St Martin's Press Boycott
A look into the St. Martin's Press boycott
Emma Aviv
Website Designer
The boycott against St. Martin’s Press (SMP) has been going on for months, yet no one seems to know about it. In case you are unfamiliar with St Martin’s Press, it is a publishing house including six imprints, those being St. Martin’s Press, St. Martin’s Griffin, Minotaur, Castle Point Books, St. Martin’s Essentials and Wednesday Books.
A marketing employee under Wednesday Books made several offensive comments regarding Islamophobia and also spread harmful information on social media. The distribution of Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs), early editions of anticipated novels sent to influencers to generate buzz around a new release, have been a point of concern. The publishing house already has a record of favoring white readers when deciding the distribution of ARCs. With the additional layer of the employee’s comments, many Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) influencers are concerned about the overall safety and security of both themselves, and other BIPOC authors.
Baran Ebrahimi '24 showing the symbol for the St. Martin's Press boycott
An organization of influencers called Readers for Accountability (R4A) has contacted SMP with the intent of seeking action from the publisher regarding the behavior of their employee and the ARC issue. However, according to R4A, the response to these advances has been “dismissive and defensive with no action being taken to investigate.”
Readers for Accountability has since formally communicated to SMP that the 6,000 influences involved in the collective will be actively boycotting SMP by restricting free advertising and reviewing of their titles. In this formal email, they outline three specific demands of the boycott:
“1. We urge St. Martin’s Press to publicly denounce the Islamophobic and racist remarks made by the employee in question.
2. We ask St. Martin’s Press to outline tangible steps to mitigate the harm caused by the employee’s actions.
3. We require St. Martin’s Press to address how they will actively support and protect its Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian influencers, authors, and readers as well as all of its BIPOC influencers, authors, and readers.”
The email also specifically expresses that they do not seek termination for the employee in question, but rather that SMP denounce their statements and take action ensuring that the influencers and authors will be treated equally given the beliefs of the employee. However, the response from the publisher focused mostly on reevaluating their system of picking ARC readers. This was done without explicitly expressing any steps on how that in itself may be achieved, as well as avoiding acknowledging the issue regarding protecting influencers.
Readers for Accountability has since reached out again, restating their concerns and calling out the supposed dismissiveness of the response. They continued to emphasize their priority of wanting to be guaranteed that they, as influencers, are safe regarding their personal information (as one individual had received threats and intimidation from friends of SMP employee’s). They also highlight that they, along with BIPOC authors, are still actively concerned about their safety against mistreatment from the employees.
To many, this boycott has evolved from avoiding free promotion and advertisement of SMP titles, to avoiding purchases altogether from SMP. Since R4A's last email on December 21, there has been no further update on actions and advances SMP intends to take, or any indication of the boycott ending.