The sensationalist literature maven who tried to play ball with O.J. Simpson has been sacked.
News Corp. announced late Friday that HarperCollins publisher Judith Regan has been fired, a move many are viewing as punishment for the shellacking the company took when she revealed her plans for an exclusive interview with Simpson to promote his hypothetical tell-all, If I Did It, which was going to be released under the ReganBooks imprint.
The book was due out Nov. 30; the two-part interview was slated to air Nov. 27 and 29 on Fox, and News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch slammed the brakes on the whole project Nov. 20, about a week after the free world found out what Regan had up her sleeve.
"Judith Regan's employment with HarperCollins has been terminated effective immediately," HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman said in a statement. Per various reports, Friedman and Regan had a tempestuous relationship over the years, and, according to Variety, Friedman also took a lot of heat for her silence surrounding the Simpson debacle.
In the meantime, the ReganBooks label will continue under the HarperCollins General Book Group. Regan moved her eponymous group, also responsible for Jose Conseco's steroid-fueled memoir Juiced and Jenna Jameson's instructional bio How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, from New York to Los Angeles earlier this year.
According to the New York Times, HarperCollins issued the two-sentence press release with the terse headline, "Judith Regan Terminated," even before her employees on the West Coast were aware of the move.
After Simpson's deal was scrapped (not until after he had been paid a reported $3.5 million, however), the erstwhile murder suspect told a Miami radio station that the title of the book and TV special was not his idea and that a ghost writer was responsible for much of the book's lurid details about how Simpson would have killed ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman, if he had done it.
Simpson also criticized Murdoch, who called the former footballer's deal "ill-considered" and apologized "for any pain that this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson," saying the multimedia mogul shouldn't be "taking the high road either."
Too late on all counts. Brown Simpson's sister, Denise Brown, said Nov. 21 on the Today show that News Corp. offered her family "millions of dollars" under the table to step aside when If I Did It hit shelves and airwaves.
While the company admitted discussing money with the family, a spokesman denied that there was any stipulation requiring the Browns to keep quiet.
Regan, meanwhile, defended the project in an eight-page statement released across multiple media channels, saying that the book deal money went to a third party to ensure that Simpson himself didn't profit from it.
The memoir-peddler labeled her position as being on the side of justice, saying, "I made the decision to publish this book and to sit face to face with the killer because I wanted him, and the men who broke my heart and your hearts, to tell the truth, to confess their sins, to do penance and to amend their lives."
If it was a line, no one was biting, including multiple Fox affiliates, who said prior to News Corp.'s ultimate decision to scuttle the project, that they wanted no part of it.
And if this tells you anything, the book didn't even encounter a warm reception from the Internet, the place where everyone assumed the tome would end up anyway.
Booksellers alibris.com and biblio.com both removed listings for the book last Friday, and eBay also knocked at least eight copies from the auction block—although not before at least one inquiring mind picked up a copy for $50, USA Today reported this week.
"It's a disgusting book, and we don't want to sell it," even if "people may have a right to sell it," Alibris CEO Martin Manley told the newspaper.
Catherine England, a spokeswoman for eBay, echoed the sentiment, citing the auction site's "murderbilia" policy.
"Out of respect for murder victims, eBay may remove items closely associated with murder cases dating over the last 100 years," England said. "We reached out to the publisher who holds the copyright; they said they did not intend to distribute this book."
Actually, HarperCollins vowed last month to destroy every copy. According to early estimates, about 400,000 were printed, but there's no word on how many still exist.
Then there's the bookseller, who wished to remain anonymous, who told USA Today that he had snatched up 11 copies for about $12,000 from "a guy who knows a guy who works in a bookstore."
He told the paper he doesn't believe in destroying books, but he does believe in free speech. However, he didn't want to be identified for fear of being labeled "evil" for profiting from the Simpson book.
Of course there's no accounting for the taste of the guy who buys from the guy who met the guy who knows a guy.