...And Everyone Is Writing a Book: UPDATE

From a quote that was conjured out of a few word fragments which someone sorta remembered reading on an ancient Assyrian tablet.  Words which were then passed around many times, reworded several times, and then, finally, misattributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero:  

"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." 

Still, nice quote.  And today the book in question is this.

Author: Salina Zito.

If you are unfamiliar with the genre in which Zito made her fortune, I have a short explainer here: Today in Magic Ruralism (tm): Salena Zito

Publisher: Hachette Press.

From the publisher's blurb

Hachette Nashville is comprised of three imprints—Faithwords, a publisher of the world’s best voices in the growing inspirational market; Center Street, an imprint publishing Nonfiction books in such categories as Conservative Political and Military; and Worthy, an inspirational adult and children’s book publisher specializing in Christian authors and bestselling nonfiction and fiction books.

The Faithworks imprint specializes in cranking out slabs of empty Christian calories by god-botherers like Joel Osteen.

The Center Street imprint, well, see if you can deduce what brand of slop they specialize in based on a selection from their list authors.  In addition to Zito, they pay money to publish a lot of propaganda by Newt Gingrich.  Then there's Rob Schneider, Donald Trump, Jr., Whiskey Pete Hegseth, Tom Homan and Vivek Ramaswamy. There are also some of the lesser lights of the American fascist party such as right-wing troll Andy Ngo's "Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy" (oh crap, they're on to us!) and a couple of Conservative potato bugs you've never heard of named Susan Crabtree and Jedd McFatter who collaborated on "Fool’s Gold: The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All" because sharting out deathless prose like that would be too much for just one person.

Hachette's business plan is painfully clear, and at least some of the people who work there (well, used to work there) have a (had a) serious enough problem with their company throwing in with the fascists to quit.  

From The Guardian:

Hachette employees protest and quit over launch of conservative imprint

Basic Liberty, a publishing imprint launched in the wake of Trump’s election win, will be helmed by Thomas Spence, an editor associated with Project 2025 thinktank The Heritage Foundation

Staff are protesting against a new US imprint of global publisher Hachette Book Group (HBG) specialising in conservative books, launched in the wake of Donald Trump’s election win.

A letter from an anonymous group of HBG employees has been published on social media, criticising the launch of Basic Liberty. It also expresses concern at the hiring of executive editor Thomas Spence. Spence is the former president of conservative publisher Regnery and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the rightwing thinktank that coordinated the Project 2025 initiative, which sets out plans to reshape the US government and strip minorities of legal protections...

Good on 'em.

Sadly, there are also people who we thought knew better -- who were voted into office based on the presumption that they knew better -- who clearly have no problem schmoozing with the fascists.  

One of them appears to be first-term Senator John Fetterman, shown here rubbing elbows with the dregs of American democracy at (checks notes) Salina Zito's book launch party.  

Ah crap.

From The New Republic:

John Fetterman Seems Like a Risk to Himself and Everyone Around Him

A damning new report reveals how the Democratic senator appears to be endangering his own life, and those around him.

Senator John Fetterman isn’t in good shape—and could be a danger to himself and those around him.

New York magazine reports that Fetterman, who suffered a stroke in 2022 one month before being elected to the Senate, is unrecognizable to his past and present staff, prone to “conspiratorial thinking” and “megalomania.” His former chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, wrote his concerns in a May 2024 letter to Dr. David Williamson, the neuropsychiatrist who oversaw Fetterman’s treatment at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C....

With friends like these...

You know, after 20 years at this blogging thing with an archive of +12,000 posts to draw from, maybe it's time for me to go for some of that easy book money.  Just bolt together a couple of dozens posts, kintsugi them together with All!New! intros an outros, and ship them off to...uh...

Remind me again, what's the name of that publishing house that pays top dollar for scathing Liberal deconstructions of the Republican party?  

The one that embraces and promotes books by dirty hippy newcomers who, when it comes to references from media and publishing industries, arrive with "neither chick nor child"?  

The one that treats its stable of dirty hippy writers with the care and attention that Hachette publishing provides to, say, a Rob Schneider or the dynamic duo of Susan Crabtree and Jedd McFatter?

UPDATE:  Sharp-eyed area blogger Charles Pierce notes "The cover of Zito's book is a dead-on copy of two books about authentic American tragedies".  These two books.  

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Fetish Objects

Way back at the end of the last century, I happened to pass a book display at a quaint, old-timey "Booke Store" offering to sell me All!Four!Count!'Em!Four! "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace" books as a set.  

