No good deed goes unpunished.

Earlier today, we posted a very positive review by John Siman about a new book by John Tepper, The Myth of Capitalism. Readers may recall that Siman has published reviews of the latest books by Thomas Frank, Chris Hedges, and Michael Hudson that integrated material from author interviews. Having done quite a few book reviews myself, I can see the considerable craft that goes into Siman’s pieces.

Siman described the main points of Tepper’s book, as well as an in-depth presentation of Tepper’s analysis in one chapter of 29 industries with high levels of concentration. This is in fact a very common practice with reviews of non-fiction books, as our readers no doubt know well. For instance, see this article by Matt Stoller in The Baffler on Jesse Eisinger’s The Chickenshit Club.

Tepper was nevertheless very unhappy with Siman’s exceedingly favorable review. Tepper sent four complaints to Siman directly, three to me, and also enlisted his editor at Wiley, Michael Henton,1 to harangue me, all in less than 12 hours after the review went live. I also got an international call at 6:50 AM, less than an hour and a half when the post launched, from a private overseas number. Since no one calls me from abroad, I suspect that also was Tepper, who is based in London.

This is from one of Tepper’s e-mails to Siman after Siman sent him a copy of the review in advance and is the essence of his beef:

I appreciate you feel that way but listing all the key research in your piece means they don’t have to go to the book to find it. That is not a book review, it is practically an excerpt listing every single industry, and I’m not at all happy with that. Normally excerpts require an author’s permission. I’ve never seen anyone write a book review with so much material from the book. I will be in touch with Yves directly if you do not cut it down.

If you look at the Stoller review as a basis of comparison, you’ll see that it recaps Eisinger’s reporting in considerable detail. I forwarded Tepper’s complaints to Siman to Michael Hudson. Hudson’s reaction:

Good heavens! If a book contains a major new idea, that means by definition that potential readers need to be oriented in some detail to grasp what the new idea is, so as to break down their cognitive dissonance. Any good reviewer will try to summarize the book’s point so that readers see how the argument is framed, and can judge the type of evidence or logic that will be used to support the book’s thesis. Here’s Gillian Tett’s review in the Financial Times of my “and forgive them their debts.” She traces my entire line of reasoning. The book’s first-month sales in Amazon alone were over 1,000 copies in Britain and another 1,000-plus in the US, so obviously she didn’t “spill the beans” and kill the market.

I did not tell Hudson that Siman had had considerable difficulty with how poorly the book was written and had had to do a great deal of work to find a way to present the book positively, which he was in no way obligated to do.

If you have read any of my book reviews (see, for instance, the Daily Deal pieces), you can see my practice was to trash any badly-written book. I had been concerned that Naked Capitalism readers were given an unduly positive impression of the The Myth of Capitalism given its defects.

Other writers I contacted agreed with Hudson that Siman’s review was a plus for book sales. From an author of seven non-fiction books:

As it turns out, I’d read Siman’s piece on the Tepper book before getting your email — and was impressed with Siman’s positive take. In addition, I didn’t in the slightest believe I’d ‘read the book’ … that is, there was nothing exceptional in the material excerpted…. and, indeed, if anything, it made me want to learn more. In light of the email exchanges you’ve had with Siman, I’m struck that you are right that Tepper is fortunate that Siman didn’t comment on the difficulty of reading the book itself. Had I know that. I’d not have had the slightest inclination to buy the book. Perhaps you might mention to Tepper the old saw about ’there’s no such thing as bad publicity’ — even bad publicity spreads the word… and, on top of that of course, is that Siman’s effort is good publicity, not bad publicity.

We also wrote an academic, who replied:

I just read that review and thought it was great. If it wasn’t cold and snowy and I was feeling even the slightest bit motivated I’d walk over and ask the INSEAD library to buy a copy or two, assuming they haven’t already. He’s forgetting that: plenty of people have access to the entire book for free, assuming libraries stock it. You gave enough to wet an appetite and you were very kind (I’m discovering that being polite to crappy book authors is a liability – that’s why reviewers can be barbarians). He should be happy with the mention and the PR. I’d be if I’d written a book like that. Nobody who would actually buy the book (the Kindle edition is only $12) and read the whole thing would skip doing so because of that review, or for that matter because of any excerpt, even if this had been an excerpt.

