How Sensitivity Readers Made Publishing More Racist w/Adam Szetela

Summary

Podcast Summary
Podcast: Conversations With Coleman
Host: Coleman Hughes
Guest: Adam Szetela
Episode: How Sensitivity Readers Made Publishing More Racist
Date: August 18, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Coleman Hughes interviews Adam Szetela, PhD in English and author of That Book Is Dangerous: How Moral Panic, Social Media and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing. The conversation dives deep into how social justice ideology and the rise of “sensitivity readers” have influenced, and in Szetela and Hughes’s view, damaged the publishing industry—especially in the young adult (YA) fiction sector. They discuss the origins and operations of sensitivity reading, unintended side effects such as increased stereotyping, the ambiguous line between authenticity and stereotype, and the chilling effect on creative freedom. With sharp critiques, the discussion also explores broader topics about who gets to write which stories, diversity in publishing, and the unintended racial essentialism that the sensitivity reading trend may have encouraged.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is a Sensitivity Reader?

• Definition and Origin
  • Sensitivity reading is recent—term only appearing around 2016.
  • Reading by someone who “shares a marginalized identity” with the character(s) to spot potentially offensive or ‘inauthentic’ content.
  • Quick commodification: people self-declare as sensitivity readers via social media, often with little to no formal credentialing.
• Industry Impact
  • All major publishers (the “Big Five”) now use sensitivity readers regularly, as do indie presses and, increasingly, journalism outlets.
• Reductionism and Incentives
  • Szetela critiques the role: “The basic premise is profound race reductionism... that if I bring in Coleman Hughes, he can point out where I’m being inauthentic because he has some insider knowledge of Black culture that I would never be able to fully understand.” [05:52]
  • Incentive for sensitivity readers to find problems (“If you invite a ghost hunter … do you think they're not going to find ghosts?” — Coleman, [10:15]), thus creating perverse economic and creative incentives.

2. The Paradox of Authenticity vs. Stereotype

• Fine Line in Writing
  • Both express how hard it is to write characters outside one’s own background without risking accusations of stereotyping or inauthenticity.
  • “If you have five Black people who just act like white people, then you get accused of colorblind racism.” — Szetela [21:51]
  • Sensitivity readers can sometimes reinforce the very essentialist and stereotypical thinking they’re supposed to guard against.
• Irony
  • Books celebrated for their “authentic” portrayal may actually trade in stereotypes if written by “the right identity”—i.e., Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give: “...it's literally full of the very worst stereotypes about black people... But because Angie Thomas has all the identitarian credentials… her book was hailed as this amazing phenomenon.” — Szetela [16:34]
  • Privileging of “lived experience” often leads to gatekeeping over who can write what.

3. The Sensitivity Reader Economy & Its Perverse Incentives

• Many sensitivity readers are also aspiring writers or industry insiders who gain both influence and money by stirring up and then “solving” publishing controversies.
• “They're there starting the fires and they're also there offering solutions, and in some cases highly lucrative ones.” — Szetela [12:02]

4. The Dynamics of Race and Identity in Literature

• One-Way Scrutiny
  • Sensitivity reading typically only scrutinizes depictions of marginalized groups by outsiders, rarely the reverse.
  • “Despite all of this ostensibly taking place in the name of anti-racism, there’s some profoundly racist assumptions embedded... White people are complicated individuals. African Americans... treated as part of a homogenous group.” — Szetela [31:31]
• Power of the Mob
  • Even authors who are themselves “professional sensitivity readers” can be targeted (e.g., Kosoko Jackson) [24:34].
  • The goalposts for authenticity and acceptability are constantly shifting, making it hard for even the most conscientious writers to keep up.
• Publishing as Loss-Averse
  • Major presses now use sensitivity readers as “disaster insurance” in a fickle, social media-driven outrage ecosystem.

5. Harm, Danger, and the Decline of Creative Risk

• Szetela’s book title uses the term “dangerous” unironically: many in the industry genuinely claim books are “harmful.”
• Hughes critiques the slippery concept of “harm” when applied to literature: “There’s a level of concept creep… I don’t think I've ever been harmed by a movie… The market of moviegoers... is smart enough to punish those kinds of stories.” [38:36]
• Overuse of “harm” undercuts artistic complexity and the audience’s sophistication.

6. Bigotry in Fiction: Writing Flawed, Offensive, or Bigoted Characters

• Industry pressure now demands that “bad” characters suffer immediate comeuppance—flawed or bigoted protagonists must be explicitly condemned in-text or by other characters.
  • “What you don't want is a conversation with two characters where one says something racist... and then the narrative just continues on. What you want is a character who can be a voice of reason and counter that.” — Szetela [51:17]
• This derails realistic storytelling (citing American Psycho, No Country for Old Men, and The Sopranos as examples of stories with uncondemned, complex bigots).

7. Soft Censorship vs. Hard Censorship

• The right uses direct legislation (e.g., book bans); the left leverages “soft” censorship via culture, social media, and internal industry policies.
• “At the end of the day, if it produces the same outcome, then it should provoke the same concerns among readers.” — Szetela [56:03]

8. Conservatives in Publishing

• Conservative imprints exist in nonfiction and memoir, but conservative fiction is nearly absent in mainstream publishing.
• Reading habits reflect some ideological splits, but industry bias and market forces reinforce left-leaning dominance.
• “There’s enormously rigid-minded progressive people and a lot are on the New York Times bestseller list in fiction. If my only goal was to write a NYT bestselling novel… better if it could be sort of either explicitly or more implicitly advocating some sort of progressive viewpoint.” — Szetela [62:47]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On how sensitivity reading started:
  “You don't actually see the term sensitivity reader appear on Twitter until 2016… This woman, Justina Ireland… built a database of sensitivity readers.” — Szetela [05:52]

• On the absurdity of the system:
  “It still sounds absolutely ridiculous to me when you say it out loud. And it doesn't sound any less ridiculous to people who work in the publishers who are not on board with this but who go along because it's sort of the in fashion thing to do.” — Szetela [08:55]

• On the shifting standard:
  “If you're a white guy and you have a book with five Black characters who like to play basketball and eat collard greens, that's gonna get absolutely eviscerated. But if you have five Black people who just act like white people…, then you get accused of colorblind racism.” — Szetela [21:51]

• On reductionism:
  “The way around that is to hire a sensitivity reader… At the end of the day, what we’re essentially talking about is a very elaborate way of saying, I have a Black friend in publishing.” — Szetela [22:38]

• On performative wokeness:
  “[Publishing is] going to basically turn them into the university. And, you know, as we have seen... it's not going to surprise me if they start to receive the same sort of negative sentiment that academia has had.” — Szetela [30:53]

