Little Brown is doing the right thing in pulling Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan’s novel from the stores, so I will do the right thing in a (financially) much smaller way and apologize to Markos Zuniga for my snotty comments about his book sales. I should have known better because, as I noted below, it’s been a number of years since one of mine sold very well. Book sales are mysterious. When I have asked publishers for an ad for one of my novels, they have frequently told me “Ads don’t sell books.” When I have mentioned a good review and wondered why the book wasn’t selling (again hinting at an ad), they have told me “Reviews don’t sell books.” So what sells books? Beats me. For a while I thought the Internet might – and it does. But only to a point. So far I haven’t seen it push anybody’s work onto the bestseller list, or even that close to it. In any case, I wish Markos the best and, again, apologize.
UPDATE: More above.
Why apologize to Kos? He was the one who bragged about how well his book would sell.
Kos is very young. If he bragged about his sales, he’s naive. Writing a book is quite a different thing than writing a blog.
I will never forget Kos’s (“screw them, they deserve to die”) comment on the 4 American civilians who were lynched in Iraq. He is a gutter snipe and I would rather chew broken glass then apologize to him.
Placement sells. Pay Borders and Barnes & Noble for window placement, table placement. Go on television and hold up your book and smile.
Go on the lecture circuit. Read from your book in Butte and Saginaw and Buffalo. Be like Patricia Cornwell and show how you hate men and place your book in airport news shops where tired travelers buy books without looking or thinking. I once met a mystery writer in Borders who met me at the front door, grabbed my hand and shook it telling me to buy his book ?Pleeeease.? I felt like royalty but did not buy it.
Roger;
Good job. You were shown to be wrong, and you handled it right away. Compare how the amatuer blogger handles his error with the proffesional Dan Rather.
My son recently graduated from a competitive-admission magnet school. One girl told him that she made every teacher feel that his or her course was her favorite. She got into Stanford. Another friend of my son asked his help on understanding a point of physics. When my son said, “I’ll just explain it to everyone tomorrow,” the guy said “No, don’t explain it to everyone, just to me. That way only you and I will understand it.” That young man to into Penn. A girl mocked the AP phyics teacher to the other students, but convinced him she was his biggest fan; additionally, she had her father (a Ph.D.) do her out-of-class physics project for her. She got the phyics prize for the school and was accepted at Princeton. Another girl produced a science project on the study of cancer in rats. Undisclosed was the fact that her father was a faculty member in the Medical School whose specialty was the study of cancer in rats. She went to the University of Southern California. I could go on and on, but at the higher competition for admission to the “elite” schools the dissembling (to be kind) and misrepresentation is rampant and outrageous. That this student at Harvard cheated and plagarized is just par for the course. How do you think she got in?
Ripper: Whatever Kos’s sins with the “screw ‘em” remark, that has no bearing on his book and its sales. My understanding is that he took that comment down.
In any event, I’m impressed by Roger’s apology. (I doubt we’ll see anything like it from Powerline.) The blogosphere is doing great stuff, and Reynolds’ book, Hewitt’s several, Kos’s, Greenwald’s…regardless of ideology this is just cool that bloggers are becoming authors zooming to the top of Amazon.
Almost anyone who blogs nearly daily for years, is inevitably going to post some things they would give an arm to retract. Especially political bloggers in a polarized atmosphere such as unfortunately prevails.
Anyway, I no longer share Roger Simon’s approval of George Bush, but I do still respect Roger Simon. Bloggers who concede error, as with human beings in general, retain their credibility.
Mona,
He didn’t take the comment down (and he was praised by many of his followers, who even defended the statement – some still do!) and then followed-up with a chest-thumping “bring it on” entry. That said, he did not say “they deserved to die”, he just said the he felt nothing for them.
When it came to light recently that he was constantly beaten up in high school, it explained a lot, though.
Firstly (to hide no secrets), I am not an American. Secondly I am of a liberal mindset, perhaps not in the way either Republicans or Democrats use the word but I am definately for freedom and as little government as is compatible with general human happiness.
I make this post because I want to thank you for doing the right thing. Not as a political comment. The “right thing” should never be political.
By makeing a correction and apologising you have acted in a civilised manner and that is (unfortunately) becoming all too rare on both left and right.
Feel Good.
Best wishes,
Demena
Grace (and humility) should always be praised.
Good on you.
Ricky: Well, I’m not a Kos fan, don’t read his blog, and don’t plan to start. That “screw ‘em” comment is indefensible, and if he stands by it that is even worse. I had heard somewhere that he took it down, but really don’t know.
But none of that changes the merits of his book. Roger apologized, which is commendable, and if Kos didn’t have the decency to make any amends for his awful comment, then Roger is more noble than Kos.
“Roger is more noble than Kos”
That’s pretty much a given, Mona, whatever the situation.
‘Kos’ may have taken his “screw em” comment down, but in interviews he embraces being “an asshole”. He is, not just because most people have reached that conclusion but because he himself owns the tag.
What’s an asshole? It’s a vague charge (the kind that, well, an asshole would typically make). I’d say it suggests a mixture of irresponsibility and cowardice (making claims one can’t prove, ringing folks’ doorbells and running away, telling half-truths that you know aren’t fair or reasonable but will earn you notice).
Dictionary.com says an asshole is: 1) The anus.
2) A thoroughly contemptible, detestable person.
3) The most miserable or undesirable place in a particular area.
An asshole would have issued the statement about Kos’ book and then NOT issued a retraction as soon as better facts came in. Mr. Simon’s retraction was particularly classy (humbly mentioning his own recent struggles with book sales).
