■x on about books we delve into the latest news about the publishing industry with interesting insiderntth publishing industry experts. we'll also give you updates and books. the latest book

non-free open books featured on c-span's book tv. and welcome to about books, a program and podcast produced by an'bo few minutes, we'll talk with the head of skyhorse publishing, which recently acquired regnery and has become foe publishing controversy books. but first, here's some of the latest news from the publishing world today shguthrie is the lao battle scammers who use a.i. technology within days of releasing her faith based memoir, mostly what god does. ms. guthrie was warning her social media followers about book scams that many fakes out there she wrote on hert write anythinr than the book. mostly what? no studies, no nothing.

the today show followed up ms. guthrie's post with an article about the online fakes and tips on how to spot general rated books. now, earlier this month, sir, can a bookscan reported that 767 million units of books were sold last year in the us. that's down 3% from 2020 to adult fiction. sales grew by 1%. that's about 1.5 million books. it's the fifth year of growth in the adultiction sector. the report also noted that young adult sales are driven by dystopian romance and thrillers. also posted gains. now chdren's books xperia it's the steepest decline last year, selling 13.5 million fewer books than it did in 2022. now, in the report, circrna industry analyst christian mclain offered predictions for

20 sales. she included an e political scie books. typically spike in an election year. market expectations based on 2016 or 2020, circrna expects a banner year in 2024. and joining us now is the president of skyhorse publishing. so, toni lyons, tucker carlson described you as the last dical publisher in the united states. what do you think he meant by that? yoknow think that publishers to a great extent, have become sort of ways for people to just confirm their biases. so, you know, the big publishing companies don't want to, you know, published books that upset thehem. they view publishing in a totally different way than i do.

so i think that books should be ■çdisturbing. they should be dangerous. they should challenge people. that peopleseek out books that are controversial shall, you know, that have a totay diffenf view than the one that they're comfortable with. and i don't see thebeks that jut sort of confirm all their biases. you know, what's the what's the benefit to the reader there? you kn maybe easy reading and they can read it whi toing something else or you know, not you know, there's no need to take notes. er do any research. there's no need to think about it. so, you know,m@ i think that tht were at this terriblen american history, maybe in world people are not interested in really thinking things through and in looking at opposing points of view. and i you know, i find that that's that' really a much

bigger danger than the danger of, you ideas. so i think that that there should be this vigorous marketplace of ideas where people disagree, where they, you know, people turn on the television and they hear both sides of all kinds of things. you know, we published a book in the fall of 2020 calth against wearing masks. and at the same time, we ■br wearing masks. and both of them were sort of know, what the arguments were. and so i amazon, some of the other big tech platforms took masks because the government had good and that having the marketplace, that challenge, that ia was dangerous. so they were able during that period to get all of the big tech platforms, to get amazon,

google, youtube to facebo,instag that they disagreed with and their many cases now that are that are pending where it was clear that people from governmenthv agencis or people from the exactly of branch actually called up amazon or youtube or other places and told them to take material dow . i mean, they have so much power and the big tech coan of, you kt lawsuit suits or, you know, other regulation. so they pretty much felt that they had to do it. and e's some letters back and forth saying, you know, how do you want this censorship to o down? do you want us to just take the book off or take the informaonu? so those are the kinds of things that i think most americans have

or for decades in in russia or united states that here we can decide things for ourselves. you , skyhorse, you know, my goal witskyhorse is to sort of be the preeminent free speech■ publisher where people can find things that other7 publishers find are too dangerous to challenging and are afraid to publish. don't want the hassle of it. so, so i think that there's a real role there and that there are places like regnery that weren't doing welbesense they wg they were getting canceled in the■ marketplace. and tony lyons, you took that sameelizabeth holtzman and alan dershowitz, the case for and the case against impeaching donald

trump. right. and you know, so so i ineally interesting way of publishing books and th know, i would like people to buy both of the one that they think that they really disagree with. and if their ideas can really stand up, then then they shouldn't be afraid. you kn so if somebody really believes something, why not read theof view? you know, why not say, where are my strongly held beliefs coming from? is it that i'm being indoctrinated? is it that i just, you know, grew up in a in a certain part of the country? so all the people here have that same point of view. i mean,rk city. i'm sure that there are a lot of ho have very similar points of view when it comesspecific issues. and then you go to alabama and you have people with very different points of view. so the narrative in new york is

that the people in alabama are, you know, not as intelligent as the people in new york. and i'm sure that if you ask the people in alabama, they would think that the people in new york are just these crazy woke people who have these misguided views that that can't really stand up. so the idea is that, you know, anyd up to argument and, you know, that's what i would like to see much more of in this country. andere's a there's a much more sinister side of it in that, u know, the big tech k0platforms, the internet startd out as this incredible opportunity for just maximum, um, diversity that every kind of idea, you know, was there somewhere and if you were willing to do a little bit of research, you could find it. but then at some point, it kind

