In 2009, some Amazon Kindle users discovered that books they had purchased from the Kindle store platform, specifically versions of “1984” and “Animal Farm” by George Orwell, were deleted from their devices without warning. Despite Amazon explaining that this was due to those specific versions of the books being uploaded to the platform by a company that didn’t have the rights to sell the book, it still raised concerns over whether this was an abuse of power by the company.
In 2025, Amazon finally clarified on the Kindle store that “by placing your order, you’re purchasing a license to the content” of that particular book, not that you own the book. This raised concern among consumers and Kindle users about the increasing lack of control they have over their digital book media, including terminating the ability to transfer their licensed books onto physical hardrives. This essentially locks readers who own a Kindle into an Amazon ecosystem if they wish to keep reading the books they licensed; publishers argue that this discourages the purchase of physical media and puts more power in the hands of Amazon, which has been accused of placing a stronghold on low e-book prices across online booksellers.
The digital purchase and lending of book licenses has long been in use on digital library platforms such as Hoopla and OneDrive, and publishers expressed concern that “library lending of ebooks will ‘train’ readers that the value of ebooks is zero.”
On June 21, 2024, Yunjian (云间), author of novel Application for Divorce (离婚申请), was quietly detained in the night. Her suspected crime: writing danmei, a popular Chinese-specific genre of queer male romance and erotica that developed alongside its more popular Japanese counterpart, shounen ai (lit. “boys love”). In official terms, she was suspected “of producing and selling obscene materials for profit.”
Since last June, authors have been silently disappeared off Taiwanese-based website Haitang Literature City. Late December, they revealed that they had been implicated by a series of police crackdowns in Anhui province, east China, specifically targeting danmei authors.
It’s not merely a matter of sexual impropriety. Amidst the turbulence of beloved authors being arrested, a frightful note on censorship law incited online outrage: sexual assailants get off easier than erotica authors. More specifically, authors earning over 250,000 yuan (USD 34,700) from “obscene materials” can face a lifetime of imprisonment—though the severity of the sentence could, hypothetically, be lessened by paying back “between one and five times the amount of illegal income.” Authors who made less were typically placed on probation. Meanwhile, the punishment for rape of a female minor by guardians under “heinous circumstances” is between three and ten years.
For Yunjian, it wasn’t until December 6th that she received her official verdict: a sentence of 4 years and 6 months, with a fine double her earnings.
According to South China Morning Post, as of January 1st, Anhui police had detained over 50 writers in China since June 2024.
Taiwan, the birthplace of beloved Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee and the origin of queer film Your Name Engraved Herein is a known safe haven for sexual minorities and free speech. Haitang Literature City previously served that purpose for authors of queer fiction, but authors are frequently finding themselves with nowhere for their craft to go.
Domestic censorships had grown tighter. Since previous years, the fate of progressing live action adaptions for danmei novels have been left in the dark. Since 2021 and 2022 respectively, Immortality, based off beloved novel The Husky and His White Cat Shizun (dubbed 2HA, as a shortening of its original Chinese name), and Eternal Faith, the live action for Heaven’s Official Blessing (dubbed TGCF), were under rigorous censorship review before news of releases ambiguously fizzled out.
However, Heaven’s Official Blessing also has a widely accessible Netflix-housed donghua animation adaptation, and both 2HA and TGCF have official translations licensed by a Los Angeles publisher, Seven Seas Entertainment. Previous works of Mo Xiang Tong Xue, author of TGCF, have also spurned other adaptations: including a live action Chinese drama The Untamed, the Mo Dao Zu Shi donghua, and recently, even a four-part stage play in Japan. Seven Seas’ latest acquisition, Thrice Married to Salted Fish, was just announced last week. Suffice to say, danmei isn’t a genre kept in the dark, or to be shelved in with the “pornographic” label. It is a thriving worldwide phenomenon.
Due to the covert nature of queer fiction in China, even Mo Xiang Tong Xue, was at one point suspected of being arrested, with rumors claiming either censorship or tax evasion.