“Classy” is another vague assessment, which seems to be at the opposite pole from “asshole”. I haven’t ever seen anyone tripping over themselves to call Zuniga a classy guy. He knows what stirs up the mob, and that’s pretty much his whole schtick.
However, rousing the mob is enough to drive book sales (and blog traffic). Zuniga knows it, Ann Coulter knows it, and I’m sure you can think of a few others as well. It’s a proven method, although it’s something of a last resort. The downside is that you have to live with the slime you produce. It’s pretty sticky, and never quite comes off.
Wow – a right-wing blogger actually apologizing for a snarky and immature comment. Way to go, and some real class from Roger Simon. Even Reynolds felt compelled to admit the truth about a silly pissing match that, frankly, neither he nor Kos had anything to do with (a figment of Drudge’s fever swamp of a closeted imagination) and that he (Insta) was losing anyway…so, let’s be honest, he sort of had to, to retain any semblance of integrity. Anyway, he did, but, unsurprisingly, the usual low-class antics from many of Roger’s commenters shine through on this post. What sad, sorry little people.
jbk,
For manners, I’ll take the comments section here over those at Kos, DU, or others, any day of the week.
To each his own.
Roger-
Good for you.
A mature and honest person is responsible for their own actions. Even when it does not advance one’s own argument (and may even hurt it), honesty is to be admired.
It is a pity in this strongly polarized, partisan atmosphere that intellectual honesty has become rarer (and it was never in great supply).
Roger, if you’re apologizing for being snarky, I can be supportive of that. We all say things a little sooner than we should from time to time and later regret it.
But if you’re apologizing for being wrong, well, shouldnt a prerequisite be that you are wrong? I checked out instapundit’s update and yes, Drudge said he sold 3,600 hundred copies when actually he sold 4,400 and is selling 700 copies a week when Drudge said it was selling few. So basically Drudge was right, the book is selling shockingly poorly.
Yes, Kos stands a decent chance of selling above average, but so what? This is Kos, a guy with one of the highest trafficked websites in existance, a household name on the blogosphere, a man with popular television personalities pushing his book, a free pass to a number of TV shows. But Drudge is wrong becuase Kos sold a handfull more copies then Drudge said and might eventually sell slightly better than authors most people have never heard of who can’teven get an ad buy?
Please, Drudge was right.
Well done, Roger.
Regarding his “screw ‘em” comment, which I hadn’t heard about before.
Ricky links to it above. Contrary to what Ricky claims, every other pinko leftist on that thread that responds to his comment expresses disgust with it, not support.
Which in turn prompts him to write a response, which I think we can all agree is in fact an apology, in spite of its moral grandstanding about “caring too much”: http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2004/4/1/144156/3224#16
Even writing about Kos makes one feel dirty.
The book business mystifies me. Most seem to agree that unit sales of 4000 after two months is pretty crappy. Sure seems crappy to me. But average nonfiction lifetime sales is 5000 units. Some speculate that Kos might scare 20000 units for this title.
I’m further told that an 8% royalty is pretty good. So if Kos sells for $20 on average, he produces a total revenue stream of $400,000 and puts maybe $32,000 in his pocket. And that’s good?
I can see why publishers publish, and booksellers sell, but I can’t for the life of me see why anyone would write a book that if it outperformed the market would only sell 10,000 units.
No wonder there’s no marketing.
As to the potential impact on the country of a Kos or Instapundit tome–zilch. Even if the titles do well, almost no one reads them.
What an odd business.
Old Dad, you have the economics of the book business substantially right. Most of us do it for love – or, sometimes in my case, for the chance of a film sale. Of course, that’s unlikely in the Kos or Reynolds case (political tomes don’t film particularly well).
Another point: authors complain about publishers (and I do!), but quite often you get an advance larger than you may deserve, essentially a subsidy – that is the few “breakout” books subsidize the rest. The DaVinci Code, reviled by some, is paying for a lot of other authors’ work.
I hear Roger Simon will soon be reporting that his friend John told him that the always reliable Drudge reports that nobody’s listening to that Commie Neil Young, but they are rushing out to buy the records of the Gaede twins who are remarkably respected in the music industry for their integrity and intelligence…
Not that it matters, but I think that’s a pretty cool thing for you to do. Bravo.
About Viswanathan, her case is oviously one of plagarism, but with Google scanning books, it will be that much easier now to accuse any new author of plagarism. All it would take is some seven word sentence, for example, to be identical, and the shrill cries of “Plagarist!” will be raised.
Ecclesiastes told us several thousand years ago that “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.” I’m afraid we’re about to get quantitative proof of that fact.
Roger,
Thank you. I was worried that you might be slipping, but you have calmed my fears. I’m just sad to see so many people using this simple statement as a platform to further rant about nonsense. Hopefully you will not catch the insanity that seems to be plaguing so many.
Ratatosk, Squirrel of Discord
While Kos dosn’t deserve an apology, you showed yourself to be a gentleman, Roger. That’s far more than Moulitsas will ever do, unless he grows up a lot.
It’s rare for anyone to apologize these days for anything, so props to Roger for doing so. Especially since he did nothing worse than making a snotty comment.
For those of you heaping abuse on Kos for his “screw ‘em” comment, here is his explanation for it: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/4/2/175739/8203 (the link markus provided above is wrong).
Kos is no saint, but at least understand where he’s coming from before you condemn him, and maybe show as much class as Roger when discussing him.