why she did it

This morning I said that everyone who works in the media is interested in his/her career much more than in his/her audience. Clever, successful, edgy, reprehensible Judith Regan—responsible for allowing O. J. Simpson to throw his steaming piles of blood-soaked feces into the maws of the spectators at the New Circus Maximus—doesn’t call that into question so much as underscore the extraordinary tension that can exist between those two poles.***

Michael Cader of PublishersMarketplace (and PublishersLunch) gives all the inside scoop, with links, as he does the parsing [subscription only].

If You Can Believe It
Judith Regan’s bizarre 2,200-word statement should be read in full rather than through newspaper excerpts. The gist, as you probably know, is that she’s publishing the book because her ex-husband abused her. That and: “I made the decision to publish this book, and to sit face to face with the killer, because I wanted him, and the men who broke my heart and your hearts, to tell the truth, to confess their sins, to do penance and to amend their lives.”

If She Really Wanted to Get the Message Out
Why did Regan’s statement go semi-exclusively first to the Drudge Report, and then run exclusively in full in today’s Murdoch Post to help sell papers?
Drudge
Post

If He Confessed
Regan acknowledges that Simpson doesn’t say he committed the murders, and the hypothetical positioning of the text could be read as a denial rather than admission. Rather, she’s relying on ex-CIA agent Phil Houston, who says, “When killers confess, the way they often do it is by creating a hypothetical.”

If He Wrote It
I wonder how many of those killers hire “an uncredited ghostwriter” (NYT) to write their hypothetical confessions for them?

Simpson didn’t write the book.

He didn’t sign the contract for the book.

He didn’t own the rights to the book.

We really don’t know how the book came about and who is responsible for it. Former Simpson attorney F. Lee Bailey tells Newsweek, “In essence, people pushed He adds: “So supposedly they came up with a book that says, ‘I’m innocent because if I had done it, I would have done it this way’.”

If She Meant It
“What I wanted was closure, not money,” says Regan.

Great. So why isn’t the publisher giving all the proceeds to charity or the victimized families? You won’t find that in her statement.

Regan says: “What I do know is I didn’t pay him. I contracted through a third party who owns the rights, and I was told the money would go to his children.” Translation: she doesn’t actually know where the money is going.

If She Didn’t Report to Someone Else
Of course maybe Regan doesn’t have the authority to give the net receipts to charity or the victims. This isn’t just about Judith. Officially, she reports to Jane Friedman. (And if she doesn’t, now is the time to make clear to whom she does report.) Regan is part of HarperCollins, which finances, sells, and collects the receipts for the book. As the Boston Globe editorial page says today, “this supposed tell-all degrades the publishing business and calls into question the integrity of everyone responsible for putting it into print.”

So who is responsible? And where is Jane? So far Friedman and HarperCollins have declined requests to comment publicly. But Friedman has the power to do the closest thing left to making this right.

If They Sell It
Some booksellers have been clear that they won’t interfere with customers’ choice, but they don’t want any part of these proceeds either. Vroman’s of Pasadena announced yesterday that it “has chosen not to profit from this title and will therefore be donating all proceeds from its sale to The Nicole Brown Foundation.” That was easy.

Nancy Olson of Quail Ridge Books & Music tells Shelf Awareness she’ll give all proceeds to “a nonprofit here that shelters battered women and children” and Green Apple Books in San Francisco tells them they will do the same.

More FYIs
Wal-mart issued a statement saying they will carry the book to satisfy customer’s perceived interest. While the publisher has not announced a first printing, we’re told the initial planned cap of a 300,000-copy laydown was exceeded, perhaps by as much as another 100,000 copies. These numbers are essentially confirmed by Harper Canada CEO David Kent in the Toronto Star.

———
*** Although it’s being argued that Regan is only giving the audience what it wants and that the book will be a runaway bestseller. Which is probably true. Panem et circensis and all that.

She is also making news—the very best way to garner publicity for herself and her enterprise (the book business, which, these days, only generates big sales when it makes a big splash).

Clever, that.
Disgusting. But it works.

update: to read much more about this subject—and about the book biz—be sure to check out GalleyCat.