Woke books that were bought for huge advances by “inexperienced” editors have flopped commercially, insiders say. The Mail has the story.
“Ideological fanatics” allowing their politics to dictate professional decisions have seen profits slump, according to industry experts.
Among the works responsible for huge losses is the once hotly anticipated memoir by the actor Elliot Page about her journey transitioning. Pageboy received a $3 million advance but has sold just 68,000 copies.
Industry standards suggest for publishers paying roughly $7 per book sold is considered a good deal, according to insiders talking to the Free Press.
It means that even books that sell tens of thousands of copies such as Page’s can still tank commercially.
Other recent ‘woke’ flops are Carolyn Ferrell’s Dear Miss Metropolitan described by the New York Times as “a story of three young girls, black and biracial, who are kidnapped and thrown into the basement of a decaying house in Queens”.
The novel was acquired in a deal estimated to be worth more than $250,000, but has shifted just 3,163 copies since it was published in 2021.
Another example is “queer feminist Western” Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens which has sold around 3,500 copies despite commanding a $500,000 advance.
Meanwhile, established white authors have complained that they are facing more barriers to getting published.
Crime novelist James Patterson drew criticism after he likened the situation to “just another form of racism”. He later apologised but a similar point was made by Joyce Carol Oates.
“A friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good; they are just not interested,” she said.
It is also something editors themselves have acknowledged.
“We flat-out decided we weren’t going to look at certain white male authors, because we didn’t want to be seen as acquiring that stuff,” one senior editor told the Free Press.
When asked whether editors acknowledged they were “discriminating against writers because of their skin colour”, the editor replied: “I don’t think it was worded quite as blatantly as that. It was worded more like, ‘Is this the right time to be championing authors of more traditional backgrounds?’ Often, the language was a bit opaque.”
Worth reading in full.
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I hope they all go out of business.
Plenty of room for up-and-coming publishers who disdain this literary tripe.
“Woke books that were bought for huge advances by “inexperienced” editors have flopped commercially”
Well, whoever would have thought it?
‘Inexperienced editors’ being code word for editors chosen for diversity & inclusion.
Hopefully another example of “go woke, go broke“. Fortunately we can still choose from the many thousands of excellent, worthwhile, well-written books published in the last couple of hundred years.
Blimey these editors is clever with words init?
Proper wordsmiffs!
The problem is: if that’s all the precision you can muster in a phrase, then the quality of your logic is likely to be similarly inept and muddled.
And when is the right time?
It appears the Free Speech Union didn’t allow Tommy Robinson to join as a founder member. Why? Either they champion Free Speech or they don’t. He paid, but they refunded him the money – apparently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajHwWjzb9PA
Free speech doesn’t mean you have the right to join anything you want, even if you’re not wanted. Not being wanted isn’t a restriction of your free speech. Tommy Robinson can still join the Free Speech Union if he wants, according to Ian Rons.
I totally agree that Free Speech doesn’t mean unrestricted access to all or to say literally anything to anyone, but what is the reason for him being denied the membership level that he tried to get? Surely that is a perfectly legitimate question for him to ask, but yet he hasn’t had an answer apparently.
Also, why does Ian Rons have to be so horrid/adversarial in his text/tweet ….”He can join, but he hasn’t paid the fee. Listen to him bleat”. A totally unnecessary final sentence. Although he did pay and it was refunded.
Hi Jasa – on this week’s Weekly Sceptic podcast, Nick Dixon asked Toby Young whether this story about Tommy Robinson being refused membership of the Free Speech Union was true or not. Toby said “No”. He also thought TR should not have been harassed and arrested at the recent march last Sunday, though he also said he would have preferred TR not to have come because it allowed the legacy media to be distracted from reporting on the march itself.
Fair enough. I agree that TR needs to be a bit more sophisticated in how he goes about things e.g. being at the march last Sunday, although why couldn’t he be there and true, he wasn’t denied membership, but the link that I posted shows that he was denied the level of membership that he sought and was offered a lower level. TR asked for a reason and has apparently not been given one.
Over the last 3 or 4 years I have completely lost trust in everything. Lockdown Sceptics, as this site was originally, was a sanity stabiliser when I found it and joined back in March/April 2020. Toby does great work, but sometimes I’m not sure that he is totally onboard. I hope that he is. It would be nice to know why the FSU refused TR the level he desired. It maybe a completely fair reason, but Ian Rons saying that he didn’t pay doesn’t seem to be true according to the link that I posted (if you listen to it all), which adds to my disillusionment about everything.
Hi Jasa – ok I’ve now watched the video which I confess I hadn’t done when I posted first. That was because I took what Toby Young said on the Weekly Sceptic podcast at face value and reported it. But I must say it does appear that Toby was being a little economical with the truth. It seems TR was denied Gold Membership of the FSU and I think we know the reasons why. The FSU and other organisations on the centre-right are desperate to keep their brand squeaky clean. We all know how the left love to smear anyone and how the msm will prohibit someone on our side talking about actual issues by endlessly introducing whataboutery questions such as: “How can you say you are a serious organisation when TR is a gold member?” etc. You may remember when Gerard Batten was leader of UKIP, he wanted TR to join. But it split the Party for the very same reason and UKIP never recovered. This is a real problem that we have to overcome. I can tell you I was a member of UKIP at that time and was in favour of TR as a member. Frankly, our brand was toxic to the msm anyway and nothing could have made it worse. But more importantly, you have to stand up to these msm, lefty bullies.
But I don’t want to be too hard on the FSU on this. We, sceptics / libertarians / right wingers whatever you want to call our merry band, have to navigate very tricky waters and Toby Young is doing a fantastic job in persuading the msm and assorted politicians that he is a serious player and naturally he does not want anything to mess with that.
It is a pity Toby or Ian Rons could not have had a private word with TR and they could have kept all this between themselves. Perhaps they did, who knows. And maybe TR is in the wrong here for bringing it up. Theories on a postcard!
Scumbag leftists. Go woke go broke. I’m kinda glad they are. Sack these cretins and get back to selling good stories that make money
Didn’t they realise that the “woke,” who are usually young, easily influenced and spend their entire lives on TikTok, don’t read books?
I suggest they’re in the wrong business ……
Modern day books, films, art, museums, plays etc are largely white inventions turned into white industries for white consumers. That is not to say there haven’t been great books and films from the rest of the world but the big consumers in the West are the white middle class. So what happens when these industries try a bit of wokery-pokery? They end up insulting and lecturing and losing their customers yet clearly don’t attract any “minorities” to replace them.
In this way, and it is somewhat ironic to say the least, woke productions can easily be criticised as being part of a “white saviour” narrative and should be abandoned. If bame people are underrepresented, let them make their own films and write their own books. Bollywood does very well, why shouldn’t others follow?
Free market capitalism working as it should – the consumer is the regulator.
Yes, but sadly only in part because I rather think Disney et al have such deep pockets that they can afford these losses for the political “gain”. Also, I suspect they are (perhaps willingly) doing the work of the deep state and they certainly have deep pockets.
Furthermore, by releasing woke versions of established brands eg Bond, Star Wars etc, they destroy the white man led brands into the bargain.
None of this is a stupid as it looks.