http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21397/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/8/114050/1607#92
>...For the sake of opening up this discussion, I'd like to ask Amy
Goodman why she published her last book, The Exception to the Rulers:
Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love
Them, with Disney-owned Hyperion.
Michael Moore: What possessed you to make money for Rupert Murdoch by publishing your book, Stupid White Men, with ReganBooks/HarperCollins, and to then go to AOL/Time Warner's Warner Books with Dude! Where's My Country?, before jumping to a third corporate ship, Viacom's Simon & Schuster, to publish your latest offering, Will They Ever Trust Us Again?
David Corn: When you were underscoring the media's role in spreading W.'s deceptions, in The Lies of George W. Bush, why did you choose not only to go with a corporate-owned publisher, but with Crown - for years now, a member of the German-owned Bertelsmann AG conglomerate, which helped to spread anti-Semitic literature and Nazi propaganda in the years leading up to and during WWII? See here and ironically, here, in The Nation.
Al Franken: When publishing Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, why did you make money for Dutton, a cog in the wheel of British-owned media giant Pearson, rather than help to reform American media by making a commitment to and money for an independent American publisher? And, finally, I really hate to point out to populist Jim Hightower that he, too, made money for that same Brit media giant, by going with another of Pearson's holdings, Viking, when he published his latest book, Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush. Ouch. And this is an issue that resonates with me, personally, since we're currently putting the finishing touches on our book proposal (Chelsea Green is one of the publishers we have talked to).
There are several obvious reasons to go with a bigger publisher -- prestige, big advance, better promotional opportunities (e.g. getting on the Daily Show), and better bookstore penetration. Of course, you surrender something when you sell your soul to the Bertlesmanns and Murdochs of the world.
Chelsea Green looks to have effectively boxed me and Jerome in -- we'd look like hypocrites writing about building a Vast Left Wing Conspiracy to battle the VRWC, all the while publishing with a big corporate publisher. That's fine, because we were leaning on running with an indy publisher anyway. But here's the problem -- we do need an advance of some sort.
So there's a poll attached to this post. Would you consider making pre-orders on a book Jerome and I were writing, to help fund the research staff we want to put together? Details on the book would be forthcoming, so you'd get the chance to make an informed decision. But the big question is -- would you help us fund the writing of the book by purchasing your copy 3-6 months before it came out? (In practical terms, that would be mid summer to late fall, with the book coming out early 2006.)
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-- Michael Pugliese