Simon & Schuster Hurdles Suit Over Milo Yiannopoulos Book

MANHATTAN (CN) -  Milo Yiannopoulos dropped his $10 million lawsuit Tuesday against Simon & Schuster for jettisoning plans to publish the alt-right provocateur’s memoir.

Gay, British and a former editor at Breitbart, Yiannopoulos saw his $255,000 contract for “Dangerous” go up in flames last year after drawing more controversy than usual for endorsing sexual relationships between teenage boys and grown men.

Though he published the book by himself in the end, Yiannopoulos tapped Jeffrey Weingart at Meister Seelig & Fein to seek damages for breach of contract.

Both parties painted themselves as the victors Tuesday when Yiannopoulos filed court papers ending the case.

“We are pleased that Mr. Yiannopoulos’ lawsuit has been withdrawn, with prejudice, and with no payment from Simon & Schuster,” the publishing house said in a statement.

Yiannopoulos noted meanwhile that Simon & Schuster was unsuccessful in trying to claw back his advance.

“Simon & Schuster will tell you they paid nothing in this lawsuit,” he said in a statement. “That’s a lie. Not only did I keep the advance they retroactively claimed I owed back, but they have spent enormous funds on lawyers because they refused to admit they had done wrong.”

A representative for the Simon & Schuster clarified that the $80,000 advance is a nonissue for the company, and that it told Yiannopoulos he was under no obligation to repay that money when it reverted the rights to “Dangerous” to him in February 2017.

“So his efforts to spin that as a victory are off-base,” the representative added.

While Yiannopolous said his ordeal has hurt Simon & Schuster’s standing among conservatives, the CBS-owned publisher noted that it has no regrets about terminating “Dangerous.”

Under the original contract, Yiannopolous would have received 10 percent of the catalog retail price of “Dangerous” for the first 5,000 hardcover copies sold, 12.5 percent for the next 5,000 hardcover copies sold and 15 percent on all copies sold after the initial 10,000 hardcover copies.

Yiannopoulos said he’s made “well over a million dollars” from self-publishing the book and does not want those proceeds spent on a long legal process.

“I would rather use it to help other authors reach the conservative audience that Simon & Schuster hates so much (but is happy to profit from, naturally),” Yiannopoulos said.

Yiannopoulos also referenced the aggressive editing notes about “Dangerous” that Simon & Schuster filed with the court.

“They signed my book knowing they’d never publish it and then tried to make me walk away with excessive editing (you’ve all seen the manuscript!) and demands,” he said. “In the end, they just nuked it and took their chances.”

One of the alt-right’s most popular voices, Yiannopoulos was banned by Twitter last summer for inciting his fan base to target black actress Leslie Jones with racist tweets.

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