The Haitang incident is a fearmongering response to the increasing popularity of danmei. “They were all arrested on the same day, and the police had all the authors’ information; it was clear that they had been targeted,” speculated Chenchen, a longtime danmei reader.
As a result of the fines, many authors still had to turn back to writing to pay off their dues.
The question of free speech is complex—the legislation is largely freely interpreted by those in power. What constitutes as “obscene materials,” and how do we measure the “social harm” that dictates the severity of a sentencing? The lines keep shifting: whereas euphemisms used to slip under the radar, new reinterpretations of censorship easily place restrictions on “nothing below the neck.”
In one interview by RFA Mandarin, longtime writer Si Yueshu laments that the lines keep shifting for authors, despite danmei being a low-paying labor of love. “You can’t actually know what you’re allowed to write and what you’re not allowed to write,” she says. “Very successful authors usually upload three chapters a day, or more than 10,000 words, and the most they can make is around 20,000 yuan (US$2,740) a month.”
The extensive fines for this hard-earned salary become, more clearly, examples of economic exploitation.
Danmei remains an explorative space for women and queer individuals to express their sexuality. Infringement of this freedom based on historical stigma against homosexuality has long been criticized as outdated. Why must independent queer authors be martyrs for creative expression? And for the average American fan, what can they do besides consumption?
For some like Yunjian, who have been facing poverty, medical conditions, and innumerable other hardships, donations have helped authors stay afloat.
In the Western or even Chinese diasporae consciousness, danmei isn’t without its faults, in terms of reinforcing certain gendered stereotypes or beauty standards. Yet that critique is entirely quashed under the face of legislative censorship, which seeks to perpetuate the idea that gay people, below the neck, have never existed in China at all.
Above: “cut sleeve,” a euphemism for homosexuality, originating from a folktale regarding Emperor Ai of Han, who had cut his sleeve rather than disturb his lover resting upon it.
While the act of “separating the art from the artist” continues to be a debate that divides fans and pop culture enthusiasts, publishing houses have recently found themselves trying to navigate controversy when authors’ personal behaviors have forced their published work to come under scrutiny.
In 2024, the daughter of celebrated Canadian author Alice Munro came forward with allegations that her mother deliberately avoided intervening when her husband sexually abused her during her childhood. The content of Munro’s stories, which often focused on “passive” characters who grapple with feelings of abandonment or betrayal, drew scrutiny from both readers who believed that her personal actions were inseparable from her work, including her famous short stories “Vandals” and “The Children Stay.”
The public backlash was swift, as authors and readers like Rebecca Makkai lamented on social media, “I love her work so much that I don’t want to lose it, but am also horrified to see the meanings of many favorite (foundational, to me) stories shift under us.”
In January 2025, popular British author Neil Gaiman (whose work has been adapted into television and film projects) was accused of sexual misconduct by eight women in an article by Vulture. Critics in academic journals like Ad Fontes noted that it was nearly impossible to believe that these alleged acts didn’t influence his work, as “Gaiman’s fiction doesn’t dabble in sexual debauchery—it’s almost everywhere.” The long list of allegations inspired pop culture critics to create think pieces on YouTube and NPR, arguing whether publishers should play a role in “deplatforming” Gaiman by dropping his projects and whether readers could ethically enjoy his work, including novels like Coraline and comics like The Sandman.
In both of these controversies, the publisher was stuck in the middle of two sides of a raging public debate: either stop publishing the author’s works (which one side argued was censorship) or continue to publish them and be criticized for ignoring serious allegations in the pursuit of financial gain. In the wake of the allegations against Neil Gaiman, graphic novel publisher Dark Horse Comics cancelled the upcoming publication of additional books in Gaiman’s graphic novel series Anansi Boys. Alice Munro’s books remain available and in print after the allegations were made public and are available through sites such as Penguin Random House and Munro’s Books, which also published a statement of support for the victim.
