Eagle Accused of Short-Changing Authors on Royalties

By Ron Hogan on November 7, 2007 10:22 AM

If you haven’t seen Motoko Rich‘s story on the bloc of conservative authors suing Eagle Publishing, have a look. Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter have filed suit against Eagle, the corporation behind the iconic conservative imprint Regnery, over what they term “a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.” More simply: Eagle may be shifting large quantities of Regnery titles to Eagle-owned book clubs and other organizations which then sell the books at a discount in order to stiff the authors on royalties. If you’re wondering how that would work, Rich clarifies: “Their contracts specify that the publisher pays only 10 percent of the amount received by the publisher [on such sales], minus costs—as opposed to 15 percent of the cover price—for the book.” And that leads straight to the nut graf:

“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?’”

Any agents reading this want to chime in on how standard that clause is, and whether you’d let an author accept it? One anonymous tipster has already suggested that the implications of this lawsuit extend to “any publisher who has a direct-to-consumer arm, like Rodale or the evangelical publishers.” And acquiring editors: Do you agree with Miniter in his other complaint that Eagle’s practices, by keeping a significant portion of Regnery sales out of the Nielsen Bookscan loop, keep authors who want to “trade up” to New York publishing from getting advances that reflect their true commercial potential? Tell me what you think; you can stay anonymous if you like.

Reaction has been muted so far, but I do like Kevin Drum‘s response: “If a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged, what do you call a conservative who’s come face to face with the naked face of vertically integrated capitalism?