[10] An early draft manuscript of the book was obtained by BuzzFeed News, which asserted the work contained numerous instances of self-plagiarism.

[15] Announcement of the book drew outcry from more than 100 Simon & Schuster authors,[16] including Tim Federle, Rainbow Rowell, and Danielle Henderson.

[17] Roxane Gay pulled her book from Simon & Schuster, stating that she was not interested in doing business with a publisher willing to give Yiannopoulos a platform.

[9][18] Simon & Schuster posted a statement on social media on December 30, on its decision to publish Yiannopoulos stating: "We do not and never have condoned discrimination or hate speech in any form.

At Simon & Schuster we have always published books by a wide range of authors with greatly varying, and frequently controversial opinions, and appealing to many different audiences of readers.

While we are cognizant that many may disagree vehemently with the books we publish we note that the opinions expressed therein belong to our authors, and we do not reflect either a corporate viewpoint or the views of our employees.

[31] In its debut release on July 4, 2017, the book sold just over 18,000 copies, and not 100,000 as suggested by Yiannopoulos,[32] and temporarily went out of stock on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, where it peaked at No.

[7][9][35][36] On February 20, 2017, coinciding with Yiannopoulos receiving criticism for a resurfaced audio recording in which he defended certain forms of pedophilia, Simon & Schuster announced it would not be publishing the book.

Several days later, Yiannopoulos released a statement saying that although Weingart's law firm had served as "excellent litigators," he would represent himself against Simon & Schuster.

[39] While attending a court hearing in January 2018, Yiannopoulos argued that confidential documents which had not been disclosed to him by Simon & Schuster were "absolutely essential for me to properly assess my own case".

The presiding judge, Justice Barry Ostrager, disagreed and ruled that they contained "proprietary financial information" and said the documents had "nothing whatsoever to do with the substantive merits of your case".

[40] Justice Ostrager explained the process that Yiannopoulos needed to follow in order to raise a dispute with a view to obtaining access to the documents.

[41] In papers filed on 20 February 2018 with the New York supreme court, Yiannopoulos and Simon & Schuster requested that the case be dismissed "without costs or fees to either party".

As part of the court submission, Simon & Schuster's editor Mitchell Ivers described Yiannopoulos's first draft as "at best, a superficial work full of incendiary jokes with no coherent or sophisticated analysis of political issues".

[32] Ivers suggested that Yiannopoulos's criticism that contemporary feminism was "merely a capitalist con-job – a money-grab designed to sell T-shirts to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé fans with asinine slogans", was hypocritical, and prompted the note "Um … like your MILO SWAG?