Fit to Print?

HarperCollins CEO and president David Kent. (Harpercollins Publishers)

Q: How prepared were you when the news broke?

A: When the story broke on Tuesday, it was just as difficult for us [in Canada] to react as anyone else. I will tell you that we had already printed a substantial amount of copies. If you know about Judith Regan’s track record, you know that she has million-copy bestsellers. And once we knew what it was about, we knew people’s reactions were going to be similar to what they are when they pass a bad accident. They say, “Oh, I can’t look at that thing.” But then everybody slows down, because they have to see it. This is what Judith is the master of. We have all learned that you never underestimate Judith Regan’s ability to sell a book. We all say, “Oh my God, [no one will buy this],” and then watch it become a No. 1 bestseller.

Q: How do you handle promotion and publicity for a book like this?

A: Well, in this particular case, you guys — the media, television, newspapers, radio — handle it for us. I think Judith’s two-hour television show on Fox, which is a sister company to HarperCollins, will be heavily promoted because it’s Fox’s kind of book. It’s a very sensational book and Judith Regan is a very valuable publisher to the organization. So I don’t think we need to worry about running ads.

I will tell you that the orders we’ve received in the last 36 hours [the day and a half after the news broke] pretty much doubled what our first print run was going to be. Even though I know that there are booksellers who won’t carry it.

Q: What is your take on booksellers like the Nicholas Hoare chain in Eastern Canada, which has said that it won’t sell the book?

A: Well, Nicholas, for those who don’t know him, is a very high-quality, British bookseller. And Nicholas is a perfectionist. And what’s wonderful about freedom is that you are free to carry or not carry something. [Like when] Indigo decided it wasn’t going to carry Mein Kampf. That’s not censorship, that’s a retailer’s freedom. And booksellers make decisions every single day about carrying or not carrying thousands of titles because there is only so much room. So I can perfectly understand why someone like Nicholas Hoare would choose not to carry this book, because he is a particular kind of bookseller.

Q: How do you answer the criticism that O.J. Simpson will profit from a crime he was accused of committing?

A: Well, he’s not profiting. I think the money is all going to his children, but I can’t answer that question because we’re not publishing the book. We’re just the distributors. And this is what we do all around the world with all the subsidiary companies. We distribute their books in our market.

Q: But certainly some of the controversy comes back to you.

A: Of course it does. Why else are we talking?

Q: When people realize that this comes from HarperCollins, does it have an impact on other HarperCollins titles?

A: If people want to think that out of the 14,000 titles that we have published — of the Nobel Prize winners and the Pulitzer Prize winners, the Giller Prize winners, the National Book Award winners — out of all these books, that one book outweighs all that, they can. People will jump to whatever conclusions they want to and that’s their prerogative. It’s like cancelling a newspaper subscription because you didn’t like one story.

Let’s be very realistic about this. We are talking about a book that people don’t have to buy, a television show that they don’t have to watch. This isn’t about polluting the atmosphere so that the planet will die. This isn’t about selling cigarettes, which we know will kill people. Let’s keep things in perspective. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.

Q: Do you have any personal qualms about this book?

A: I don’t like anything that would reflect badly on this company because this company has been in business a long time and we publish a range of titles. Most people don’t know that we’re the largest Bible publisher. We publish distinguished authors. We publish all kinds of books. We don’t censor ourselves. But we do have limits.

(HarperCollins Publishers)

Q: What are those limits?

A: First of all, there is a distinction between censorship — which is something imposed by the government — and the freedom of people to turn off the television, to not buy a book. For me, as a publisher, we make decisions all the time about what we will and won’t publish. Some happen to be matters of taste, some are matters of law. When I was running another publishing house, which is another quite prominent and successful publisher in this country, I didn’t want to have anything to do with any books about Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo. I just said that we’re not going to publish anything on the subject.

Q: Why not?

A: Because I didn’t want to exploit the thing. I didn’t say that I didn’t want this book to be published, I just said, as my old boss says, “It’s not the kind of money I like to make.” We didn’t say, “That’s disgusting, no one should publish it.” We said that this is not a book that’s consistent with what our publishing philosophy is.

Q: Do you as a publisher have an obligation to publish controversial books?

A: I think we have an obligation — again, nothing is absolute — to try not to pre-decide what people may be interested in reading about. So we will publish some of the finest writers in world and we will also publish books by wrestlers.

HarperCollins Canada’s obligation is to distribute books published by our sister companies, unless they violate Canadian law.

But, personally, would I publish Mein Kampf? Yes. Would I publish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is one of the most hateful pieces of fiction ever written? And I’m Jewish. Would I publish it? Yes. The government of Canada won’t let that book in the country. Adults are not being allowed to make the choice to read a book that right now is one of the influential pieces of fiction in the world.