“I Hired Them. They Reported Me for Missing a DEI Meeting” – Oliver Malcolm

I was actually reported once for not attending a DNI meeting. Caving into staff on some of these smaller issues and maybe not even debating them is much easier than saying no. It is a problem when the publishing industry and the thoughts and teams within that are almost like an Islington dinner party. What I really rage against is when there's a suppression of ideas. Nice kind of saw the real side of publishing maybe. I had this really surreal conversation where I sat down with the same editor and she said to me we are not going to be promoting the book. We're going to focus on digital sales which means they weren't going to print it. You had an experience which I've seen multiple times over the years. Part of the antagonism just came out. It's him from Trigonometry. Do you want a little slice of trigonometry for yourself then head over to our merch store where you'll be able to buy hoodies, t-shirts, caps, print stickers, posters and of course the world famous trigonometry mug. Go to shop.triggerpod.co.uk. That's shop.triggerpod.co.uk and become part of the show. Ollie, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much. Really look forward to speaking with you about the publishing industry with some inside stories, Francis' book being canceled is one of them of course that you were involved in and what happened to you as well. Before we get into all that, tell us a little bit about your background, your story, how you eventually ended up here. Sure. So first of all, I've noticed by the way I'm minicking your body language which hopefully is a good sign. But yeah, I was originally a history graduate. I studied fundamentally modern history of Nazism at the University of Sheffield. That was probably in the year of maybe around about 2000 and I actually went to Sheffield Uni because Ian Kershaw was a bit of a hero of mine at school. He's obviously written his incredible biographies of Hitler and obviously had a huge amount of exposure to a new framework of ideas and I found incredibly motivating. And so having done that degree, I think you'd always do is go and work for Glaxo Smithcline. I think I did about 18 months to two years there. And when I say I work for Glaxo Smithcline, really I was working as a sale rep for the Rybina brand. So what looked good on paper the day to day wasn't quite so motivating. So didn't last long in that sort of corporate world but thorough advert to work as a key account manager for what was then Random House. Came down to London. I was obviously brought up in a very, very different environment. I was brought up in the peak district and actually my father's, I guess, very itinerant in that he was born in Bombay. I worked in publishing for maybe four, five years at Random House, followed by a decade at HarperCollins, and then a couple of years at her sheds. I think what was quite interesting. These are for people who are not familiar with the publishing world. These are big publishers really, really big. Some of the biggest publishers in the world. Sure. I mean, they are the biggest three publishers in the world. And I guess what's quite privileged about my experience is that I worked not only with different publishers in different houses, but I worked sort of cross functionally. I worked in sales, I worked in editorial and I worked as a managing director. I was also very fortuous as I got to work on the board across the UK and Australia. But yeah, I think I've got a fairly interesting insight on what actually happens behind the curtain. And what have you seen over the years? That means you're sitting here today. Because the reason I say this is, we were talking before we started and we remembered our friend Sean Wall, she came on the show. And I remember saying to him, you know, you've been on live at the Polly, you've been on this show, you've been on that show, you've been on, um, mob the week, all of them, right? And now you're on trigonometry, what happened? Sure. And I think your story is actually very much along the same lines because you're reacting to things that were happening in your industry that have ended up in a very different place for you personally. Sure, sure, sure. Well, look, I think, I think, you know, my corporate and professional motivation is of course that I'm setting up a new publishing house. Um, we're setting up Highline Publishing Studio, um, which is a, you know, Transatlantic new publisher. Um, and I guess the motivation is that we're sort of sick of the monoculture of publishing. Um, but look, if I was trying to explain it to someone who doesn't know our industry well, um, if you look at media, uh, and particularly newspapers, I guess what you have is no matter who the owners are, you have the times, you have the telegraph, uh, you have the daily mail, you express the independent, the guardian, you do have a spectrum of ideas. Um, and I think you have a spectrum of people, um, but sort of almost by stealth, albeit slow, tectonic stealth and such a thing. Um, the publishing industry now is almost in effect, the guardian, the guardian, the guardian, the guardian, the guardian. And what's unusual about that is that not only does it create what I think