Woke publishers ‘paid huge sums for books that flopped’ - Times article

Adrian Tchaikovsky is writing some great stuff which includes mixed gender relations/ species, subversion of norms/being hood, all in huge sci fi arcs. It’s not his theme, just a feature of some of his universes. He is presumably a white male, but that shouldn’t be relevant. Assess on quality, make sure you’re assessing a wide range of authors, and you get good books.

Striking another blow for freedom of speech, thought and expression, I see.

Interesting thread, thanks. I see on Twitter that TRAs have convinced a Japanese publisher to drop a planned translation of Abigail Shrier's book.

I like science fiction, originally the preserve of white American men, but much more diverse these days. The last one I read was a clever, subtle time travel story in which the ethnicity/physical characteristics of the protagonists in the future wasn't mentioned. In SF the ideas are much more important.

This is one of the big genre areas I love as well - and it is getting more diverse which is I think is massively benefiting the sector.

I often feel what is market at me by publishing industry isn't wide enough in scope though - I'm not into Jilly Copper or celebrity autobiographies.

Applecrisp thank you for answering my question.

It's a team I had fairly close involvement with for a project that wound up not happening, and schooling came up in conversation.

I work in a lot of different mediums, I've written for screen and theatre, and I also publish both fiction and non-fiction, and I've been published by a Big 5 publisher and by tiny indies. I don't just have one publisher, I work with a lot of different companies and organisations and I'm always hustling and having meetings with different people who might hire me as a freelance writer for something or other.

Clanchy has stated that she made up 'composite characters', she wasn't writing portraits of specific children.

I really don't think it's a good idea to get into Kate Clanchy, as Mumsnet has seen so many threads about her, and they always turn into bunfights.

Okay, but you’ve then written a long post about her.
Anyway, I didn’t know the whole story about Kate Clanchy so thank you for your answer.

Rotting death should be rotting teeth, sorry autocorrect did me dirty!

I really don't think it's a good idea to get into Kate Clanchy, as Mumsnet has seen so many threads about her, and they always turn into bunfights.

There are two reasons Kate Clanchy's book caused a firestorm, first because she was writing about real people who were also children, and who were under her care. That's very different from writing about fictional characters. (And she said a lot of pretty dodgy things about her kids, calling them fat, making fat shaming remarks about certain parts of their bodies, calling white students "boring" compared to "exotic" non-white students, saying that a student with a big nose had to be lying about not being Jewish, talking about young girls' shapely legs and breasts, saying her autistic students were so annoying no one liked them and even she couldn't stand them for more than an hour, referring to working class kids as "feral" and saying she'd happily slap a Burka on them to cover up their rotting death and double chins, and referring to one of her young girls who had been raped as suffering "a loss of grace." You personally might think those are all fine, but it's clearly a lot more than "Poor Kate was cancelled because she used the expression almond-shaped eyes.")

The second reason is because the entire thing started when Kate found a negative GoodReads review that had been posted nearly a year earlier, from a reader who disliked that Kate had said some of those things about her students, and Kate was so offended that a reader had disliked her book she went on a huge Twitter rant claiming that the reader was some kind of vendetta against her and most crucially claiming that the quotes in the review were fake and that the reviewer had made them up to smear her, and that they weren't in the book at all. Then it turned out she'd lied and all the quotes were in the book.

If Kate hadn't lied, and chosen to be offended by a reader disliking her book, nothing would have happened. Her book won tons of awards and did really well, there was no controversy over it until she opened her big mouth on Twitter and lied. And her Twitter rant was nearly a year after the GoodReads review was posted, so it's not like the review damaged her or the book.

Whatever your thoughts on Kate's book, she shouldn't have lied and attacked a reader for the crime of not liking her book.

Jilly Cooper gleefully writes about what appalling people poshos are. The real heroes of her novels are the pure-of-heart horses and dogs.

I like science fiction, originally the preserve of white American men, but much more diverse these days. The last one I read was a clever, subtle time travel story in which the ethnicity/physical characteristics of the protagonists in the future wasn't mentioned. In SF the ideas are much more important.

I was referring to one single team, not an entire publishing house, and I was not referring to my own publisher. I wouldn't name my own publisher anyway.

Fair enough about Jilly Cooper. I wonder if she was obliged to submit to a sensitivity reader.

I'm not sure what you're referring to in your last sentence? Do you mean this?
""EXACTLY!! I was just ranting about that the other day, the team comprises six Eton grads but they're "diverse" because 2 of them identify as non-binary."

Yes that is what I was referring to. How do you know they were Etonians, especially if it wasn’t your publisher?

Most authors include physical descriptions of characters. If a character has blue eyes, blonde hair, and milky skin, they're clearly supposed to be white.

Didn’t Kate Clanchy get into a lot of trouble for describing her students ‘chocolate skin’ and ‘almond eyes’?

Jilly Cooper is currently at #2 in the Sunday Times best seller chart. Dolly Alderton (who went to Rugby School) is #3, and while I haven't read her latest book her area as both an author and magazine columnist has always been the posh London socialite/media world.

I'm not sure what you're referring to in your last sentence? Do you mean this?

""EXACTLY!! I was just ranting about that the other day, the team comprises six Eton grads but they're "diverse" because 2 of them identify as non-binary."

I was referring to one single team, not an entire publishing house, and I was not referring to my own publisher. I wouldn't name my own publisher anyway.

If an upper class author who went to public school writes a book set amongst the English aristocracy where all the characters are named things like Cressida and Sebastian and live in country manors and play polo, it's pretty obvious they're supposed to be white.

