For those of you heaping abuse on Kos for his “screw ‘em” comment, here is his explanation for it: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/4/2/175739/8203 (the link markus provided above is wrong).

Kos is no saint, but at least understand where he’s coming from before you condemn him, and maybe show as much class as Roger when discussing him.

Thank you. I was worried that you might be slipping, but you have calmed my fears. I’m just sad to see so many people using this simple statement as a platform to further rant about nonsense. Hopefully you will not catch the insanity that seems to be plaguing so many.

Ratatosk, Squirrel of Discord

About Viswanathan, her case is oviously one of plagarism, but with Google scanning books, it will be that much easier now to accuse any new author of plagarism. All it would take is some seven word sentence, for example, to be identical, and the shrill cries of “Plagarist!” will be raised.

Ecclesiastes told us several thousand years ago that “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.” I’m afraid we’re about to get quantitative proof of that fact.

Another point: authors complain about publishers (and I do!), but quite often you get an advance larger than you may deserve, essentially a subsidy – that is the few “breakout” books subsidize the rest. The DaVinci Code, reviled by some, is paying for a lot of other authors’ work.

I’m further told that an 8% royalty is pretty good. So if Kos sells for $20 on average, he produces a total revenue stream of $400,000 and puts maybe $32,000 in his pocket. And that’s good?

I can see why publishers publish, and booksellers sell, but I can’t for the life of me see why anyone would write a book that if it outperformed the market would only sell 10,000 units.

No wonder there’s no marketing.

As to the potential impact on the country of a Kos or Instapundit tome–zilch. Even if the titles do well, almost no one reads them.

What an odd business.

Regarding his “screw ‘em” comment, which I hadn’t heard about before.

Ricky links to it above. Contrary to what Ricky claims, every other pinko leftist on that thread that responds to his comment expresses disgust with it, not support.

Which in turn prompts him to write a response, which I think we can all agree is in fact an apology, in spite of its moral grandstanding about “caring too much”: http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2004/4/1/144156/3224#16

But if you’re apologizing for being wrong, well, shouldnt a prerequisite be that you are wrong? I checked out instapundit’s update and yes, Drudge said he sold 3,600 hundred copies when actually he sold 4,400 and is selling 700 copies a week when Drudge said it was selling few. So basically Drudge was right, the book is selling shockingly poorly.

Yes, Kos stands a decent chance of selling above average, but so what? This is Kos, a guy with one of the highest trafficked websites in existance, a household name on the blogosphere, a man with popular television personalities pushing his book, a free pass to a number of TV shows. But Drudge is wrong becuase Kos sold a handfull more copies then Drudge said and might eventually sell slightly better than authors most people have never heard of who can’teven get an ad buy?

Please, Drudge was right.