MILO YIANNOPOULOS: I TOTALLY WON THE LAWSUIT I DROPPED

The subscription-only newsletter Publishers Lunch reports that Mr. Yiannopoulos has acknowledged the inevitable:

Milo Yiannopoulos's unintentional comedy show/performance piece known as his breach of contract lawsuit against Simon & Schuster, seeking $10 million, has come to an end. Playing the final, brief role of lawyer, representing himself, Yiannopoulos discontinued his lawsuit with prejudice (meaning this is final) in a filing posted to the docket Tuesday, and dated February 15 by the parties.

But on Facebook, Yiannopoulos insists that he was the real winner, no matter what the LIE-beral media says:

After finally being able to personally review the documents that Simon & Schuster disclosed, it was clear to me that they wrongfully terminated my contract in bad faith.

So his point is proven, even though he's withdrawing his legal assertion of that point.

Based on the documents, I think they signed my book knowing they'd never publish it and then tried to make me walk away with excessive editing (you've all seen the manuscript!) and demands. In the end, they just nuked it and took their chances.

Why would Simon & Schuster do that? I would understand that claim if S&S engaged in "catch and kill" -- if, in other words, it bought the book in order to prevent its publication, the way the National Enquirer reportedly bought the story of Donald Trump's Playmate girlfriend. But when S&S dropped the book, the rights reverted to the author. He was free to pursue another book deal, or to publish it himself (which is what he did). And S&S allowed him to keep an $80,000 portion of the advance. That's suppression of a conservative voice, according to Yiannopoulos.

Having earned well over a million dollars from publishing my New York Times best-selling book Dangerous myself....

Er ... maybe. Sales of Dangerous were not great. It's possible that it grossed $1 million in revenue. Subtract the costs of manufacturing, shipping, warehousing, publicity, and so on, and I bet Yiannopoulos took in a lot less.

... it was always going to be hard to prove damages, as anyone who has ever hired a "damages expert" will know.

Yes, it's hard to cry poverty when you're claiming blockbuster sales, as Yiannopoulos did.

... Simon & Schuster will tell you they paid nothing in this lawsuit. That’s a lie. Not only did I keep the advance they retroactively claimed I owed back....

He didn't have to pay back money S&S had already voluntarily given him, so he's counting that as a cost to S&S.

... they have spent enormous funds on lawyers because they refused to admit they had done wrong.

Simon & Schuster is a division of CBS, a corporation that had revenues of $13.69 billion and earnings of $2.65 billion last year. I think the company can afford the cost of a few lawyers.

... Worse, Simon & Schuster is the publisher who proved we don't need them. Independently publishing my book was the most profitable thing I've ever done -- and now I have my own imprint, Dangerous Books, which will publish all my future titles and the titles of many other conservative authors too.

So far, Dangerous Books has published precisely two books -- Yiannopoulos's book and Fatwa: Hunted in America by Pam Geller. But as blogger Richard Bartholemew noted last November, the company was apparently terrible at getting good shelf placement for Geller's book in Barnes & Noble.

Anti-Islam polemicist Pamela Geller is upset with Barnes & Noble:

Eureka! @BNBuzz displays FATWA! Can you find the FATWA? No, seriously, can you find the one sole copy? Sheesh. (photo thanks Mr. Smith)

The Tweet is accompanied with a photo of a Barnes & Noble bookcase on which the spine of her new memoir FATWA: Hunted in America appears on the fourth shelf, sandwiched between multiple copies of two other titles also categorised as “Domestic Affairs”. Supporters are also grumbling that the book is not apparent in book shops.

At the time, Bartholomew wrote:

... the Dangerous Books website consists of nothing more than an advert for Dangerous and a newsletter sign-up feature; there’s no direct contact address or staff – nor is there any mention of Geller’s book. Meanwhile, the Dangerous Books Twitter account seems to be a half-hearted effort, with around 350 followers and just a couple of hundred Tweets – only two of which relate to Geller and her book, and one of these is a dud link to Yiannopolis’s website.

The Dangerous Books website link now gives you Yiannopoulos's website, which has one front-page story about the end of the lawsuit and nothing else about Dangerous Books. (There are references to George Soros, Antifa, and a "dead gay hooker found in Dem donor's home," however.) The Twitter account hasn't published an original tweet since late November and has had no activity at all since late December. (The last post was a James Woods retweet.) And that dud link is still a dud link.

If you click on the Dangerous site's "books" tab, you go to a link with the URL https://dangerousboutique.com/product-category/books/. Here you can buy Dangerous, an autographed copy of Dangerous, Geller's book ... and that's it. There's no mention of forthcoming books from the imprint. (Amusingly, you can sort this three-item inventory by popularity, average rating, newness, price low to high, price high to low, on-sale date, and "featured." However you sort them, the order of these three items doesn't change much.)

Just go away, pal. Why continue to embarrass yourself?