The Year in Publishing: August 2008

Random House told Sherry Jones that, after signing her to a six-figure deal for two novels about one of the wives of the prophet Muhammad, they were afraid of terrorist retaliation, so they cut her loose. This spurred a lively debate over censorhsip with much posturing on both sides. All of this controversy, Jones told us in one of her first interviews, came as a complete surprise. None of this was good for Random House’s reputation, but they didn’t come out of it nearly as badly as Denise Spellberg, the woman who sabotaged Jones’s path to publication. (Though only briefly, as we’ll see in later posts.)
Chelsea Green had a book about Barack Obama they wanted to rush to market; they weren’t going to have finished copies in time for the Democratic National Convention, so they distributed coupons for an exclusive print-on-demand edition available only through Amazon.com. That got indie booksellers good and mad; even Barnes & Noble cancelled its order in retaliation. But the issue wasn’t that simple.
Threshold, the conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster, published a book called Obama Nation written by one of the guys who swiftboated John Kerry in 2004, which was good for a couple days of fake controversy.