A Publisher's Tale...

As a publisher, an editor and an author, I have first-hand experience of attempts to censor work that goes against the grain of the current gender orthodoxy.

My fifth novel was explicitly gender critical. Since then, a prize-winning author on the same list – who admitted they had not read my book – asked for their rights back because they did not wish to be associated with the publisher of such a book (even though they admitted they hadn’t read it).  

When I was involved in publishing a memoir by a prominent GC campaigner, we were warned by various people at all levels of the publishing industry that we were committing professional and commercial suicide. One well-known figure in the industry vowed to campaign publicly against the publisher, two authors asked for their rights back, and another asked for his book to be removed from the publisher's website.

In the first week of publication, malicious stories circulated wrongly claiming that 350 copies of the book had been sold, when the real figure was more than 10 times that.

It felt like it was all about intimidation, deterring anyone else from publishing similar work, and trying to hide the most threatening information – that there’s a big market for this stuff.