Lady Whistlethreads March 10th

Dearest Gentle Bookthreader,

It’s time for our weekly wrap up of book drama, discourse, and terrible behavior!

1 An editing company sent out a promotional email that said your bestseller is good but first drafts lie to you and are not the drafts you are going to publish. And if you’re like what in the word soup? Yeah, me too. Do they think a bestseller is a first draft? Do they think a bestselling author doesn’t know they have to write more than one draft? Talk about ChatGPT-splaining to an expert.

** The Continued Saga of Author S **

The publisher confirmed to Publishers Lunch that they canceled S’s book and the rest of the series and will not publish it even with edits.

2 After the “Author S” saga from last week, many people weighed in about the issue. Is keeping lists of “problematic” authors helpful? Or out of context is it hard to differentiate between someone who uses their vast wealth to campaign against human rights or to s3xually assault their employees with someone who said something off putting one time? I think every person is allowed to make their line wherever they want to.

3 Someone defended Author S’s right to freedom of speech and says she can say whatever she wants and shouldn’t lose her publishing contract. But my understanding of the First Amendment is that it protects you from the government arresting you from speaking out against it, not that people can’t get mad at you for saying gross stuff.

4 Someone decided to go buy books by anyone on a “Cancel Culture” list. Which you would only do if you agree with them and don’t think they should have been criticized for what they had to say.

5 Someone posted in support of this author because “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” is discriminatory. The whole point of DEI is to make spaces more INCLUSIVE of ALL people. But if changing your behavior to accommodate others feels like discrimination, that’s good to know about you, I guess.

6 A publishing house posted in support of sensitivity readers, stating that if they request a change and the author does not compy, they won’t publish the story. An author commented that sensitivity readers are censorship. Friend, that’s book bans. It’s normal for people to have ethics around who they want to work with and what kind of work they want their name on.

** Kindle Unlimited **

Context: People have been calling for an Amazon boycott. Many indie authors are speaking out about how this would affect them, because the majority of indie authors make the majority of their money through Amazon.

7 An indie author posted a video explaining how KU works from the author perspective, and her comments were FLOODED with people saying that she needs to be willing to make sacrifices. (Her living? Feeding her children?) And people suggested they should make a list of authors who are posting to support KU and review bomb them.

8 Many readers explained that they are going to just pirate instead of use KU. Which is not an ethical alternative, you are thinking of the library. Some people even argued that pirating is going to be what keeps books in circulation when Fahrenheit 451 comes true. And like, if you think your harddrives and wifi are safe under that regime, you are not smart.

KU has an exclusivity clause, and will remove authors from the program if their books are found elsewhere - including pirating sites. It is not a victimless crime to use these sites, you are not only not paying for the art you are consuming, you might be leading to that author losing money they have earned because you are stealing their work.

** Everything else **

9 People like to argue about if fanfiction supports the author who wrote the original story. Financially, no, of course it doesn’t. However, it does keep that person’s IP in your mind, which might lead you to financially support the original.

10 Someone who purposely put “kkk” in their username is now just posting rage bait for liberal readers and authors so we should probably just block them, idk.

11 An author started vaguely posting about people being cruel to them because they are an indie author. Their ARC readers pushed back that the author was mad because they asked them to include trigger warnings and tag the artist on their posts. Asking people to show basic consideration is not cruelty.

12 Many readers questioned why the release of Oathbound, the third book in the bestselling and award winning Legendborn series, wasn’t given the same attention in bookstores as Fourth Wing and SJM are. Many readers posted pictures and videos of tiny tables in the back of the store with a few copies, while FW & SJM each had their own giant display with books and merch.

✨ A small part 2 will be coming later this week for my paid substack subscribers. See my pinned FAQ (on Threads) if you’re curious about why I have to set boundaries for how much I can work in a given day/week!

🫖 See something Lady Whistlethreads worthy? PLEASE DM ME ON IG. I’m trying to figure out a better system, but my tags are no longer showing up on Threads. If anyone has ideas (Google form? Email address?) please let me know. 👇🏻

What did I miss? Feel free to share below 👇🏻

New issues every Monday, around 12 PST.

Xoxo,

Lady Whistlethreads 🫶🏻🫖