is a, you know, exacerbation of monoculturalism, but you ultimately end up getting the same publishing experience or the same sort of sensorious behaviors, no matter who your originating publisher is. Um, and I find that obviously deeply disturbing, and it was becoming more disturbing, um, the deep into my career I got. Um, but yeah, I'm propelled, obviously by, I guess wanting to do something different from traditional publishing, but also I'm propelled by creative expression that I genuinely think the best ideas come out, uh, in environments where you have to synthesize different perspectives. I, I obviously embraced the dialectic. I like an open forum for debate. Um, I don't mind antagonism. What I, what I really rage against is when there's a suppression of ideas, um, and sort of a premeditation of curation. Um, I just want to judge books by what's on the page, not by what I had as a sort of premeditated perspective. But is, is that happening? I mean, uh, you know, we were talking, you, you helped, uh, publish a couple of, uh, works by Douglas Murray. Sure. Uh, I had my book published, Francis eventually. A lot of people with all sorts of different opinions are getting their books out there. Um, is it really true? Also, look, this, that is the, the question of the best question. Um, but what, why I'm rallying it, rallying against it so much is that what you don't often realize as an author is that your book is not actually getting the best possible opportunity, because even if an editor buys your book, and even if your title gets acquired to, to be within that list, that ultimately every single book has to have a boutique team around it to make it successful. So nowadays, you have to have a great publicist. You have to have a brilliant marketing team and a digital marketer. You have to have a production team and sales reps. And the thing is that at any one time, any of these individuals can bring in their own subjective bearing into that publication. So what happens if your jacket doesn't get designed particularly well or it misses its on sale date? What happens that the rep doesn't actually decide to actually present that book to the retailer? I'm to the retailer doesn't even put it on sale in the space that they said they put it on sale on. And so I guess that when you look at these sort of micro-sensorious behaviors across the whole value chain, do I think that books of certain persuasions have as good opportunity as others? No, I don't. And that's a problem, because ultimately, if you want people to again get access to the full spectrum of ideas, um, I think that it's a lot more difficult for certain authors to actually achieve that. And why is it that this has happened? You said it's, you know, publishing is the guardian, the guardian, the guardian, the guardian. Sure. Why is that? So because I imagine, look, I don't know, but correct me if I'm wrong, I always thought publishing is a business. So what you want to do is make money. The west way to make money is to publish books that people buy. I might, no, no, no, no, no, you're completely, you're completely right. And you're going to be very careful, don't you suddenly sort of generalise in such broad terms about the whole of publishing? Not least is ultimately the fastest-growing components of publishing now. It's like self-publishing. On TikTok and areas which aren't traditional publishing at all, in some ways, the actual global books markets incredibly buoyant. Look at the digital marketing, look at the growth of audio, and also particularly buoyant for English language publishing, because of course, people are now preferring to read in English languages. And so you'll often see, for example, in countries like Germany and Poland and France right now, sometimes the English spoken book is doing better than the native tongue, which is a huge change in our market. But look, the reason why things have changed so much in my opinion is that, look, publishing has always been slightly more on the left liberal side. And the old expressions like "Bollinger Bolshevism" and "Champagne Socialists". But it is a problem when the publishing industry and the thoughts and teams within that are almost like an Islington dinner party. But it's got worse and worse and worse because of the nature of, I think, the markets that are doing well. Because what's happened rapidly in some ways is that, for example, the new form of romance is doing so so well. And so what publishers do is that they have to chase the market and that can have a huge bearing on the mix of staff. And so, for example, I think publishing is now probably at 68-69% female staff. Which, look, you have to chase the money, of course you do. But what are the net bearing of that? is that it's no longer representative of the public or the readership, or rather to the point what happens of in time that stops young boys wanting to read or them being a priority. That's not going to create a more sort of hospitable long-term environment between male and females, I don't think. So in some ways it's come about slightly organically by oneness. The other reason is a slightly more worrying one in some ways, which is that publishing in my experience has always felt like it's going to collapse since