Al Regnery's recent success has surprised many people--including Regnery himself. The normally confident conservative publisher, who currently has two books on the New York Times bestseller list, remembers a time when none of this was assured. It was right after September 11, and Regnery even considered not publishing one of those bestsellers, an anti-Clinton book by September 11 victim Barbara Olson titled Final Days. And he thought the second, Bernard Goldberg's Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, could be dead in the water.
"We wondered if there would be a market for it at all," Regnery said of Bias. "After a crisis, Big Media tends to be very present in everybody's house and people tend to trust it. We wondered if people were going to buy something that says the media isn't always telling it to them exactly like it is."
But Regnery swallowed his doubts, releasing both the new Olson and a backlist title from her, as well as pressing on with a media campaign for Goldberg. What he found was a rich environment for right-leaning titles richer, perhaps, than the eight-year Clinton period during which Regnery made his name.
Radio and TV producers were clamoring for Olson's widower, Ted, or for Regnery himself. Meanwhile, Bias earned attention from both the conservative media that sympathized with Goldberg's claims as well as the liberal outlets that were his targets. Regnery now has more than a combined half a million copies of the two books in print.
Conservative books in general have seen an upsurge in the last few months, with successful titles coming from Bill O'Reilly, Peggy Noonan and even Pat Buchanan. In a time when publishers complain of diminishing media and sagging sales, Regnery can't fully explain what's moving the sales needle for his own books. Flag-waving, he believes, is a part of it, but he also thinks he has come up with a convincing formula. "The kind of books we publish are probably less susceptible to the ups and downs of the economy because they focus on issues that concern people," he said.
When Clinton left office, many wondered how Regnery would survive. But his newest successes only confirm his belief that he is filling a need, in a publishing climate that sports few truly conservative houses. He's not worried that could change, nor, for that matter, will he change what he does well. "We're not tempted to do fiction," Regnery said with a laugh when asked whether his success might allow him to expand. "We're just going to take the money and continue doing the books we've always done."
