so, in brazil, we have this gigant publisher called ‘galera record’ and and they publish most of the big titles and authors (here’s a list of some authors and books, but there are many more)
the problem begins with the absurd price they put on the books. it’s so expansive, most people can’t afford it. when they released koa (one year after the book was launched) it was cheaper to buy the original, hardcover, signed copy then the portuguese one. but then you say “okay, it’s expansive, but you’re paying for a high quality product, so it’s worth it” right? no.
here are some of the problems we have with this publisher:
i’m going to use a recent exemple, but you can find stuff like this in basically all their books.
they released the brazilian version of house of earth and blood, by sarah j maas this semester, and it was one of the most expected books of the year. they whitewashed ALL the non white characters. Hunt, Fury, Juniper, Isaiah... you name it, they whitewashed. it was absurd. all the fans ware so angry, we made it to the trends and they said that in the next edition they were going to fix it. but if you had already bought it, it’s your problem. you keep the racist copy or pay for the new one.
like i said, you can find things like this in most of their books. here we have Raphael from tmi (Cassie Clare) saying “i’m not gay. i’m not straight. i’m not interested.”, and they turned to “i’m not gay. I’m straight. i’m not interested.”
they literally changed his sexuality
and this is an old book, they never fixed. besides changing characters races, skin color and sexuality (among other absurd things), their books are poorly translated. wrong words, characters names spelled wrong, changes in the original texts that are not necessary or make sense
2. bad quality of the books
besides the poor translation, the books have a low quality. like, really low.
the paper they use it’s terrible and gets yellow with months (in the pictures, 1° one is books that i have for six years from other publishers and 2° have 3/4 years)
we’ve been complaining about this for YEARS, they aways say they will change the papers, but never do.
besides this we have other problems: books with missing chapters, books with the pages glued together, with whole pages missing, the bumps of the books not aligned, literally anything you can think about. and yet they put an absurd price no one can afford
3. lack of professionalism
this one is the most recent one. yesterday, the main editor of the publisher was “talking” against pirate books. i understand. it’s her job. but then she compared piracy with RAPE, RACISM AND MURDER and then made this joke, referring to a case that is running here in brazil, where a girl’s rapist was sentenced with “guilt rape”, witch is basically saying he didn’t meant to rape her. that’s not even legal and it’s so so so disgusting and wrong. we are still fighting to have justice brought to this case and this girl, and the main editor of one of the biggest publisher in the country had the nerve and lack of character to make a joke saying that reading in illegal epubs is “guilt piracy.”, when most people who read in illegal forms don’t have the money to buy books. we don’t have many libraries. it’s either read in epubs or don’t read at all. so besides having no compassion with all these peoples, she used an serious and disgusting issue as a joke.
that’s not the first time she’s involved in cases like this, and yet she was never fired or reprimanded. they just ignore it, because she’s the heir of the publisher, so i guess it’s okay she does this kind of thing
we are basically hostage of this publisher because it buys all the big titles and it’s either give them money or don’t read the books we love so much.
most of us cant read in english or cant afford to buy international copies, so if we want our favorites, we need to buy it from them. the reason for this thread is to ask you to help us bring attention to this. we are tired of the disrespect this is and we want authors to know who their selling their work to, and to know what is happening here. so please, tag the authors, publishers, managers ANYONE you can think of that will read this and be able to do something to help. please. we are so tired of having to deal with this, we just don’t know what to do.
thanks for reading, i’m so sorry for any mistakes, and please share this and tag people
UPDATES: AUTHORS WHO SAW THIS AND MADE A STATEMENT
we reached to every author i mentioned and more. thank you so much to everyone who helped us, it means the world to us!
2087
blakekathryn
jacobvanloon
jbbartram-illu
germansingergirl
stormborns
kaledo-art
