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

Because that quote is complete bollocks and utter lies made up to push some kind of "white people are being oppressed" culture war clickbait (the same that tries to align the GC movement with racist ideology on the grounds they are both anti-woke).

"while white writers must avoid writing about non-white characters"

Except one look at the best seller chart or a peek inside a Waterstones will show you that tons and tons of white writers write non-white characters without anyone raising an eyebrow or any "risk" of controversy.

The paranoia that white people are being oppressed or that non-white people are stealing what rightfully belongs to white people is sheer Enoch Powell.

"in a business which will not consider working with white male authors."

LOL. The vast majority of authors published are white men. The idea that the business "won't consider working with white male authors" is just racist MRA delusional fantasy pushed by Andrew Tate types.

It's really really alarming how quickly a thread in Feminist Chat, which ostensibly was about trans ideology and gender, has become about "white men being oppressed." White men are not oppressed.

I'm an author, not an employee of a publishing company.

Well, quite. This has been a good year for books- I have bought Sharron Davies' book and Glinner's.

What are you referring to here

Applecrisp, I’m referring to this quote upthread:
Many will not consider working with white male authors, it is claimed, while white writers must avoid writing about non-white characters or risk being accused of cultural appropriation.'

Then you said you had 6 old Etonians on your team so it seems odd that white (I guess they are white but I could be wrong) men are working in a business which will not consider working with white male authors.
How many are on your team? Presumably you have no say in who is hired or you’d have avoided so many employees from that school.

Is failed the right word? As a book of its kind it’s probably done perfectly well. As a blockbuster 3m advance payment book it hasn’t, but that’s the publishers mistake. I’d rather phrase it differently.

You can hardly call Elliot Page's book a failure when it hasn't even come out in paperback yet. Profit margins for paperbacks are slimmer, but it's quite common for books to sell better in that format. They get picked up by a wider range of outlets, too - airports and the like.

The hardback hasn't even had its first Christmas yet, so it's really too early to judge how it's doing.

I was a bit worried seeing this in a professional capacity as we bought four copies of the Page book!

Anyway, all copies are out on loan and there have been 18 reservations so phew!

For comparison Helen Joyce has generated 30 requests so far, Hannah Barnes 19 and Sharon Davies 11. Bit surprised that the last one hasn't done better, maybe.

I just wanted to add that I am quite willing to read stuff that I disagree with, or can’t relate to, and always have been. But the inauthenticity and smugness of “woke” cultural output is offputting. In YA fiction, I’ve read a couple of books recently that were well-written and engaging enough for me to overcome the feeling that I was being taught a lesson about the evils of colonialism. But lower quality books that do that shit become very annoying very fast. And I don’t think any book could be well written enough to overcome taking gender ideology seriously.

I think there could be many reasons why Elliot Page's book failed, but I think one of the main reasons is that Page just isn't famous enough and their story isn't appealing enough

I know her transition was the hook for the book but I wonder if it put off more readers than it drew in. If she was a good, intelligent writer with something to say about sexism in Hollywood and being out as a lesbian, I’d have been interested even though she’s not that famous.

But I don’t think even Page herself is buying what she’s selling now. She looks so ill but speaks of being happy. Without reading it or ever planning to, I expect the book to be about as authentic, convincing, insightful and uplifting as the average trans Tumblr.

(If she ever writes a detrans memoir, she might have an actual bestseller on her hands! J/k I know her handlers wouldn’t allow it.)

AppleCrispMacchiato - interesting about the Milkman thread. I didn't see that. I absolutely loved the book, and as you say, it's nothing to do with being "woke'. In my view, 'woke' is best defined as something like 'a kind of progressive politics obsessed with the primacy of personal identity to the exclusion of all other causes'. And when I say 'identity', I'm talking principally about gender identity, followed by neurodiversity and racial identity. So I wouldn't include sex, age, disability or nationality as core parts of a person's identity under the woke umbrella.

I think there could be many reasons why Elliot Page's book failed, but I think one of the main reasons is that Page just isn't famous enough and their story isn't appealing enough. When an A-lister like Julia Roberts or George Clooney, say, writes a memoir, they're famous enough for people, including the people who don't buy many books, to want to buy it regardless of how interesting it is. Someone like Page made a handful of moderately successful films, but that's it. And they have a rather sad story involving sexual abuse and being unhappy in their own body, whereas most people buying a celebrity book probably want to read something uplifting.

Bear in mind too that the biggest buyers of books are older women, and you can see why Page's book wasn't a huge bestseller. I'm surprised it sold as many copies as it did.

Also I find the word "woke" in the context of publishing a bit weird, because how do you define woke? I remember the last MN thread about books that I participated in, posters were talking about how much they hated the (Booker Prize winner) Milkman because it was "woke." It's a book about a young Irish girl living in Belfast during the troubles who is subject to the unwanted romantic attentions of an IRA member, and how all she wants to do is read books. There's nothing "woke" about it in any way, unless you think women having the right to say no to sexual attention is woke. It's like there's just this weird default to use "woke" to mean "anything I personally dislike" so the word has lost all meaning.

