Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wrote a book bashing capitalism: It’s OK to be Angry About Capitalism.
Sanders will venture out on tour to promote the book.
Do you think the events are free? One would think so from a man who hates capitalism and claims to be for the people.
Nope. The tickets cost up to $95:
BRENNAN: “But I have to ask you, you’re going on tour to promote this book ‘It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.’ And you’re here talking about it. I understand we’re not the bad guys you’re describing in the book when it comes to media. But tickets for your tour apparently are selling for $95 on Ticketmaster, which is accused of anti-competitive behavior. You know that. Some of your Democrats are criticizing them. Aren’t you benefiting yourself from this system that you’re trying to dismantle?”
SANDERS: “No, I’m not. I — first of all — first of all, those decisions are made totally by the publisher and the bookseller. I think there’s one case where, in one place here in Washington, Politics and Prose, an independent bookstore, charging some tickets. Most of them, I think, are $40, $50. And you get a book as well. So, if you want to come, you’re going to have to pay 40 bucks. I will throw in the book for free. And we’re doing a number of free events. But I don’t make a nickel out of these things at all.”
Ticketmaster has recently been accused of anti-competitive behavior.
The service is selling tickets for up to $95 for Sen. Bernie Sanders' book tour. When asked about this, he points to the "publisher and the bookseller” for those prices. pic.twitter.com/kjxJk5wzpx
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) February 19, 2023
Sanders will stop at The Anthem in DC on March 1st.
The cheapest ticket available is $55 in the way back.
Spencer Brown at Townhall gave me an idea. Two tickets at $95 cost $190.00. Ticketmaster service fees are $16.45, so times two, it’s $32.90.
So that is $222.90.
The anti-Capitalists will tell you they have no choice but to partake in capitalism. They are forced to use it!
As far as I can tell, no one is forcing Bernie to do a book tour or sell tickets for that amount.
It’s the publisher’s fault Why not make the book a blog so people can read it for free? Why not self-publish the book?
Socialists crack me up.
It’s even funnier that the tickets are through Ticketmaster. The Senate dragged Joe Berchtold, the Live Nation executive, in front of the Judiciary Committee because of the fiasco caused by everyone buying Taylor Swift tickets. Live Nation owns Ticketmaster.
Even the Republicans on the committee went ballistic on the Ticketmaster big shots:
The most remarkable aspect of the hearing may have been the display of consensus by a panel often split along partisan lines. Mr. Blumenthal summed that up with a mocking salute to Mr. Berchtold.
“I want to congratulate and thank you for an absolutely stunning achievement,” he said. “You have brought together Republicans and Democrats in an absolutely unified cause.”
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Comments
He could have self published his book as a PDF and then done the tour gratis. It’s not about the money, right Bernie?
The worst kind of “public” servant, the public fraud.
Hey, there’s a lot of upkeep on those 3 houses.
Exactly but I’m
Sure the Dems gave him plenty to
Drop out.. TWICE
As Mrs Marx supposedly said at Karl’s funeral, “I wish he’d spent a little less time writing about capital and a little more time earning some”.
Actually he is being forced to do it, and as he said, he’s not personally getting any of that $95. But that’s all a result of the fact that he decided to place the book with a commercial publisher, and be paid a generous advance and royalty. When you do that, one of the provisions in your contract is that you are required to do these tours for no extra money. As you say, he could have gone another route.
Of course there are advantages to going through a publisher, because they’ve got the contacts with the bookstores, and they arrange promotion, such as book tours. All that increases sales, so if he wants to maximize the number of people who read the book this is probably the way to go. On the other hand, he could probably have self-published and hired a firm to do all the promotion that the publishers do, but stipulate that it would be subject to his approval, so he could veto these ticket prices.
Provisions are added and removed all the time before a contract is signed off by the parties involved. If Bernie wanted all book signings to be free of charge it would of been on of his contract demands and had the contract adjusted accordingly.
He could also found locations not tied to Ticketmaster / Live Nation to be the ticket seller if tickets were to be sold. He could of found other ways to distribute tickets if he wanted to go that route. Then again it would have required a little bit of work on his part or his handlers to deal with..
At the time he signed the contract ticket sales to his appearances were probably the last thing on his mind. And he is not the one booking the appearances or choosing who sells the tickets. Neither he nor anyone working for him has any control over that, and he gets nothing from it. But refusing to appear would be a breach of contract and could cost him serious money. This is a standard part of any book contract; you have to go on tour, and appear where you’re told to appear. I’ve heard of Sabbath-observing artists who ran into serious difficulties because it hadn’t occurred to them that they’d be required to make appearances on a day when their conscience wouldn’t allow them to. They worked it out, but at a significant cost.
Then Bernie, or his handlers are fools, I guess that goes without saying. Like I said every term in a contract is subject to negotiation, the bigger you are the more leverage you have. He is not working for a union where he has to accept the terms already agreed up in an existing contract. The publisher probably figured if that he was too dumb to worry about his public perception on this one and in the end the PR hit goes on Sanders not the book publisher.
So the defense is that he’s just not very savvy about such business-minded things?
I know who I’d want to be in charge of dismantling the US economy to rebuild in his image. The guy with a dream but no savvy…..they are a dime a dozen and not worth a dime.
Boo Hoo! They failed to read a contract and understand the ramifications of not reading a contract that they signed.
According to you, Bernie would have to eat shit off the sidewalk if he failed to remove provisions from the contract as to what the publisher wanted him to eat.
Please stop.