• On harm and elitism:
  “Once you're using that language and you're generalizing about people's harm, I don't agree with that at all for a number of reasons. And because that's the language that's used, the publishers themselves are panicking and hiring people like sensitivity readers.” — Szetela [41:36]

• On class and status in outrage:
  “It’s not the Black dude at the local homeless shelter who’s outraged over the latest book deal... this is a very clear class of highly educated, left-leaning, often affluent people...” — Szetela [45:22]

• On the inevitable universality of accusations:
  "I want to create a board game called 'You're Racist,' where every decision on the board game somehow leads you to being a racist in the end." — Szetela [27:19]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:29] The Amélie Wen Zhao Controversy and Sensitivity Reader “Mobility”
• [05:52] What Are Sensitivity Readers and How Do They Operate?
• [10:15] Incentives and the Ghost Hunter Analogy
• [15:30] The Paradox of Stereotyping vs. Authenticity
• [17:49] The Line Between Stereotype and Cultural Authenticity
• [21:51] Colorblind Racism vs. “Racial Authenticity” in Publishing
• [24:34] Sensitivity Readers Turned Targets
• [27:19] The No-Win Game (“You’re Racist” Board Game)
• [31:31] Why Scrutiny Only Flows in One Direction
• [38:36] The Question of Harm: Audience Agency and Concept Creep
• [41:36] Why Industry Panic Over “Dangerous” Books is Irrational
• [45:22] Elitism and Who Drives Outrage
• [48:10] Publishing’s Approach to Writing Bigoted Characters
• [51:17] Sanitization of Literature and “Privilege Checking”
• [56:03] Soft Censorship vs. Hard Censorship
• [59:41] Where Are the Conservative Novelists?
• [62:47] Progressive Bias and Market Incentives

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Conclusion

Coleman Hughes and Adam Szetela deliver a forthright, often sharply funny, critique of the publishing world’s handling of identity, authenticity, and creative risk. The conversation powerfully argues that the rise of sensitivity readers—initially intended to foster a more diverse and respectful publishing landscape—has, paradoxically, deepened racial essentialism and suppressed creative freedom, all while serving the interests of a small, hyper-engaged cultural elite. Szetela’s fieldwork and analysis paint a picture of an industry in thrall to performative activism, where the pursuit of safety and “authenticity” has led to a loss of trust in both writers and readers, and a stultification of literary art.

This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in the intersection of art, identity politics, and freedom of expression.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Adam Scitella. Adam earned his PhD in English from the Department of Literature at Cornell University. And before Cornell, he was a visiting fellow in the Program on the Study of Capitalism at Harvard. He's also written for the Washington Post, the Guardian, Newsweek, and other publications. And he's the author of a new book entitled that book is Dangerous How Moral Panic, Social Media and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing. In this episode, we talk about how wokeness has destroyed the publishing industry, especially in young adult fiction. We discuss the role of so called sensitivity readers. We talk about the line between cultural authenticity on the one hand and stereotyping on the other, and much more. So without further ado, Adam Satella. This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal info and if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft. LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first [e-mail] podcast terms apply. All right, Adam Satella, thanks so much for coming on my show.

[B]

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

[A]

So I met you when I was up in Madison giving a talk and you told me you were writing a book about moral panics in the publishing industry, how essentially social justice ideology has warped what you are encouraged to publish. The whole pipeline of publishing from writing a book, how you can write it, who can write what kinds of characters and what kinds of checks novels are subject to before they get published. And it's a fascinating topic and you've written a great book about it called that Book Is Dangerous, How Moral Panic, Social Media and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing. So thanks so much for coming on my show. I'm curious, how did you get into this particular topic? Were you ever a novelist? Did you do, do you write novels? And what made you interested in this?

[B]

Yeah, so I don't write fiction, I don't write poetry, but I have four degrees in English, so I like literature.

[A]

That's too many.

[B]

It's too many. Yeah, I had to. I had to do a second MA as part of my PhD work. But yeah, so I've always been into literature, into reading, and I've always been a very strong advocate of free speech. So know is really around early 2000 and tens, like the period that people call the Great Awokening that sort of period that there's a lot of these free speech controversies and things like that. And, you know, just as they have affected academia, just as they have affected virtually every corner, they have also affected publishing. And, you know, I think I was uniquely situated to be someone who's very interested in this, as someone who is, again, simultaneously a strong advocate of free speech, intellectual freedom, creative freedom, but also someone who's very passionate about books and access to books and what sorts of books are being produced.

[A]

So your book and my book, the End of Race Politics, they both feature the same anecdote in the first chapter, except I missed a crucial part of it. So I'm talking about the Amelie Wen Zhao controversy, where you have a young Asian author, Asian American or born in China.

[B]

I think she was born in China and at the time was, I want to say she worked in finance and nyc.

[A]

Right. So she writes this novel called Blood Heir, and the blurb before the novel comes out says something like, you know, in a world where oppression is blind to skin color and, you know, such and such a protagonist, you know, saves the world.

[B]

Sound the alarms.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And it was a reference to indentured servitude or human trafficking in China. Right. Meaning, you know, if you're being trafficked in China, you look the same as the people that are trafficking you. There's no racial or ethnic difference. That's all it meant.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Right. It was really just an innocent descriptive.

[B]

Yeah. This is a fantasy novel. This is not.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, a work of historical fiction.

[A]

Right. And someone on Twitter, some people on Twitter, got so offended that. At the notion that oppression even could be blind to skin color that she was. She basically pulled her book for a time. What I didn't know was that. And I learned this from your book, One of the sensitivity readers. And we'll get into what the heck a sensitivity reader even is in a second. One of the sensitivity readers that was mad at her for that very innocent mess up later was the subject of something similar when his book came out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. And I forget what that book was about. I think it was. His name was Kosovo. Jackson.

[B]

Kosovo War.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I guess let's start by talking about what is a sensitivity reader, because this is something that if you're not in the world of publishing, it's you. You probably haven't heard of it. It's also fairly recent phenomenon. I'm not sure they existed even 20 years ago. So what is a sensitivity reader? What problem are they trying to solve? And what is the effect of their existence in the industry.

