Simon & Schuster, Mike Pence, Post Hill, Deesha Philyaw, West Virginia University Press

what makes you click

Big Publishing is getting itself in trouble again for paying money to crypto-fascists, and we are seeing the same cycle of outrage we have seen, and I have written about, with the #PublishingPaidMe moment, the strange force that “getting a book deal” has upon famous people, the problem with symbolic instead of structural change, the LittleBrownWalkout, and the John Bolton deal. I really don’t need to write about the latest —the money publishing is giving to Mike Pence and Bill Barr, or Simon & Schuster’s distribution of Post Hill Press, publisher of Gaetz and the cop who shot Breonna Taylor. You can guess my opinion. Google can give you the facts.

But, okay, I will add this: authors with enough fame to make a difference, and enough leverage to go to another publisher without penalty, should be the activists here. They could raise a ruckus, and/or publicly cancel their contracts. If they want to go one better, they could show up outside the doors of Simon & Schuster with picket si…