No one needs to spend more than $50, these days, in order to make any publication they have written freely available to the entire world. And Commie Bernie has a public stage where he gets lots and lots of free publicity for any junk that he writes, so that comes free to him, too.
We are long past the days of needing to actually print a book, or have runs of 20,000 to get it out. Books are files that are saved and transferred at no cost. They cost NOTHING. ANd, as I said, Bernie gets tons of free advertising every time he opens his mouth and the media covers his idiotic drivel.
Hey!! Those lakeside mansions don’t pay for themselves! The DNC may have bought it for letting Hillary get the nomination, but they don’t maintain it or pay the taxes.
You are such an absolute tool!
An educated dimwit.
“Actually, he is being forced to do it.”
No, he is not. As others have pointed out, he merely could have refused to sign the contract unless those portions were removed.
Ticket prices are expensive. The artists such as Swift or Springsteen and others folks on tours like Sanders don’t have to use Ticket master. They could run it themselves. They could require a far lower flat fee and max ticket buys. They could require each ticket be presented by the original purchaser by two factor authentication that only the original purchaser would possess like a DL#.
All of those options would require the ‘talent’ to take a risk in running the promotion and cut deep into their personal profits. Much easier and far cheaper to blame Ticket Master instead of taking accountability for their failure to proactively impede scalpers.
some venues had exclusivity agreements binding them to use Ticketmaster, certainly a venue owned and / or operated by Live Nation fits that bill. In some respects it is another part of the business that venues and artists have farmed out to a greedy third party.
If you believe ‘talent’ with name recognition/fan appeal on the level of Springsteen or T Swift are helpless pawns you are not a serious person.
The issue of scalping could be fixed by a consortium of the most popular/sought after ‘talent’ refusing to participate in the ‘greedy system’. The artists at that level hold the power to break the secondary ticket market. They find it easier to feign outrage at third parties or the system.
You should put the “greedy” in quotes. Those artists are just farming out the greed, so someone does the dirty work for them.
Billy Joel historically bought every ticket for the first few rows of his concerts so that scalpers and others could not buy them. Then he sent his road crews out to the cheap seats and gave those to fans who couldn’t afford the expensive seats.
Everyone who is anyone has control over how that works.
But Bernie is too stupid to understand that Capitalism is being used to promote his book about anti capitalism.
If he can’t understand this, he shouldn’t be a Senator, let alone an author.
Or he knows and doesn’t care so pretends not to know b/c if he acknowledges a possible solution, other than blaming ‘greedy capitalists’, it would require him to take risk.
If the artists who while about their helplessness in the face of the system refuse to buck the system it isn’t b/c they are actually helpless. They profit from the system. The scalpers actions reveal the true price point the ‘market’ will bear. By outsourcing their ticket sales they transfer promotion risk today in exchange for lower prices but very importantly benefit on the next tour b/c the now the true price point is revealed and they raise prices on subsequent tours.
Give the book away you commie. That way there is no profit issue you FRAUD.
Many venues take a cut from all merchandise sales, , A 20% cut is a fairly standard rate, I wonder if any books sold on site that are not pre purchased in advance will be treated that way during this tour.
The only bright light in this whole charade is that Bernie will find himself doing book signings that no one will attend.
Or someone buys all of the tickets and then gives them away to the loyalists. Sadly, whatever night it is, I already have plans.
I think we all recognize that politicians’ book deals are little more than legalized money laundering and payoffs.
When Obama left office, he and Michelle reportedly signed a joint book deal with Penguin Random House that paid them a $65 million advance. Does anyone really believe they sold enough books to recover the Obamas’ advance and make the publishing house a profit? Same question goes for Hillary’s 2014 memoir “Hard Choices,” which paid her an $11.5 million advance.
Don’t think these types of deals are reserved for only corrupt Democrats, either.
If the books don’t sell enough copies to recover advances and marketing costs, and make a profit for the publisher, where does the money for the advances actually come from?
Asking for a friend.
Some book deals probably are laundered bribes, though why anyone would want to bribe an ex-politician is an open question. (One possible answer, sometimes, is that the money may represent someone making good on a promise made while the politician was in office. And the reason they don’t stiff him is because they want the next politician to take notice.)
But many politicians’ book deals are completely legit. Some politicians’ books really do sell enough to justify such deals.
As for your claim that if the book doesn’t earn back its advance that proves the advance was a bribe, this is not true, because most books never earn back their advance. That’s how the book industry is structured. The advance ends up being all the publisher pays. So this is not a valid test of whether a particular deal is a bribe.
I submit it is a reasonable inference that these massive advances, which the publisher knows will never be earned back are payoffs, whether for past actions or future access and influence. Kind of like $83K a month board of director seats on a Ukrainian energy company and the sales of Hunter’s “artwork.”
I’m just stunned someone would pony up any money to see him.
Cut the Socialist, Sanders some slack. Them dachas ain’t gonna buy themselves.
Comrade Sanders is among the worst of the vile Dumb-o-crats — a shiftless, lazy, parasitic, ne’er-do-well, self-enriching career apparatchik and hypocrite who’s never held a private sector job, and who, despite his advanced years and wizened body lacks the moral probity and wisdom to criticize communism, and, still romanticizes and whitewashes it.
Wait, isn’t that description basically all of them?
Sanders may not be making money directly from the appearances. But I suspect it’s baked into the money he gets from the publisher.
Those dacha of his aren’t gonna pay for themselves.
Perhaps he can get some help wrangling his real estateportfolio from Fauxcahantis, or his fellow Trained Marxists from BLM.