These two controversies demonstrate that “when it comes to the question of whether authors are visible in their works or whether audiences can be complicit in destructive art,” publishers have started to grapple with their long-held role as gatekeepers of the literary world and what responsibility they bear when allegations emerge (Lawson, Ad Fontes).
The academic publishing controversy may be the least popular in this list, but it is still a huge issue impacting the industry. In an article published by Big Think, Simon Oxenham claims that big publishers of academic journals have a vested interest in locking away knowledge from the majority of humanity. As Oxenham explains, this is how academic publishers are ruining the industry:
Image by Brianna Montes
Academics must generally hand away all rights to the copyright of their best creations, creations that often take millions of dollars of public money to make. Once the work is finished, it is given permanently, and for free, to publishers who reap a higher profit margin than practically any other industry. Since the value of academic research is incalculable, publishers can charge whatever they want. This means that the price of access to academic research is rising and access is becoming harder. Both public libraries and professional researchers are losing access en masse. universities and hospitals must pay millions of dollars per year to access work academics produced decades ago, work that was generally funded by the public purse, or charitable grants at great expense. Researchers and scientific organizations around the world are now working hand in hand to change the system to one based on open access. The goal is to end big publishers’ time as gatekeepers of the industry.
Dan Mallory, who writes under the pseudonym A.J. Finn became a best-selling author with his 2018 debut thriller, The Woman in the Window. Before his success as an author, Mallory worked as an editor for several publishing houses both in New York and London. In Feb 2019, The New Yorker published an article written by Ian Parker, which exposed a web of lies and deceptions spun by Mallory himself. For years before his novel was published, Mallory spent his time taking advantage of the publishing industry and the colleagues who trusted him.
The author claimed in an essay submitted with his application to Oxford’s prestigious New College that his mother died of cancer and that his brother had also died in his care. He claimed to have written a dissertation about Patricia Highsmith, the author of the Tom Ripley novels, while at Oxford. The New Yorker article revealed that Mallory never completed his dissertation, despite having once signed emails as “Dr. Daniel Mallory.” He’s never published scholarly work on Highsmith, either. Further into his career, he claimed that he had surgery for a brain tumor. Later his father confirmed that Mallory never had cancer, despite the fact that he missed work for the supposed high-risk surgery. In a statement to ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” Mallory blamed his deception on a 2015 bipolar II diagnosis.
In 2010, Apple made its big entry into the e-book marketplace, which had been dominated by Amazon and its Kindle reader. At the time, book publishers were frustrated with Amazon’s low prices and welcomed the new retailer with open arms. After all, Apple was willing to let them set their own prices with the condition of taking a cut from each sale. The problem with this was that the terms Apple had offered big publishers allowed them to engage in a price-fixing conspiracy. Some publishers involved in the conspiracy included Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster. Under this deal some e-book prices rose from $9.99 to up to $14.99.
In July 2013, US District Court Judge Denise Cote found Apple guilty of conspiring to raise the retail price of e-books and scheduled a trial for 2014 to determine damages. The court stated that Apple broke antitrust laws when it entered the e-book market. Apple claimed that they had simply been promoting competition in a very monopolistic market. The court disagreed by stating, “Competition is not served by permitting a market entrant to eliminate price competition as a condition of entry, and it is cold comfort to consumers that they gained a new e-book retailer at the expense of passing control over all e-book prices to a cartel of book publishers.” In June 2014, the court issued a $450 million settlement, which Apple only agreed to pay if they lost the case in an appellate court. However, in 2015 The US supreme court decided not to hear Apple’s appeal, putting the settlement into effect. Furthermore, affected e-book buyers received $400 million in cash and credits.
Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist widely known for her book series, The Neapolitan Quartet. The subject of her real identity is one that has aroused great curiosity amongst the industry over the years. Ferrante’s anonymity particularly irritated Italian investigative journalist Claudio Gatti, who took it upon himself to unmask the author. Gatti believes that Ferrante’s readers have a right to know who she is, after all, they have supported her for many years. After months of investigative work that required the use of forensic accounting to uncover a money trail, the journalist was convinced he had uncovered the truth. So in October 2016, through a blog published by The New York Review of Books, Gatti “revealed” that Ferrante is really Anita Raja, a German translator who lives in Rome.
