Avalanche! Or a few thoughts about the response to the last night's Chapters tweet.
Last night I was asked in a interview if I knew that a Chapters staffer had recommended people (the interviewer, for one) not buy my books because of LGBT content.
Didn't know that.
So around 8:30 pm I tweeted:
"Found out Chapters staff has warned people away from my books due to LGBT content. Definitely feel less guilty about ordering from Amazon."
The first sentence made a statement. The second sentence made a joke about it, lightening, I felt, the impact of the first sentence because although I wanted to make the point, I didn't want anyone to think I was all up in arms. Chapters is a huge company with a lot of staff and they can't police everyone every moment of the day, particularly not if a complaint isn't made to the manager at the time.
Just to make sure it was clear I wasn't blaming Chapters as a whole, I tweeted almost immediately after:
"In fairness, there have probably been Chapters staff who've rec'd my books because of LGBT content. No one's told me about them though...so?"
Two people got back to me within minutes and I retweeted their tweets.
RT @MetEvaine I have seen your books recced at my local Chapters - Pointe Claire, Que - as staff pics, quite often over the past few years.
RT@StarxEyedxQueen I was rec'd your books & it was never mentioned. Guess they thought it wasn't that big a deal or the point of your books.
Over the course of the evening, a number of people said that would never happen at their Chapters. Excellent! A number of other people were so outraged about the initial tweet, they were calling for a boycott of Chapters as a whole. Saying they wouldn't put up with banning books! This was censorship! Not so excellent! There's a HUGE gulf between a staffer on the floor saying, "You don't want to buy this, it has LGBT content." to individual customers and a corporation saying we won't sell this because it has LGBT content.
The first is what happened: a staffer on the floor saying, "You don't want to buy this, it has LGBT content."
This did NOT happen: a corporation saying we won't sell this because it has LGBT content.
Trust me, Chapters stocks and sells books with significantly more envelope pushing LGBT content than mine. Chapters stocks and sells YA books with significantly more envelope pushing LGBT content than mine. Probably MG books as well. Okay, it's a fair bet this particular staffer isn't selling those books, but they are being sold.
What's more, Chapters contacted me this morning and they're looking into it. They contacted me again this afternoon and made it clear that this sort of thing is not permitted. It's all good. You can not blame a corporation or even a single bookstore if a couple of fuckwits slip through the interview process. Granted, you can get fairly snotty if it's pointed out to them and they don't do anything about it but that's not what's happening here. It was pointed out to them, and they're correcting the situation, which is exactly what you want to happen. Yay!
I didn't think things through before I posted and accept full responsibility for the levels of anger which, quite frankly, as much as I appreciate the support, I found somewhat upsetting. Boycotts? Book banning? No. I was thinking something more along the lines of, "That sucks. That staffer needs to be spoken to and if they refuse to adjust their attitude, fired."
What I neglected to take into account last night was the limitations of 140 characters which probably made the situation seem significantly worse than it was. It's obvious "a chapters employee" would have been better than "chapters staff" except there were too many characters to make it fit. I wasn't looking for outrage over social injustice, it was more along the lines of wow, looks like a fuckwit slipped through the interview process. I also neglected to take into account how the internet cranks everything up to eleven. You're tired, and stressed, and oh thank ghod, here's something safe to be outraged about that won't result in being fired or divorced.
Sometimes anthills need to be poked with sticks. This time, not so much.