Free Republic

Most of the general public, particularly those who know students in college or university, are aware of the sharp increases in the cost of higher education over the last several decades. Such increases have strained the budgets of students and their families and have led to significant increases in student debt. Included in these sharp price increases is the cost of textbooks and online materials that students need for their courses. A commonly cited estimate is that the cost of these materials may average around $1,200 per year per student (or $150 per course for eight courses during an academic...

This is a vanity post, I need Freeper help. I am looking into starting a publishing business for educational, spiritual, and short story works. I have never run a business so this is something I will be doing from scratch. I have another teacher who wants to be my partner in this venture. I need help in all areas and wanted to come to the one place where I know the smartest people are- FreeRepublic. Thank you for any and all help you can provide!

James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas released audio Wednesday of a purported conference call in October in which CNN president Jeff Zucker appears to tell editors to spike the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop. On October 14, the New York Post published emails found on a laptop apparently belonging to Hunter Biden, suggesting that his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, had met in 2015 with one of Hunter’s business associates from the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma. That directly contradicted Joe Biden’s claims on the campaign trail never to have done so: “I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or...

A Supreme Court justice has urged his colleagues to tackle the issue of immunity for social media platforms. On Tuesday, Justice Clarence Thomas asked the court to consider scaling back Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The section in question has served as a shield for social media companies, protecting them from content users upload to their platforms. When it comes to content posted on their sites, these companies have argued they are more like distributors of information than publishers. In most cases, the legislation grants immunity from legal prosecution, should a user post content that is deemed illegal...

Teen Vogue is really pushing to indoctrinate young people into the Marxist designs of the Black Lives Matter movement. Forget fashion, it’s about toppling our capitalism-worshipping bourgeoisie. The magazine has apparently dropped its mission as a purveyor of style tips to young people and adopted one of destroying capitalism, abolishing the police, and – no joke – advocating actual tenets of Anarchism. Just take a look at a few of the recent politically-charged headlines from the teeny bopper mag, and you might be shocked at what they’re trying to get your kids to embrace for radical societal change. Teen Vogue...

The co-founders of political research firm Fusion GPS plan to release a book next month on the "never-before-told inside story" about President Trump's relationship with Russia. The book, entitled "Crime in Progress: Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump," will tell the story of how Fusion GPS helped put together the infamous "Steele dossier," The Associated Press reported on Monday. Co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch's book, which is due out Nov. 26, is being called an " 'All the President's Men' for the Trump era" by publisher Penguin Random House. "After four years on...

Watch out, publishers: a nightmare scenario for Facebook may soon be a reality.    The social network last week officially launched its secondary news feed called Explore. The feed generally features posts from Facebook Pages users don't follow. News Feed, meanwhile, hosts posts from friends and Pages users do follow.But that's not true for everyone. In six markets, Facebook has removed posts from Pages in the original News Feed and relegated them to another feed, Filip Struhárik, editor and social media manager at Denník N, wrote. That means Facebook's main feed is no longer a free playing field for publishers....

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Following controversy over undercover videos filmed by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) into the practices of Planned Parenthood, a lawmaker in California has introduced a bill that would make secretly recording inside abortion facilities punishable by up to a year behind bars. “It is the intent of the legislature to enact legislation to prohibit any person from intentionally video recording a confidential communication, or disclosing or distributing that video-recording communication, without obtaining the consent of all parties to the communication,” A.B. 1671, introduced by Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez ,reads. It criminalizes any person who “intentionally discloses or...

Oxford University Press Bans Use Of Pig, Sausage Or Pork-Related Words To Avoid Offending Muslims 14 Jan 2015 The Oxford University Press has warned its writers not to mention pigs, sausages or pork-related words in children's books, in an apparent bid to avoid offending Jews and Muslims. The existence of the publisher's guidelines emerged after a radio discussion on free speech in the wake of the Paris attacks. Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, presenter Jim Naughtie said: "I've got a letter here that was sent out by OUP to an author doing something for young people. "Among the things...

(Speaking notes for an address to the Canadian Journalism Foundation Toronto, Canada, 2/16/2012)Good evening. I’m old media. This is my 36th year as a newspaper man – apologies – my 36th year as a multi-platform news executive. It’s a career I started as a copyboy on this same street about a dozen blocks east of here. I was hired for taking a picture of a belly dancer fooling with a drunk columnist. I was given the job of a guy who had just been fired for being a drunk. And I ended my first night on the job, taking home...

