USA Today looks at the rising success of conservative authors and its impact on the publishing industry:
Now, the largest and less ideologically driven publishers are trying to cash in on the growing number of conservative readers when overall book sales have been flat.Crown, which is part of Random House, and Penguin have hired editors from Regnery for their new conservative imprints. And Bookspan plans to start an as-yet-unnamed conservative book club early next year to compete with the 39-year-old Conservative Book Club, owned by Regnery's parent company.
"The center of the culture has moved to the right," says Crown vice president Steve Ross, who sees conservatives as "a vast and historically underserved readership. Publishers are catching up."
Polls show that 33% to 42% of adults identify themselves as conservatives; only 16% to 24% call themselves liberals.
Ross says that "most mainstream publishers work in a fairly isolated cultural island in New York and perhaps unconsciously publish for people of a similar mind-set."
Ross's statement falls nicely into the realm of the blindingly obvious, but former Democratic pol Pat Schroeder just can't see it:
Patricia Schroeder, the former Democratic congresswoman and now president of the Association of American Publishers, decries the notion that major publishers are belatedly discovering conservatives.Posted by Alan at July 26, 2003 10:49 AM"What about all the books by Bill Bennett or Pat Buchanan?" she asks. "It's not as if publishers are babies who've just discovered they have a right hand."
via USA Today
Kudos to Townhall's C-Log for the tip.