Authors getting '10 percent of nothing' for foamer books

Five right-wing authors have sued their publisher for marketing huge lots of their books to book clubs and other outlets it owns at vastly reduced prices, meaning that instead of getting the usual 15% royalty on cover price, they get 10% of the publisher's net profit on the internally-marketed books, which is virtually nil.

Said one disgruntled writer: "You get 10 per cent of nothing because they basically give them away." Another complained:

The difference between 10 cents and $4.25 is pretty large when you multiply it by 20,000 to 30,000 books. It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance. Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?

I'm not sure where the Marxist part comes into it, unless he's referring to the fact that these writers are already wealthy and the publisher, using the dictum "To each according to his needs," figured they didn't need the money.

Anyway, fun for all. Once you see what books they're talking about, you'll quickly lose any sympathy. The titles include such shit-bombs as "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" and "Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America's National Security."

technorati: conservatives, Republicans, right wing