Times Interview with Kate Clanchy - shared article in post

> The publisher should absolutely support their author, as they chose to acquire, publish and profit from their work.

Agreed. And if publisher has doubts, publisher should (a) read the work in question; (b) speak to author and agent, in person, in order to agree on the course of action.

> The SoA shouldn’t say they won’t get involved but then get involved on social media.

Personally I'd like the SoA to offer a safe space for face-to-face discussions / listening. If the SoA are not able to do that, then I think the publisher should find a way to do it, via some third-party, non-judgemental, neutral space, even just with the very basic goal of getting the humans involved into a room together .

> The author should leave the situation to their publisher and agent to address.

I agree that this should be the first step in the protocol.

> Of course, if they fail to do so that’s a different matter.

Yes, and the problems arise where there is disagreement. So the next level of question is what each party should do in the case of disagreement; also, what each party should do when one of the above (author/publisher/agent/SoA etc) goes rogue and does something that they shouldn't (e.g. retaliating online). The priority should be to de-escalate and take the conversation offline, but there needs to be a safe space and protocol to enable that to happen. In my opinion.

I find your attitude completely incomprehensible. You will ignore the voices of little Afghan girls because they come via someone you dislike. I can't think of anything Kate Clanchy has written that is quite as despicable as that.

No, anything shared by her is something I will steer clear of. It's like choosing not to walk in dog crap. I don't find her brand of authoritarian prejudice easy to laugh off.

@EsselteFilingBox upthread at 13.22 says it's all still there on Goodreads, so you can check it out.

But what I find really bizarre is the way that her publishers went from “this is writing we deem worthy of publication, which we will promote and benefit from”, to “this is exploitative, racist writing and its author should be ostracised‘.

Yes that’s bizarre.
Why are they now suddenly apologising?

Isn't part of the problem here a kind of dualistic thinking that requires people to be totally good/saints or condemns them as totally bad/sinners? As far as I recall, Clanchy admitted at the time that she was defensive and behaved badly; she looked again at her book and rewrote bits of it. As readers we are free to adore her work, think her work is vile, be somewhere in the middle, or be indifferent.

What we shouldn't do, on the basis of our opinions, even if they are shared by lots of people who agree with us, is insist that the book is withdrawn, the publisher cancel her contract, issue apologies for having published it, and join nasty social media posting about it. That seems to me an absolutely clear point, and I can't see that any other sensible view is possible.

Do you find the poetry written by Afghan girls that she shares on X also fatally contaminated, or do you think you might be able to cope with reading something shared by her?

The publisher should absolutely support their author, as they chose to acquire, publish and profit from their work.

The SoA shouldn’t say they won’t get involved but then get involved on social media. They should also make the point to their authors that they don’t go around bullying other authors. (They should also boot out all the book bloggers they allowed in and have some standards of entry.)

The author should leave the situation to their publisher and agent to address. Of course, if they fail to do so that’s a different matter.

So you're making serious allegations that you can offer no evidence for, that conveniently support your personal opinions?

Authors should accept that some people won't like their books.

Publishers should accept that not everything they write will be popular with everyone.

Members of the reading public should not be attacked for expressing their opinions.

I'm in publishing and I'm aware that this is retraumatising for all involved.

Rather than continue to relitigate the past, could we try to redirect this discussion towards a future scenario? i.e.:

• What should a publisher do, in a future scenario?
• What should the Society of Authors do, in a future scenario?
• What should the author(s) in question do?

Clanchy isn't the victim here though. She was the first to engage in attack just because she was angry about a fair review. This whitewash of her behaviour is awful.

The poetry may or may not be good, but for me it is fatally contaminated, so no thank you.

What is currently wrong with publishing is that it has forgotten that the bedrocks of publishing are freedom of expression, a plurality of voices, freedom of speech and diverse options. The right to not offend someone isn’t a bedrock, but has become the overarching position.

If you aren’t interested in those bedrocks then publishing isn’t for you. The sooner all the people who don’t like that bugger off out of publishing, the better.

In the meantime, why not enjoy some of the poetry Kate is sharing? The awful racist, classist woman using her platform to elevate the voices of the most disadvantaged girls in the world.

KC's book, and the racist, classist world view it touted were the key issues for me. I daresay the publisher could have found other equally unpleasant authors embedded in the establishment if they wanted, but this was the one that I read and was shocked by, as, clearly, were others. If some of the people shocked by the book held other views I would disagree with, that is not relevant.

Clanchy's publicity machine trying to suppress evidence of valid criticism was the problem.

The omnicause should not rule our attitudes to anything. Or everything.

The mindset behind that may be a clue to what is so wrong with the publishing industry.

Agree. I’ve been writing fiction since 2007 and haven’t looked at GRs for at least eight years as it can be unpleasant to say the least.

Separate from Clanchy, Goodreads isn’t a space for honest reviews and there have been plenty of purposefully hostile reviews left (say, for gender critical books) designed to bring an author down. Goodreads is a huge problem for publishing. Book bloggers can cause huge problems especially since the Society of Authors decided to class them as authors and allow them to join, causing no end of problems.

The reason the Clanchy story matters to women is because it mirrors so much of what happens within the book industry to gender critical authors. For example, when Rachel Rooney did a SAR for her publisher, as in this case, her publisher redacted every word that wasn’t her name. Every. Single. Word. That also involved a badly behaved publicist.

Rachel and other writers, especially in children’s publishing, have faced huge hostility and bullying from other writers as with this case (and sometimes involving the same women, who are, surprise surprise, TRAs). They have faced hostility from within their publisher.

Whether you like KC and/or her book isn’t the key point. It’s how her publisher and the industry behaved that matters.

Totally. Assuming you're describing Clanchy and her support staff. Goodreads initially appeared to be a space for honest reviews, but clearly at least one author (and I suspect also her publisher, at that stage) did not want that to happen - hence the hounding.

Thanks, that's helpful and illuminating.

I didn't realise Goodreads provided space for a twitter like mob to gather. I do think ignoring them is the best policy because they obviously don't want a conversation just submission.

If anyone has a Goodreads account, it's worth looking the book up and reading the resulting reviews. The original review that started the controversy is still there. Some really helpful reviewers have provided timelines. I recommend 'Cecily''s review as she has tried to provide a balanced appraisal of the book as well as a timeline of the resulting controversy.

Clanchy's comments have been removed (I imagine her publisher insisted on that at the time).

The book wasn't just criticised for comments on race, classism and ableism are also in the mix and several of her critics were absolutely hounded off social media.

No doubt if she didn't make the posts that appeared to come from her, the detective she hired will be able demonstrate that in the radio series dedicated to her. So far her record on telling the truth wrt the matter is poor.

As for cancel culture, it's a bit rich for her to play the victim when she so viciously hounded a woman for leaving a bad review. I have an extremely limited amount of sympathy for anyone who is hoist by their own petard.
How did she 'viciously' do this?
Where was it written about? Another twitter mob? Doesn't an author have a right to reply?

Not without going back to X more than four years ago. I don't know whether Goodreads itself would retain any evidence. KC's behaviour was deeply unedifying - very 'do you know who I am?'.

Because it was all written about extensively at the time. Her victim was really scared. Fortunately Clanchy didn't get away with it. As someone said upthread, Streisand affect.