Last week, a publishing pro writing under the pen-name Eowyn wrote a blog about the rotten state of publishing. Eowyn joined the industry in 1988, the same year The Satanic Verses was published. I’ve posted a link to the article at the end of this piece but for now, here’s a quote from it:
How is it then, that so many authors are now frightened to speak their minds, for fear of reprisal in the shape of cancellation or sacking from their publishers? How is it that so many people working in editorial offices are looking over their shoulders concerned about saying the wrong thing? I was horrified to talk to junior members of staff in my old firm to discover that they constantly check what they say.
I’m not going to go through everything Eowyn discussed in her blog but what she said about the sheer craven spinelessness from those at the top of our industry who have kowtowed to twitter mobs for far too long really struck a chord because it’s a cravenness that has infuriated me for far too long. My last substack discussed all this from the perspective of the Society of Authors and its Chair’s failure to step up and speak out against authors being abused, hounded and cancelled for wrong-think. In it, I called out the SoA’s failure to challenge publishers who drop authors, and now I want to take it a step further because enough is enough and publishers need to step up too.
Before I give my advice as to what publishers can do to stop the rot, let’s go back to May when a group of people in publishing set up a Twitter group called Young Refuseniks, billed as ‘The first ever online support group for trans and non-binary publishing employees/hopefuls and authors.’ An admirable raison d’être but one that quickly morphed into something sinister.
Yes, you read that right. The Young Refuseniks, a group set up by people who work in publishing, compiled a list of people within the industry they deemed transphobic. And who was included in the list?
These are the kind of people who made it onto the list: anyone in publishing including small unpublished authors who had the temerity to like a tweet posted by a ‘transphobic account.’ And who were the arbiters of what qualified as a ‘transphobic account?’ You guessed it, the Young Refuseniks. This list was seven pages long. That’s seven pages worth of twitter accounts neatly compiled into a downloadable format for anyone who followed YR and joined its Discord group to access. By the time the Young Refuseniks Twitter account was closed following a huge backlash (and numerous people pointing out that the list could be in breach of GDPR), it had close to 500 followers. Many of them were agents and editors. Presumably the Discord group is still active. It was certainly active in the short time I had access to it.
Active or not, there are around 500 publishing professionals who could still have the blocklist stored on their devices. Agents. Editors. Publishers. Marketeers. People with the power to make or break authors.
I feel it’s only right to share this screenshot of the Discord group from when the backlash against the Young Refuseniks was at its peak.
Sorry to disappoint you, poster in the above screenshot whose name I’ve deliberately blocked out, but none of your mods were stalked. The simple reason your blocklist made it to ‘terf Twitter’ was because so many people in publishing are cowering in fear, terrified their legally held beliefs will be revealed and their careers ruined, and so are censoring their voices and thus remain under your radar. The very fact you created that list proves they were right to take such precautions. The very fact you thought it appropriate to create something that could easily be used as an illegal blacklist by the agents and editors who followed you proves what dire straits the publishing industry is in and that we have returned to the age of McCarthyism.
Last week it was announced that Swift Press had acquired the rights to Hannah Barnes’ book Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children. Hannah Barnes is an award-winning senior journalist at the BBC. There is not a cat in hell’s chance this book won’t have been scrupulously researched (it’s stated she had access to thousands of pages of documents including unpublished reports and emails, and over a hundred hours of personal testimony), and that lawyers will go through the finished manuscript with a fine toothcomb. That didn’t stop the co-chair of Pride in Publishing, a man who’s worked for a variety of publishing houses including HarperCollins, from tweeting this:
I give Swift Press its due – it’s fearless in what it publishes. But I read this tweet, not only furious that someone who holds such a powerful position in publishing could tweet something so libellous without any fear of consequences, but also with concern that none of the big publishing houses had the balls to acquire the book. Because this book is going to be big for the simple reason that it’s covering a huge story on a subject more and more people are becoming aware of and for which concerns are rapidly growing. Considering that it was revealed recently at the Penguin Random House/Simon & Schuster antitrust trial in the US that 90% of titles sell fewer than 2,000 units, you’d think the big publishers would have been lining up to publish this. After all, publishers are in the business of making money. To make money, they need to publish books people want to read and not just the books people in publishing think they should be allowed to read. But it’s not just the publishers and those working for them who are actively trying to suppress certain voices.