Elliot Page's book, okay it's about gender identity and clearly was published to jump on that trend. Personally I think the main reason the book failed is because it tried to sit between two stools, half trashy Hollywood gossip kiss and tell, half about sexuality and gender ideology. But there's a lot of valuable stuff about E Page's experiences as someone who was one of the few out lesbians in Hollywood, talking about how damaging and prevalent lesbiphobia is, and especially the concept of corrective rape as a way of "curing" lesbians. That's important and needs to be discussed regardless of whether people consider it woke. Because there's such an important link between the rise in lesbiphobia, and young gay girls feeling they have to transition. Was Page's book shunned because it's about a trans person, or was it shunned because people don't want to read a book that acknowledges how bad lesbiphobia is?

it seems odd that an industry which is run by white, half-witted Etonians should then refuse to publish books written by similar, especially if they don’t make money.

What are you referring to here? Zillions of books are published every year that are written by posh/mc white authors, and the vast majority of those books don't raise an eyebrow or cause any controversy at all (regardless of whether it's a white author writing all-white characters, or a white author writing ethnic minority characters).

The whole anti-woke "white men are being discriminated against", you can't get published unless you're "diverse" "let's just scream woke woke woke blue haired woke woke" as a replacement for actual facts is just complete bullshit being peddled by right wing rags for clicks.

White people aren't being peculiarly oppressed by wokeness, and I hate to see the GC movement being exploited to promote an anti-racial diversity agenda. It's really alarming how many threads in Feminist Chat start off being ostensibly about gender, then turn into rants about race and how whiteness is under attack.

There is a straightforward solution. White writers can be permitted to write but must only do so with a co-author who is "diverse.

Interesting - I'd notice many of the new writers, often female, I started reading in last few years started out self publishing then get picked up publishing houses - sometimes to the detriment of their writing it goes off the boil somehow - but many more suddenly have co-writers.

I think without kindle books and oddly TV shows based on books I'd be reading a lot less - as I really struggle to find new things in book shops - and many book prizes like the Booker Prizes tend to promote books I tend to find not that good with odd exception - they're not a guide to finding a good book IMO.

I think the poshos go into publishing because they see it as a "creative" industry which makes them feel artistic and gets them social brownie points when in reality its just a business like any other business in which you're buying and selling products

WoollyBat · Yesterday 18:52

Because they’re trying to feel better about being white

So do these poshos join publishing because if they feel guilty about being white, it’s a good career to follow
Or, do they not feel guilty about being white but then go to work for publishers and realise that unless they say they feel guilty they won’t get promoted?

Short attention span. If its over 280 characters years it’s just too exhausting…

When I were a lass… if I was interested in a topic I would read several books from different authors/viewpoints to get a wide scope. People seem to be less inclined to try to explore these days.

Virtue signallers don't read actual books or newspapers, they just look at twiitter or social media.

To be fair, lots of bad books are published and always have been. They may sell for various reasons and a book can be terrible in terms of bad writing, cliche, holey plot etc and still be a bestseller. It might be the name, the genre, many people enjoy an unchallenging cliched read as it’s comforting - a successful publisher identifies what will sell not just what’s full of merit. That does involve picking up on the zeitgeist too - so this headline seems to be about assuming readers as a whole are riding the same “woke” zeitgeist trends as literary and arty circles, and it seems they’re not (or less so).

It's odd that they can't seem to recognize a compelling story, or one that is really shit, when they read it.

Maybe that is a low level observation, but I mean - isn't that the most basic part of choosing books for a publishing house?

Because they’re trying to feel better about being white.

WoollyBat you and others who have commented on this thread have worked in publishing so you’d know more about it than me but it seems odd that an industry which is run by white, half-witted Etonians should then refuse to publish books written by similar, especially if they don’t make money.
Then a lot of things in this world are odd, I suppose.
Re the ones which identify as non-binary, is this just for work- so once they leave the office they return to being GC?

WoollyBat? Really? Still, I suppose it’s an enjoyable opportunity to do some social stereotyping. I wonder what they think of you.

Yes, it is an exaggerated stereotype, though based on a pretty real situation. And as I said I don’t work in-house and know I wouldn’t fit in - I am no good at office politics and schmoozing and I’m GC, so it would be hell.

I do feel bad about it as I said, and was saying having a rant really. Not so much because this culture is posh - that’s not a crime - but in light of the self-declared wokery and claims to DEI it pisses me off.

I know what they think of me - they think I’m odd and blunt (I am).

I feel bad about saying that now! Because I actually work with some really nice people who don’t all fit the description.

WoollyBat? Really? Still, I suppose it’s an enjoyable opportunity to do some social stereotyping. I wonder what they think of you.

This is the original article that the Times article is based off. It has quite a lot more detail.
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-fight-for-the-future-of-publishing

As for the DEI thing in general - both using gender identity as a handy non-status-quo-disrupting DEI, and signing up / putting call-outs for submissions from anyone who’s a ethnic minority, LGBTQ+++, neurodivergent and so on regardless of the quality (I’m not saying the quality is any less overall, but as per the thread title, bad decisions are made on this basis).

I don’t actually think any of this is motivated by a conscious wish (except maybe in the most ultra cynical execs) to DEI-wash publishing while really keeping the internal structures and staff as ruling-class and hegemonous as possible.

I think it’s motivated by cultural cringe in well-meaning arts graduates who lack rigorous thinking skills and really think they are being kind and trying to be a good person and so letting themselves off the hook for being privileged. It’s an overall effect caused by ultimately selfish (but not consciously so) purity spiralling.

I feel bad about saying that now! Because I actually work with some really nice people who don’t all fit the description. And even if they do it’s not really their fault for getting themselves a job that tends to be looking for them IYSWIM.

But the sexism in the hierarchical structures is really obvious and everyone is just so posh. I feel like the class non-diversity is the most powerful one in publishing, though others are significant too.