Recently, I killed 3 projects. I kicked out 4 authors. I removed the 4, because:
a) they were annoying me with ugly, abusive behavior, and a disrespectful tone, so I dealt with All The Trash®, as his trash writing sucked, didn't sell, and he was delusional enough to blame me for his s***ty writing failing to sell. He seems to believe we force customers to buy products. We use him as the reverse benchmark on what kinds of trash we don't tolerate. But I understand how desperate he is to be published by us, and I feel somewhat flattered.
b) Some pilot, asked me to sell his book for $20 in America, then $5 in Sri Lanka. I said no. He demanded. I told him to f*** off. Because we don't f*** with customers that way.
c) I was shocked to find one r***rd actually tried publishing child porn on our AngryPages. That was a exhaust vent on our Death Star tier of Tumblr problem. I was shocked how f***ing stupid he was. After being professional, as I would likely not be able to keep my composure when someone makes me that angry.
d) I was sad, to decline a book by a respected author, who won prizes in Sri Lanka, that tried to publish an anti-Trump hate product. This one, was hard, and I chose to pass up on the opportunity out of my own publisher bias.
***
Mikey, my best friend, and also Obama's pal, I have in mind, for actually running AngryPages one fine day. And I know, I just know, for a fact, he'd have published that book because it's satire. Anything can be disclaimed as fiction, as satire, and that's where this is heavy.
See, most publishers, do have a special angle, a tone, a small niche, or some kind of direction they publish. I wouldn't publish Rogue State, by William Blum, I think it's all BS, a lot of it's speculative, passed off as fact, and it's also, easy for us to write responses to argue. We don't want to publish that sort of s***, because it ends up causing the reader to hate America.
The way we police that Protect List, is we don't allow anything that can portray or lead to a person reading to form a conclusion that is hostile. That means any kinds of accusations, that are very hard to prove. If they have some evidence, we will entertain it, and support them. But we generally, will label it opinion.
It's where NY Times have an opinion column too.
When I say, "We don't want to publish that sort of s***", I mean, the AngryPages team led by me, presently, don't want to, at this moment in time.
At some point in time, when I am not in charge, or someone else, and a lot of our people are left leaning, they'd probably do it reverse.