like for the 20 years, it's always feeling like oh my god this is the you know this is the the violinist on the Titanic, the string quartet. But what happens is is there you know there's a quite a large wealth gap between those at the top at publishing and those at the bottom. And so once you get to the top and I had a huge privilege to do that, I was you know I was the pig in the trough and you chomp at your swill and you enjoy your swill. But then if you want to appease the young staff coming through, it's much easier to appease them with things which have no commercial bearing on the actual business and ensures that you continue to get rewarded handsomely. And so in some ways you know caving into staff on some of these smaller issues and maybe not even even debating them is much easier than saying no. And I think over time you know we've seen for example a huge amount of unionization take place in publishing. So you know for example in the US right now one of the biggest publishers have now got a 500 to 600 strong union. And that's when the the youngest staff are being paid just under $60,000. I mean from me it's not it's publishing is not like working down a coal mine. But yeah that that sort of I think the macro macro thing that's taken place over this time. You know one of the things that I've always struggled with with that thing that you just said which is people in positions of power caving to younger staff. Is there not a part of a person in that situation just because like how fucking dare you? Who are you? Why are you telling me what I'm supposed to do with this thing that I've been working for 15 years or even in some cases this thing that I built from the ground up and I own. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Is there not a part of there's a righteous indignation against this? Well there is on my behalf. Yeah. But I think you know I don't I don't want to sort of necessarily you know critique senior people saying that it's all down towards so it's all down to their sort of defensive play. Partly it's just down to the fact that publishing has reached the point of being so manual laborious, fragmented that just getting through the day is almost like a huge achievement and I know every industry says that but of course in the old days it was simply getting a book on a shelf in physical form. Nowadays it's getting a book on a shelf in physical form in audio form in digital form through hundreds of fragmented ways around the world that the market is just fragmented and fragmented and fragmented as it's becoming credibly laborious and you have seen that you know in recent months this huge sort of conflict around the salt path that hadn't had a sensitivity read and in some ways you know people go into the politics of whether it should or shouldn't have had a sensitivity read should have had a fact check on all these things and I sort of thought to myself probably one that's just slipped through the net just one of those ones where you know it seemed like a very reasonable sort of nice narrative piece of travel you know nonfiction and that it's sort of being caught up slightly of the culture wars. But yeah that partly that the world of publishing has got very very sort of fraught and frantic but I do think there's also that that that you know people are being trying to get to the top all that time and it's just easier to appease people by putting in you know big big big departments to deal with the problem hence why you've got massive sprawling HR functions it quite a few of the publishers so yeah hopefully that sort of surmises where I stand and so for everybody listening and watching we know each other because only you bought my book I did indeed yeah I bought my book for Hodor and Storton and it initially went really well I went everyone in publishing is lovely sure we're having this great time we're right I'm writing this book there's loads of support and then it ended up taking a bit of a turn yes and I kind of saw the real side of publishing maybe yeah I think so I think that AI feel incredibly responsible in some ways because I'm the person who having acquired that book then and then a left and went to a different publisher so look there's always a degree to which don't sign with a publisher and have your book orphaned because of course sometimes books are successful because it's based upon the passion of the individual that published it I was particularly passionate about Francis's book because one I love the podcast to my parents about teachers and also because of your sort of South American connection because my last school I did a year or so it's a teacher in Chile so with your sort of Venezuelan connection but also it just taught common sense it sort of said look you know you have to gain some discipline if the two or three bad apples in the classroom or the entire thing goes to you know the dogs and so you know I like the fact that someone's actually coming up with a solution to how to get things back on track unfortunately as we know I think that it was as much what you represented rather than what was read and that's one of the most difficult things for me because you know having as you guys know published the likes of Douglas Murray and appears Morgan the