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

[SirSamVimesCityWatch]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7ea5efaf-b36d-47d3-9418-f251e8f95376?shareToken=0b1e9d8a8e3ca314f562ed93f72ada34

Oh deary me.

Excellent post Arthurbella.

@ScholesPanda It's many years since I worked in publishing, but from what I remember, the way books are sold internationally is more complicated than that.

Let's say you're an author. Your agent sells your MS to a publishing house. She (agent) may sell them world rights, meaning they can publish it anywhere, or she may sell them only UK rights, hoping to sell the other territories herself separately. (I think the countries are often grouped into territories, e.g North America for the US, Canada and Mexico.)

It would be ruinously expensive for a publisher to print loads of copies in their home country and ship them across the Atlantic. So if they have world rights, generally, their rights dept will try to sell foreign rights to publishers abroad. (This is quite a money-spinner and shows why you can't evaluate the profitability of a book on sales figures alone, as someone has done up thread. There are lots of other contributing factors including film & TV rights, etc)

if an American book isn't published here, it means no one has managed to sweet talk the UK publishers into buying it. But it may yet happen.

Some years ago I took a postgrad course in a literature-based field where this debate came up. I asked this very question - if as a white person it's inappropriate for me to write characters of other races, but it's also wrong to write a story full of white characters, what do I do if I want to write novels?

A long silence. The only responses I did get were of the opinion that actually lots of white women have published books already and I should just get out of the way and let 'diverse books' by 'diverse authors' be published instead. Seriously.

A long silence. The only responses I did get were of the opinion that actually lots of white women have published books already and I should just get out of the way and let 'diverse books' by 'diverse authors' be published instead. Seriously

Thats interesting Invisible. Was this opinion offered by the other students or the tutor?

Other students. The lecture had covered elements of diversity/representation in the literary topics we were analysing, among other things. This came up in the following seminar discussion, during which it was said both that books featuring only white people were bad, essentially, and that white authors shouldn't write non-white characters because it was appropriative. It wasn't the same student making both statements, but both were well-received by the group and not questioned or explored further by the lecturer facilitating the discussion. I had to say something about what I saw as an inconsistency! No, it turned out 'don't write at all' really was the only solution offered.

I know at least a couple of the students went on to work in publishing.

Invisible - in the former GDR books and films etc were censored, but apparently writers such as Christa Wolf found a way of writing that would satisfy the censors but which readers could read between the lines.
I don’t know how this was done and I’d love to know more about it but I can’t read German so my curiosity will remain unsatisfied.
Anyway, maybe writers will find a similar way round today’s rules.

The thing about reading a book, as opposed to interacting irl or on social, is that it is a solitary, anonymous and intimately individual thing. We read books silently and alone (audio listening aside). Readers can make far braver choices in book content than anywhere else. If you must agree publicly with your tribe that TWAW and Eliot is soo handsome and empowered now, you don't have to back that up with your pocketbook or your precious time. You can quietly get back to that bodice ripper with the dashing cad of a duke.

I find with good genre fiction the stories are more compelling, and the writing itself is as good or better than the literary fiction, without me being aware the whole time that this person is trying to write a Great Novel.

I don't think it's always been that way. Older literary fiction doesn't give me the same sense at all.

@TempestTost I've had very similar thoughts

There's not a lot in the article tbh - especially the anonymous publishing quotes bitching about fellow employees. And if I didn't believe that the Bookscan figure for Tough Crowd covered all sales - which I didn't - then I don't believe it for other books too.

Not all books are successful. No kidding.

Vanishingly few books win such staggering advances.

That isn't how it works.

Yes, really, most of the literary fiction I pick up I don't really enjoy.

Although the Henrietta Lacks book isn't literary fiction.

Of course there are some that are really good, and some that are fine but not amazing, but overall I feel like they are often missing something that's still more commonly found in genre fiction. A kind of energy, maybe?

The thing with the blue haired woke employees is that they need to be weeded out at the roots from these companies. They are only interested in promoting their agenda. They don’t give a shit if the company that pays them burns to the ground. They don’t care if the books don’t make money- in their small minds the desire to turn a profit is evil capitalist oppression. If they lose their job because they helped destroy the company, they don’t care. They just float between academia and DEI jobs sucking the life out of everything like dementors.

For anyone in publishing to say that any group should not write is appalling. It's totally against the ethos of freedom of speech and the principles of democracy.

