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Milo Yiannopoulos gets $250,000 from Simon & Schuster for a book on ‘free speech’

Milo Yiannopoulos gets $250,000 from Simon & Schuster for a book on ‘free speech’

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Breitbart News tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos will be publishing a book through Simon & Schuster’s Threshold Editions imprint, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He was reportedly paid a $250,000 publishing advance for the book, which will be autobiographical.

Yiannopoulos told THR that he met with Simon & Schuster “top execs” earlier this year and “spent half an hour trying to shock them with lewd jokes and outrageous opinions,” expecting to be asked to leave. Instead, he says, they offered him “a wheelbarrow full of money.”

When reached by email, a representative for Threshold Editions told The Verge that the book, titled Dangerous, is set for release on March 14, 2017. They cited Yiannopoulos’ self-description, “the most fabulous supervillian on the internet,” and said that the book will be about “free speech.” The book is currently listed on Amazon but does not have a description.

Threshold Editions is the publishing giant’s politically conservative nonfiction arm. Its most recent releases include titles by Glenn Beck, Donald Trump, and former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, as well as a biography of Chris Christie and a satirical history of the Obama era called Give Me Liberty or Give Me Obamacare, with a foreword by Dick Cheney and an afterword by Rush Limbaugh.

“they said banning me from twitter would finish me off.”

The announcement comes five months after Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from Twitter. After years of cultivating a reputation as one of the internet’s most vicious trolls — stoking the fires of Gamergate and blaming the political left for the Pulse nightclub shooting — he was removed from the platform in September, shortly after inciting hours of racist abuse against Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones. Following the ban he sent a comment to BuzzFeed, saying that Twitter “confirmed itself as a safe space for Muslim terrorists and Black Lives Matter extremists, but a no-go zone for conservatives.”

At the time he also said that the decision would “blow up” in Twitter’s face and help him gain fans. He repeated this sentiment to THR this morning: "They said banning me from Twitter would finish me off. Just as I predicted, the opposite has happened... I'm more powerful, more influential, and more fabulous than ever before."

This is not the first time Yiannopoulos has expressed intentions to write a book. In December 2014, he announced plans to write a book about Gamergate, citing his unique perspective as “one of the vanishingly few journalists consistently sympathetic to the Gamergate consumer revolt.” In January 2015 he announced a book called The Sociopaths of Silicon Valley, for which he purportedly interviewed dozens of executives from media and gaming businesses. Neither book was ever published.

Following days of online criticism, Simon & Schuster released a statement about the book on Twitter, defending the choice to publish it.

Updated December 29th 12:23 PM EST: Updated to include Amazon listing.

Updated January 2nd 4:33 PM EST: Updated to include statement from Simon & Schuster.