huge amount of antagonism comes prior to anyone have actually read the book so I was always fighting off arguments or having to stand in front of committees and it was clear that literally nobody had read the book so one might presume that the same thing happens to you Francis that part of the antagonism just came out it's him from Trigolometry don't it and I and I experienced that a lot and actually some of the other authors I tried to bring in was in the process of negotiating books with where I left were effectively cancelled I remember I got told the other day I tried to sign up Zubi and I don't know the everyone knows where your listeners know who Zubi is but I think he's been on the podcast sure yeah and I love Zubi because he's you know almost he represents his own worldview and he has opinions which are not popular and he's prepared to back them up he's sharp he's very worthy of a book and I like the fact that the book was different to everything else which was out at that time of course you know in the midst of that deal suddenly gone no more no more what was happening and so of course I I have to always be careful when you talk about deals that you're working on because of you know privacy um but you weren't alone um and you won't be the last but that's that's the sort of thing which you know really really impacts me and motivates me that you've got to have a new type of publisher most people think the American revolution began with the declaration of independence it didn't it was built over years as Britain tightened its grip and the colonist defended what they had been doing for generations governing themselves Hillsdale colleges new series revolutionary america from subjects to citizens tell this a whole story across six episodes covering the growing conflict with Britain through independence the war and the writing of the constitution you visit the historical sites here expert accounts from Lexington and Concord bunker hill and valley forge and get material that didn't make it into the full length documentary watching this as a Brit is a strange experience the six episodes you're essentially watching your own country get it wrong repeatedly and then lose very educational not great for national pride this is one of more than 43 courses Hillsdale offers on the constitution the roman republic the american founding genesis the second world war and more all build the same way taught properly not dumb down i couldn't recommend Hillsdale courses more highly go to hilsdale dot edu slash trigger to watch it's totally free learn the history understand the founding start right now at hilsdale dot edu slash trigger it started off as it was convinced we called class from confidential then it went to a new publisher thanks to Andreas camper mar a little brown who effectively saved the book it became uneducated sure sure but i remember this getting the call and i was actually in america from the editor and saying oh all is gone and i was like what all is okay and then she went no no but it's all going to be fine don't worry about it and then i spoke with constantly because i was i was really shocked i was taken aback because it was instantaneous and then everything was fine every the processes were fine and then i had this really surreal conversation where i sat down with the same editor and she said to me yeah um we are not going to be promoting the book i'm sorry but we agreed on serialization sure he ended up getting serialization in the times and in the daily mail and two page feature but she was just saying no no no that's not going to happen and i was shocked and she went oh and also the print run the we're going to focus on digital cells which means they weren't going to print it and i i just felt as if it was this kind of surreal experience where everything you'd been promised or we're going to do this and we're going to do this and it was like oh no no we're not going to do that why not well that we just don't feel like it yeah and it got me incredibly angry because number one it was my book and you know i put so much work into it but number two it got me so furious because [BLANK_AUDIO] If you're going to do this to me, which is one of the stupidest people to do this to in the entire country, what are you going to do to authors who don't have a YouTube channel? YouTube channel. What are they going to do with people that they can't call on? One of the first people I call was Douglas Murray asking for advice. Most people don't have access to that. Sure. Sure. Well, look, you had an experience, which I've seen multiple times over the years. That's actually oddly the authors who've been, you know, had the worst possible treatments, so the ones who are not actually alive, and of course, you know, with Roldole having his entire backlist, you know, basically censored and reworked because of his historical views, and that, you know, in that instance, I think the family tried to sort of intercept, but also when you're someone who's, you know, you've created this baby, you've put a lot of work into it, and then the rug has just pulled from underneath you. It's unacceptable, but it's also, you know, there are many, many, many examples like that, but it also shows you that publishers do have