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.

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.

Didn’t Kate Clanchy get into a lot of trouble for describing her students ‘chocolate skin’ and ‘almond eyes’?

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.

Fair enough about Jilly Cooper. I wonder if she was obliged to submit to a sensitivity reader.

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."

Yes that is what I was referring to. How do you know they were Etonians, especially if it wasn’t your publisher?

Jilly Cooper gleefully writes about what appalling people poshos are. The real heroes of her novels are the pure-of-heart horses and dogs.

I like science fiction, originally the preserve of white American men, but much more diverse these days. The last one I read was a clever, subtle time travel story in which the ethnicity/physical characteristics of the protagonists in the future wasn't mentioned. In SF the ideas are much more important.

I really don't think it's a good idea to get into Kate Clanchy, as Mumsnet has seen so many threads about her, and they always turn into bunfights.

There are two reasons Kate Clanchy's book caused a firestorm, first because she was writing about real people who were also children, and who were under her care. That's very different from writing about fictional characters. (And she said a lot of pretty dodgy things about her kids, calling them fat, making fat shaming remarks about certain parts of their bodies, calling white students "boring" compared to "exotic" non-white students, saying that a student with a big nose had to be lying about not being Jewish, talking about young girls' shapely legs and breasts, saying her autistic students were so annoying no one liked them and even she couldn't stand them for more than an hour, referring to working class kids as "feral" and saying she'd happily slap a Burka on them to cover up their rotting death and double chins, and referring to one of her young girls who had been raped as suffering "a loss of grace." You personally might think those are all fine, but it's clearly a lot more than "Poor Kate was cancelled because she used the expression almond-shaped eyes.")

The second reason is because the entire thing started when Kate found a negative GoodReads review that had been posted nearly a year earlier, from a reader who disliked that Kate had said some of those things about her students, and Kate was so offended that a reader had disliked her book she went on a huge Twitter rant claiming that the reader was some kind of vendetta against her and most crucially claiming that the quotes in the review were fake and that the reviewer had made them up to smear her, and that they weren't in the book at all. Then it turned out she'd lied and all the quotes were in the book.

If Kate hadn't lied, and chosen to be offended by a reader disliking her book, nothing would have happened. Her book won tons of awards and did really well, there was no controversy over it until she opened her big mouth on Twitter and lied. And her Twitter rant was nearly a year after the GoodReads review was posted, so it's not like the review damaged her or the book.

Whatever your thoughts on Kate's book, she shouldn't have lied and attacked a reader for the crime of not liking her book.

Rotting death should be rotting teeth, sorry autocorrect did me dirty!

I really don't think it's a good idea to get into Kate Clanchy, as Mumsnet has seen so many threads about her, and they always turn into bunfights.

Okay, but you’ve then written a long post about her.
Anyway, I didn’t know the whole story about Kate Clanchy so thank you for your answer.

Clanchy has stated that she made up 'composite characters', she wasn't writing portraits of specific children.

It's a team I had fairly close involvement with for a project that wound up not happening, and schooling came up in conversation.

I work in a lot of different mediums, I've written for screen and theatre, and I also publish both fiction and non-fiction, and I've been published by a Big 5 publisher and by tiny indies. I don't just have one publisher, I work with a lot of different companies and organisations and I'm always hustling and having meetings with different people who might hire me as a freelance writer for something or other.

Applecrisp thank you for answering my question.

I like science fiction, originally the preserve of white American men, but much more diverse these days. The last one I read was a clever, subtle time travel story in which the ethnicity/physical characteristics of the protagonists in the future wasn't mentioned. In SF the ideas are much more important.

This is one of the big genre areas I love as well - and it is getting more diverse which is I think is massively benefiting the sector.

I often feel what is market at me by publishing industry isn't wide enough in scope though - I'm not into Jilly Copper or celebrity autobiographies.

Interesting thread, thanks. I see on Twitter that TRAs have convinced a Japanese publisher to drop a planned translation of Abigail Shrier's book.

Striking another blow for freedom of speech, thought and expression, I see.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is writing some great stuff which includes mixed gender relations/ species, subversion of norms/being hood, all in huge sci fi arcs. It’s not his theme, just a feature of some of his universes. He is presumably a white male, but that shouldn’t be relevant. Assess on quality, make sure you’re assessing a wide range of authors, and you get good books.