Newly published research describes how book publishing has been reshaped according to the whims of the identitarian Left. After conducting dozens of interviews, young American author Adam Szetela found that the process for getting a book published, especially in the young adult (YA) market, was poisoned by politics.
The Telegraph describes the pattern:
An advance copy might be critiqued for the way it represented identities, resulting in an online brawl—what Szetela terms “rage spectacles”—with hundreds, even thousands posting negative reviews of a book which they had not necessarily read. What was most troubling, in all this, was the move from valid criticism to demands for books to be banned.
Examples of works affected include:
- Blood Heir. a fantasy novel set in a world with slavery. Author Amélie Wen Zhao was berated online because it was “anti-black” to have slavery that wasn’t African-American slavery;
- A Place for Wolves: author Kosoko Jackson, who campaigned against Blood Heir, cancelled his own book amid allegations of Islamophobia;
- The Black Witch: Laurie Forest’s novel faced a campaign of one-star reviewing on Goodreads because it included prejudiced characters;
- American Heart: author Laura Moriarty was also accused of Islamophobia;
- The Continent: some readers burnt advance copies of the Keira Drake book because it featured a “white saviour” narrative;
- The Adventures of Ook and Gluk by Dav Pilkey was dropped by Scholastic on account of its representation of Asian characters;
- Sparrow and Vine: Sophie Lark’s romance novel was cancelled pre-publication, accused of both racism and including a fictional character who is too sympathetic to Elon Musk.
Negative Amazon reviews and the social media pile-on have become the weapons of choice—typically used by people who haven’t read them—in the battle to ‘disappear’ objectionable books. Szetela also provides a hair-raising account of how ‘sensitivity readers’ are recruited using the search bar of X, formerly Twitter (!), which then instals ‘experts’ who end up pressuring writers, especially from ethnic minorities, to be more ‘authentic’ i.e. to stick to the identity politics script.
According to Szetela
If this is what I’m privy to in public, then certainly there is stuff going on behind closed doors that I am not aware of.
Admittedly a chicken-and-egg situation, these changes point to how writers now need the kind of success enjoyed by J.K. Rowling in order to become bullet proof in the culture wars.