All people have something to say. Just because the past might have overlooked certain voices doesn't mean you improve the future by omitting other voices. If you do that you run the risk of missing really important issues essential to democracy and feeding alienation and feelings of disfranchisement. That's completely counter productive to your overall aims because it undermines the value and authority of the voices you are trying to promote.

The net result is a massive backlash.

In political terms this is actively dangerous.

Women who have been deplatformed really understand this in practical terms better than most.

Anyone in publishing who doesn't understand this, doesn't understand the society they live in and how the freedom they have is protected. They shouldn't have been hired if they don't understand this. So it comes back to hiring decisions and top down power wishing to control the populace in rather sinister way.

Publishing is a crooked industry full of middle class white women telling writers they need to be more diverse. Editors don't actually do any editing anymore, they expect manuscripts polished to a shine ready to go on their desks.

Don't even get me started on "agents": all you need is an English lit degree, a few connections and/or the ability to work for low pay or free for a year or two, and you too can be at the frontline of deciding what gets read.

The publishing industry likes to make a big song and dance about diversity among its writers while staying incredibly non diverse internally. It tries to correct this by a bunch of heavily engineered recruitment campaigns while actually all their diversity issues would evaporate if they just actually shaped themselves into an industry that paid proper money. They like to position themselves as being artsy and Liberal but in reality you will find more creative thinkers from a much wider range of backgrounds in finance and tech.

PS: Don't even get me started on writing competitions for people from "underrepresented backgrounds". Sorry, since when has the gay community EVER been underrepresented in the arts?

Also....its writing. How can anyone be judging you on your gender, ethnicity, class or sexuality based on words on a page? A truly non discriminatory approach would be to ask writers (and job applicants) to remove their name from their writing/application materials.

Anyone in publishing who doesn't understand this, doesn't understand the society they live in and how the freedom they have is protected. They shouldn't have been hired if they don't understand this. So it comes back to hiring decisions and top down power wishing to control the populace in rather sinister way.

I’m sure plenty of people in publishing are concerned about this but no one would dare speak out. Any accusation that they are in some way opposed to diversity would render them unemployable.

An atmosphere of censure, uncertainty and authoritarian pressure does not foster good art. Actually it might produce some underground stuff, working against it, but I suggest this is why litfic now is largely impoverished - it's working within stipulated parameters, being Good and ticking boxes instead of experimenting and testing and exploring. That makes for dull, weak and pointless work.

'while white writers must avoid writing about non-white characters or risk being accused of cultural appropriation.'
But will also be criticised for having a too-white cast of characters (see Harry Potter).

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

a very interesting debate 👍

i would argue that experimental lit fic is still being published - look at the recent booker list. Won by a white man so that group isn’t being excluded

This does not surprise me at all, I've heard this kind of thing in a number of contexts. Writing, and also giving preference to "diverse" candidates in other employment areas.

I don't know if you've ever read Ibram X Kendi's book, but he is the darling of American anti-racism. His book is quite clear - the only remedy to past racism is current racism - just flipped. These kind of attitudes are very much in line with that way of thinking.

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

That’s what happened with Julian Fellowes’s drama set in America. He had a co-author who was a person of colour.

And yet JK Rowling’s books are selling just fine…

Funny that.

I know an English writer who spent decades living in Japan and wrote a beautiful novel set in Japan and their usual publisher then said we love it but will not publish it unless you agree to let us find you a Japanese ‘co-writer’ whose name we can stick on the cover so you don’t get accused of cultural appropriation

She said no

The last I heard the book was still unpublished

The whole publishing industry has forgotten what it is for. And it isn’t to tell customers what to think.

It wasn't the same student making both statements

Then surely that's just the case that different people have different opinions?

90-95% of published authors are white, only a tiny handful ever become the subject of a Twitter campaign or "cancelled" (and being "cancelled" rarely amounts to more than a few tweets, some people have received massive career boosts and received a huge amount of PR from claiming to have been cancelled), so clearly the current situation is perfectly fine for the vast, vast majority of white writers who write anything they like and don't get criticised for it.

I don't know why we're acting like this is a major problem, when evidently there are thousands of white writers happily writing books that are exclusively about white characters without any criticism, and thousands of white writers writing books about minority characters without any criticism?

Writing, and also giving preference to "diverse" candidates in other employment areas.
But that's obviously not the case when the overwhelming majority of people working in publishing are privately educated and white British, 90-95% of published author are white, and overwhelmingly male-dominated to boot.