populism and nationalism, conservative writers and publishers are wrestling with how to reach a wide audience now that a block of readers that was once reliably in lock step philosophically has splintered. Once dependable formulas for generating best sellers — write a book attacking the Clintons, plug it on Fox News, repeat — may no longer deliver a hit.

“The 2016 election turned the political world upside down, and it also turned the publishing world upside down,” said Matt Latimer, a literary agent at Javelin whose clients include conservative writers. “The audience has fractured. A few years ago, a Paul Ryan book was widely embraced by conservative book buyers. Would Trump voters buy a Paul Ryan book today? I don’t know.”

Right-wing authors are also losing a reliable driver of book sales — the Clintons. Last year, Regnery alone had three best-selling books that took aim at Mrs. Clinton, including its first graphic novel, “Clinton Cash,” adapted from the book by Peter Schweizer, and “Hillary’s America,” Mr. D’Souza’s book, which sold more than 200,000 copies.

“We had certainly planned to take advantage of those opportunities if Hillary Clinton had won the election, and we looked at several books that we had signed up or considered the day after the election and thought, well, those aren’t going to work,” Ms. Ross said. “Oftentimes, we have said here that what’s bad for America is good for Regnery book sales.”

Regnery has instead pivoted to courting Trump voters with forthcoming books like “How Trump Won,” by the Breitbart editor-at-large Joel Pollak and Larry Schweikart, and a series of “Deplorables Guides” to issues like immigration, gun control and climate change, using a moniker Trump’s supporters adopted for themselves.

“The mood of our market is far, far different with Trump as president than it would have been with Hillary Clinton as president,” Ms. Ross said. “It’s hopeful, but cautious.”

Correction: January 13, 2017

A picture caption on Thursday with the continuation of an article about the publishing industry’s struggles with polarizing right-wing authors misstated, in some copies, the year the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., occurred. It was last June, not June 2015.

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