Looks like Joanne Harris is facing a vote

[Imnobody4]

Joanne Harris is facing a vote by Society of Authors members on whether she should stand down as chair alongside demands for a review of how the organisation protects free speech.

Read here: t.co/rxchlOKHku t.co/FaeROzAVoG
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I'm shocked by this whole sorry saga. Harris has a trans child and this seems to have coloured her views on everything. She has been vile to Rowling.

But this is just the way the publishing industry is going: everyone believes the trans ideology and if you don't you're bullied and silenced. It's shit.

Posting things like this today don’t help. But then she also said today they actually have a lot of new members so 🤷‍♀️

I don't think you need to worry about unfollowing GC accounts before submitting to agents. Most people are wise enough to know that this is a contentious issue that attracts strong opinions. If you're prolific on twitter and frequently involved in spats, or repeatedly make strong statements either way on something divisive like this I think it might be a red flag for some agents, simply because it's going to make you a bit marmite for potential editors and (further down the line) readers, unless your book is directly related to social issues or politics of course.

If an agent wants to trawl your social media for evidence of GC views and would reject you as a result, they're probably not an agent you'd want to be with anyway. I'd say avoid anyone with pronouns in bio and just be professional and avoid politics of any kind. There are plenty of sensible ones out there - in fact, I'd say they're the quiet majority.

Thanks @WinterTrees I’m a Twitter lurker and barely ever even like anything. Am actually thinking of having a social media purge.

But it doesn’t help the confidence of new writers seeing the way established, well respected authors talk about and to each other in social media.

I think it is ever more a curse than a blessing.

It doesn’t help that my genre is YA, which appears more captured and at war with itself than any other.

Publishing is captured … like seriously. If you’re looking for an in, you’d be better having a Twitter account with a fake name, or getting off it completely.

Ah yes, YA would definitely be a tricky area to negotiate as GC author. You're wise to be circumspect there Legrandsophie but don't let any of the nonsense put you off. Best of luck with submissions.

In fact there are various quiet networks forming. The TWAW accounts are loud at the moment, but they're a vociferous minority. The balance will continue to shift, is my prediction.

I’m in this field and work with a number of publishers. I’m quiet on Twitter, but follow GC accounts as well as some with GI views. I sometimes like posts by people like Milli Hill and Onjali Rauf who are respectful and factual, but I don’t get involved in the more combative and derogatory spats as I do think there’s sometimes some bullying on the GC side which I don’t like.

Any client could easily find out I have GC sympathies by checking my follows and likes, but I think they tend not to - or in some cases know and don’t care. I get the feeling some of them actually know and are GC themselves and silently support me. But others just don’t notice. I was contacted recently by a flag-waving, all-out loudly woke he/him to do him a favour, I did and he was lovely. I suspect money talks and a lot of people would rather publish sellable books and work with reliable contractors and useful contacts, above checking their woke credentials.

JH has been awful and is useless as a figurehead/public face of the SOA as she’s biased and unprofessional - but I’d say that if she took any obvious side in a contentious debate, as she should defend all authors (within the law).

Fuckwit turkeys marching for Xmas.

I think if SOA are going to change membership criteria to include anyone who writes including unpublished writers, then it’s doomed in its role as a union. I’m sure it’s all about being inclusive and non-discriminatory blah blah (/making money), but workers need unions that represent their needs, so I’d predict an exodus of professional writers to somewhere else (or a new organisation) and the SOA can basically turn into a wider version of Mslexia. Not that there’s anything wrong with clubs and organisations for would-be and amateur writers, but there are plenty of them already.

I went to the Filia talk about publishing, chaired by Helen Joyce, and I think that while some publishers are captured, others are beginning to realise that there's money to be made from GC views and the tide is turning among older editors. The big problem is children's books, which has totally sold out to gender ideology.

There's still a problem with all the GC, queer-theory young graduates trying to get a foothold on the publishing ladder but fortunately I have friends who've been in publishing for ever, and have taken great delight in weeding out the woke and looking for critical thinkers when recruiting. One of my friends occasionally forwards the worst CVs for her GC friends to laugh over. Some of them are beyond parody.

Publishing is captured

not all publishing. Who were the publishers who told Fox and Owl that they didn’t want to pay to be ‘educated to their viewpoint’? Fox and Owl left in tears.

weeding out the woke and looking for critical thinkers when recruiting

I have various experiences of working with "woke" young people in publishing who refuse to accept that any point of view other than their own could be reasonable, spout gender ideology non-stop and spend a lot of their time asserting their special identities, needs and demands instead of getting on with the task at hand.

In the interests of not being discriminatory (unlike them, since they discriminate against anyone they suspect of believing in the existence of sex), and wanting to give everyone a fair chance, I treat them the same as anyone else. But there definitely is IME a strong tendency for people like this - not all of them, but most - to not make great team players, not work efficiently, not have a capacity for independent critical thought, and to flake on deadlines and obligations.

Publishers, and other employers, are going to notice this. Unfortunately that does ultimately mean they'll discriminate when hiring. (As they always have - just in a new way.)

Publishers aren't stupid. People who are using a certain ideology as a way to score points and/or control other people are not people who are going to be easy to work with.

Also, while some issues are fashionable, publishing like everything is subject to trends, which come and inevitably go.

100%

Article by Kate Clancy in UnHerd.

"Why Joanne Harris must go
The Society of Authors Chair has no interest in upholding freedom of speech"

unherd.com/thepost/why-joanne-harris-must-go/?mc_cid=a7369bba39&mc_eid=31e133b3a4

The meeting is happening now.

Live tweeting here: twitter.com/LoobyLouDino/status/1593312843075567618?s=20&t=Y5wcDQ3YTZF3I7bE90j2zA

Wow, sounds tense!

Great tweeting, whoever that is.

'SoA members have voted AGAINST strengthening Freedom of Expression by 593 votes to 161.'

Fuck me.

'Resolution 6 to remove Joanne Harris as chair falls 143 - 608'

Stitch up innit

www.theguardian.com/books/2022/nov/17/joanne-harris-faces-vote-to-oust-her-from-society-of-authors-role-salman-rushdie-twitter

Well, it was unlikely she'd get voted out. I'm not even sure of the ethics of getting rid of someone who's basically just been an arse on Twitter.

But as someone who has considered joining before, it looks pretty farcical to me as an organisation. The fact they've opened it to unpubbed writers means its purpose is now utterly diluted. And that freedom of expression vote is pretty chilling. I predict a slow withering.

Wow. That's awful.