Small Publisher Loses Round in LoC Fight

The Library of Congress requires that a publisher must publish books by three different authors before its works will be included in LoC's Cataloguing in Publication program; last summer, Lev Tristin, author and self-publisher of The Pitfall of Truth, sued, claiming the three-author requirement is a violation of his First Amendment free speech rights and Fifth Amendment property rights (PW, Aug. 8); that suit has now been dismissed. Tristin had contended that his inability to get listed in the LoC's CIP program hurt his chances of selling the book not only to libraries but to bookstores as well, and limited his likelihood of getting reviews.

Although Judge Charles Lettow denied the government's argument that the court lacked jurisdiction in the case, he agreed that excluding the work from the CIP program does not harm the commercial value of the book since there are alternatives to the CIP program. In addition, the judge wrote, the CIP program "imposes no barrier to prevent authors from marketing their publications on their own."

Tristin said the decision's "underpinning assumption that such vehicles for bringing the book into the marketplace of ideas as libraries, bookstores and reviews are of no importance to the publishing process, and that taking them away does not diminish that ability to publish a book is obviously absurd."

In rejecting Tristan's First Amendment argument, Lettow found that the LoC restrictions are not designed to advocate a particular point of view, but are in place to allow the LoC to most effectively use its resources.

Tristin has printed 5,000 copies of Pitfall; it is now only available through Amazon. Although he never expected to make a lot of money on the book, which deals with religion's role in terrorism, Tristin said he will appeal the decision "as a matter of principle," arguing that his book "deserves a chance to be heard in the market."