[B]

Yeah, so as you point out, this is a fairly recent phenomenon. I'm sure there was ad hoc sensitivity reads that have always been going on, just not under that name. But you don't actually see the term sensitivity reader appear on Twitter until 2016. And this is the same year that this woman, Justina Ireland, fiction writer, built a database of sensitivity readers. And essentially what a sensitivity reader is, it is someone who shares an identity, a quote unquote marginalized identity with a fictional character. And they are brought in to read a manuscript, whether it's fiction or poetry or even nonfiction or even journalism. Like people at the New York Times Union demanded that there be sensitivity readers there. And these people are brought in to read a text and to identify potentially offensive or quote unquote problematic material. And you know, I know, I know you've written about this and talked about this ad ad nauseam, but the basic premise of the sensitivity reader is one of sort of profound race reductionism, which is this idea that if I'm writing a book about, or not even a book about, but a book that has black characters, then if I bring in Coleman Hughes, he can point out where I'm being authentic, inauthentic is Coleman has some sort of insider knowledge of quote unquote black culture that I as a white person would never be able to fully understand. So at this point, sensitivity readers are used by all the big five publishers. So Mac, Milan, Harper, Penguin, they're used by the indie publishers, they're used in certain journalism, they're used in certain academic peer reviewed outlets. And you don't go to school for this stuff. There's no sensitivity reading degree program. Quite literally. If you go on X right now, you'll see posts about sensitivity readers. And they all take two forms. First, first form is someone looking for a sensitivity reader. So this could be a publisher looking for a sensitivity reader. It could be an agent, it could be an author themselves. And you'll see posts by sensitivity readers. And at this point, they've sort of commodified every single corner of identity you could think of. So it's not just about race anymore, which I think was the focal point at the beginning. It's now like, I'm a gay trans person who can read for gay trans person, or I'm a pregnant Asian American mom and I can read a story. Like they get quite gray, granular. And so this is, this is a, you know, a profession. And some of these people actually make quite substantive amounts of money. If they're in the sort of upper echelons of this.

[A]

Right. So if you're a social justice mind minded, very online person in 2016, you can essentially just tweet, I am a sensitivity reader or put it in your bio and yeah, voila, you are a sensitivity reader.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And so you can get paid to read manuscripts without any true expertise. Right. It's like you don't have to be a published author yourself. Right, yeah. So.

[B]

And you know, to me, even though I've spent years sort of in this space, it still sounds absolutely ridiculous to me when you say it out loud. And it doesn't sound any less ridiculous to people who work in the publishers who are not on board with this but who go along because it's sort of the in fashion thing to do. So the number of people I've interviewed and I'll ask some questions, I'll say where, you know, where did you hire, hire the sensitivity reader? Wear this. And I've heard stuff like, yeah, my colleague just typed in black sensitivity reader on Twitter and now we have this like 25 year old editing a novel for us. And that seemingly the only criteria that has allowed them to get that job is that they're black or they're Asian or they're gay. And obviously like, you know, there's, there's no like single black community or gay community or single definition of what it means to be like authentically gay or what have you. So like one of the things that unfolds is, as you would expect is like one black reader might feel this way about a book, another black reader might feel this way because there's no, this is a very sort of slippery, very reductionist understanding of identity and literature and what books are supposed to do. So like, yeah, you end up in these sort of weird, potentially darkly funny situations.

[A]

Yeah. There's a cartoonist, Scott Adams, has a funny quip where I think he compared sort of DEI auditors essentially to ghost hunters. It's like if you invite a ghost hunter and hire a ghost hunter to come into your house, do you think they're not going to find ghosts? 100% they're going to find something. Right. So there's something similar there with the sensitivity readers. Like if you're reading a 250 page manuscript and you're getting paid to do so, what's the odds that you're not going to find something? Right. And if there's, even if there's nothing to find to justify your own job's existence, there's an Incentive to show that you did, because you could be accused of not having done work if you don't find anything. Right.

[B]

For sure.

[A]

So, so, so the incentives are strange. On the other hand, if I were to steel man, that sensitivity reading is important. Okay, let's say I have a Chinese American character or let's even, you know, I grew up around a lot of Chinese Americans actually like something I know less like Lebanese American. Like I really didn't grow up with many or many at all. And when I'm writing the scene and they're around the kitchen table, what am I having them eat? Right. This is an example. I think you that that showed up in your book. Am I Googling Lebanese American food? Because will that give me enough cultural knowledge to actually paint that picture authentically? What might a Lebanese mom say? What's a little saying that like, you know, would be, would create authenticity? Is there something to be said for being able to give me a clue on those kinds of things?

[B]

Yeah, for sure. So before I even answer that, I just, you know, I think you make a great point about the incentive structure in this stuff. One thing I often think about is Maslow's law of instrument, which is if you give someone a hammer, they're going to find nails. And so one thing you'll notice if you really, if you read my book, if you've been paying attention to this stuff, the sensitivity readers who are at the heart of these online mobs, they themselves are often writers, or if they're not writers, they're sort of professional sensitivity readers in the sense they're getting paid for it. And I don't think it's incidental that the same people starting these fires over and over again. And you'll notice the same people can be at the heart of controversies around children's book. And then they reappear when the nation, you know, an adult journalism outlet, publishes a poem that people find offensive. They're there starting the fires and they're also there offering solutions, and in some cases highly lucrative ones. So I mean, the, the incentives of this are not incidental. And I think you would have to put on profound blinders to think that just because someone's liberal or just because this is literary culture that the same sort of economic aspects don't apply, that they would apply to, you know, any other situation. Now, to your point about Steel Manning, this, which I think we can do, right? So it's absolutely true that especially in American publishing, that for a countless number of years books have been filled with stereotypes, books have been filled with, you know, stuff that is genuinely not reflective of a certain culture or a certain group of people. And it's also true that for many years, the people who have worked in the upper stands of publishing have been overwhelmingly white people. So that's all true. And I think a lot of this, to give it the most generous reading possible, it does come from like a genuine sort of good faith effort of like, hey, America is a diverse place. How do we have like, you know, picture books that have black kids? How do we have picture books that have Indian kids, gay kids? And how do we make sure that we're not sort of just recreating sort of reductionist ideas about people? I think if it had just stuck to that, the movement itself would actually have a lot more public support and, you know, I wouldn't have to write a book. But it has moved on from that to a lot more sort of esoteric claims about what counts as racism or sexism. And there's this huge punitive component to it. And ironically, to your point, like, you brought up the stuff about dinner. One of the ironies of this is that the sensitivity readers and the people who are really in this space shaping editorial practices, acquisition practices, they have ironically, in my opinion, recreated the very racism, sexism and so on that they're ostensibly trying to fight. So, yeah, as a white guy, I could write a novel and I could have black characters in it, and I can go over a black family's house for dinner. And that, for an editor, is going to be a point where we need to bring in a sensitivity reader. But, you know, I have black friends, so I've gone to their house for dinner. You know, I went to a friend's house recently. He made grilled chicken and rice and broccoli. I made grilled chicken and rice and broccoli. But the sensitivity readers will come.

