The publisher of Sarah Palin's newest book was once sued by five of its authors because they "structured their business essentially as a scam."

"I got another book deal."

Okay so I was reading through this Salon piece on Ted Cruz's new book, explaining how the New York Times essentially outed publishing houses for using bulk sales to drive up the numbers in order to get on best seller lists. When I came across this:  

At some point the New York Times figured this out and began to list such alleged best-sellers with a “dagger” next to them denoting bulk sales, which sort of takes the fun, if not the profit out of it. And it wasn’t long ago that some authors got wind of another layer of the scam at their own expense. They sued their publisher, the right-wing Regnery Publishing for selling what would otherwise be boring, remainder bin books to various affiliated organizations at a steeply reduced price and even for free as promotional items. The authors did not receive royalties for such sales and they weren’t happy about it, one of them even complaining, “they’ve structured their business essentially as a scam and are defrauding their writers.” Imagine that. (Here is a link to that 2007 New York Times article.)

The name of the publisher, Regnery Publishing, seemed awfully familiar to me. Now where had I heard that name before?

And then it hit me:

Sarah Palin has a new book coming out, with a new publisher. 

Regnery Publishing, a conservative press based in Washington, D.C., announced Tuesday that it was planning a November release for Palin's Sweet Freedom: A Devotional.

Ah ha!

So it appears that Palin's newest publishing house is really just a scam operation that rips off its authors in order to drive up its own profits.  Interesting, no?

Of course Palin is not known for being exactly honest concerning book sales herself, since in the past she has used SarahPAC to purchase bulk orders of her own books in order to artificially drive up the numbers and increase her own profit margin as well.

So the question now remaining is, who will rip off whom?

Will Regnery rip Palin off, and use her waning celebrity to sell bulk orders of her books to conservative markets as giveaways, thereby depriving her of royalties?

Or will Palin herself buy up bulk orders using SarahPAC money, and then give them away to the six people who still want to read a book by her ghostwriter and pocket the money herself?

Well considering the most recent quarterly filings from SarahAPC that last scenario seems increasingly less likely.

However this IS Sarah Palin, who, I think we can all agree, was born to grift. So when it comes to being devious and ripping off her own fans, I would not count her out quite yet.