INDIGNITY VOL. 3, NO. 113: Ethics by the book.

CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS DEP'T.

Ethics? Buy the Book! 

SELLING BOOKS CAN be a stressful business. In 2019, when Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor held a book talk at Portland Community College in Oregon, the Associated Press reported, "the roughly 550 free tickets made available to the public (the rest were reserved for VIP guests) resulted in the advance purchase of only 28 books."

When an aide to Sotomayor learned that the event organizers had bought 250 more books to sell to attendees at the talk, the AP reported, the aide wrote to tell them it was “definitely not enough.”

It sounded very bare-knuckled laid out in writing, thanks to the AP's public-record requests, but from the point of view of an author trying to bring off a successful book event, it was reasonable enough. The line to meet the author required people to buy or bring a book for signing; there were going to be more than 500 people there; the author didn't want to leave anyone out. 

Does it make sense to view Sonia Sotomayor as an author? The AP reported that for her memoir, My Beloved World, she received a $3.1 million advance, and that royalties on her books for children have added up to "at least $400,000 since 2019." That makes $3.5 million in book money, at minimum. Since she joined the Supreme Court in 2009, meanwhile, Sotomayor's cumulative salary as an associate justice works out to about $3.46 million.