I know of authors who’ve been dropped by their agents for having gender critical views and I know of agents who stand by their authors but know not to bother approaching certain editors with their work. It doesn’t matter what the book’s about or how well it’s written or if it has the potential to be a best-seller; the author is deemed so beyond the pale that the agent or editor will not even consider taking it on. Diversity and inclusion is the mantra… but not you. We don’t like how you think so we will exclude you. And this exclusion covers anyone who doesn’t toe the line on what the totalitarians (let’s call them what they are) believe is the correct way of thinking.
Books are created and published for so many purposes, chiefly to entertain, to inform and to educate but we are reaching a stage where self-censorship is inhibiting creativity. This prevents authors creating characters and worlds with the full spectrum of humanity in them and the full spectrum of human emotions and perspectives, and it’s the readers – many of whom simply want to escape into the pages and forget the real world for a few hours – who loses the most, denied the full vivid experience of the scenes alive in the author’s head.
So if any of the head-honchos of the publishing houses are reading this, then please, take my advice and stop the crippling effects of self-censorship and sanitisation of your authors and their books because we’re approaching the stage where what you publish – indeed, what you’re offered for publication – will be so anodyne that no-one will want to read it. Much of the following advice also applies to agents.
1) Make a statement along the lines of the one released by Netflix: “As employees we support the principle that Netflix offers a diversity of stories, even if we find some titles counter to our own personal values. Depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”
2) Live by that statement. Add clauses to staff contracts explicitly stating that refusal to work on titles or with authors they disagree with or perceive to be harmful is grounds for dismissal. Every time you give in to them, you embolden them. Learn to say no.
3) Put an end to sensitivity readers, especially in works of fiction, unless specifically asked by the author or if the book’s about an especially sensitive subject, and even then, only employ them in the most extreme of circumstances. Just knowing a sensitivity reader is going to go through an author’s book to flag ‘problematic’ words or phrases is enough to stifle creativity. What is problematic to one person isn’t going to be problematic to another.
4) If the author does agree to a sensitivity reader, do not make them feel pressured to change every little thing that’s flagged.
5) Remember, diversity includes diversity of thought, and that includes for your employees. With that in mind, remember offence is taken not given. Disagreement is not hate. No two humans are the same, not in appearance, experience, personality, or beliefs. Make tolerance to dissenting thoughts a priority and enable your work environment to be a space where free expression flourishes.
6) Stop inserting morality clauses into your authors’ contracts. We’re not talking about illegal behaviour here, we’re talking about a clause in a contract that allows for said contract’s termination if the publisher believes the author has behaved in an immoral way. Morality means different things to different people and all you’re achieving with this clause is to cower the author into silence because you are making yourself the arbiter of what morality means. You are effectively removing their freedom of speech.
7) Stop bowing to Twitter mobs. These activists are a tiny minority whose only enjoyment in life is finding offence and sucking the life out of everyone else, and yet they have the publishing world – in fact, most of the arts and entertainment worlds – bending over backwards to appease them. Authors stood up against the Young Refuseniks. You can stand up against the totalitarians too. Every time you give in to them, you embolden them. Learn to say no.
And that’s it. That’s my advice. I’m not going to pretend it will be easy but if you stand firm, you – and freedom of expression – will prevail.
You were brave to publish this and I can only hope the response on a personal level is positive. I don't share your hope or your patience, primarily because I've watched publishers in action for a long time and the situation has just gotten worse and worse. My somewhat rebarbative response is here: https://continentalriffs.substack.com/p/life-after-the-bigs and my name is attached. (I completely understand why yours isn't.) Best of luck. I hope you're right and the people in publishing come around. Amitiés j