Shameless

by Sara Nelson -- Publishers Weekly, 6/12/2006

What's a bookseller to do when he or she detests the author and/or message of the number #1 selling book in America?

That's the question plaguing many stores following conservative pundit Ann Coulter's Today Showappearance last week, in which she accused several 9/11 widows of "enjoying" their husbands' deaths and profiting financially from their misfortune. Coulter was interviewed by host Matt Lauer, who read aloud several passages from Coulter's now-hot book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Coulter went so far as to suggest that some widows might have been overcompensated by the Victim Compensation Board because, "how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies?"

That Ann Coulter makes liberal America furious is clearly her intention, and definitely not news. And believe it or not, Virginia, there are actually booksellers who don't fall into the knee-jerk, blue-state stereotype many publishing types count on as the norm. But Coulter's most recent, some say, particularly self-serving attacks—there are at least two books by 9/11 widows coming this fall—has some booksellers mightily confused. Should one's own politics influence how one does business? Or, more pointedly: Must you sell a book that offends you?

PW asked around, and the results, were varied: Judith Rosen found that some self-proclaimed liberals were more, well, liberal than you might think. At the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., Godless is on display on the front tables. But at least one bookseller in California, our Bridget Kinsella reports, took it off the new-release table and put it spine out on the shelves (aka Siberia). This bookseller asked specifically not to be named for fear of angering the publisher; another told us she'd rather say nothing than give Godless any more ink.

Just as booksellers can stock and shelve whatever they choose however they choose to, publishers can publish what they want however they want to. In both cases, the principle aim is to sell books. Crown Forum, Coulter's publisher, has done a masterful job, if measured by sales and media play. At press time, the book was #1 on Amazon, and the tabloids were graced with Coulter's tresses and disses all week, and booksellers somewhere are clearly benefiting. But our business isn't your everyday retail op. Are some of the people involved in Team Coulter—editors, publicists, salespeople—disgusted by some of the things she is saying? You bet. Are we all nonetheless obliged to defend her right to say them? Maybe. But while we don't all have to go the Brian Williams route and apologize for giving Coulter airtime in the first place, we also don't have to go out of our way to help her and her book get noticed.

If the book business were widget manufacturing, such questions wouldn't matter . But publishing isn't widgeting. In the business of shaping and selling ideas, we bear some responsibility for the ideas we choose to disseminate, and the people we choose to disseminate them. So if we have to do what's best for business, so be it. But I have to hope that at least while we're doing it, we all wrestle with these questions, and even lose just a little bit of sleep over what and who we're putting out there.

Agree? Disagree? Tell us at www.publishersweekly.com/saranelson