With O'Reilly making a 'Killing,' publisher backs its star
Bill O’Reilly’s brand extends beyond TV: He’s made a killing with one of the most successful franchises in publishing, a series of history books with “Killing” in the title, most dealing with the assassinations of public figures.
O’Reilly’s books have been reliably huge hits, with his publisher, Henry Holt, unfurling the title and subject of each new Killing book with great fanfare.
A new, as yet-untitled book by O'Reilly and his Killing series co-author, Martin Dugard, presumably the latest in the franchise, is due out on Sept. 19, according to a bare-bones listing on Amazon. Holt backed its star writer on Wednesday after it was announced that Fox News and O'Reilly were parting ways in the wake of mounting sexual harassment charges against the conservative host of The O'Reilly Factor.
"Our plans have not changed," said Holt publicity director Patricia Eisemann.
Authors mired in controversy have sometimes paid a steep price for perceived sins, but few with O'Reilly's lucrative track record. Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos lost his book contract with Simon & Schuster in February, after podcast clips surfaced in which the gay writer/editor was heard seeming to condone sex between men and teen boys.
Four of the six books in O'Reilly's Killing series have hit No. 1 on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list: Killing Jesus (2013), Killing Patton (2014), Killing Reagan (2015) and Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan (2016).
The series began in 2011 with Killing Lincoln, a fast-paced, minute-by-minute account of the assassination of President Lincoln.
O’Reilly also has spun off best-selling young-reader editions of the series, and several of the books (Killing Lincoln, Killing Reagan and Killing Jesus) were adapted for TV by National Geographic.
O’Reilly’s reach in bookstores extends beyond the Killing series. On March 28, he released Old School, co-written with Bruce Feirstein. Ironically, it’s a primer on “old school” values.
Despite the controversy at Fox News, sales of Old School have hardly flagged. The book landed on USA TODAY’s best-seller list at No. 2 on April 6; this week it will be No. 5.
O’Reilly also teamed up last year with mega-selling author James Patterson for a children’s picture book called Give Please a Chance, another “old school values” title that became a best seller.
The Killing books, while wildly popular with readers, have not been without critics.
Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz disputed Killing Reagan, which portrayed the president as greatly diminished after he was shot: “The Reagan depicted by Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Dugard bears no resemblance to the man I knew and worked so closely with for years,” Shultz wrote in The New York Times.
In an unsympathetic review of Killing the Rising Sun, which took on the demise of an entire nation (Imperial Japan), USA TODAY reviewer Ray Locker (in a ** out of four-star review) wrote, “It’s time for the killing to stop.”
In an interview with Cindy Adams of the New York Post, O’Reilly explained how he and co-author Dugard work together:
“I keep to 300 pages. Nobody wants to read 500 pages. Research is filed to me….in narrative form. It tells me the story. I do all the writing and shoot it back to researcher Martin Dugard. 'Is it true? Anything to change?'”