the last book I ever read (Salman Rushdie's Joseph Anton, excerpt eight)

from Joseph Anton: A Memoir by Salman Rushdie:

The highest offer for the English-language rights to publish The Satanic Verses was not made by Viking Penguin. Another offer was a full $100,000 higher, but Andrew and Gillon both advised him strongly against accepting it. He was not accustomed to figures of this size, much less with turning them down, and he asked Andrew, “Could you just explain again why I should not agree to receive an extra one hundred thousand dollars?” Andrew was adamant. “They would be the wrong publishers for you.” Later, after the storm broke, an interview with Mr. Rupert Murdoch was printed in The New Yorker, in which he stated emphatically, “I think you should not give offense to people’s religious beliefs. For instance, I hope that our people would never have published the Salman Rushdie book.” It was possible that Rupert Murdoch didn’t know that some of “his people” had been so enthusiastic about the novel that they had outbid the opposition by a considerable distance, but it seemed probable, in the light of this New Yorker profile, that had Murdoch found himself in the position of being the publisher of The Satanic Verses he would have withdrawn the book the moment the trouble began. Andrew Wylie’s advice had been unusually prescient. Murdoch was indeed the wrong publisher for the book.