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How twitter took down a YA novel that scammed its way onto the NYT Best-seller list

I honestly did not expect to see a hodgepodge of "famous in the 90s" people involved, even tangentially, in a New York Times YA Fiction Bestsellers list conspiracy. I was not prepared.

On a related note, apparently YA book twitter is nuts.


the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

None of this comes as a surprise to the folks concerned by the current state of the discourse, who describe being harassed for dissenting from or even questioning the community's dynamics. One prominent children's-book agent told me, ”None of us are willing to comment publicly for fear of being targeted and labeled racist or bigoted. But if children's-book publishing is no longer allowed to feature an unlikable character, who grows as a person over the course of the story, then we're going to have a pretty boring business."

only white characters can have flaws!
 

Tacitus_

Member
Holy shit. I am reading Warhammer 40.000 novels about the grim dark future of humanity locked in a state of perpetual war against hell and nightmare combined itself, total biomass eating intergalactic aliens, fungus hellbent on war and destruction and a elven race made of all the darkest and fucked up desires and pleasures incarnated and even that universe isn't this freakin' savage.

That's a pretty apt comparison actually.

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I honestly did not expect to see a hodgepodge of "famous in the 90s" people involved, even tangentially, in a New York Times YA Fiction Bestsellers list conspiracy. I was not prepared.

On a related note, apparently YA book twitter is nuts.
yikes....I'm hella progressive but there are levels to this shit...sucks that people who advocate for social equity are lumped in with this mess.
 

GSG Flash

Nobody ruins my family vacation but me...and maybe the boy!
It seems like a good way to fight this scam is for the reporting stores to inform NYT of any bulk orders being made for a specific book. If NYT sees a suspicious pattern, they can ban the book from the list.
 
Okay, I read that article and then the review itself, and the hate was pretty justified. The direct quotes are pretty damning. Some gave me chills after reading them because it mirrored the shit I experienced.
Why? Do you think GRRM advocates for rape, incest, or torture because many of his characters do such acts?

Someone should make a thread about that link, with a decent OP of course. It'd be interesting discussion.

Edit: GRRM of Game of Thrones.
 

Kinitari

Black Canada Mafia
Okay, I read that article and then the review itself, and the hate was pretty justified. The direct quotes are pretty damning. Some gave me chills after reading them because it mirrored the shit I experienced.

The point is, that those quotes from the book are not endorsements of ideas. When someone in the book said 'the fae race is all dirty' or whatever, the point is to create a dialogue around these kinds of notions - the book is about a girl who is surrounded by these ideas, believes them in her youth, has them challenged by her experiences and eventually joins the 'resistance'.

I don't want to speak to the quality of this, I don't know and I honestly don't care - but taking quotes from the book that say racist things doesn't mean the book is one that extols the virtues of racism, or whatever.

There's a lot of weird purity checks and faux fragility that's actually just exhausting to see, and I hope we collectively grow out of it.
 
Seems like the book is now getting review bombed on Goodreads and Amazon, and it was taken down from the NYT Bestseller list. I'd say this whole stunt backfired, but then again "there's no such thing as bad publicity."

On a related note, apparently YA book twitter is nuts.

I'd like to see these idiots get their hands on a Mark Lawrence novel.

Why? Do you think GRRM advocates for rape, incest, or torture because many of characters do such acts?

Lol. It's like someone reading The Shining and thinking that Stephen King is in favor of child abuse and alcoholism.
 
That book they referred to in the Article that's #1 in the YA list and had been on there for 25 weeks titled "The Hate U Give" which initials is T.H.U.G is currently getting made into a movie directed by George Tillman Jr. with an ensemble cast of black actors that include Issa Rae, Regina Hall, Amandla Stenberg, Common, Lamar Johnson, and Russell Hornsby.

Oh shit, I need to keep an eye on this.
 

Faddy

Banned
From the stuff i just read about YA fiction drama it seems like this new book only got called out because it was a new publishing group. The drama was more like "hey who are these interlopers" more than anything else. Can't have outsiders steal your potential "The Fault in Our Stars" money.
 

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
I honestly did not expect to see a hodgepodge of "famous in the 90s" people involved, even tangentially, in a New York Times YA Fiction Bestsellers list conspiracy. I was not prepared.

On a related note, apparently YA book twitter is nuts.

Yea, that whole thing just sounds insane. Social media has signal boosted a lot of smart people with good ideas that normally wouldn't have gotten any attention, but it's also signal boosted a lot of dumbasses (both evil and well-meaning).

Okay, I read that article and then the review itself, and the hate was pretty justified. The direct quotes are pretty damning. Some gave me chills after reading them because it mirrored the shit I experienced.

That's the point. You were supposed to get chills and recognize how bad the speech and actions were. That stuff was never supposed to be framed in a good way, the whole point of the book is that the main character slowly recognizes that they were wrong and begins to make amends for their past.

Try reading Revelation by Flannery O'Connor. It does the same sort of thing in far fewer pages. If you think this story deserves hate then you seriously need to learn to read.
 

Mael

Member
I honestly did not expect to see a hodgepodge of "famous in the 90s" people involved, even tangentially, in a New York Times YA Fiction Bestsellers list conspiracy. I was not prepared.

On a related note, apparently YA book twitter is nuts.

Read the article and the review.
I'd say that what the author of the book being talked about could work but from the review it seems like the author is really bad at this.
Now onto reading that Slayven thread...
e: Oh boy that's a doozy!
 

Random Human

They were trying to grab your prize. They work for the mercenary. The masked man.
I'd be a little careful with that Vulture article. It was widely disputed, and IIRC the author of it has some sort of grudge against YA twitter.

From the stuff i just read about YA fiction drama it seems like this new book only got called out because it was a new publishing group. The drama was more like "hey who are these interlopers" more than anything else. Can't have outsiders steal your potential "The Fault in Our Stars" money.
Nah, people are usually excited when small publishers do well and get on the NYT. This got called out because they're not a real publisher and they essentially manipulated the system to get a #1 best-seller despite no "real" sales.
 

Mael

Member
I'd be a little careful with that Vulture article. It was widely disputed, and IIRC the author of it has some sort of grudge against YA twitter.

That's pretty clear to anyone who has read the article to be fair.

Damn, people are crazy. Even trying to discredit books that aren't finished.

the book was done and in the hands of a few librarians, where do you think the captions are from?
 
I used to work in a local bookstore (remember those?) when I was in high school. Every so often you'd get someone come in and buy every copy of a book. I didn't think much of it until one day a lady came in and took every copy of Playboy from the magazine rack, then asked if we had any more copies in the back. I said yes and she said she wanted to buy all of them, so I brought them all out and my manager sold them all to her. He explained to me how some of the publishers buy up old copies of their old books to pad their numbers and to never trust magazine and book sales figures.

I guess that practice is alive and well, except now the publishers have moved on to just placing bulk orders.
 
The book was done and in the hands of a few librarians, where do you think the captions are from?
No, in the article quoted it said there was an instance where one author was already being dragged for a manuscript that wasn't even finished.
 
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