Ed Cone pointed to an article in the NY Times about a lawsuit brought by some conservative authors against conservative publisher Eagle Publishing. This caught my attention because Eagle was started by Tom Phillips who also founded Phillips Publishing (now Phillips International) back in 1973 and built it into a newsletter publishing powerhouse.  I spent over 10 years in the newsletter industry and so I often found myself competing with them in various markets. Heck, they offered me a job about 10 years ago.

The lawsuit claims that Eagle is ripping off the authors on royalties because they are selling books from their Regnery imprint to other Eagle-owned entities like book clubs and newsletter publishers at a deep discount.  Those entities are then selling the books at a discount to their members (book club) or using them as promotional bait for newsletter subscribers.  Here’s the rub according to the article:

In Regnery’s case, according to the lawsuit, the publisher sells
books to sister companies, including the Conservative Book Club, which
then sells the books to members at discounted prices, “at, below or
only marginally above its own cost of publication.” In the lawsuit the
authors say they receive “little or no royalty” on these sales because
their contracts specify that the publisher pays only 10 percent of the
amount received by the publisher, minus costs — as opposed to 15
percent of the cover price — for the book.

Mr. Miniter said
that meant that although he received about $4.25 a copy when his books
sold in a bookstore or through an online retailer, he only earned about
10 cents a copy when his books sold through the Conservative Book Club
or other Eagle-owned channels. “The difference between 10 cents and
$4.25 is pretty large when you multiply it by 20,000 to 30,000 books,”
Mr. Miniter said. “It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making
collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance.”
He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist
company?”

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Eagle newsletter publisher was using these books for promotional efforts.  In all my years marketing newsletters I never found a promotional item that could beat a well-targeted book at increasing subscription sales rates.  Believe me, we tried everything from baby boomboxes to handbags and none of them lifted rates like a good book title.  One newsletter I worked on that covered HR issues for small business owners got the best result from two little books our editors created called "Hired at Will" and "Fired at Will".  In years of trying those books couldn’t be beat.

Don’t you love the line, "Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?"  Personally I think these privileged few are finally getting a taste of the backhand that many average employees are getting from their companies on a daily basis.  The company is merely doing everything it can to maximize its bottom line and from what’s in the article they don’t appear to be doing anything that breaches the authors’ contracts.  It’s really no different than reducing company contributions to employee health plans (or negating them altogether), freezing wages at below cost of living increases, keeping minimum wage below poverty level, etc.  Yeah, the irony is delicious.