Dangerous: everything we know about Milo Yiannopoulos's cancelled book
Milo Yiannopoulos's controversial book may have topped best-selling lists before it was even written, but that hasn't stopped it from losing its publisher. Here's everything we know so far:
What is Dangerous, and why has it been making headlines?
Dangerous is the third book from British journalist, public speaker and provocateur Yiannopoulos, a man who has made his name and won a loyal following by saying incendiary things and being banned from Twitter for inciting hate. The book was acquired by Threshold Editions, an imprint of US publishing house Simon & Schuster, for an advance of $250,000 (£200,000) last year.
On Monday, Simon & Schuster announced that they had cancelled the book "after careful consideration" in the wake of video footage emerging in which Yiannopoulos discussed sex between "young boys" and older men.
What has Yiannopoulos said?
On Monday night, after Simon & Schuster's statement, the 32-year-old posted on Facebook, confirming the news.
More will emerge on Tuesday evening when Yiannopoulos gives a press conference in New York. A statement on his Facebook page said: "Milo Yiannopoulos will be making his first on-camera comments to press regarding the recent controversy over statements Milo made during Joe Rogan and Drunken Peasants podcasts. Questions will be taken following a statement."
How much of the book had Yiannopoulos written?
Dangerous was originally due to be released in March, which would suggest that Yiannopoulos would have got a considerable chunk of his word count out of the door by the time the announcement was made at the end of 2016. However, in February, the writer announced that Threshold Editions had pushed the date back, to June 13, to accommodate writing about riots at US universities at the start of the month.
Yiannopoulos posted on Facebook:
I asked my publisher, Threshold Editions, for more time to submit the manuscript for DANGEROUS so I could include material about the craziness and rioting at UC Berkeley, UC Davis and UW Seattle. It would be absurd for me to publish a book without some discussion of the insanity of the last few weeks.
Threshold Editions declined to comment at the time.
What kind of book was Dangerous meant to be?
The description on the book's Amazon page was minimal at best, merely stating that Yiannopoulos's book was "a new book by Milo Yiannopoulos entitled Dangerous published by Threshold Editions". However, more information emerged in a letter Carolyn Reidy, Simon & Schuster's CEO, had addressed to the publishers' authors, "many" of whom had "expressed concern and displeasure" over the acquisition of Yiannopoulos's book.
In it, she wrote that Yiannopoulos's book would not contain "hate speech":
I want to make clear that we do not support or condone, nor will we publish, hate speech. Not from our authors. Not in our books. Not at our imprints. Not from our employees and not in our workplace.
Reidy added that Dangerous would be:
A substantive examination of the issues of political correctness and free speech, issues that are already much-discussed and argued and fought over in both mainstream and alternative media and on campuses and in schools across the country... [and] could become an incisive commentary on today’s social discourse that would sit well within its scope and mission, which is to publish works for a conservative audience.
As for Yiannopoulous, his account of what he proposed to Threshold was as follows:
I met with top execs at Simon & Schuster earlier in the year and spent half an hour trying to shock them with lewd jokes and outrageous opinions. I thought they were going to have me escorted from the building — but instead they offered me a wheelbarrow full of money.
What happens with Dangerous now?
Well, it won't be being published with Threshold Editions or Simon & Schuster, but that doesn't mean another publisher won't approach Yiannopoulos with another deal. As Yiannopoulos said when he secured the deal after being banned from Twitter: “They said banning me from Twitter would finish me off. Just as I predicted, the opposite has happened. Did it hurt Madonna being banned from MTV in the 1990s? Did all that negative press hurt Donald Trump's chances of winning the election?”
Publishing houses will be wary, however. Simon & Schuster caused a lot of controversy with their acquisition of Dangerous, losing deals with high-profile authors such as academic Roxane Gay as a result (since the cancellation of Dangerous, she has released a statement that she won't return to the publisher) and blanket bans on reviews of their titles from literary journals.
But that's not to say Yiannopoulos's book wouldn't be a commercial success. It reached the top of Amazon's bestseller list within 24 hours of being announced due to a rush of pre-orders, and returned there in February after riots at UC Berkeley. As Yiannopoulos's literary agent, Tom Flannery, told The LA Times: "I think he has a much wider fan base than people realise".
What about Yiannopoulos's other books?
The professional provocateur was once a poet – or a satirist, depending on who you believe. He self-published two poetry collections, A Swarm of Wasps and Eskimo Papoose, in 2006 and 2007, respectively. The latter was later exposed as borrowing heavily from the lyrics of pop star Tori Amos. Yiannopoulos responded that Eskimo Papoose was, in fact, a joke book and a work of satire.
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