Everyday Cancellation in Publishing - new report from SEEN publishing and Sex Matters

[ArabellaScott]

https://sex-matters.org/posts/publications/reports/everyday-cancellation-in-publishing/

This looks absolutely brilliant. I've only read the Intro as there's lots there to digest. Some other recs:

“An astonishing report that lays bare how a once open-minded publishing world has allowed a minority of activists to bully it into so far abandoning its core principles that it has begun to work, not only against its own ethos, but also against its own interests.”

Anne Fine OBE, author and second Children’s Laureate

'This report gives the publishing industry a clear roadmap back to lawful workplace policies and creative, even unorthodox commissioning. Leaders in publishing must take note.”

Lionel Shriver, author

“When history looks back on the epidemic of collective lunacy that was the trans cult, special odium will attach to psychiatrists, counsellors and teachers who warped the minds, and surgeons who mutilated the bodies, of vulnerable people in their care, especially children. But lesser culprits will not escape blame, and high on the list will be publishers who, contrary to their normal editorial judgment, censored or even cancelled brave authors critical of the cult.

Richard Dawkins

No word in the Bookseller yet. They will probably try to ignore it for as long as they can as they are terrified idiots. The BookBrunch coverage was fantastic 😂

The whole report is eyebrow raising, but to my mind this is particularly mad. I'd always understood that publishing these days was quite cut-throat - that margins are so low that if you want to publish a book you have to have a proposition that is expected to sell in large numbers.

The idea that publishers will pay huge advances for books that don't sell many copies, but refuse to publish books that are highly popular and will sell in their thousands, purely because they approve of the first and don't approve of the second, is just nuts. It's no way to run a business, is it?

Someone explained the rationale behind this a while back - they are selecting these books as signals to each others' DEI initiatives. The advance makes news. The book itself is never expected to make any money, and nobody will read it. It's all signalling.

The explanation was better than this, but it was a long time ago!

Hadn’t her husband just died suddenly at this point as well?

Thanks @StrawberryLetter32

if it’s not in the bookseller then is anyone in publishing actually aware of it? I know SM sent it to various agents and publishers, but I think as someone else has said, is it only being read by GC people in a particular bubble?

im currently deciding whether to send it to a publishing friend. I work in media, but not publishing.

Every CEO and director and head honcho across the 30 organisations mentioned in it (publishers, literary agents, funding bodies and membership organisations) plus dozens more received a digital copy direct to their inbox. If they glance at the Executive Summary, many of them will be so pissed off they will at least skim to the sections that interest them most and they will look to see if their organisation has actually been mentioned. So they will be aware of it, yes.

What's stopping you sending it to your friend?

A few things, some of them more to do with her current family and personal circumstances than that she'll stop speaking to me as a Terf ;-) I'll have a think. Thanks

This is exactly the kind of shit Private Eye should have been covering in their books/publishing section. They have been so disappointing.

https://www.bookbrunch.co.uk/page/article-detail/seen-in-publishing-gender-report-released/

Sadly paywalled!

