"The Most Disastrous Decision in Corporate Publishing History"

Can you guess?

I decided to read through Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention so I could learn how The Autobiography of Malcom X was brought to the world: who published it, what the terms were, how the process went, how it initially sold. The Table of Contents did not include what would have been a helpful, discrete chapter on the book instead, the story was spread over hundreds of pages. I started at the end, with the index. The most helpful entry was Alex Haley, with whom the book was written. The first entry about the book is on page 219; the last one is on page 466. The publication history of The Autobiography of Malcom X —the conception, drafting, contract, production, and publication—spans three extraordinarily momentous years.

Haley proposed to Malcolm he write a book about Malcolm’s life in 1962, after a story Haley wrote about Malcolm ran in Playboy. Malcolm hesitated at first, and then agreed, upon two conditions: any royalties would go to the Nation of Islam, and Haley…