Canceled book-contract lawsuit draws attention to editing’s significance

An editor’s markup of a conservative media pundit’s manuscript — now part of a lawsuit’s documents — draws attention to the craft of editing and its role in publishing books.

As reported by the Washington Post (and reprinted by the Chicago Tribune), Simon & Schuster and its Threshold Editions imprint awarded a six-figure advance on a book to Milo Yiannopoulos.

Editor Mitchell Ivers went to work on the manuscript with what the Washington Post describes as “earnestness,” “writing clipped, direct notes of feedback to the conservative media figure, who made a name for himself by making outrageous statements designed to raise people’s ire.”

The book deal had been awarded in spite of Yiannopoulos’ history of making inflammatory statements, “many of which played on fraught notions of race, gender and sexuality.” When Simon & Schuster later canceled the deal, Yiannopoulos responded with a lawsuit — and through this, the manuscript emerged.

Ivers’ editing, according to the Washington Post, “seemed to be an attempt to shape Yiannopoulos into a writer who could be read by a wide audience.”

Or, put another way by writer Jamil Smith, as related by the Washington Post, “The editor’s brutal comments are somewhat entertaining, but none of this should distract from the fact that they sought to make [Yiannopoulos’s] bigotry both digestible and marketable.”