Readers globally are tired of seeing hateful, bigoted authors paid, published and supported by publishing industries.
We are using this form to demand better from you.
As global powerhouses are publishing, you have the money, influence and ability to change the publishing industry for good. You have no need to continue supporting and paying authors like Sarah J Maas, JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Jojo Moyes, James Patterson, Dav Pilkey, James Dashner, Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, Elle Kennedy, George R. R. Martin, Lillian Harris, John Green, Ernest Cline, Stephanie Meyer, Stephen King, T.J. Klune, Margaret Atwood, Brandon Sanderson. The list goes on and on and on an exhaustingly on.
Many of these authors have very obvious prejudices in their books.
Whether it's their anti-Semitism, their transphobia, their stereotypical portrayals of people of colour or their degradation of overweight people by using them as villains. These are things that aren't taken out in the editing process, which means they were there all along, and were acceptable to your companies. By continuing to publish novels with these themes, you are enabling these authors and their prejudices. By sanitising these views, you are allowing and enabling further prejudice in society. You have a duty to call out these views and you have a duty to do this before they hit the shelves. Long before you pour your advertising budget into them. If you are unable to do that, you can hire sensitivity readers, but it should not fall to the marginalised communities affected by these works to do that work for you. And it should not take decades, in some cases, for these issues to be brought to light and brought to your door.
It is time for change.
One look at social media will show you how unpopular these authors are. And how desperate readers are for true diversity.
We want to see trans authors published traditionally, we want to see people of colour published traditionally, we want to see LGBT authors. We want to see disabled authors. We want to hear our own voices finally uplifted in the publishing industry that has so much impact on the world.
At a time when anti-minority hate crimes are rising and significant countries are banning books left right and centre, you have an obligation and a duty to stand up and uplift these own voices. They are not hard to find, you can find thousands and thousands of excellent independent authors who deserve to be published and given the support that you throw behind authors who are happy to write and fuel bigotry.
It is no longer simply disappointing to see publishers posting daily about regurgitated fan fiction. It has gone far beyond that, it is hurtful, it is damaging and it legitimizes the idea that some groups are better than others, and it upholds supremacy.
We are writing this form to show you the that the readers who want the books you are afraid to publish are out there. The books you say are unsellable, are actually completely the opposite.
They are not just sellable, they will be global successes will make sure of that, because now is the time for change.
This is not to say that those controversual authors should not have their voices, but instead of being given access to global powerhouses, they should be forced to rely on themselves. They should be publishing themselves independently and doing the advertising and distribution work themselves.
The work that independent authors are forced to do by your industry.
Now is the time for change. Do you want to be complicit in supremacy and bigotry? Or do you want to be on the right side of history.