Despite being considerably annoyed at this point (I’d been kept up two hours after my normal turning-in time, and I am still not completely over my bug and need proper sleep even more than usual), I had decided to go the high road, let Tepper cool off, and write him in the evening, which is the earliest I would have seen his and Siman’s messages in the normal course of events had Siman not caught me right before I was about to call it quits. That would have meant Tepper would not have gotten the message till the morning his time and would hopefully have calmed down by then.

Since Mr. Diplomacy isn’t my normal style of discourse, a colleague was so gracious as to pen the intended e-mail to Tepper:

Dear Jonathan, It’s clear from your email that you are upset. I’m hoping, though, with some time and perspective, you’ll get past that. Especially because the post about your book is one that will stimulate, and, based on feedback already has stimulated, interest on the part of readers to learn more. I’m not entirely sure why you’ve chosen to cross swords with John. He did not “excerpt the book wholesale”. Stirring up a fight with John seems counterproductive. What interests are served in airing disagreements and dirty laundry among the NC readership who have just been advised your book is important and worth reading? Best, Yves

However, Tepper continued to be extremely aggressive. His editor e-mailed me mid-afternoon, trying to bully with with Big Company Name: “It is not OK with Wiley (a potential copyright violation, actually)…” Anyone who has dealt with lawyers would recognize that Henton was shooting from the hip (“potential copyright violation” is a non-category) and had not even bothered speaking to his in-house counsel to see if Tepper had bona fide grounds for his beef.

I e-mailed Henton:

Mike, You are in no position to dictate the review of a very poorly written book. Siman was exceedingly generous in how he depicted it given the importance of the topic. He wrote to me during the course of writing the review that: “Here are my thoughts, Yves. The book is fucking unreadable. The first dozen or so times I picked it up I couldn’t read more than two or three pages without dozing off. There’s just so much information — important information! — but it’s presented in a such a quirky labyrinthine manner that it took me four weeks to sort it all out. “I guess Tepper charges a lot of $$$$$$ to his clients for giving them snippets of his exhaustive research. Well, that’s legit. But did he write this book simply to make more money or to address the failure of American capitalism for genuinely concerned citizens??” Siman has a PhD in classics and has published reviews of other major books with dense material, so there’s no issue with his reading skills. If you persist, I will remove the review, and publish Siman’s original take, which he sent to me by e-mail, in its place, and I will put “fucking unreadable” in quotes in the headline. Yves

Despite this warning, Tepper did indeed persist, e-mailing both me and Siman again. His missive to me started, “I sent this email 10 hours ago and haven’t got a single apology or response.” So you now understand how this post came to be published.

Tepper and his editor made clear that they do not understand copyright law. Had there been a copyright violation, a notion we vigorously dispute, the remedy is to request or force the removal of the supposedly infringing article. So by removing Siman’s review, we are acting in accordance with where their tactics were going, had they bothered to understand them.

Be careful what you wish for.

I am very sorry that Siman has come out the loser in this display of pettiness and ignorance about book promotion by Tepper and that the 88 very thoughtful reader comments have been binned along with the post. One reader suggested if you are still interested in Tepper’s book despite it needing considerable editing, do pick it up…at the library.

We think this incident is worthy of attention for a separate reason. As a savvy reader who I made listen to this sorry tale pointed out, this sort of legalistic bullying is all too common in America. Most people capitulate because they don’t know their rights and are unwilling to spend money to call a lawyer to get a reading. Hopefully Tepper and his editor will think more carefully about what is in their interest before abusing people who have done them a big favor.

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1 You can see Michael Henton’s bio on LinkedIn. As one writer put it, “He just a couple steps up from intern!”