How the St. Martin’s Press Boycott Reveals a Core Problem of the Book Community.

The very first thing you need to know is that it was not actually a boycott.

Let’s go back to October 7th 2023.

After the attack from The Islamic Resistance Movement, aka Hamas, an employee with the press went on an Islamophobic rant online. People were outraged and insisted that the company simply say that those statements do not align with their beliefs.

Not fire the person, not even give them any form of consequence, whatsoever. Just say that you do not agree with those beliefs and you do not approve of racism in your company.

They never did.

So this “boycott ” was developed. The plan was to continue buying books from the company, just don’t share or post them on social media.

And I repeat.

That is not a boycott.

The reason they went with this approach was to reduce any money lost by authors under the brand.

There are two problems with this.

One, these systems are designed for those authors to be the crumple zone of the business. If they are not being impacted by your “boycott” then the people in charge absolutely are not either. This is the blatant example of putting your comfort over other people’s actual lives.

This is imperial privilege.

And two, this severely devalues the role of the consumer. Because that’s all that’s happening. People are going from being influencers & consumers to being the influenced consumer. Especially at this point, over a year since the “boycott” started. All of the books you knew about from that brand at the time this started, have come out. If you have any newer releases from them that you are looking forward to and that you are going to purchase, it is because you have been influenced by someone else.

And quite frankly of all groups of people to participate in something like this, the people chosen are genuinely the worst to do it. You’ve taken people who have a finger to the pulse of book news. The people who will know what books are always coming out of that company and when, and told them it’s okay to keep buying.

I highly recommend watching this video on us economics
https://youtu.be/gqtrNXdlraM
(hate the ground news sponsership, and you can watch this video to understand better why.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfHx4CfKFqQ
Warning there is some ableist language, including an analogy that I don’t even understand).

Back to the purpose of the econ video. At the end of the day, the economy doesn’t care about you as a “small business” or an influencer. The economy cares about you as a consumer eagerly buying new cameras, computers, softwares, and yes books for the sake of your job. You have not actually made a change in position in their eyes. That’s why every other day for my entire lifetime, you’ve see some news about this or that being bad for small businesses. From lack of checks on credit card fees or rent prices (cause a lot of small shops and restaurants don’t own the spaces they work out of), to mass adoption of ai. As long as you’re buying, you’re still just a cog in the machine and they really don’t care where.

But this brings us to an overall problem with the book community. It is a space so entangled with imperial capitalism that it clouds a lot of people’s vision and taints a lot of their values.

A big part of why I wanted to stop being on social media and stop engaging with that community was how quickly people would drop their values, how quickly they would become a guard dog for the system the second it was Their money they would have to sacrifice.

I’ve seen people attack and to dehumanize folks, dismiss living experiences that didn’t align with their capital gain while defending fucking amazon as if it’s some little guy who has no choice but to screw you over.

I’ve also seen authors that write and profit off of stories of oppression and genocide, while having nothing to say about those things happening in the real world in our real life. And then proceeding to shame people who will not turn on their values to vote for a genocidal fascist.

It is a space where people have deeply confused their conflicts of interest with victimhood and thus feel entitled to insist their comfort remain centered in all actions and decisions.

And truly the one thing I can thank the 2024 election cycle for (something I will be making a video about soon) is the ability to no longer pay any mind to the gaslighting. To the people insisting there’s something wrong with me for holding true to what I believe and the future I wanna see for all people around the world.