influence. People can sometimes think, "Oh, if I'm a self-published author, I don't need a publisher anymore." And yet you see when you do have a publisher, the impact they can have when they really want to put the marketing and energy behind it, or equally what happens if they decide to drop it. What they were doing there is they were dropping it like a bull, and therefore you, you know, all the ramifications. You wouldn't be properly sold, it's not properly marketed, it's not properly PR'd, and that makes it very, very difficult to succeed in an unfortunate industry where you have thousands and thousands of new books coming out per week. And what that must lead to is a culture of fear and a culture of silence, particularly if you are an author, like I said, who doesn't have a huge public profile, maybe this is a first book, you're going to think to yourself, "I'm not going to say this, I'm not going to actually push the boat in any direction," because the moment I do, there is a chance that some individual in the HR team, or the marketing team, or whatever it may be, will look at it and go, "Yeah, I didn't know this." Sure, sure, sure. And, you know, that's, we've seen that a lot. I mean, again, another example, when I published Wake Up, which is Pierce Morgan's book, it's very hard to identify when someone's doing a piece of subjective cancellation within probably marketing and PR, because that's just not doing work, but you can't tell always, but what of it is in the design department, for example, and then they just refuse to do a front cover. And so you're forced to go out of house to find a designer somewhere who'll do you a front cover. But I'm dealing with this right now with Highline Publishing Studio, you know, trying to work with specific agencies or businesses, and they just look instantly at our mission and say, "No, not doing that." So, you know, that sort of, they're welcome to work with whoever they want to work with. But within Publishing, that sort of soft cancellation of individuals and authors is a daily occurrence. And with your own experiences, how did this manifest for you? So I think it's probably no secret that I've always been on the cusp of cancellation. I've never really cancelled, but when you publish, you know, the likes of Douglass and the likes of Pears, you are going to make yourself unpopular. But I think the things that, you know, when I look back on my career feel really quite, I guess, a bit more personally painful, is that, I guess, back in the day, you're just being staffed because you thought that'd be good and you'd hire them based upon their merit credit qualities, and I hired a couple of staff, maybe very early on at my time at one of the publishers, and supported them hugely. Actually, one of them even wrote a letter to the bookseller to recommend that they were, you know, a rising star because I thought they were so brilliant. And so it was incredibly painful when, you know, the Identitarian Cultural War madness started, that I was actually reported once for not attending a DNI meeting. I wasn't there on the Zoom call during the pandemic, and I was reported to my boss saying, "He's not there. Why wasn't he there? What are you going to do about it?" And what makes it even more painful is the, of course, these guys, one of the many events should be publishing, you know, your Douglasses and your Pears. But oddly, at the same time, I was publishing See a Calisi. So I don't know if you guys know who See a is, but See a is, was the first ever Black Captain of the South African rugby team, the first Black Captain, 128 years, rugby has always been associated with apartheid. Here's a guy who was born and raised in Vida Province, he's a quarter, and he was basically brought up in abject poverty. Incredible story. I published his book thinking, "Oh my God, this is the thing I want to do, I'm passionate about." And there's a part of you who thinks as well that, you know, isn't this just proof that I'm not racist? Nope, because it's not the right type of person. I guess in the way that when I did Pears, the first question in the Q&A afterwards was, "Why are you publishing this and not Ash Sarkar?" So it's an interesting, it's, it's not about necessarily supporting a cause, it's about having the right, you know, opinions of a cause, because, you know, See a was an incredible icon, pushing, you know, ideas around unity, but he wasn't the right type of person. But doesn't it speak to just the culture of fear that exists in publishing, that you didn't attend a DEI meeting, and you got reported, they didn't know what could have happened, your child could have been sick, they could have been a family emergency. Maybe you had to be pulled into another type of meeting, maybe you weren't. And actually it's a good point as well, because, you know, when you do fight, the good fight is it were, I speak to a lot of people who have fought the fight in environments where you're on your own, and sometimes it just, it just becomes cumulative, and you, you know, you get slightly worn down by it all, and so you're missing of any meeting, might be just do the fact that like, wow, every time I go onto one of these meetings, I get an absolute, you know, annihilation from the 400 