[A]

If you said fried chicken, it would have been racist. You're very careful to say grilled.

[B]

The sensitivity readers themselves will say, a black person isn't just going to be eating the same thing as a white person, because if they were, you wouldn't be hiring a sensitivity reader in the first place. So. And I can give you examples of books that have been sort of lauded for their commitments to dei, for their commitments to like, really understanding black culture, Asian culture, you know, I think a great example is the YA novel the Hate U Give, which was turned into a movie. So the author is a black woman. It's Angie Thomas. She had a lot of support by this organization called We Need Diverse books that is just advocating, you know, not assigning, buying books by white people, instead buying it from people of color. A lot of people associated with we need diverse books are sort of involved in these controversies. And if you read the Hate U Give, it's been lauded as this book that deeply understands black culture that, you know, I've read reviews where people are like, it throws the door open on black culture as if black people were like savages on some undiscovered island. And Andy Thomas revealed. So just lauded down the line. But when you read the book, it, it's literally full of the very worst stereotypes about black people. Like there's a character in it who just commits violent crime for no reason whatsoever. There's another character, his name, if I remember correctly is just called 40 ounce because he just likes drinking 40 ounces. It's really like no disrespect to Fox News, but if I went to Fox News and I spoke to an 18 year old intern and I was like, can you just come up with a list of the worst stereotypes about black people and we're just going to turn it into a YA novel, it would be that. But because Angie Thomas has all the identitarian credentials in terms of what she looks like, but she's also, you know, knee deep in the rhetoric of like what counts as progressive and stuff, her book was like hailed as this amazing phenomenon. It's also a critique of police violence too. So like if you can add that moral component to it. But if she had, if that book had been written by, you know, someone with paler skin, it would have been absolutely eviscerated if it even made it to that level of being published in the first place, which I don't think it would.

[A]

Yeah, so it's kind of a paradox because if I were to write a book about a 12 year old that wanted to be a basketball star and went over to his grandma's house and ate collard greens, people would say that's authentic. And I would be writing about myself in that case. Right, but if you wrote that exact same thing, you would be accused of stereotyping. What, he's black so he has to eat collard greens at his grandma's house. He's black, so he has to love basketball. Well, no, he doesn't have to, but this particular boy does and I think that's okay. Right. And so I mean, what, what is the line between just stereotyping and actually capturing a cultural difference? I mean, if I want to write an Italian character as a black person. If I want to write an Italian character and I want to have him go home to his family and eat spaghetti.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

With meatballs. I mean, look, I'm not reinventing the wheel, certainly, but I'm also. Italians do eat spaghetti, you know, like, that's, that's not.

[B]

I can just picture this getting chopped up, right? Like spread online.

[A]

What are they going to say? They don't. I mean, you see these videos. I saw hilarious videos on, I think, I think Instagram Reels or TikTok or something of Italian Americans having like a. Italian, Italian and like breaking the spaghetti before putting it in the pot, which is a huge. No, no. Among Italy. Italians, but common among American Italians. And each one of the Italians actually reacts in the exact same way with just like, oh, my God, what are you doing? But with an Italian accent that I can't do.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

And so obviously multiply that through every aspect of life, there are patterns. Like black kids do like basketball at a higher rate than a lot of other races. That's. It was true of me as a kid. It's true. And so if you want to inject authenticity, how do you inject authenticity without injecting a stereotype? Are they just actually two different words for the same thing, two different sides of the same coin?

[B]

Yeah, no, I think that's a great question. And I think a lot of the people who I consider, you know, fairly smart and fairly well intentioned are sort of trying to figure that out. I would never try to offer some sort of blanket formula for toting that line. I think it really has to take place on a case by case basis. So, for example, if I, as a American dude who has never been to northern Italy for some reason, decided to write a novel set in northern Italy, you know, I think there's, there's objective ways to, to get that right or wrong or authentic or inauthentic in terms of how do people dress, how do people eat, how do people talk, are there certain assumptions about dating? Are there like that? That's kind of like a sociological question. But again, it starts to get weird and in my opinion, not empirically accurate or just frankly, downright racist. When you start sort of creating these cultural differences where in fact they don't lie, or to your point, when you sort of, you critique someone for. For writing a story that has cultural difference, but because that person's writing it from, you know, an outsider perspective, quote unquote, then it's hailed as racist. Like I would, you know, and the sensitivity readers, the way I, the Easiest way, I think, for people to. To conceptualize them is I think they function as a sort of disaster assurance that allows you to navigate this space that doesn't have clear guidelines. So if I'm an editor at HarperCollins, and you're a white author and your book has black characters in it, I know that that could be a potentially a real big problem, especially when it gets hit by the review outlets, especially places like Kirkus, which are just, you know, woke beyond belief to the extent that they have a policy of identifying characters by race in all their reviews. So they will write, coleman, this white guy, has a book with five black characters and stuff. So, you know, people are gonna be like, does he get it wrong? Does he whatever. But to your point, if you're a white guy and you have a book with five black characters who like to play basketball and eat collard greens, that's gonna get absolutely eviscerated. But if you have five black people who just, you know, for lack of a better word, just act like white people and are not distinguished by their race, then you get accused of colorblin racism. So the way around that is to hire a sensitivity reader or two sensitivity readers or half a dozen sensitivity readers, and to then also put that in publicity material or put it in the acknowledgment section so that you're getting sort of this, like, social proof that would allow you to do whatever you end up doing in the novel but not getting that sort of backlash. Honestly, like, I might be talking sort of. At the end of the day, what we're essentially talking about is a very elaborate way of saying, I have a black friend in publishing. Like, you know.

[A]

Yeah. Like, we ran this by black people, and they. They liked it. So you can't criticize it.

[B]

Yeah. Does that work, though?

[A]

Because.

[B]

No, not ours.

[A]

It can still get criticism right on a carcass.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then how does. If you're getting the social media mob, does the fact that you ran it by a sensitivity reader actually help you in that moment? Or is it that their suggestions, the sensitivity readers are basically the same people that are professional cancelers, so they kind of know what they are triggered by. Yeah, that's kind of what it is in some way, right? Yeah. Because at the end of the day, very few people actually read novels. Obviously, it's been shrinking and shrinking, and its lunch has been getting eaten. Been getting eaten by television and movies for a long time. And among people who read novels, the number that truly care and are highly sensitive about portrayals of different races and genders and all that is even smaller. No doubt. And so we're talking about an incredibly small slice of the population that influences the writing of the entire industry. Right. And so if you get people from that, it's not even, I don't want to say demographic, because it's not bound by race or gender, that ideological demographic, if you will, and you get them to clear it, then you're unlikely to get those sorts of critiques. Right?

