You may have seen the news about alt-right demagogue and all-around shitstirrer Milo Yiannopoulos and his book deal with Simon & Schuster’s conservative imprint, Threshold, reportedly worth $250,000. I have no knowledge of how that particular deal came together, but as somebody who’s served as an acquiring editor and seen similar scenarios play out, I imagine it was something like this:
- Milo and his literary agent decide they want to see if they can get a book deal. They put together a proposal, which boils down to: “Hi, I’m Milo, lots of people follow me on Twitter and plenty more have heard of me. I’m pretty famous right now, in case you haven’t noticed. Here’s some other famous conservatives who’ve sold a lot of books. I bet I can sell as many as them, probably even more. Oh, and here’s some stuff I wrote, so you can tell I write good.” Probably they come up with an outline for an entire book’s worth of material.
- Milo’s agent sends the proposal to—let’s say five editors, one at each of the Big 5 American publishing conglomerates. Milo’s agent says, “Hey, Milo’s going to be in town on this date. You should meet him.” Some, if not all, of the editors agree. Meetings are scheduled.
- Meetings take place. As Milo described it to a reporter, “I met with top execs at Simon & Schuster earlier in the year and spent half an hour trying to shock them with lewd jokes and outrageous opinions.” This gives the editors, and other members of the publishing team, an opportunity to see whether Milo can comport himself entertainingly with the media. If Milo’s agent is smart, and if the editors are serious, other people in this meeting are likely to include the house’s publicity director, marketing director, sales director, and/or the publisher him/herself.
- After the meetings, the editors at the various houses get together with their colleagues and figure out whether they really want to publish Milo’s book. Assuming that Milo didn’t pull some GG Allin shit in the meeting, the question isn’t “Do we really want to work with this guy?” but “So, do we really think people would buy this guy’s book?” Spreadsheets are compiled, based on how many books the house thinks it can sell, how much it costs to produce that many books, and how much they’d have to pay Milo in royalties (under standard industry terms) if they sold that many books.
- Meanwhile, Milo’s agent has gotten back to the editors, confirming that they’re interested in publishing Milo’s book. At this point, Milo’s agent is likely to set a date for an auction. On the day of the auction, everybody emails or calls Milo’s agent with their initial bids by a certain hour (noon’s often good, but sometimes they start earlier). A smart agent will suggest that the initial bid doesn’t just include the amount of money the house is willing to pay, but an outline of marketing and publicity plans. This will indicate that the house is already thinking seriously about how to make the book a success. Anyway, once the initial bids are in, Milo’s agent will look at the highest bid, then call the editor who made the lowest bid. (NOTE: Remember in the previous step, when the house figured out how much they’d have to pay Milo in royalties for selling a certain amount of books? That’s NOT going to be their opening bid.) “Hey,” Milo’s agent will say, “the top bid right now is $XXX. Can you top that?”
- So editors will either go higher than the highest bid, or they won’t. If the highest bid becomes greater than the amount in royalties a house has already figured on paying, then they have a choice: Apparently somebody else thinks they can sell more books than you thought you could sell. Are they right, or are they fooling themselves? Then you go back and do some more math, and figure out how many books you’d have to sell to meet the new bid, and you decide whether that’s realistic or not.
- Eventually, there’s only one publisher left. Sometimes, you reach that point by the end of the first day. (Keep in mind: Milo’s agent isn’t asking point blank: “Will you raise the bid?” It’s assumed that the editor probably has to go back to the publisher, lay out the situation, and get approval for a new, higher bid. Time is factored in for all that.) Sometimes, it can stretch out to a second day. Eventually, though, there’s only one publisher left. In this case, it’s Simon & Schuster.
Now, there’s other ways this could have happened. Milo’s agent might, for example, have decided to do a one-bid auction, which is exactly what it sounds like. To reiterate what I said up top, I have no idea how Milo’s book deal actually came together. This is just a gross simplification of how similar deals, involving high-profile public figures, often take place.
One thing I’d underline in this process, though, is that when we point fingers at Simon & Schuster for giving Milo $250,000 (and how that money is actually spread out is a whole other article), we risk eliding over the likelihood that plenty of other publishers were likely willing to give Milo $150,000, or $200,000, maybe even $225,000. Don’t hate the player—or, at least, don’t only hate the player; hate the game.
