Self-censorship rears its head again?
Do publishers have spines?: Click on the pic to pre-order from Amazon
Does God Hate Women has been available for pre-order on Amazon for months. But now it appears that publishers, Continuum, are getting last-minute cold feet.
The publisher phoned us on Friday, and talked of changes, or delays, or would we like to drop a chapters. We would not like to drop a chapter, and if we had liked to drop a chapter, the time to discuss that would have been several months ago, not now, a week before the book is supposed to appear. The publisher sent the can-we-drop-it chapter to an ecumenicist to get his opinion.
The “ecumenicist” is a specialist in Muslim-Christian relations.
The conference call has not happened yet, so nothing is definite. But this has ominous echoes of The Jewel of Medina farrago, when Random House pulled out of the publishing deal at the last minute because an academic had warned that it might inflame Muslim passions.
Can you hear a rumbling sound? There is an internet shitstorm on the horizon, and it’s coming this way.
UDATE: (17:02) Has the wind changed direction? Was it just a shitstorm in a teacup? Looks like it could be.
It looks that way. But the ominous echoes were very real on Friday…