#smp boycott

[aroaessidhe]

Speak up St. Martins Press!

We are concerned that, based on posts made by a Wednesday books employee who works directly with influencers and authors, that this employee

An employee within the marketing department of Wednesday Books, an imprint of St Martins Press, which is an imprint of Macmillan, has made numerous posts with racist and Islamophobic rhetoric amid the genocide of Palestinians, and the publisher has been silent for months. This employee is also in charge of sending arcs to influencers, and a number of people have noticed a pattern of Arab and Muslim readers not receiving arcs, which is potentially related.

Readers are asking for the publisher to address and denounce the racist remarks from the employee and offer tangible steps for how they are going to mitigate the harm, and until they do so we are boycotting St Martins Press and its imprints: Wednesday Books, Griffin, Minotaur, Castle Point Books, Thomas Dunne Books, and SMP Swerve.

This means not posting about or reviewing these books, though you can still buy and read them.

And more recently, and the reason for my specific post today, sign the petition to make clear the number of community members who are demanding action!

If you want to use a US zip code, why not use 10271 - where the SMP Marketing Department is.

You can find more info/updates at readersforaccountability

[eggcatsreads]

Reminder that the publisher that sent unsolicited and unconsented for sex toys to people is the SAME one still currently under boycott, and that this boycott is explicitly to not do promotion or reviews of their titles. This boycott has been going on since October of 2023, and since they have not responded it is still ongoing.

And yes, this includes any titles you may have on Netgalley (or other arc review sites).

"But wait, my feedback ratio!" I hear you cry.

There's a solution for that. When the boycott started I had about 2 SMP titles, and 1 I had just reviewed. And on NG using the "will not provide feedback" option negatively affects your feedback score, so no, I'm not suggesting that.

Here are the 3 "reviews" for the titles I had from the boycotted publisher.

And then I have not requested or taken any of their titles that they've placed on "Read Now" to try to force an end to the boycott.

Doing this has not affected my acceptance rate for titles I request, by the way. Publishers who rejected me beforehand still do, publishers who generally accepted me still do, and ones where it was a 50/50 are still about the same.

[panicatthebookshelf]

Saint Martin's Press took close to a year to make a statement and only did so after they caused another massive ""scandal". All they basically had to say was: hihi we did an investigation and can't find any proof on the Islamophobia and racism the whole book community has proof of.

Do not be fooled by these people. They supported racist employees and did nasty stuff to Black authors for supporting a boycott.

[lexsreadingcorner]

Does bookblr actually know about the SMP Boycott? Cuz I just went through the booklr tag and so many of you are posting about books published by St. Martin's Press. I have to assume that most people in the booklr community just don't know that there's been a boycott going on for months now??

If you hadn't heard about it until now, now you know. It's a marketing boycott that applies to all of St. Martin's Press' related publishing houses as well. You can still buy SMP published books and read them, but we're asked not to provide any free advertising. Basically, no talking about the books on social media, posting pictures or reviews, etc.

[triviareads]

my friend created a helpful resource if you'd like to track romance novels (mostly historical romances) that fall under the ongoing St. Martin's Press boycott:

Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It's the all-in-one workspace for you and your team

[aroaessidhe]

so, the saint martin's press boycott.

I was offline for a few days a week or two ago and during that time SMP made an (okay) statement, R4A deliberated and eventually accepted terms and declared an end to the boycott, people got mad at R4A because the statement wasn't good enough, R4A panicked a bit and basically ended up disbanding/deleting their content. I don't know all the details of everything, but here's some summarised thoughts, since I have been one of the only people posting about the boycott on here:

firstly - I did see SMP's statement and think, eh, it was better than their previous ones, but it was still noticeably very vague on the catalyst of all this (it mentions Islamophobia and Gaza but it's not really centred or as emphatic as it could be) - so I totally understand people being angry that it was seen as good enough. The boycott is because of anti-Palestinian bigotry and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

However, people upset at R4A started claiming that there were no Palestinians/Muslims in R4A, that it was all white people, which are both untrue. There were accusations of sucking up to SMP bc people want arcs/money and typical internet dogpiling and threats, which is... not really productive at all, to say the least, and starts to drown out reasonable criticisms.

Some people (the ones that feel safe enough to come forward, which is not everyone, due to said threats) have come out and discussed exactly why R4A decided to end the boycott. Mari's video here is worth watching - essentially it's that SMP clearly made massive steps to meet the demands, and the ones they didn't they're legally not able to (ie any explicit reference to the employee or what they said would probably get them sued).

A large group of (primarily bipoc) SMP authors have started talking about how they were working behind the scenes to urge SMP to respond - and reiterated that yeah, there's no legal way for them to comment on what the employee said and did.

I think most people understand strikes/boycotts are about negotiation, not necessarily getting every single demand. And it's an immense achievement to get a major publisher to respond and make changes. The way R4A fell apart at the end is pretty disappointing - they genuinely had the platform to make a lot of change going forward, and I hope that the change that was made isn't going to be undone because of that.

It kind of seems like the people who are encouraging continuing to boycott have changed from a marketing boycott in order to bring change to just a 'this company did a bad thing so don't engage with it ever' boycott. Which is valid, but said company has no incentive to meet the demands in that case.

But I also totally understand the opinion that the point of this - racism against Palestinians amidst a genocide - has been pushed to the side. It's extremely reasonable to be angry while watching an ongoing genocide. It's very reasonable to want someone with such despicable views to be fired (even if there's no actionable way to make that happen, and that was never an r4a demand). SMP also hasn't made any kind of statement about the unsolicited sex toys they sent people either, so like....there's that too.

I haven't decided exactly what I'll do - I've only read two SMP books since this started and tbh there's only a handful of other SMP books I'm interested in reading. But I'm considering, if I do decide to post those, donating the cost of a book to a GFM/esim/etc any time I read/review a SMP book. That feels like the most direct thing to bring things back to the point.

[lexsreadingcorner]

Just a heads up, but as of yesterday, August 27th, the SMP boycott has officially ended. Readers for Accountability put out a statement last night.

(Please don't debate on this post whether or not you think it should have ended. This is simply to spread awareness. And as always, you can make whatever personal decisions you want to in regards to how you spend your money and who you support. No debates on this post.)

[triviareads]

No worries! Looking back they didn't post anything on their main page asking to withhold the title but they did repost a couple of people saying that posting the name of the book in the PR box is crossing the picket line. Several organizers also said this on their personal pages so that's probably where I got that. Which in turn, made my brain associate posting the title of the book in ANY capacity as crossing the picket line and I didn't really get why the list might be different!

Good to know! I knew there was a reason I still don't know what the title is (and nor have I bothered to search). I think framing matters but ultimately, in the short period of time after the PR boxes were sent, not naming the book was the right call if the boxes were sent in a desperate attempt to solicit ANY publicity whatsoever. I imagine as time goes on, that book might be named as a book people are NOT reviewing until SMP fully answers the concerns of the boycott (not whatever BS they posted last week), something I have seen some reviewers do while @ing SMP.