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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.)

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I know it would never happen, but I love the idea of a publisher launching 5 new writers with the publicity gimmick that they would all have identical plain covers and be described as Authors A-E with no other info available for the first year of release. Then you could see which sold best and which got most critical acclaim before you found out about their race/sex/background.

Orchestras have been auditioning blind for a while now. I prefer to read a text without knowing that the author had depression, fought in the WW1 trenches, was an illegal immigrant etc as that might influence my initial interpretation.

Most novels now seem to have a full picture of the author inside the back cover as well as blurb about where they live and how many cats they have. Have people lost the ability to just read a text without author info?

Brilliant wheeze @Beowulfa.

I have always wanted more literary prizes to be judged blind.

Just as an example, I had a quick look at the current UK top 10 fiction best seller list. There isn't a single definitive list so I actually looked at two different lists, the WH Smiths list, and the Sunday Times list.

All the authors in the Sunday Times top 10 are white. There's one American author on the WH Smiths list who is half-Korean and half white, the rest are white.

All the authors on both lists are either British or American.

Nearly half the British authors in the Sunday Times top 10 went to public school. (Not just privately educated, actual public school.)

The WH Smiths list is 50/50 male and female, the Sunday Times list has 6 female writers so slightly female-dominated for this week.

I haven't read all the books on the list so I don't know whether they have non-white characters or not, but all the authors are white except the one half-Korean author, so clearly we either have white authors writing books with only white characters (without criticism or controversy) or white authors writing non-white authors (again, without criticism or controversy). For example Richard Osman has two books in the top 10 right now and the main characters in his series are two elderly women and a gay Asian man. I've not seen a word of criticism anywhere suggesting that Osman is wrong to do this when he's a white heterosexual man. His books are insanely popular and he's pretty beloved as a TV personality and author.

I’m an author trying to get my first book published and though I expected publishing to be woke I’ve been quite shocked.

Agehts - usually white women in their 20s or 30s -tend to list the books they’ve read recently and loved as a guide for authors. I’d say 75% of them list Detransition Baby and I’ve looked at around 50 now. Most of them with pronouns in bios. A few who are hardcore TRAs who post really anti women (or pro trans as they see it) stuff online.

Pretty much all of them say they’re especially looking to represent people from minority groups (I don’t fit into this category as a middle aged white woman) So much focus on the writer and identity rather than decent stories.

Theres an agent I haven’t sent to yet. My book exactly fits one of the things she says she’s looking for. She reps about 20 authors and not one of them is not a member of at least one minority group.

I’m not giving up but it is disheartening. Publishing should try to focus on what people want to read. And it’s not autobiographies of rich privileged unhappy actresses who have their breasts cut off.

I actually pitched a YA novel once, back when dystopian YA was all the rage, about a post-new civil war America where the concept of celebrity has been made illegal, and all politicians, all writers and musicians are known by a code (so Agatha Christie would be CRUK1, a new crime writer might be CRUSA91038). Political speeches are delivered by AI. AI actors.

And then 10 people would be chosen every year by lottery to be the "designated celebrities" for the year and followed 24/7 by live streaming drones to fulfil people's desire for celebrities, and it opens with our MC being chosen who is a teenage girl who runs a black market Shakespeare club while also being torn between love for two boys, yadda yadda. Sort of Hunger Games meets Harrison Bergeron. Dystopian but also you could kind of see the point?

Sorry for the derail!

Out of curiosity which agencies are this? This doesn't match with my experiences of working as a published author at all. I can't think of any major lit agency in the UK that fits that description, though I'm sure there are plenty of smaller agencies doing the performative woke thing.

For example I'm with Curtis Brown, which is one of the biggest literary agencies in the UK, and they definitely don't go in for pronouns, have lists that are exclusively minority writers, and out of the 20 book agents they currently employ, not a single one includes Detransition Baby in their lists of the type of books they like. Ditto for Independent Talent.

I actually just looked at my own agent's client list (which I've never done before) and I'm surprised that her list is mostly white blokes. I guess some of them might be gay or disabled or some other kind of minority, but she only has five clients who aren't white out of a client list of more than 50, and for a female agent who makes a big deal about wanting to platform female writers, it's a very male dominated list.

Publishing should try to focus on what people want to read.

As a reader I do wish they'd focus on good stories and less on big names and literary prizes but it must sell books or why else would they do it.

Most of the booker prizes I've read were bought as gifts for me as I'm a reader though I've been unimpressed by most. I've bought DS math books because I know who Matt Parker is and know can do funny maths.

The self publish sector is supposed to be still growing and I've found many new authors though that and amazon - many more turned out to be female something I wasn't actively looking for than I was reading before.

I haven't read all the books on the list so I don't know whether they have non-white characters or not

There must be lots of - most, even - books where the author doesn’t specify the race of the characters.

Applecrisp what is the name of your publisher who employs so many Etonians?

Most authors include physical descriptions of characters. If a character has blue eyes, blonde hair, and milky skin, they're clearly supposed to be white. An important part of an author's job is creating a mental image of the characters for the reader, and all kinds of decisions go into how characters are "coded." If an upper class author who went to public school writes a book set amongst the English aristocracy where all the characters are named things like Cressida and Sebastian and live in country manors and play polo, it's pretty obvious they're supposed to be white.

Anyway clearly there are plenty of best-selling authors who are white yet who write non-white characters without anyone thinking twice about it. People are very keen to scream about how whites are being oppressed and it's all woke woke woke woke but the objective facts simply don't support that.

If an upper class author who went to public school writes a book set amongst the English aristocracy where all the characters are named things like Cressida and Sebastian and live in country manors and play polo, it's pretty obvious they're supposed to be white.

Are there many books like that written these days? I don’t read much modern fiction so I don’t know.
Are you going to answer my question as to the name of your publisher who employs so many Etonians?

Jilly Cooper is currently at #2 in the Sunday Times best seller chart. Dolly Alderton (who went to Rugby School) is #3, and while I haven't read her latest book her area as both an author and magazine columnist has always been the posh London socialite/media world.

I'm not sure what you're referring to in your last sentence? Do you mean this?

""EXACTLY!! I was just ranting about that the other day, the team comprises six Eton grads but they're "diverse" because 2 of them identify as non-binary."

I was referring to one single team, not an entire publishing house, and I was not referring to my own publisher. I wouldn't name my own publisher anyway.