The case centers on Apple's move to change the way that publishers charged for e-books as it prepared to introduce its first iPad in early 2010. Traditionally, publishers sold books to retailers for roughly half of the recommended cover price. Under that "wholesale model," booksellers were then free to offer those books to customers for less than the cover price if they wished. Most physical books are sold using this model. To build its early lead in e-books, Amazon Inc. sold many new best sellers at $9.99 to encourage consumers to buy its Kindle electronic readers. But publishers deeply disliked...

The National Newspaper Publishers Association is affiliated with the hundreds of newspapers across the country that cater to the black community or, in the words of the NNPA, “The Black Press of America”. The Northeast Publishers Association is a smaller association that best characterized as the trade association for black newspapers in the Northeast. The NPA has prepared the advertisement below to go in black newspapers across the country. Walter Smith, a director of the NEPA, blasted out the advertisement to many on their email list with a note saying, in part, “We can educate our readership by either running...

WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange has said in an interview he had signed deals for his autobiography worth more than one million pounds(($A1.57 million). Assange told Britain's Sunday Times newspaper that the money would help him defend himself against allegations of sexual assault made by two women in Sweden. "I don't want to write this book, but I have to," he said on Sunday. "I have already spent 200,000 pounds for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat." The Australian said he would receive the equivalent of $A800,000 from Alfred A. Knopf, his American publisher,...

Publisher Peter Osnos, who admits to personally working with former Bush White House press secretary Scott McClellan on his new book, What Happened, began his career as an assistant to I.F. Stone, the pro-communist "journalist" named as a Soviet agent of influence who was the uncle of Weather Underground communist terrorist Kathy Boudin. But the connections don't end there. Boudin's son Chesa was raised by Barack Obama associates Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who were Boudin's comrades in the communist terrorist group, after Kathy Boudin went to prison for her involvement in an armed robbery and assault that took the...

I have just finished a 65,000 word manuscript and am looking for a conservative book agent. Unfortunately, most literary (non-fiction) agents tend to be lefties. Just wondering if any FReepers have had experience with book publishing and can suggest any literary agents who enjoy working with conservative authors. I'm afraid that I can't say more about my manuscript simply because I have been somewhat more outspoken here on FR than might be good for future book sales. I'm not asking for a personal recommendation, simply the names of anyone that you might have worked with to publish a book that...

A House committee held an important hearing Thursday morning on the issue of "libel tourism." That's the practice of bringing libel suits against American authors in other nations, particularly the United Kingdom, where First Amendment protections do not apply and where the burden of proof is placed on the defendant rather than on the plaintiff. Saudi Arabian businessman Khalid bin Mahfouz has brought several such lawsuits, winning a default judgment against American researcher Rachel Ehrenfeld for her book Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It, and forcing a Cambridge University Press to destroy copies of the...

The interview itself, however, was quite bizarre. A pleasant if not docile woman, Ms. Hillman seemed not to know how to conduct an interview. She seemed unprepared and unsure of what to do from one moment to the next. In short order, I became the one keeping the conversation afloat, even offering suggestions as to what questions should be asked. Indeed, an interesting first impression. The next day I received a call back from Faye. It took me a moment to realize who she was on voicemail when she referred to herself as ‘Lorraine Phelan’ – Don’s wife. Odd, I...

Author and magazine editor Jed Babbin is very concerned about two cases being decided in foreign courts that he believes could have an adverse effect on First Amendment rights in the U.S. Jed Babbin, editor of Human Events, served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in President George H.W. Bush's administration. He explains that a Muslim with possible connections to terrorist funding is using a British court to sue Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, an American author who wrote a book critical of Islam that sold in Britain on the Internet. And in Canada, a similar case has been brought against Mark...

Jim Baen, the founder and publisher of BAEN Books has had a stroke and is in a coma. Baen Books are well known for sucessfully launching a profitable ebook venture known as Webscriptions. Baen's philosophy is that is a good idea to get as many people introduced to books and nothing is encrypted or uses DRM. His company has been against the Digital Millenium Act and shows his support for the dissemination of free books from the Free Library. Baen Books has been the most dymanic force in science fiction and is the publisher of popular novelists like David Weber...

I'm very angry because I'm sick and tired of what I see as deception and dishonesty within the literary community. It's been going on for far to long and nobody seems to want to pay attention to it or to care about it. I love my publisher which is Publishamerica and it's a first rate Publisher however I have seen firsthand with my own eyes individual authors that meet on discussion boards asking each other to do reviews of one anothers books that most always turn out to be four or five star reviews. These people then go on every...