Since I was not about to shell out one pfennig for the novelization of one of the shittiest movies of all times --

-- I had no idea why anyone would even consider asking the buying public to invest in a four-pack of such awfulness.  

Were there some interesting difference between them?  Alternate endings?  Some, subtle printing errata that would make such a thing valuable to a collector?

Nope.  Just the same, shitty story with four, different covers.  Mass-produced fetish signifiers designed by marketers to convince already-gullible fanboys to exchange a chunk of actual money for the privilege of displaying a matching, 4-volume set of booklike objects on his shelf  in order to further validate and underscore his status as a member in good standing of the club.

Might as well have been blank pages or a slab of  plastic for all the value they were supposed to hold as books.

Of course, Star Wars games and action-figures and sleeping bags and dildos will never die, but books are a different matter: no matter how rabid the fan base, eventually the market for identical, useless, pricey, book-shaped crap that performs no other function besides taking up space on an already-crowded shelf will start to collapse.

Bear that parable in mind as you read this:

Killing Conservative Books: The Shocking End Of A Publishing Gold Rush

A decade ago, mainstream publishers became convinced they could make millions by churning out books for the right — and now the bubble may be bursting. From Allan Bloom to Ann Coulter.

The conservative book business has seen better days. Ten years ago, the genre was a major source of intellectual energy on the right, and the site of a publishing boom, with conservative imprints popping up at industry giants like Random House and Penguin. But after a decade of disruption, uneven sales, and fierce competition, many leading figures in the conservative literati fear the market has devolved into an echo of cable news, where an overcrowded field of preachers feverishly contends for the attention of the same choir.

“I think the problems in the conservative publishing arena are more acute than in the rest of the industry,” said Keith Urbahn, former chief of staff to Donald Rumsfeld, who now runs a communications firm in Washington and works as a literary agent for conservative authors.

The challenges afflicting the market are varied, but in interviews with BuzzFeed, several editors, agents, and executives faulted the same trend they were celebrating in 2003, when mainstream publishers began elevating conservative editors, like Adam Bellow and Adrian Zackheim, and luring high-profile Republican figures like consultant Mary Matalin into the book business. At the time, many on the right welcomed this development as the sort of victory that had eluded them in Hollywood, academia, and the mainstream press — a mass influx of conservatives that would wrest the industry from the hands of liberal elites, and work to reverse the tide of the culture wars.

Instead, what followed was the genrefication of conservative literature. Over the next 10 years, corporate publishers launched a half-dozen imprints devoted entirely to producing, promoting, and selling books by right-leaning authors — a model that consigned their work to a niche, same as science fiction or nutritional self-help guides. Many of the same conservatives who cheered this strategy at the start now complain that it has isolated their movement’s writers from the mainstream marketplace of ideas, wreaked havoc on the economics of the industry, and diminished the overall quality of the work.

Editors at these imprints face unprecedented pressure to land cable news and radio provocateurs like Ann Coulter, rather than promote the combative intellectuals, like Allan Bloom and Charles Murray, on whom the business was first built. “You are left to rely completely on cable and radio [for promotion] and as a consequence of that, you have to provide those venues the type of material they want,” said Bellow, who runs Harper Collins’ conservative imprint, Broadside. “It’s become a kind of blood sport and the most ruthless gladiator comes out on top.”

...

The Conservative book publishing industry has always been one of the more painfully obvious Wingnut Welfare slop troughs. The quality of the writing generally ranges from dull, Soviet-style rote recitations of party-line propaganda, to just embarrassing, to poo-scrawlings on the madhouse wall, and on the rare occasions when the ideas manage to rise even to the level of cut-and-paste Republican bumper stickers from 1988 they are invariably touted as the state-of-the-art in cutting-edge Conservative thinking.

For the "author", cranking out a Conservative book means a payday, a free ride on the Mouse Circus  merry-go-round and a means to up your speaking fees.

For the "reader", buying such persiflage and stacking it on your shelf serves the same purpose as Rick Perry's suddenly-conspicuous glasses: a prop for stupid people to feel smart Because Books! 

More Book Ideas

UPDATE: Welcome Vanity Fair/James Wolcott Readers. Also too, if anyone knows Mr. Wolcott's email address and wants to send it my way so I can thank him more directly than standing atop our Big Chrome Bean Thing and waving in the direction of the Hudson River, please send it along to driftglass00 AT yahoo DOT com.