Wicked Pretty Update #4: The Prettying

[cleolinda]

Let's see if LJ will let me post this.

Yeah, this is still going. Last night, pointed me to Twitter:

@SaundraMitchell: Hey @PublishersWkly since Christopher Navratil is upset the authors didn't contact him how about providing an addy? It's not on their site!

@SaundraMitchell: And nice reportage! Extremely balanced. Why didn't you talk to any

Comments

[ext_199804]

I wrote the article. There was actually extra fallout behind the scenes from having written it at all (not from Tor, actually, from someone else).

It was all kind of traumatic, so this second Running Press debacle and subsequent attack on the author by the publisher just makes me shake my head with despair.

In fact, I think that article in Publishers Weekly was mostly meant to blackball Jessica Verday from professional publishing, and to let other writers supporting her know that they might too be blackballed. But I can be cynical these days.

[cleolinda]

In fact, I think that article in Publishers Weekly was mostly meant to blackball Jessica Verday from professional publishing, and to let other writers supporting her know that they might too be blackballed. But I can be cynical these days.

In the main entry, I did not want to officially state that as a theory, but that was at the back of my mind. And that was one of the reasons I did that huge long close-reading of the PW piece to show how verifiably inaccurate it was, because I did not like the implications of people having only Navratil's side of the story. There doesn't even have to be any kind of organized blackballing; no one reading that would want work with the kind of troublemaker he described.

[ext_199804]

There doesn't even have to be any kind of organized blackballing; no one reading that would want work with the kind of troublemaker he described.

Yup. And that's why I disagree strongly with the commenter who said that this fiasco would end Telep's career.

I think instead it will end Verday's.

The ones who have the power in this situation have traditionally been the publishers. This is why writers band together into organizations like SFWA, or in solidarity like what happened here; one writer speaking out is going to get mauled, and readers will rarely realize or care what happened.

And even so, this article has made it such that even SFWA or the writers who closed ranks can't save her. Both are endangered, in fact, if they speak up too much about it, because more careers could be ruined by this-and unofficially so.

Your post is important, and I'm so afraid that people won't see it. But everybody in professional publishing will see Navratil's.

/cynical

[cleolinda]

Well, apparently the School Library Journal blog has decided I'm the reporter of record, which might help.

http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/teacozy/2011/04/06/wicked/