The Bullies Of The “Book Community”

     There are some things that cannot be said too often. Some of them are hardly said at all.

     Have you heard about the tragedy of Amelie Zhao? If not, it’s about time:

     Amelie Wen Zhao is a Young Adult author whose debut sci-fi/fantasy novel, Blood Heir, was set for a June release from a major publisher, as part of a three-book deal. When the deal was announced a year ago, Zhao, who is just starting her career, made her excitement public....

     Well, guess what? The book, which had positive buzz ( Barnes & Noble called it one of the most anticipated YA releases of the year ), has been the subject of a massive Social Justice Warrior pile-on on social media, as Jesse Singal discussed in a tweetstorm. Very few people have even read the novel, but the mob attacked it as racist for a variety of reasons, one of them being that Zhao created a fantasy world where “oppression is blind to skin color” (this, from the press release). It’s a fantasy world, and people haven’t even read the book, but the mob was certain that Blood Heir is racist, and that its author — a young woman raised in Beijing, but now living in New York City — ought to be shut down.

     And guess what? The SJW attackers got their wish: Miss Zhao voluntarily withdrew the book from its scheduled publication.

     Amelie Zhao seems to be a perfectly sweet and decent young woman with a real storyteller’s gift – and she had achieved a lifelong dream. But her SJW attackers have destroyed that dream out of...what? A desire for “justice?” There’s some sort of “justice” in bludgeoning an innocent young woman into surrendering her achievement?

     We both know the answers, Gentle Reader.

     Larry Correia lit into Miss Zhao’s attackers with a furious and exemplary incisiveness. It’s too good to excerpt; please read it all. Not that it will have the slightest effect upon those vicious monsters, but Monster Hunter Correia is the right man to give them the shellacking they’ve earned.

     Will Miss Zhao recover from this brutalization? Possibly in the long term. But the moral of the story “should” be “obvious.”

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     I have no interest in the sort of Pub World acceptance Miss Zhao pursued and achieved. At this point I regard the conventional publishers with disdain. They’re dominated by SJW thinking. Worse, as Miss Zhao has learned the hard way, they make juicy targets for the SJW hordes.

     Indie is the way to go. With the exception of Baen Books, there are no traditional publishers with the courage God gave a cabbage. Moreover, the ongoing extinction of the brick-and-mortar bookstore in favor of Amazon and comparable outlets has reduced what a traditional publisher can offer a new writer in the way of marketing support to barely more than what a diligent indie can accomplish on his own. And not only does the indie writer retain absolute control over his book; he also gets to keep a much bigger slice of his revenues pie.

     Best of all, the indie writer is “bully-proof.” Anyone who can be shamed out of reading a book by SJW hysterics would be unlikely to read it in the first place and even less likely to enjoy it or recommend it to his friends.

     All that having been said, it remains the obligation of good men to whack the SJW bullies across the chops – preferably with a tire iron – whenever and wherever they poke their heads above the slime line. I salute Larry Correia for having done so unambiguously and thoroughly. There are other places where the job needs to be done, most notably in the ever more antisocial “social media” and in reviews at Amazon and other online outlets.

     It’s a form of support your preferred indie writers need quite as much as your dollars. Please don’t stint them.