Here it is in full. "SEEN in Publishing gender report released News - Publishing Thursday, 26th June 2025 Called Everyday cancellation in publishing, the report into 'the impact of gender-identity beliefs in publishing' was released yesterday and immediately sparked opposing views The report was jointly commissioned by advocacy group Sex Matters and SEEN in Publishing and is written by social researcher and author Matilda Gosling. According to the statement announcing its release: 'Despite many examples of discriminatory work policies and practices, and widespread experiences of ostracism, de-platforming, harassment and silencing across the publishing sector, many people – including industry leaders – have denied and continue to deny that a problem exists. This report presents robust evidence that publishing professionals will find difficult to ignore.' Maya Forstater, founder of Sex Matters, said: "Leaders in the publishing industry should be ashamed of the way female authors and employees who express gender critical beliefs have been systematically mistreated, maligned and silenced. "This report exposes poor commercial decision making across the industry, as gender critical books turned down by all but a handful of publishers have wildly outsold books based on gender identity ideology which benefited from large advances and big publicity budgets." The report, Everyday cancellation in publishing: The costs and legal risks of discrimination against gender-critical staff and authors, 'is based on data from 25 interviews, a review of publicly available policies and statements, a social-media review, an analysis of published books, and detailed assessment of 30 organisations,' according to the statement. Its findings include: 'Publishers have made poor commercial decisions guided by ideology, not markets; Books examined showed those on gender-critical topics sell nine times more copies than books promoting gender identity beliefs but are less likely to be published; gender-critical lesbians and gay men working in publishing lack staff groups that advocate for their needs and rights based on their same-sex orientation and abuse of those with gender-critical views in publishing, particularly women, has been relentless and has caused immeasurable harm.' The report also includes supportive comments from authors Sonia Sodha, Anne Fine, Richard Dawkins and Lionel Shriver. Reacting to the release of the report, literary agent Alice Sutherland Hawes said: "For a group constantly whinging about being silenced they are incredibly loud. I haven’t read the full report because I have a life, and trans creators to support, but if they are so concerned about advance levels, maybe they could focus on the disparity between advances for creators of colour and their white counterparts, rather than 'oh no a trans woman got a higher advance than me.'" Another literary agent, who preferred to remain anonymous, said: "Like JKR’s original essay, this report takes a research-based approach to a harmful world view and makes it sound reasonable — and this is dangerous. "The report is also very disrespectful to junior members of the publishing community. We can only move forward as an industry if we step away from the old adage of 'this is how it has always been done.'" Other publishers and organisations in the sector were approached for comment, but were unavailable for comment, or did not want it reported that they were unavailable for comment. BookBrunch is interested to hear your experience and views – please get in touch if you’d like to share them. Read the full report here:- http://sex-matters.org/posts/publications/reports/everyday-cancellation-in…

Good grief. Those quotes at the end.

'Like JKR’s original essay, this report takes a research-based approach to a harmful world view and makes it sound reasonable — and this is dangerous. "

I mean, eh?

Maybe because it's both research based and reasonable? How on earth is this dangerous?

That people come out with this utter utter nonsense scares the shit out of me.

It's worth pointing out this this is one of the features of DEI - it's mechanism that short-circuits market supply-and-demand and profit seeking. Company stakeholders and government regulators demand that the board of directors of companies put in place DEI targets, e.g. 10% of books published must address sexual minorities. (I have no idea what the real number is). The CEO's performance based compensation is tied to those targets and they implement a plan to achieve the goals: hiring DEI staff, bring in consultants, hire publishers who specialize in the area (and fit DEI hiring goals) and allocate funds for publication.

It's treated as a regulatory expense, so the fact that it doesn't make money is not necessarily seen as problem. Once you've staffed up for DEI, it's very easy for those resources to turn against the host.

So, this is the (rudimentary) outline of industry capture, and it's easy to see why this would be extremely difficult to dislodge even as at least some companies are scaling back their DEI programs.

I think there will be an article in The Critic. There was probably something on GB News. The difficulty is that the trade press is dodging the issue and mainstream media - BBC, Guardian etc - does not want to run stories unless they're about 'JK Rowling's transphobia' etc etc.

The report is also very disrespectful to junior members of the publishing community.

I should hope so. CEOs living in fear of ideologically driven space monkeys among the junior staff is no way to run a business.

CEO: I've signed up this major female author for a book that will be really good for our bottom line

Space monkeys: She's a terf, we refuse to work on this book

CEO: It's a book that's got no gender identity elements, and it will sell by the shedload

Space monkeys: TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN. TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN.

CEO: Ok, let's scrap that profitable book and give a big advance to a trans author who will sell less than 2000 copies

And me. It is absolutely insane, isn't it? They are SO determined to stick by their fact-free narrative that research which refutes it is deemed "dangerous".