[B]

Yeah, you're definitely less likely. But there have been certainly cases of books being accused of this, that or the other transgression that have gone through the sensitivity reading process. Like you mentioned, blood error at the beginning. Right. So that was critiqued heavily by this guy, Kosoko Jackson, who is himself a novelist and also a sensitivity reader for Big Five Publishing. And a few months after he went after this other author, people went after his book. So, like even someone who is sort of in that 0.001% of hypersensitive people, even he apparently cannot write a book that avoids accusations. And I think that speaks to the fact that the sort of criteria is so ephemeral and esoteric and constantly in flux that even the. The wokest of the woke kind of can't stay up to date with it.

[A]

Yeah, it kind of has a character of. I think John McWhorter wrote this in his. In his. In his book Woke Anti Racism. He just created a table of actions and their opposites that are both considered racism.

[B]

I think I was talking about the litany of contradictions or something he called it.

[A]

Right. So if white people move out of a black neighborhood, that's white flight, which is racist. If white people move into a black neighborhood like Harlem, that's gentrification. It's also racist 100%. So the only thing you can do is like, be a white person that stays in a white neighborhood. But that also vaguely feels racist too, if. If it's intentional or I don't know. And so there's many different examples like this where. And publishing is one, as you point out in the book, if you are a white guy that grew up around mostly white people and you're writing a quasi autobiographical novel and you didn't grow up around black friends because you grew up in Vermont where it's 1% black. Well, your novel isn't going to have black people.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

And that is racist. Right. Because there's no representation. But if you try to conjure black people into the situation, then. And you try to be culturally authentic and they're eating cornbread, then that's also racist. So there is a sense in which, you know, anything can be, literally anything can be, can be marked as racist, which gives the people doing the marking quite a bit of power and leverage. And it gives them. It means that basically they, whether they mark the novel as racist can now have to do with various other factors such as how much they like you, for sure. So it makes sense to now be, really be in their good graces and court them. And I'm not saying all of this is done consciously, but it creates a certain incentive structure.

[B]

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I've had the thought more than once over the past few years and I simply don't have the time to do this. But I want to create a board game called you're racist, where every decision on the board game somehow leads you to being a racist in the end. Because it's, as you pointed out. Right. So if you move out of the neighborhood, you're racist. Stay in the neighborhood, you're racist. So to tie that in with publishing, I had a conversation with an editor at Penguin Random House, one who is actually very close to the internal uprising over Jordan Peterson's book where some of her colleagues wanted Penguin Random House Canada to not publish this book because it was written by Jordan Peterson.

[A]

Was it 12 rules to life for his follow up?

[B]

It was, it was 12 rules, which isn't a political book, but just because.

[A]

Really it's a self help book.

[B]

Yeah, but so, so at Penguins, mostly about lobsters. Yeah.

[A]

I mean, the whole first chapter is about lobsters.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Did they have to get a lobster sensitivity reader?

[B]

They did not get sensitivity readers, but there was an internal town hall where people were quite literally crying and accusing Penguin Random House of violence for publishing this book. And the person I was speaking to who was in that town hall, she was someone who identified as a feminist. She's a woman of color. You know, I quote her in my book, I think at the beginning, where she's even like, hey, I have kids. Like, I do think about like diversity and publishing a lot who are giving a voice to. But she was like, that was just absolutely ridiculous, the idea that we wouldn't publish this book. And she's like the idea that people who weren't even like working on the manuscript were like crying about it. Like, you don't even have close contact with it. You're not at the editor. She just found it absolutely ridiculous.

[A]

Had they even read it?

[B]

I mean, probably not. I mean, one of the things that.

[A]

The Entire first chapter is about lobsters, to be clear.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Like, it's like 40 pages of just describing the life cycle of lobsters.

[B]

I think it was less about the book and more about. This is Jordan Peterson, who has offered these books.

[A]

So it's hard to imagine they were sitting there reading it in tears about, you know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then about who he was.

[B]

In that case, you. I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask the question of if these people are genuine. And, you know, unless you're some sort of method actor, I assume they're genuine because they're literally crying. Like, I'm not speaking metaphorically. If that's genuinely how they feel, then, like, these are people who need help. You know, they're in Canada. They should have free health insurance and access to mental health professionals. Now, on the flip side, if. If this is like sort of performative outrage, and that certainly exists within publishing, then, you know, if you're. If, like, those people shouldn't be there, in my opinion, and if they continue to be there and you continue to hire people like that, you're going to end up turning every major publisher and they're already sort of like this, minus, you know, like the one conservative imprint. You're going to basically turn them into the university. And, you know, as we have seen, especially in the past year, like, it's. If you're confused as to why so many Americans hate places like Harvard and Yale, not just conservatives, but centrists, and you're confused as to why the right wants to defund these institutions, then you're probably part of the problem. And I think publishing has been going in that direction for a number of years where, you know, it's not going to surprise me if they start to receive the same sort of like, negative sentiment that academia has had.

[A]

Right. So with the sensitivity reading, why does it go in one direction and not the other? In. In other words, if I were to write a novel as a black author, I could write white characters. I mean, I assume I would be encouraged to write authentically from my own perspective, but I wouldn't have to run it by white readers. I mean, yeah, presumably even if I wrote like an Italian American character, I probably wouldn't have to run it by an Italian American sensitivity reader, presumably. Is that true? So why does it go in the one direction and not the other?

[B]

Yeah, so I think it goes in the one direction, not the other. Is that despite all of this ostensibly taking place in the name of anti racism, there's some profoundly racist assumptions embedded in this. And one of the core assumptions is that white people are complicated and different in individuals. And the idea that me, Adam Sutella, could write a book that really understands white culture or something like that, it sounds wild even saying it out loud. I think there's some nuance there where if you have like a J.D. vance or someone who's writing about like a distinct sort of poor white southern culture, you can sort of get away with the sort of racial spokesmanship stuff. But for the most part, people in publishing recognize that white people are, are different and there's not like one culture that like binds them all. Whereas African Americans, Asian Americans, gay Americans, they're treated as, you know, part of this homogenous group that can have spokespeople and like, you know, just spend time reading people like McWhorter, spend time reading your book. It's quite clear that many people in these communities themselves, especially the people who aren't benefiting from this, who aren't purporting to be spokespeople, are very much against it because it's super reductionist. It's often offensive. It's intellectually sort of barren.

[A]

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[B]

Make it easy with Stitch Fix. Just share your size, style, budget and done. Your personal stylist sends pieces picked just for you. That was easy. Stitch Fix Online Personal styling for everyone. Free shipping and returns.

