Hundreds of Simon & Schuster employees are demanding the publishing giant not publish any books written by former Trump administration officials.
The petition demanding the New York publishing conglomerate to stop treating “the Trump administration as a ‘normal’ chapter in American history” collected 216 internal signatures, representing approximately 14% of the company’s workforce, and support from several thousand nonemployees, according to the Wall Street Journal. The petition singled out a planned two-part autobiography to be authored by former Vice President Mike Pence, which the publisher’s employees alleged amounted to support for “racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Blackness, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism, islamophobia, antisemitism, and violence” in the online petition.
Last week, Simon & Schuster President and CEO Jonathan Karp defended the company’s decision to publish Pence’s work, citing the company’s duty to “publish, not cancel.”
SIMON & SCHUSTER DEFENDS PENCE BOOK DEAL: ‘WE COME TO WORK EACH DAY TO PUBLISH, NOT CANCEL’
“As a publisher in this polarized era, we have experienced outrage from both sides of the political divide and from different constituencies and groups,” he said in an internal letter to employees that was obtained by the Washington Examiner. “But we come to work each day to publish, not cancel, which is the most extreme decision a publisher can make, and one that runs counter to the very core of our mission to publish a diversity of voices and perspectives. We will, therefore, proceed in our publishing agreement with Vice President Mike Pence.”
Simon & Schuster announced the book deal with Pence, in which the former vice president will focus on how he went from growing up in Indiana to becoming the vice president, in an April 7 statement. The first part is tentatively scheduled for release in 2023.
The letter’s signers demanded the company revoke its arrangement with Pence, a move that would not be without precedent. Simon & Schuster previously reneged on a publishing deal with Jonathan Mattingly, one of the officers who shot Breonna Taylor.
“That decision was immediate, unprecedented, and responsive to the concerns we heard from you and our authors,” Karp said of the Mattingly book in his internal letter. “At the same time, we have contractual obligations and must continue to respect the terms of our agreements with our client publishers.”
Simon & Schuster also scrapped plans to publish a book by Sen. Josh Hawley on censorship from technology companies after he participated in GOP lawmakers’ Jan. 6 objection to the certification of the Electoral College tally, which preceded the Capitol Hill insurrection.
“After witnessing the disturbing, deadly insurrection that took place on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., Simon & Schuster has decided to cancel publication of Senator Josh Hawley’s forthcoming book, THE TYRANNY OF BIG TECH,” the company said on Jan. 7. ” As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: at the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley.”
Days later, Hawley reached an agreement with Regnery Publishing, a conservative publishing house based in Washington, which said it was “discouraging” to see Simon & Schuster “cower before the ‘woke mob'” in canceling the publication of Hawley’s book. The Tyranny of Big Tech is scheduled for release this spring.
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Representatives for Simon & Schuster did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