The reveal; however, was not met with the enthusiasm Gatti had hoped for. Ferrante’s fans were upset and consternated by the violation of the author’s privacy. Many believe that the journalist’s stunt boils down to one thing, sexism. They argued that Gatti’s obsession might actually just be outrage at the success of a female writer who wishes to work on her own terms. And as it turns out, Gatti went through all that trouble for nothing. Not only did he get an unexpected response, but his findings were also wrong. It has now been proven that the person writing under the pseudonym of Elena Ferrante is not Anita Raja.
In February 2023, Puffin Books, a children’s imprint of Penguin Books, announced that they are revising and editing some of Roald Dahl’s children’s books to remove language that today’s readers deem offensive when it comes to race, gender, weight, and mental health. Dahl is the author of many popular titles such as Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and The Witches. However, in the years since his death, many have brought attention to a number of harmful tropes used by the late author, including a history of anti-Semitic comments. These views and statements have left a stain on the author’s legacy and in 2020 the Dahl family quietly issued a statement apologizing for the hurt caused by his views. By editing Dahl’s works, Puffin sought to provide a better reading experience for today’s young readers.
However, some writers and voices within the publishing industry have criticized the updated works as an act of censorship. Some critics claim that the publisher could take too many liberties and change more than small phrases or statements. And others state revisions to suit 21st-century sensibilities risk undermining the genius of great artists and will prevent readers from confronting the world as it is. The changes to Dahl’s books only add fire to an ongoing debate over cultural sensitivity. As for the publisher’s response, Penguin Random House, Puffin’s parent company, announced that it will continue to sell the original versions of the books along with the edited ones.
On June 6, 2020, YA author L.L. McKinney started the hashtag #PublishingPaidMe, calling for authors to transparently share the advances they received for their books. Earlier in the year there had been a lot of talk about publishers seemingly paying white authors more for their stories than they do authors of color. McKinney was hoping to highlight the pay inequality between Black and non-Black writers. The hashtag quickly trended on Twitter, with authors sharing their advances, which is the amount of money they receive for their books before any royalties start coming in. Renowned authors like Jesmyn Ward and N.K. Jemisin shared that they were underpaid for some of their more popular work and had to “wrestle” for decent advances. Meanwhile, nonblack authors reported receiving significantly larger advances for books that were not as popular.
The campaign revealed that the publishing industry’s systemic biases spread all the way down to the numbers. Furthermore, it showed how much the industry underappreciated black authors and their stories. In the following days, the hashtag became a movement beyond social media. Around 1,300 publishing workers signed up to participate in a ‘day of action,’ in which those in media and publishing would spend the day working on books by black authors, phone banking, or donating their day’s pay. However, not much more has been done in the past few years to eradicate the disparities within the industry.
American Dirt: Cultural Appropriation and the Publishing Industry
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins was released in January 2020 and was anointed the biggest book of the season well before it came out. The novel tells the story of a mother and son, Lydia and Luca, fleeing their home in Acapulco, Mexico, for the US after their family was murdered by a drug cartel. It received amazing blurbs from authors like Stephen King, John Grisham, and Sandra Cisneros. It all seemed to be going fine, until it wasn’t. Critics started to bring up one major problem within the book; it was a book about Mexican migrants written by a white American author.
Not only had Cummins written a story that was not hers, but she also fetishized the pain of her characters at the expense of treating them as real human beings. On social media, people started to deem the book as “stereotypical” and “appropriative,” with some even calling it trauma porn. Flatiron Books decided to cancel Cummins’s book tour, citing threats to both the author and booksellers. This controversy added fuel to the ongoing debate about who can tell what stories.
The question surrounding the debate is “is it empathy or exploitation?” Did Cummins write American Dirt because she empathized with a group of people and wanted to uplift their voices, or did she want to exploit their traumatic experiences?