[A]

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[A]

You mention satanic Verses and Salman Rushdie in the book. Thinking about how this conversation deals with the question of Islam is a really interesting one. Because if Salman Rushdie's book and his fatwa, which lasted decades and eventually someone did end up stabbing him multiple times and thank God he survived. Or thinking of the treatment of someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who you know, has had, has had and will have to have security for the rest of her life for the same reasons as Salman Rushdie. Does how do you then? I mean, it seems like a paradox to me because I think everyone would want there to be more and more interesting novels with Muslim protagonists, whether those are Muslims in the west or Muslims in the Middle east or in Asia. But how do you then allow for really interesting stories if you're not allowed to portray Islam negatively or even in a complicated manner? Right. Like if you want to have a Muslim protagonist that ends up renouncing their faith or that struggles with their faith for whatever reason, you've just got like 10,000 different landmines to avoid. So that in this case, you know, we're not just talking about mere cancellation, we're talking about actual potential violence.

[B]

For sure. Yeah.

[A]

So then that kind of discourages the writing of those kinds of books, at least in any kind of a way that would be complicated enough to produce a truly great novel.

[B]

For sure.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. So, I mean, there's a quote that I like by Ray Bradbury. He wrote it in his Coda to Fahrenheit 451 Novel about book burning, and he says there's more than one way to burn a book, and there's no shortage of people running around with lit matches. So when I think about Salman Rushdie in the sort of novel that you're talking about, there's pressure to not produce that novel. But I do think it's different than the sort of, you know, at least in some respects, than the sort of liberal, anti racist stuff that goes on, you know, down the street in the New York City publishers. In the sense, like if, for some, if you somehow got a novel published that's, I don't know, depicting Muhammad in one way or another, like, yeah, there's real violence that might come with that. Like, you might lose an eye. Whereas, you know, if you write a book, the quote unquote reproduces stereotypes about gay people or black people. Like, it's. It's unlikely that's gonna lead to violence, though. You might lose your agent and never be able to write a mainstream novel again.

[A]

To revisit the stereotype question, it's worth asking whether and in what situation stereotypes are harmful to begin with. So. So from my perspective, you know, like, the stereotype that black kids are more likely to like basketball is not inherently harmful. It's definitely true. And if you were to write a novel from that perspective about a black kid that wants to become a basketball player, to me, that would. That would be neutral, right? I would say, okay, maybe it's a good novel, maybe it's a bad novel, but you're not doing anything wrong or racist as a result. On the other hand, if you write a novel where every white character is complex and some are stereotypically white and some are counter stereotype, yet every black character in the novel really fits a very narrow mold, then I think you can build a case that this novel stereotypes one group in a very basic way and allows for complexity in another group.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

And so I guess the question is like, in what scenarios are stereotypes actually harmful? In what scenarios are they harmless?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I would agree with you 100% on an impression of a novel like that. Now, the question of harm, I think is a complicated question because I mean, as someone listening, I'd be like, well, how do you define harm?

[A]

Right. I mean, I get. Harm might be the wrong word because it's used.

[B]

It's a word these people use frequently.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Without definition.

[A]

Sure. I mean, at some level, I don't think you're going to be harmed by a novel or a story, period. I think that's, you know, that that's. There's a level of concept creep around, the concept of, of harm, where it's like, I. I don't think I've ever been harmed by a movie. It's an interesting comparison because people, you know, don't as often talk about this with movies. I mean, the only times I felt harmed from a movie is if it gave me nightmares, for instance, like a horror movie. That's why I don't do horror. But if I thought a movie, if I thought a movie's characters were overly simplistic or even racist in their depiction of those characters, I don't personally feel harmed by that. I just feel like, I mean, the truth is, the market of moviegoers and readers, I think, is smart enough to punish those kinds of stories and smart enough to reward stories that perfectly calibrate authenticity and complexity. So I'm not sure, I mean, if I were running a publishing house, I would really want to make. I would want to release the best stories possible. And that by definition would mean. Because the audience has seen everything before. Right. The audience has everything it's seen in its cultural memory. So when you introduce a simple stereotype, the problem isn't a feeling of harm. The problem is I've seen this before.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Right. And so what are you showing me in this book or this movie that is new.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so, you know, I feel like there is a role for feedback. But the problem with a sensitivity reader is almost that they're doing like an Official audit of the book for no nos. When what would be a lot more useful is give me 10 ideas about how I could make this more complex and more interesting. Right. Which is just normal feedback. I mean, that. Sure, in a way, you know what would be good? The good kind of sensitivity reader is just a reader. Just a reader giving feedback.

[B]

Totally.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. No, I agree with you. And, you know, if we want to be scholastic about this, what you're essentially talking about is the distinction between flat characters and round characters. So round character, someone who's complicated, someone who has contradiction, someone who feels like a real person. And that's true whether you're writing a fantasy novel or what have you. Like, those are the characters we remember that we empathize with, that we connect. And, you know, if you're reading a novel where the round characters are all white and the black characters are sort of background stereotypes, then, yeah, that's feedback. And people have been giving that sort of feedback for years. Like, it's certainly the case that white authors have written amazing books that have black characters or Asian characters. That's all existed. But to your point about harm, it raises the stakes of all of this in a way that I think has created real problems. So there's a difference between just offering the sort of feedback that you said and then saying, I mean, the title of my book is called that book is Dangerous. And I didn't use dangerous to be hyperbolic or whatever. There's people I quote in the book who call books dangerous, who call them harmful. I mean, I quote a distinguished professor of literature who has been interviewed in Esquire and Washington Post, who has compared the Dr. Seuss books that were pulled from publication and cease publication to cars without seat belts. And once you're using that language and you're sort of generalizing about people's harm, I don't agree with that at all for a number of reasons. And because that's the language that's used, the publishers themselves are panicking and hiring people like sensitivity readers. Because there's a huge difference between just publishing a book that, you know, isn't that good because the characters are sort of flat and what have you, and publishing a book that has done violence to the black community. Like, nobody wants to be accused of that.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I'll just add, too. You know, I. It wasn't until I really got to like certain spaces of American life, so Harvard, Cornell, those sorts of places that I started hearing people use harm to describe, like watching a movie. Right. I mean, I've Met people, especially people in my upbringing, who have quite literally lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I have zero memories of anyone talking about a book causing them harm.

