- Joined
- Feb 16, 2005
- Messages
- 2,093
- Reaction score
- 676
I can think of too many publishers that might be.Take a smallish publishing house with a somewhat egotistical publisher who thinks he is more computer-literate than he is; add to that his certainty that if he drops into any department and make changes he will improve things, and not cause chaos; and then consider what might happen if he thinks that one of his own books (which he acquired for his own publishing house) is ready to go because he's fed up with his editor questioning the potentially libellous statements he's made about the American president.
Consider what might happen in such a situation. But please don't ask me about it, because I still wake up in a panic nearly two decades later.
I once worked at a house where I had an entire system in place for hiding books in progress on my computer.
When I first got into New York publishing, I noticed uneasily that when people praised some publisher because "at least he's not a violent sociopath," they weren't entirely kidding. Just mostly kidding. Ha ha.
I was out on the West Coast when the whole Bret Easton Ellis/S&S/American Psycho thing broke. I heard about it at a fairly literary party. "The head of Simon & Schuster has pulled it from their list on the grounds that it's morally objectionable," someone told me.
I was dumbfounded: "Dick Snyder...? thought something was morally objectionable?" Then, brow rapidly clearing: "Oh! He must have gotten someone else to read it for him." Which of course turned out to be the case.
Things are probably worse in Hollywood.
Last edited: