Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi is having a very bad week. Not only is he embroiled in a plagiarism scandal, he lost an arbitation ruling to make more money off his books.
Publisher's Weekly reports that an arbitrator ruled in favor of Regnery Publishing and against claims by Corsi and two other authors, Joel Mowbray and Richard Minter, that Regnery had “siphoned off” retail sales of their books by selling their books through the Conservative Book Club and Human Events magazine, which, like Regnery are owned by Eagle Publishing. The article continues:
In his ruling, arbitrator Alan Baron rejected all of the authors chargers, noting that the authors “have not produced evidence that a single volume was ‘diverted’ improperly or fraudulently by Eagle Publishers or Regnery. Suspicions and speculation are no substitute for evidence.” The authors had alleged that, in order to lower royalty payments, Regnery had moved sales of their books from retail channels through the book clubs and magazine. Baron agreed with Regnery publisher Marji Ross who said sales through the club and magazine were done as a normal course of events to help promote the book, a position supported by several expert witnesses.
The authors primary evidence was that a total of 460,000 copies of their books were unaccounted for, and alleged that those books had been sold through non-retail channel with royalties unreported, but Ross said that most of those copies had been destroyed. She was backed by Regnery’s distributor at the time, NBN, whose president, Jed Lyons, noted that the 460,000 copies represented a return rate of just over 30%, typical in the book industry.
In ruling against charges of breach of fiduciary duty and fair dealing, Baron said there was no fiduciary duty between Regnery and the authors and that Regnery had acted within industry standards. He pointed to testimony from Regnery expert Cathy Hemming who said the relationship between publisher and author is “fundamentally adversarial, not fiduciary in nature.”
Corsi put forward a case based on speculation and not actual evidence? When hasn't he done that?