[A]

It's a profound lack of respect for the audience. Because what you're saying is this book or movie portrays a character of a race in such a way that the audience is going to absorb a message. The audience is too dumb. They can't see that we've written a flat character.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

What they're gonna see is, oh, all Hispanic people are that way. And they're just gonna download this brainwashing from the movie rather than saying, you know, I found that Hispanic character to be pretty boring. Right. They were just salsa dancing the whole time and, you know, had no complexity and that it seemed a little out of place given the fact that everyone else in the movie was like, you know, like a. Like a Freudian character study.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The truth is, if you write that way, the audience is going to pick up on that in two seconds. And they're not going to leave the movie theater or leave the novel more racist than when they entered. They're gonna leave thinking, wow, they really didn't put too much effort into that character.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

And so it will reflect badly on the author and on the director. It won't beam racism into the hearts of the audience. And so to assume that it's harmful and that it's dangerous is to assume the audience has no defenses, no immune system to racist writing. Which is. It's just, to me, it's. It's precisely the opposite of the truth. In other words, the audience is actually the correct judge of what's good writing and what's bad writing. And when you do it well, everyone in the theater can feel it. Everyone who reads the book can feel it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So another question I wanted to ask you is, is anything.

[B]

Should I just add on.

[A]

Yeah, please, on that.

[B]

So I think there's unquestionably a huge strain of elitism in these conversations. In the sense, again, it's not the black dude at the local homeless shelter who's like outraged over the latest book deal that was given out at Harper Collins. This is a very clear class of highly educated, left leaning, often affluent people, often white people too, like, or be honest about that, who are engaging in these conversations, stirring these debates and things like that. And, you know, as we talked about, I think there's like, very clear incentive structures to that. I also think too, that within these spaces there's a lot of competition for relatively few resources. So that's whether that's like a six figure book deal. Whether that's a fellowship at a university's English department. Most people are sort of losers in the professional managerial class economy. And they end up at, you know, Penguin Random House has an editorial assistant who makes $52,000, which is clearly not enough money to live on. So if. If you're living that life and then you see someone like Amelia Wenzel get a huge advance for her debut book, you know, I think it would be like incredibly naive to think that like just basic emotions like jealousy and just the competitive nature of this corner of the economy aren't a major factor in what's going on for sure.

[A]

Another topic I wanted to touch is how to write characters that are themselves bigoted. Right. And this is something that you talk about in the book. Yeah, the. I think the example of our parents generation used to be like Archie Bunker type of character, but I never really watched that show. And I think in our generation, Tony Soprano is like a better. A better reference point for people because obviously he's a bad guy, but he's also the center of the show. He's someone for whom a lot of empathy and sympathy is built over the seasons. If that weren't true, the show wouldn't work. But when his daughter brings home a black boyfriend, he's racist about it. I mean, casual racism, casual homophobia, in fact, hardened homophobia, violent homophobia at times. And so how does the publishing industry today, in the era of sensitivity, readers treat the writing of bigoted characters.

[B]

Yeah, so I interviewed a woman, I'm not going to say her name, but very influential literary agent who's been in this game for decades. If you look at the list of authors she represents, it's sort of like a who's who of contemporary literature. And she was telling me on the phone about being in a meeting recently. And this was really just emblematic of the current climate where they were talking about a historical novel with the publisher. And in this novel there's a character who says and does misogynistic things. And, you know, she said there was red flags from the publisher and editorial assistant, you know, pointing to these passages where this character says these things. And from their perspective, they were kind of like, this is misogynistic language. Like, this shouldn't be in the book. And she's telling me over the phone that her response was just very straightforward. Georgie was like, this is 1850. Like, this is. This is how they talk. Is that. What are we talking? This is how they talk. But there are people the true believers who genuinely believe that even having that in the book is problematic. It's problematic because it's going to make a reader feel uncomfortable.

[A]

It's problematic because maybe it should make them feel uncomfortable.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Maybe that's the point.

[B]

Sure it's uncomfortable because maybe it will. You know, someone will read that and think it's cool that a character is talking like that. There's sort of. Those are the arguments. Right. But I think even people who see those arguments as profoundly stupid, who work in publishing, they're concerned about the bottom line. And the number of incidents at this point that have affected the bottom line are innumerable. So these people will say, you know, I don't think it makes a book misogynistic to have a misogynistic character. That's profoundly stupid. But what I'm worried about is this cabal of people on Twitter and Goodreads who are gonna screenshot this passage before the book even comes out. And now that's the big blow up. And it gets picked up on the Internet.

[A]

And that will define the book on the Internet, that one passage out of context.

[B]

Yeah, I've talked to people like that who are like, Adam, I agree with you down the line. I think that's crazy. But at the end of the day, I'm trying to sell books and I'm also trying to get this great book, att. And I don't want the attention to shift to this other thing that really has nothing to do with the book. But it's really unfortunate. Right, so to your question, right. Obviously there still are books that have a racist in them or misogynistic, I would say far fewer books and far sort of like, you know, a sort of different kind of racism, sexism. And in those cases, it's going to be easier to publish that book with a mainstream press if those characters get privilege checked or if they have their comeuppance. So what you don't want is a conversation with two characters where one character says something racist or anti semitic or sexist and then the narrative just continues on. What you want is a character who can be.

[A]

You need to get struck by lightning right after they say it, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. You know, they want a character who's gonna be a voice of reason and counter that. But, you know, I grew up my own literary tastes when, especially when I was younger were sort of novels about bad characters who don't get their comeuppance. Like, I love the novel American Psycho, one of my favorite novels, Wall Street Banker who's racist, anti Semitic, homophobic, kills people, rapes people. And at the end of the novel, he doesn't go to jail, he doesn't confess anything. He doesn't admit he was wrong. He just sort of, like, continues on. And, you know, I love those books. Just at an aesthetic level, I find them very entertaining.

[A]

No country for old men.

[B]

Yeah, 100%. I like those books a lot. But I also think from a more sociological perspective, that's how the world works. Once you start eliminating those characters from books, we're losing the versimilitude of literature. The ideal world that these people want, where everyone who makes a racist comment or does a sexist thing gets their comeuppance. That's not the world we live in. So then, is the purpose of literature to only create an ideal world? I would argue no. And I would argue if you care about art, that's not the function of art. That can be a function of art. But when you have these people running around sort of dictating what art should be, what literature should be, and if you have a different understanding of that, then you yourself must be racist or sexist. I mean, those people are creating real problems, like, for just aesthetics broadly conceived.