people who are on it. I remember once, for example, I said, I used the word "cancel" culture, and if someone shouted, you know, that's, they didn't say it was liblist, they said it was a pejorative term, you could not use the word "cancel" culture, we were talking about American dirt at the time, and I just said as a moral argument or a philosophical argument, you know, American dirt was such a huge book because the author had essentially written in the voice of an ethnicity that wasn't them, and I said, I just said the argument, well look, do you use cancel that altogether, would you just sell that book to people who aren't bothered about that particular thing? Because we just want them to be creative, and it's fine, you know, there's always, it's not pretending to be that person, it's fiction, right? We're just trying something out, developing is a writer, it's creative, but I was the, you know, well is me, but that's not the view within publishing, absolutely no way should anyone be appropriating. But that's insane, what they're not going to publish a fellow? Well, it's, it's, it's, it's happened many, many times, and appropriation also, you know, often only acts in one direction, so it's quite misogynistic work, if I remember correctly. Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah. Among other things. Yeah. And this is why I always push back on this pro-type of progressivism, woke, whatever you want to call it, because for many different reasons, but primarily for me, the thing that angered me the most is because it's the enemy of art. It's the enemy of free expression. It's the enemy of creating anything truly, truly significant, because what you are doing is you are being utterly censorious. Well, I, I think I've said many times that for me, I'm not taking premeditated publishing decisions. What I want to do is just publish completely across the spectrum. I want to trust the readers to make the decisions for themselves. I think I've probably got a, you know, a limit. I probably won't publish hate speech, and I'm sure there are people on the line as well where you sort of have to have a serious conversation, whether that's something you can or cannot publish. Obviously, it can't be something that's criminal, but the ultimately, you have to allow synthesis of arguments. I mean, I believe the education is through synthesis of perspectives as a historian. I would read Eric Hobsbum, who's obviously on the left wing, but I'll also read Alan Bullock or I'll read Ian Kershaw or I'll read an Anthony Beaver. The whole point is you build up your knowledge set through reading a real sort of eclectic range of views, and fairly enough, you know, the old days, I think, being well read was something which was considered an incredibly important characteristic. That person's well read. You don't talk about that that much more. And yeah, you know, here we are as publishers, maybe actually restricting breadth of perspectives that you can actually read, go into it, go into a bookshop right now, and then look at the displays. You can really try to be as objective as possible and try to say whether that's because it's the best possible curation for the people in that area or whether there's a sort of degree of propaganda occurring. Well, this is the thing about it is, and this is why I was asking you about this publishing being a business, but it seems to me like with many other industries, I mean, the BBC is a very good example of this, right, a formerly great institution, in my opinion. But what, and we saw this in the comedy world when we were in it. Once the people at the top feel that a, their position is secure, the business is secure. What they realize then is, actually, I have something that's much more valuable than money, which is. power. I have the ability to impose my worldview on the world and therefore I can prevent comedians from appearing on shows who are good comedians but have their own opinions or I can prevent opinions being expressed on my program or on our channel that I don't wish to have even though they may be very popular in the country. And with books, I can prevent books from being published or as in Francis case allow it to be published but with a clear communication that we're not going to do anything for anyone to actually buy this book. It's not going to appear in shops. And that is not being done because it's not a book that will sell. It's being done because I am able to say my worldview is this. This doesn't match. Therefore we'll prevent this from going out to the public. And I completely agree that it's a status game and that having the power to determine what doesn't get read is incredibly important. And I'm seeing this more and more at the moment for example because my kids are doing their 11 plus and so I'm looking around schools and I feel unnerved as I go into some school libraries right now in that there's one thing having I guess some sort of propaganda in bookshops but what about if it's in school libraries and how does that impact behavior and also trying to get a child to learn how to think not to be told what to think. And as there's evidence already that children are starting to be put off reading because it's been seen as a sort of a metric for success rather than an enjoyable entertainment exapise and enterprise but of course is that because you know that the great and the good have been intercepting and putting in their ideas into those books I don't know but ultimately the data is there to show that for whatever reason over the last four to five years kids are being a little bit less keen on reading and that's a worry it's a huge worry. 