Morality clauses…
Many Big Five publishers’ book contracts have them now. Most small presses don’t. What are they?
Mostly thanks to Twitter being a haven for far-left and far-right trolls and home for the rants of other special interest groups , some authors have been slammed as they’re tried in the court of public opinion. Whether the actions of these authors is reprehensible or not, this can especially hurt the Big Five’s bottom line, hence the clauses.
In an exposé in the NY Times (Jan. 6), I was surprised to read about this practice. And some authors are rebelling. For example, Ursula K. Le Guin, the famous sci-fi author, wrote a scathing satire against Harper Collins when she saw such a clause in her 2011 contract (ironically that publisher is owned by Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News has had a few #MeToo targets in its ranks). Ms. Le Guin, of course, had no reprehensible behavior; she just objected to the idea of this morality clause.
The danger of these clauses might be as bad for authors as a Twitter attack: the publishers also get to serve as judge and jury for charges that are time and culture dependent. Consider Lady Chatterly’s Lover or Fanny Hill. There are groups who vocally protested against both books and partially succeeded in banning them long before Twitter or the internet even existed. The point is that censorship should not be placed in the hands of public opinion (where the most vocal can outrant people with common sense) or editors and publishers who can even use these clauses to get out of a contract. If there were advances associated with the contract (rare these days), the author can even be forced to give them back with some of these clauses.
Of course, an author can find a lawyer and sue his publisher. Whether s/he does that or not, the reading public at large doesn’t ever seem to know what’s going on, especially if the author isn’t well known. The publishers can just sweep the censorship dirt they’ve created right under their chief editor’s rug.
For publishers, books are a business. For authors, they might just write for the love of writing. The two are often at odds, especially with Big Five publishers, where books are a BIG, LUCRATIVE business. Bless Ursula for fighting back, but I wonder how many less known authors have had their book contracts canceled.
Small presses seem to be immune to this. I know a few who want to know what role sex and violence plays in a novel up front, but I don’t know of any who include a morality clause in case authors and/or their books are attacked by denizens of the Twittersphere after the fact. Maybe the Big Five publishers who are including these morality clauses should practice a wee bit of preventative medicine? And follow the lead of the small presses?
I’m an avid reader, so I’d like to write something from the reader’s viewpoint on this issue (not considered in that Times article, by the way). I censor my own reading! I won’t read erotica, for example, and I also skip bodice rippers. But I respect any reader’s right to read in those genres. Parents should also recognize that kids mature at different rates. They probably should censor their children’s reading via reasoned recommendations, but they should also censor video games (blood and gore and sexual attacks somehow seem worse graphically than they are in a novel) and the streaming video and podcasts kids often watch. That’s where the censorship belongs, not with publishers who are only reacting in a knee-jerk fashion to attacks from the Twittersphere.
These are just my opinions, of course. What do you think about this issue?
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Comments are always welcome!
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