[A]

Right. So I wonder how all of this works when books are turned to film, because Hollywood obviously is always ravaging through the latest novels for new source material for film to option something that's already written, a story that's already proven, so they don't have to come up with stories from scratch.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

And we just talked to Justine Bateman a little bit about why movies haven't been as good. So people can look at that podcast if they're interested. But if you. I mean, I guess there's two things. One, if you have sanitized novels, then there isn't as good source material for film. Right. Like. Like I said, a novel like no country for Old Men. I actually haven't read it. I've seen. I've seen the film, but it's like if the ending in the. In the book is similar, which I'm not sure it is, I've been told it's different, but the, you know, the evil character, like, walks off and that's it. He doesn't get his comeuppance. And so if you're not allowed to really write complicated stories like that or complicated characters or a character like Tony Soprano, who is a complicated bigot, he's not. He's not someone that gets comeuppance for his bigotry. Right, right. He's Someone that gets comeuppance for his. Well, arguably, depending on how you interpret the final scene in the Sopranos, I won't even go there. But the point is, if we don't have books like that, then we get fewer movies like that. And you add on top of that, what the Oscars tried to do a couple years ago at the height of 2020 race craziness, they instituted some requirements for movies to receive Academy Awards. Some of those requirements were essentially straightforward racial quotas in certain cases. And so I thought to myself, how is a movie like Belfast gonna shoehorn in, like, a Native American? It's literally taking place in Belfast in the 1960s. Right. Like, there's no. Everyone around is white, everyone around is Irish. Right. So are you allowed under these rules to basically make a period piece? I mean, it's a very strange thing. And the strangest part about it is that I think in the west, we're no strangers to government dictums. Right, Dick cats? Right. We expect when we read Orwell and when we study the history of fascism and communism, we expect it when a strong man comes to power and says, only art that justifies the state, only art that glorifies the state. This is something we have antibodies to. But what's happening is the authoritarianism is now coming from inside the house, as it were. It's coming from the bottom up. And the effect is the same, but it's actually we are censoring ourselves. We're choosing to put the shackles around our own risks. And it's a very strange thing. And I think we don't have good cultural antibodies to fight against that.

[B]

Yeah. And so, I mean, obviously there is censorship legislation across the country in the name of the state targeting, you know, a lot of books in, like, K through 12 schools and stuff. So, like this, this is the right. They've been very effective at that. And I. I do think it is censorship. And I'm not, you know, just because I wrote a book focused on left wing censorship, it's not like I don't care about the other stuff. I. I actually think there's so many resources devoted to covering that and so many organizations tracking that stuff that, frankly, I. I'm not even sure what I would contribute to that conversation. But the difference is the right has been very effective at using law and legislation, whereas the left has just been very effective at the sort of soft censorship, which is, again, not the kind that you see in, like, 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 and those sorts of apocalyptic dystopian stories that we all read in high school and are like, oh, we, we don't ever want to see this in the real world. The way it operates, you know, in places like these publishers and agencies, it's soft, it's not legislative, it's not as like top down. But, you know, at the end of the day, if it produces the same outcome, then it should, you know, provoke the same concerns among readers.

[A]

Right. In a way, it's more difficult to fight because if you don't like the critical race theory law in a red state, you can fight it. There is a clear set of steps you can take to repeal that law and ultimately win that legal battle. If you don't like the entire culture of the American publishing industry because of the problems we've been talking about for the past hour, the steps to fight it are not as clear. There are steps to fight it. I mean, you can start your own publishing company. That's a lot of work. You can start your own publishing company, start your own institution that exemplifies how things should be. Right. That's in a way analogous to what the free press is to the world of journalism. Right, sure. Or what the University of Austin is to the world of higher ed. But that requires more of a spirit of entrepreneurship and risk taking. And it's a slog. And it's, it's a lot, it's a lot more than. It's a lot more involved than writing a letter to your congressman or fighting for a law to be changed.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, final question. Obviously, the culture of publishing is left leaning to a degree that is really more extreme than even most left leaning institutions, I think for sure. Where are the conservative authors? Where are the conservative novelists? Do conservatives just not want to write books? Do conservatives not want to read books? What's going on there? How could it possibly be as lopsided as it is?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, how could it possibly be as lopsided as it is is one question. The question of where you can find conservative authors, I think is a different question. So I'll answer the first one because I think it's a bit easier. So there are imprints within Big five Publishing that are devoted to publishing conservative authors. So, you know, like Mike Pence gets to publish his memoir, other leading political figures.

[A]

What about fiction, though? That's what I mean.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because obviously conservatives read books. The realization that conservatives read books sure is talked about as a moment in the publishing industry where people started getting these right wing imprints. But that's nonfiction.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

I'm talking about novels. There's got to be conservatives that want to write novels, I would imagine. And there's gotta be conservatives that would wann read novels. And yet if I were to like scour the American public publishing industry for an explicitly conservative novel, I feel like I would be googling for a long time before I hit hit on something.

[B]

Yeah, totally. I mean if you're actually producing that work, I think off the top of my head I would. Skyhorse Publishing would probably. They're not going to care if you're writing conservative fiction or progressive fiction. And you know, they're a legit publisher with a huge audience that publishes New York Times bestsellers outside of them. I mean I, I'm not, I'm just as dumbfounded as, as you are.

[A]

So is there a reason for that that goes deeper than, I mean is there something inherent about the conservative psychology or mind that, that strays away from fiction and something about liberals and progressives that is, that gravitates toward it or is that making too much of what is really just a context specific situational lopsidedness?

[B]

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean I, I wouldn't necessarily advocate this myself but there are people who have done studies of for example Amazon buying habits within literature and it is true that liberals, people lean left of center are going to be more prone to buy fiction, poetry, etc. And you know, there's a sort of chicken and the egg sort of question. There is like are they buying it because it's sort of the stuff that's going to be written in a way that's congenial to them or is their buying fueling it, fueling the production of it? I think it's both. But I know people who have come out of certain traditions like moral foundations theory, like Jonathan Haidt's work and stuff that has concluded at least in certain respects conservatives are more rigid, less sort of open minded, things like that. And I think especially with, with fiction there's certain qualities of writing fiction that at least in some respects might correlate more closely to a liberal sort of open minded person. But you know, to. Again I, I'm not necessarily advocating that though I don't think it's like a position to totally discount because you know, for the past few years just being engulfed in this, it's quite clear and Jonathan Haidt, this is what, what coddling was about that there's enormously rigid minded progressive people and a lot of them are on the New York Times bestseller list in fiction. If my only goal was to write a New York Times bestselling novel and make a lot of money, I would make sure it's well written from a sort of aesthetic standpoint. But even better if it could be sort of either explicitly or more implicitly, advocating some sort of progressive viewpoint. Obviously, the gold standard is if you are a black author who can write well and who will write literature that is in some way shape or form advocating progressive opinions. Like, I mean, there's so many authors who that that's their bread and butter.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And there's a clear market for that.

[A]

Right. Okay. Adam Satella, thanks so much for coming on my show, and thanks for having me. That book is Dangerous How Moral Panic, Social Media, and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing. Thanks, Adam.