Wise Words

The publishing industry is a brutal thing. When Henry Regnery first went into publishing, his father gave him some sage advice:

If you ever begin to make any money in that business you are going into, you can be pretty sure that you are publishing the wrong kinds of books.

Early offerings from Regnery — including volumes by Max Picard, Albert Jay Nock, and Victor Gollancz — lost money hand over fist. (At first, Regnery had set his company up as a nonprofit, in fact, but the IRS refused to give him tax exemption, so he re-incorporated as a for-profit.) More recently, of course, books under the Regnery brand have been sometimes very lucrative…

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2 Comments on “Wise Words”

  1. The Tragedy of Publishing « Brooklyn Copperhead Says:

    [...] 2, 2008 My friend Dan McCarthy writes this brief lament on his blog for the Regnery Company.  The most contemptible peddler of red-state fascist bile [...]

  2. Tim Says:

    Regnery’s early publishing of Victor Gollanz, a prominent English socialist, is a story worth exploring. My guess is the ‘Brroklyn Copperhead’ is only aware of more recent Regney publications. They were taken over some years ago I believe.

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