Are there many books like that written these days? I don’t read much modern fiction so I don’t know.
Are you going to answer my question as to the name of your publisher who employs so many Etonians?

Most authors include physical descriptions of characters. If a character has blue eyes, blonde hair, and milky skin, they're clearly supposed to be white. An important part of an author's job is creating a mental image of the characters for the reader, and all kinds of decisions go into how characters are "coded." If an upper class author who went to public school writes a book set amongst the English aristocracy where all the characters are named things like Cressida and Sebastian and live in country manors and play polo, it's pretty obvious they're supposed to be white.

Anyway clearly there are plenty of best-selling authors who are white yet who write non-white characters without anyone thinking twice about it. People are very keen to scream about how whites are being oppressed and it's all woke woke woke woke but the objective facts simply don't support that.

Applecrisp what is the name of your publisher who employs so many Etonians?

I haven't read all the books on the list so I don't know whether they have non-white characters or not

There must be lots of - most, even - books where the author doesn’t specify the race of the characters.

Publishing should try to focus on what people want to read.

As a reader I do wish they'd focus on good stories and less on big names and literary prizes but it must sell books or why else would they do it.

Most of the booker prizes I've read were bought as gifts for me as I'm a reader though I've been unimpressed by most. I've bought DS math books because I know who Matt Parker is and know can do funny maths.

The self publish sector is supposed to be still growing and I've found many new authors though that and amazon - many more turned out to be female something I wasn't actively looking for than I was reading before.

Out of curiosity which agencies are this? This doesn't match with my experiences of working as a published author at all. I can't think of any major lit agency in the UK that fits that description, though I'm sure there are plenty of smaller agencies doing the performative woke thing.

For example I'm with Curtis Brown, which is one of the biggest literary agencies in the UK, and they definitely don't go in for pronouns, have lists that are exclusively minority writers, and out of the 20 book agents they currently employ, not a single one includes Detransition Baby in their lists of the type of books they like. Ditto for Independent Talent.

I actually just looked at my own agent's client list (which I've never done before) and I'm surprised that her list is mostly white blokes. I guess some of them might be gay or disabled or some other kind of minority, but she only has five clients who aren't white out of a client list of more than 50, and for a female agent who makes a big deal about wanting to platform female writers, it's a very male dominated list.

I actually pitched a YA novel once, back when dystopian YA was all the rage, about a post-new civil war America where the concept of celebrity has been made illegal, and all politicians, all writers and musicians are known by a code (so Agatha Christie would be CRUK1, a new crime writer might be CRUSA91038). Political speeches are delivered by AI. AI actors.

And then 10 people would be chosen every year by lottery to be the "designated celebrities" for the year and followed 24/7 by live streaming drones to fulfil people's desire for celebrities, and it opens with our MC being chosen who is a teenage girl who runs a black market Shakespeare club while also being torn between love for two boys, yadda yadda. Sort of Hunger Games meets Harrison Bergeron. Dystopian but also you could kind of see the point?

Sorry for the derail!

I’m an author trying to get my first book published and though I expected publishing to be woke I’ve been quite shocked.

Agehts - usually white women in their 20s or 30s -tend to list the books they’ve read recently and loved as a guide for authors. I’d say 75% of them list Detransition Baby and I’ve looked at around 50 now. Most of them with pronouns in bios. A few who are hardcore TRAs who post really anti women (or pro trans as they see it) stuff online.

Pretty much all of them say they’re especially looking to represent people from minority groups (I don’t fit into this category as a middle aged white woman) So much focus on the writer and identity rather than decent stories.

Theres an agent I haven’t sent to yet. My book exactly fits one of the things she says she’s looking for. She reps about 20 authors and not one of them is not a member of at least one minority group.

I’m not giving up but it is disheartening. Publishing should try to focus on what people want to read. And it’s not autobiographies of rich privileged unhappy actresses who have their breasts cut off.

Just as an example, I had a quick look at the current UK top 10 fiction best seller list. There isn't a single definitive list so I actually looked at two different lists, the WH Smiths list, and the Sunday Times list.

All the authors in the Sunday Times top 10 are white. There's one American author on the WH Smiths list who is half-Korean and half white, the rest are white.

All the authors on both lists are either British or American.

Nearly half the British authors in the Sunday Times top 10 went to public school. (Not just privately educated, actual public school.)

The WH Smiths list is 50/50 male and female, the Sunday Times list has 6 female writers so slightly female-dominated for this week.

I haven't read all the books on the list so I don't know whether they have non-white characters or not, but all the authors are white except the one half-Korean author, so clearly we either have white authors writing books with only white characters (without criticism or controversy) or white authors writing non-white authors (again, without criticism or controversy). For example Richard Osman has two books in the top 10 right now and the main characters in his series are two elderly women and a gay Asian man. I've not seen a word of criticism anywhere suggesting that Osman is wrong to do this when he's a white heterosexual man. His books are insanely popular and he's pretty beloved as a TV personality and author.

Brilliant wheeze @Beowulfa.

I have always wanted more literary prizes to be judged blind.

I know it would never happen, but I love the idea of a publisher launching 5 new writers with the publicity gimmick that they would all have identical plain covers and be described as Authors A-E with no other info available for the first year of release. Then you could see which sold best and which got most critical acclaim before you found out about their race/sex/background.

Orchestras have been auditioning blind for a while now. I prefer to read a text without knowing that the author had depression, fought in the WW1 trenches, was an illegal immigrant etc as that might influence my initial interpretation.

Most novels now seem to have a full picture of the author inside the back cover as well as blurb about where they live and how many cats they have. Have people lost the ability to just read a text without author info?