Gatekeepers and Privishing

With all the talk of the benefits of indie publishing, one benefit has been overlooked, that of avoiding being privished.
For a definition I'll throw to investigative journalist Charlotte Dennett, “Privishing is a practice little known to authors. It happens when publishers kill off troublesome books.”
Here's a quote from The Price of Liberty by Dennett's husband, Gerard Colby: “We privished the book so that it sank without a trace.” Dennett and Colby were both victims of privishing. Privishing refers to the practice of a publisher buying up the rights to a book to shut it down. The term applies to non-fiction books of a sensitive subject.
In 1974, Gerard Colby (then with "Zilg" tacked onto his name), wrote Du Pont: Behind the Nylon Curtain. Needless to say, the Du Ponts were not a little unhappy about the book, so applied pressure to the publisher Prentice Hall. Prentice Hall reacted by privishing the book and firing Colby's editor. The Times resisted pressure from the Du Pont company and published a glowing review. It was one of many rave reviews. The Price of Liberty, mentioned above, details the bizarre happenings when Colby attempted to publish with a second publisher. These included mysterious missing pages from 3,000 copies of the 10,000 print run. The missing pages were precisely the additional 3 pages detailing Prentice Hall's privishing of the last edition.
Colby and Dennett later signed with Harper Collins for a book - Thy Will Be Done, The Conquest of the Amazon - on the links between the CIA, the Rockefellers, and the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL, aka Wycliffe Bible Translators).  On the one hand SIL denied that the native peoples of Brazil and Guatemala were being slaughtered by the military regimes of their countries while at the same time allowing its base to be used by Green Berets who were looking for signs of resistance in the Western Amazon. SIL also assisted the Peruvian air force which had napalmed the Mayoruna and Campa Indians.
Colby and Dennett researched the private and government USA institutions that supported SIL. They discovered that the US military had donated surplus military equipment. Now, they did not find any direct links between the CIA and SIL, but they did document financial support from a foundation that was later exposed as a CIA front and they did document the fact that JAARS's (JAARS being SIL's private air force) head pilot, Lawrence Montgomery, was on the CIA's payroll.
SIL assisted the CIAA in its Intensive Language Program for American and Latin American military officers and gathered intelligence on native peoples. Nelson Rockefeller, as coordinator of the CIAA, acquired data such as mineral reserves in Latin America. Colby and Dennett alleged that Nelson Rockefeller used this data after the war when he formed the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC). IBEC became key in the commercial exploitation of the Amazon which led to military dictatorships and genocide.
Harper Collins published the book in 1995. When Colby and Dennett went on bookstore tours, they found that no copies of their book had been shipped. When the paperback sold out, Harper Collins advised that it was out of stock indefinitely. Finally Harper Collins agreed to reprint if Colby and Dennett could raise 500 orders. They did; Harpers Collins raised the amount to 1,000. When Colby and Dennett raised 1,000 orders, Harper Collins upped the amount to 2500. Further, orders for the book, including one order for 1,000 copies, frequently "disappeared" from Harper Collis' computers.
At one point, Harper Collins had to set up a hot line to meet the demand but nevertheless announced that the book was out of print indefinably.
Some sensitive books will not make it past the gatekeepers in the first place, and historically political pressure has compelled publishers to withdraw books from the market.
Lobbyists prevented a Bible version from being released in the USA in 1997, and in 2001 lobbied to prevent the New Testament translation known as Today’s New International Version (TNIV) being used by three major Christian denominations, and were implicated in a major Christian bookstore chain’s refusal to sell the TNIV.
The lobbyists were spawned mainly by the anti-equality for women organization The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) which was allied closely with the Southern Baptists. The Southern Baptist Convention’s giant bookstore chain Lifeway Christian Resources was the parent of Broadman and Holman Publishers which published the Holman Christian Standard Bible, a market competitor of the TNIV. Lifeway bookstores refused to sell the TNIV. Of the Holman Christian Standard Bible, R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, said he is excited “if for no other reason than we will have a major translation we can control.”
A number of the same lobbyists were members of the translation committee of the English Standard Version (ESV) Bible, another market competitor to the TNIV Bible.
Politically powerful figures today exert some considerable control over Bible translation and have succeeded in imposing restraints upon Bible publishers. In 1997, lobbyists reacted to the New International Inclusive Language Bible (NIVI) which was published in England, and applied considerable pressure to the publisher, Zondervan, not to release such a Bible in the USA. The NIVI’s crime? To translate gender language accurately; for example, to translate the Greek word referring to a human person of either gender by the English word “person” instead of the traditional “man”.            
On the CBMW’s Board of Reference have been such politically influential people as Pat Robertson, founder of Christian Coalition (described as “a major source of troops for the right-wing of the Republican Party”), Christian Broadcast Network (CBN), and The 700 Club, and author of New World Order. Pat Robertson lobbied for legislation which ensured a “return to the traditional family and the traditional relationships in the home,” in which the “wife is to recognize her husband’s role and submit to his wisdom in matters where there may be disagreement” and in which the man should “bring home the bacon” and the woman should “fry it up in a pan.” The Christian Coalition’s “Contract with the American Family” stated that it would “reaffirm family values” by opposing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) that would provide equal rights for women. In 1996, the Federal Election Commission sued the Christian Coalition, charging that its voters’ guides, which are distributed in churches, constituted partisan political activity. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee subpoenaed records of the Christian Coalition looking for evidence of illegal or improper political spending in the 1996 elections. CNN alleged that Pat Robertson hand-picked more than 30 Bush campaign leaders, and made public the relevant documents.
In 1997 the group Focus on the Family reacted strongly to plans by the International Bible Society, which owns the copyright of the New International Version (NIV), to publish a gender-accurate (e.g. translating the Greek word meaning a person of either gender as “person” rather than “man”) version as a new edition of the NIV.
Many people are not aware that most available Bible translations are backed by denominations or specific ideological groups. The English Standard Version (ESV), for example, had on its board of advisors several people who were signatories against the TNIV immediately upon its release. It is worth noting that the ESV was released only shortly before the TNIV. The ESV was published by Crossway Books, the President of which, Lane T. Dennis, was one of the original CBMW Council members and is currently on the CBMW Board of Reference. Crossway Books publish many books by CBMW members, specifically those books which promote their anti-equality for women agenda.
My own New testament translation was sat on for some months by a Big Publisher, but they finally said the lobbyists would object to my translation so they would be unable to publish it. Later, a powerful group of opposing ideologies attempted (and put quite some pressure on me) to buy the rights, clearly with the sole purpose of shutting it down.
In the case of non fiction, indie prevents privishing, and will enable sensitive material to see the light of day.