Article in The Bookseller about cancel culture/JKR etc. Cautiously optimistic!

[AbsintheFriends]

Saw this on Twitter and thought it was worth sharing. Publishing is a super-woke industry, so the message here gives me reason to feel cautiously optimistic that the era of rampant piety, virtue-signalling, purity-spirals and witch-hunts may at least be starting to be challenged.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to C&P an entire article but it's subscriber only content so pretty inaccessible. I'll do it in a separate post that can be reported and deleted if it contravenes regs. In summary - the CEO of Hachette (David Shelley) and literary agent Clare Alexander met with the HoL Communications and Digital Committee 'investigating freedom of expression online, which included a discussion of “cancel culture” and authors feeling they had to self-censor.' They said that it may be necessary to warn young recruits to the industry that they might have to work on books and with authors they don't agree with, and called this a ''watershed moment' on free expression.'

You would think that publishing would be a place where people could argue eloquently and respectfully

I see you've not worked in the industry.

I know of someone whose relative worked at Hachette (entry level) during the JK 'scandal'. When a bunch of the young 'uns in the office staged a refusal to work on any more of her books they were dragged one by one into the boss' office (not sure which one) and told in no uncertain terms that not one of them was bigger or more important to the company than the client, and they could either tow the line or leave.

Funnily enough, the majority backed down.

i know quite a few writers who are gc but are quiet and 'the american market' is a factor- being published can be a brutal experience anyway, no one wants to poke the woke...

This is the problem. Writers are arguably outside of polite society to a certain extent and allowed to question, but in this case they risk their contracts being cancelled and more or less being shunned by the industry, which is already so competitive. JKR and Ishiguro are saying what many can't because they are too big to lose their careers at this point. I'm sure this has been said before, but a lot of writers owe her thanks for saying what many are surely thinking.

On the other hand a certain book didn't make the shortlist...

One of the things I find infuriating about this debate is how the ‘I am an intersectional ally’ means ALL issues pertaining to ‘diversity’ must be treated the same and if you disagree on some aspects you’re immediately old, bigoted, upholding outdated power structures, punching down, disingenuous etc.

So you can’t (as David Shelley, CEO of Hachette has done) set up award-winning diversity and inclusion networks and initiatives, give your staff opportunities to respond and have a voice but still retain the business decision-making skill to say No, refusing to work on JKR’s The Ickabog (non-controversial charity donation fairy-story publishing) because she said she supports women’s rights and nothing offensive about trans people is not a valid choice as an employee - and still be considered on the side of diversity and free speech. Despite your openly gay status, your career-long support of PEN (whose guiding principle is freedom of expression in writing), your track record as an editor who took on JKR before he knew she was JKR - so the ‘cash cow status’ didn’t apply - and your willingness to listen and not shut down debate.

This was an excellent summation of how Hachette handled the earlier JKR row, I think: www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-simple-solution-to-the-jk-rowling-trans-row/amp

Fwiw, I like Sam Missingham - I don’t agree with her on this but she is a sharp astute woman who calls out industry bullshit and I still like her even though I don’t agree with her on this issue. I also like MN even though it makes me a TERF, apparently. I like a lot of the people I see frothing on publishing/book Twitter about this. I feel a great deal of sympathy for the recent grads and the junior staff who feel exploited and affronted by this - even though I think they’re wrong. I actually didn’t like Clare Alexander’s statements as reported so much, because she uses a bit of patronising language (‘clever girl’) and dismisses the young and sets it up as an ageist debate. But I appreciate her speaking up.

I genuinely don’t understand why we cannot be allowed to hold a plurality of diverse opinions on diverse ‘intersections’ of rights and the expression of debate on them without such vitriol. It’s so reductive.

No Squirrels I agree - I think it is as Ishiguro says it's partly down to algorithms.

I can feel myself becoming more and more entrenched in the gender critical camp with absolutely no room for nuance as well, possibly because it's 'my side' and what I am shown on social media reflects my standpoint because that's what I click on/like etc.

Just as the TWAW brigade appear to have no nuance, I wonder if I am losing mine too. I don't think I am, but how do I know?

Where it stops for me is the blatant misogyny and the way that women are being trampled on by the TRAs and men are being left alone. And the drugging of children. There's no room for me to feel balanced about those because like most women over 40 I'm jaded and I also know how easily led I was as a teenager.