of all went south. and what happened there is that people discovered that youinter. so that the internet bomes the best possible source of censorship that the tools are so incredibly powerful. so while well, it started out as opportunity or just this open world where everybody could have a voice, what it winds up being is that you can use bots, you can usepecic types of censorship to make sure that it's ver vopposing points of vi. and when it comes to to po really stifle dissent if you just make sure that nothing that contradicts what your narrative is, you know, can be easily accessed. so that becomes true even with things like, let's say,■t the iq war, where we all saw the

beginnings of that. o said that there weren't weapons of mass destruction, youed, were vilifie cases, lost their their government jobs. there was a cia agent outed as as punishment for it. so that was the beginning of it. and then you saw things like, you know, the the snowden story where there was a war on whistleblowers. but what it's come down to and it really happened during covid, then just kind of disappeared from the internet. so there were people who who had, you know, decades their one pres decades, maybe ten, 15 years, who if the government or if a big tech something they were saying constituted ve their whole life's work

just disappear, just taken recol way to kind of sue the government or sue youtube or sue and that, i thought was just such an incredible tuaramerica,d toúd see. but what it what it winds up being and what it what it really can get to is that any kind of dissent can be labeled as misinformation. so when you looked at at the definition of health, misinformation during covid, it actually became and was described in many places as anything that contradicts the official government point of view. so you would have won official say something and anybody who contradicted that official then was scrubbed from the internet. so the problem is that once you

give the government that kind of power, it's not easy to take it back. and, you know, so you can say, well, we're in a crisis. so we have to do takesteps to tn if there are many people■1 who would then say, well, you didn't actually protect people you prte corporate nations making certain products. story that doesn't really fit here. but the idea is that yo then take any narrative about any subje and say that it's the truth. and because it's the tth, anything that contradicts it shouldn't be allowed to be puhein or in any other form. andha i tnk, is sort of fundamentally un-amer. combat t. and i'm working very hard to do that. and and i think, you know, that a company like regneryt this really story history of

ishing conservative views for, you know, 75 years, then sort of found itsno■ñ in any int bookstores example, many books that that they publish. i mean, i didn't really know the details, but i could see from the books that i was publishing. so when i published robert f kennedy's book, the real anthony fauci, you know, it was the bestselling book in america. in its first week, it sold 93,000 copies. the new york times bestseller list made iat number accept an r it. big tech it. so it was censored in every possible way. it got no reviews at all. totaledlackout because it was labeled as misinformation, which by the definition that was prevalent then, whicht contradid statements by dr.ere

pese misinformation. he represented and that was that was where where, you know, then to. so a book that contradicted him even just by the title. so you didn't have to read any of it to decidet. and the title itself was misinformation because it said thff official might be saying things that were untrue or incole or needed further research. tony lyons, is it fair to say that you published conservative books? i know you just bought regnery and anothe conservative publisher as well. yeah. so, you know, we we publish books across the political spectrum. have many books coming out this this year that are, you know, really solidly can conservative books. we have pro-trump books, but we also have anti-trump books coming out. weat are for bobby

ow, it's really across the political spectrum with all the different nuances. and that's the kind of publisher that i that i want to be. so when it comes to conservative books, i've been really fascinated by the censorship of those books. so that kind of drew me more towards that kind of publishing u know, on the democratic side, if, if you welt writing a mainstream book right now, you have five, you know, gigantic publishing companies, fiveom know, are more than $1,000,000,000 companies that are gd on those . but if you have a really great, you know, exciting, interesting, b"challenging conservative book, there aren who would be brave enough to

publish them now. so that's a it's a very strange historical moment. there. and so i wanted to take part in kind of writing what i s as a as a wrong. you've published woody allen, rfk jr, as you said. alex jones. so is therldan limits? you know? that's always a tough question. and, you know, if if a book explores that point of view and, you know, that's a and it's a strong argument for whatever the point of view is, i think it's better for the there. and i think that that what you find is, you know, when you look at this country now, there really two americas of what the truth is. and,ou really, really hmful, really dangerous, but also bad for the american mind t

we really want the broadest possible spectm d and the idea t both sides have, t missing formd that that ought to be taken know, really, the truth is decided, likebefore, if ideas and that it's much better to have it done in the town square with people making their very best arguments rather than a publisher or or a government some of the other authors published by skyhorse in manafos hedges and lennon. what where did the name skyhor■( the name skyhorse came from an employee who worked at the company many, many years ago. i really liked the name. it doesn't really have much to

do with person that it that it came from, but i had started off thinking that i was going to going to call it pegasus books. and what i what i liked was the idea of something sort of soaring into the clouds, you know, something big some some big idea, some new way ong. and but at the time that that trademark was taken, you know, there's there's another publisher called pegasus■l book. so skyhorse seemed like a like a good alternative to that. and it's a name that i that i really like now, you know, totally separately fromhe from the history of where the idea of it came from. well, nyrted with lions press. does that still exist? yes. so my father started lions press in 1985. he was a professor of literature in new york. he he believe, 26 books and literally thousands of articles■b and newspapers and magazines. he still alive.