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When you see this soft cancellations within publishing or hard cancellations than publishing, what is the stated rationale for why somebody shouldn't have their book published with a particular publisher? It's a great question, but when you look at a publishing year ahead, you're publishing so so many books and the reality is that you almost need to see a publishing year, like an old school CD, which is that you've got four or five major singles, which you have to do brilliantly and the rest of tracks. Some of those tracks might unexpectedly break out and become the singles, but for the most part, you're governing the rhythm of the year by those singles. Now, as long as you do the singles well, you can pretty much get away then and else. It's a black bus to market. You'll notice that if you really want to find the whole of my argument here, the three biggest authors in the world probably don't get on with or agree with what's going on in the industry and yet the industry is still backing them and doing hugely. JK Rowling, as far as I understand, she is having probably the best sales of her entire career right now, hugely different to what the media narrative is, but massively successful, but she doesn't agree with the group think and publishing is sort of complied. We all know that, next many years ago, 85 members of staff walked out because of her kid's book, because they didn't want to be working with her. Someone had different views on gender identity, but even so, she's now been tolerated. We're in incredibly privileged position on our board, our spokesperson's Lee Child, and he's got some fascinating ideas that he is incredibly against what he says is cultural boycotting. It makes no sense to him that to put pressure, for example, on Israel, the right thing to do is to boycott events held by Israeli writers or Jewish writers. The rationale being is that why would you boycott an entire community as if it's totally homogenous? And in fact, with the Israeli community and the Jewish community, is anything but homogenous, the most pluralistic of all. And so his view is that it's again slightly different to publishing. Or, I mean, look, the other classic example is Sam and Rushdie, at the literary end of the spectrum, who has been super pro-freedom of speech. And I've attended an awards ceremony when he actually won an award for, I guess at the end of the night, for a long term commitment to free speech. And it was almost a chilling silence in the room that he'd won that award. So why Sam and Rushdie controversial with work people? Well, only because he's, you know, he backed freedom of expression. And in particular, he'd said that the, you know, what was happening to the the reduction of all the role-dile novels was disgraceful. He believes that, you know, you shouldn't be changing history for the sake of modernist principles. And ultimately, you know, role-dile like him or load him. He's a controversial guy, but he got a lot of people reading. And you know, you have to weigh up the pros and cons of anyone. We've been through this with Churchill and everyone else, right? But yeah, so Sam and despite the fact that this is a guy who's been stabbed in the eye, he's had a fat wire on his head. And has written some of the most incredible novels of the last 25 years or longer. There was a chilling silence, the day that he won a award for, you know, services to free speech and publishing. And it's quite a, that's quite a big moment for me. Don't you think it smacks over, I'm going to be on it, I'm brutally honest about it, despicable arrogance that you look at somebody like Roald Dahl, who I believe is a genius, I believe, as the children's writer, he is a man of unique brilliance. And you then go, I'm going to change works of brilliance purely because they don't agree with certain people's politics in, I think it was 2024. Well, I agree. I think that, you know, it's like going back to Picasso and this blue phase and then turning it green because blues no longer in. It's unacceptable, it's a changing of the historical record. And I personally feel like if it was just Roald Dahl, but of course it's not, we've had lots of examples of that. You know, Dr. Seuss, we've had Agatha Christie, we've had truly iconic names whose works, their original creative works, have just been altered for a modern sensibility. By the way, that modern sensibility isn't a sensibility, it's the priority of a specific group. And ultimately, you need to allow things, I think, to have the oxygen in which they are written. And actually, if you then learn about that time, if the entrance into, for example, Agatha Christie was like, oh, she used to say this sort of thing, and that's how they thought. Maybe that's good. Maybe that's actually the reader will get more insight into that