Milo Yiannopoulos drops $10 million lawsuit against publisher Simon & Schuster
(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Milo Yiannopoulos has announced that he will drop his $10 million lawsuit against his former publisher Simon & Schuster.
The right-wing figurehead filed papers in the New York Supreme Court on Tuesday asking for the case to be “dropped without costs or fees to either party”.
The former Breitbart news editor was attempting to sue the publishers for breach of contract after they decided to drop the deal on his book Dangerous.
The publisher gained the rights to his book for an advance of $255,000 (£200,000), before cancelling the deal in February after a recording emerged that appeared to show Yiannopoulos endorsing sex between “younger boys” and older men.
After Simon & Schuster dropped the book, Yiannopoulos self-published it in July 2017.
He claims that he made over $1 million from the book, despite selling just 152 copies in the UK by its release date.
The book sold 18,000 copies in the US, according to Nielsen Bookscan. It had debuted at number one of Amazon’s non-fiction chart.
Yiannopoulos’ PR team had claimed that 100,000 copies had been sold in the US.
Writing about his decision to drop the lawsuit, Yiannopoulos said that Simon & Schuster had tried to “nuke” his book with “excessive editing” and accused them of “signing my book knowing they’d never publish it”.
He went on to explain that he didn’t want to spend the money he made from Dangerous on the lawsuit, rather he wanted to “help other authors reach the conservative audience that Simon & Schuster hates so much (but is happy to profit from, naturally).”
He added: “I cost Simon and Schuster a fortune in legal fees and gave them one hell of a bloody nose.
“My book was a New York Times bestseller for five weeks and made me millions.
“The era of all-powerful publishers and cowering authors is over. We can do it without them!”
His decision to drop the lawsuit comes just weeks after Yiannopoulos fired his attorneys and decided to represent himself.
The controversial poster boy made the decision to act as his own counsel as his attorney cited that there were “irreconcilable differences” between himself and his client.
The relationship between Yiannopoulos and his former lawyer reportedly became “untenable” after the pair had a “fundamental disagreement”.
A statement read that Yiannopoulos’ “lack of cooperation rendered his attorney’s representation “unreasonable difficult to carry out effectively”.
Late last year, court documents filed in the US revealed some scathing edits to Yiannopoulos’ autobiography manuscript.
Among the criticisms, the publisher’s noted that Yiannopoulos needed a “stronger argument against feminism than saying that they are ugly and sexless and have cats” and that another chapter needs “a better central thesis than the notion that gay people should go back in the closet”.
Editor Mitchell Ivers doesn’t hold back in his comments, writing: “Throughout the book, your best points seem to be lost in a sea of self-aggrandizement and scattershot thinking,” and adds: “Careful that the egotistical boasting … doesn’t make you seem juvenile.”
Another comment in the manuscript reads: “Add something like this – only less self-serving”.
“Too important a point to end in a crude quip” is another. “Unclear, unfunny, delete,” reads another.
The publishers argued that it had an absolute contractual right to not publish Yiannopoulos’ work
According to papers filed by Simon & Schuster, Yiannopoulos did not immediately return an $80,000 advance, which they say represented a “full satisfaction and discharge of Simon & Schuster’s obligation under the [Publishing] Agreement.”
They also labelled the lawsuit a “meritless publicity stunt.”
“Yiannopoulos accepted the payment without protest, thereby sealing the accord and satisfaction and barring this lawsuit as a matter of centuries-old law,” their lawyer writes.
“That should have been the end of this contractual matter.
“Instead, Yiannopoulos waited approximately five months to file this lawsuit, in a naked attempt to drum up publicity for the publication of his book,” the court papers stated.