incredible man. and so he foundelions hired me. i had gone to law school, practiced law for about 18 months, and then joined his publishing company. m? i helped him run that up until 2001. and then we sold the company and i went with them and and then ran it for the company that bought u years. and they are they are yes. well, you keep the regnery skyhorse. definitely keep the regnery imprint. i think it's a great brand and i and i'd like to, you know, be a good steward of the brands that that we taken. what about i would you publish a book written in a. yeah. i mean my my feeng are that you know, it's a very mplicated area.

and i think that that as a free speech publisher that i should be open to all the different historical changes. so, you know, i'm a little bit skeptical of, you know, sort of how it's goto all play out and with certain kinds of books, it it seems lik's it's not going to play out. theory, you know, if it was, for example, somebody was going to write a practical book and it was somebody who was an expert in that area and they had written many, man■:y ti and i then becamet of shortcut e process and say, write a book on articles on how to do■? some specific thing, you know. so to the extent that it would just save them.

500 hours workj■p and then creae an author tick book, that was their idea based on, you know, their form of, of, of writing, their style, their ideas, you know, that that, i think isn't a bad we can to do things more quickly and get a product that's, you know, just as high quality,ne. you know, i you know, i think that there are a lot of dangers to it, too. starting to to see what some of those are, that there's all kinds of biathat can go into the process of of a i. anything. tony lyons founded in 2000 657 new york times best seller. so far more than 10,000 books on the backlist the wall street journal sa about him, quote, mr. lyons doesn't use sensivy and that

alone qualifies him as a maverick in today's vi really ad civil libertarian and wary of power in all its forms. he especially deplores the extent to which social media platforms or traditional media and government seem to have joined hands to combat misinformation. he sees such coercive unityal ty clas necessary for discovering truth. tony lyons is the publisher of skyhorse. we appreciate your spending a few minutes with us. thanksmuch. and you're watching about books. a program in podcasts produce by c-span's booktv. well, each week, dozensbooks ar. here's a few. author peter schweitzer is out with his latest book, blood money why the powerful]w■■e tura blind eye while china kills american schweitzer's previous k also focused on china. his 2022 book was red handed how

american elites get rich helping china win. another new book, nick troiano, has released the primary solution rescuing our democracy from the fringes. mr. troiano is executive america, which advocates for primaries and independented note, former federal prosecutor andrew weissmann and new york university law professor melissa murray comal indictments against former president donald trump into one book. it's called the trump indictments the historical charging documents with commentary. oz timeline of the four cases. a guide of@k president. and historical comparisons formr political leaders. mr. weissman served as a lead

prosecutor in former special counsel robert mueller's office, and he previously authored the book where law ends inside the mueller investigation. and we want to note one book review this week, the guardian's martin pengilly took a look at the washington book, how to read politics andoliticians. it's by carlos lozada of the new york times. mr. pengilly calls the book, quote, an authority of overview u■2s political publishing in the last decade. and carlos lozada, by the way, will be a guest in the coming weeks. on c-span's q&a program. and this week on book tv's afards program, journalist kara swisher talked about her career covering the tech industry and its key players. here's a preview. burn book is an expression actually mean girls is out now, which is kind of too it is for lly think about people and you're not. people are supposed to see it. and of course, that's the whole premise of that movie.

and you have fun with it. and >it's sort of gossipy and mean a little bit, but funny. and so i decided that's what i was doing in my memoir of whaven valley, the same time that subhead is a tech love yeah. so i don't want this idea that pes out there. i know tech is terrible. it's not terrible. it's how how it's being and so i want to say i love tech, but let me tell you what happened. yeah. yes, journey. do these people becoming the world's richest and most■y e? and a reminder that afterwards airs at 10 p.m. eastern time on book tv. well, thanks for joining about books, a program and podcast produced by c-span's - continue to bring you publishing news and new author programs. and a reminder that you can get thisapp and you can also watch ne any time all of our author programs at booktv dot

org.

b just click on the book fairs and festivals tab or search curt schlichter. >> you've been watching booktv, television for serious readers. every sunday at c-span2 here from nonfiction authors discussing their books and