I know we all know this, but it just goes to show that this belief system is essentially a fundamentalist religion. It is operating exactly like a cult, and what's frightening is that it's still being allowed to in many areas, seemingly with few checks. It's being imposed top down and at the most influential levels, with no dissent permitted, and large swathes of the population appear to believe it because the so-called "experts" and "clever people" say they do and behave as if it is all proven, despite that not being true, and has "always been the case", which is again not true.

Imagine if all of medicine, politics, academia, publishing, the arts and media were explicitly promoting Scientology, say, as The One True Way, or evangelical Christianity because they were being funded by wealthy orgs that supported those ideologies, would brook no dissent and were threatening people & their families on a personal level if they didn't comply. I don't see this as any different. It IS very scary.

I worked in publishing for decades (have now jumped to a better-paid and less fucking infuriating industry). When I saw that this report was out, I had a glance at social media and noticed this. 🤨

I remember the person responding to Lissa. She’s a loud voice online. No idea how much real-world influence she has though.

I found the Society of Authors very useful when I first started my publishing career and got them to read my contracts when I had unagented books picked up by publishers. I haven't been bothered with them since they started turning on GC voices, mainly because of a few high-profile authors having trans children, I imagine.

I imagine there are a lot of us who share the views of those who were braver and were cancelled. There have been some years where I couldn't have managed financially without my writing income and couldn't risk being dropped by a publisher if one of the young, female editors had taken offence. I used to like JKR tweets and cross my fingers

@CavalierApproach as someone trying to leave the publishing industry for many reasons that chime with yours, which industry did you jump to?

The Bookseller has reported on SEEN in the past, but I can’t spot any mention in the most recent newsletters. I’m sad to say that the response from publishing staff will almost entirely be to ignore it or decry it without reading. There’ll be hot takes all over social media on how it attacks trans people despite nobody reading it. But execs might quietly take note that advances need to be reined in.

Frightens me too. The idea that these supposedly intelligent people can come out with comments like this shows how easy it is to lose your critical thinking, ethics and integrity when you sign up to the gender nonsense. And you don't notice because nobody calls out such flawed, oppressive comments

Slightly on a tangent to the report, but I’ve noticed more and more instances of ‘trans’ characters getting shoe-horned into fiction and I find it bloody irritating.

They’re usually nothing more than pencilled in figures, added to give a throw-away comment and then never mentioned again. They don’t contribute anything to the plot; the author’s just stuck their ‘transiness’ in as (I imagine) a box-ticking / “please don’t cancel me” gesture.

After getting penalised for being gender critical - and fighting back - I jumped from not well paid work that was in the area of publishing, to not well paid work in libraries. The library stuff was more boring but it didn't do my head in to the same extent. Most of the older library staff thought that gender identity ideology was a load of rubbish. (There are some very captured people in the library service including some in extremely senior positions. But I was just in a not-trendy backwater and it was okay - if you don't count the endless pro-trans young adult fiction and picture books, Pride Month going on forever etc etc. But most of the time I was reserving copies of Diary of a Wimpy Kid or hunting down gory thrillers.)

I'm in a branch of publishing (also not well paid) that is relatively immune from the current batshittery, not least because the authors tend to be scientists. And I'm freelance, so most of the time I'm ignored anyway.

On just one occasion, I received a roundrobin email asking all those working on a particular project to introduce ourselves and give our preferred pronouns. I just didn't bother replying. Then one of the academics involved (a man) emailed back saying "Sorry, I don't do that." It hasn't happened again.

Delighted to read Anne Fine’s quote as she was one of my favourite authors growing up. Very refreshing (and rare) when one of your heroes turns out not to be a disappointment.

Thanks for this explanation (and Arabella's shorter summary). I feel open-mouthed at the idiocy of it. It's the sort of thing they ought to teach to economics students as an example of how the free market doesn't always work the way it's supposed to.