period, more understanding of that phenomenon. And yet, no, the preferences, just censorship, cancel. But how do you, I don't understand how you come to that either in a kind of philosophical sense or a commercial sense. Roald Dahl's books still make, still sell in their tens hundreds of thousands. But children always love Dahl. When I was a primary school teacher, we used to do reading time. I always used to read Dahl to the kids. They adored it. Not one of you got canceled. Well, look, I think that sometimes you can overestimate the precipice upon which publishing is standing. And you do internally as well. But publishing for whatever reason, it always finds a way. And I think that's great in some ways, because it means that people can use a read. But it's also slightly odd. because the way you continue to do well as a publisher is you just publish more and more and more. And so what happens? Well, probably the quality of service for each individual book has to go down. But it also means if you do slice away at some of your back lists like, you know, I got the Chris, your role, though, whoever else. Well, it's okay because you then, you know, sell, you know, hundreds of thousands of the new Richmond Osmond novel you've bought. And also, you don't just do one Richmond Osmond novel, you then encourage him to do two a year, and then you do the adjacent sort of short story one. And by the way, on the topic of Richard Osmond, it's an interesting one, isn't it, that a guy who's emerged as by far the biggest fiction writer of the last decade in the UK. And he made it in America, by the way. Who do you think he's selling to? I mean, he's not selling to the Metropolitan London elite, is he? He's selling all around the UK to occasional readers. What he's doing is amazing. He's getting very occasional readers to read again to become loyal to his book, to his books. He also writes them himself. It's not like they're reading, you know, what they would be reading instead is probably not of the same quality. By guess the point I'm just making there is that we mentioned Lee Child being slightly disjunct to the industry, mention JK Rowling, but also Richard Osmond, who is now becoming one of the biggest fiction writers in the UK. He's very, very different in what he's writing and for whom and how big that is relative to what's happening in the metropolitan circles of publishing. But there's also this idea of that the artist has to be a nice human being. And there's a lot of great artists. I mean, we've talked about Picasso. I mean, Picasso, yeah, I mean, if he'd been around, he might have had a me too moment or two. Of course. But undeniably a genius, you had Dal, who had pretty, I would say, you know, he'd be on a pro-Palestine much. You know, it might be a member of the Green Party when it comes to his views on the Middle East. Yeah. And then it carries on. Hemingway. Again, another great writer. Why do we have this idea that if you are a brilliant artist, somehow you have to be this perfectly PC individual? Sure, sure, sure. I mean, the one example of that which always comes to mind, not as an artist, but obviously his map again, with Gandhi sort of tried to remain celibate by dissuading himself from being tempted and therefore having really young girls in his bed. And that was the way in which he would prove his resistance. And meanwhile, you've got. I'd like to see him explaining that. He's explaining that on the news night. And obviously we mentioned Churchill earlier, but a similar figure who I guess has been through the sort of, sort of lost my thread. Sorry, sorry, I constantly joking around his interview. But I think your broader point was that people who've achieved great things for our history already, great books and not necessarily perfect human beings. And one of the interesting things to me about all of this is a role dial in particular, his, his sin was anti-semitism. Right. It's what's fascinating to me is the very people who are canceling role dial for anti-semitism, are the exactly the sort of people that would go on a pro-Palestine march and shall all sorts of actually equally, well not maybe equally, but anti-semitic things at the same time. There's no consistency about sure. Sure, sure. Well, I think, you know, that's probably the biggest motivator for me is often the hypocrisy, which is that, you know, for example, someone like Julie Bindle, who is, you know, is described as a turf and has been ostracized a huge amount in publishing and beyond. But for me, that's someone in the 70s and 80s who as a lesbian, you know, earn the right to essentially without, to basically babysit kids, because before then it's like, I can't have a lesbian babysit, my kids, it's too dangerous. And so she's got to this point where over 20 years she's become accepted. And yet now in the new world, because she's questing different other values, she did she cancelled, you can't engage with her, she's, you know, has to have security for certain events. And I don't think that's acceptable because it's not because she's ferociously right-wing, it's because the values that she stands and happen, you know, are so dear to her, her under threat. And so yeah, I think again, would it be easy for authors like Julie to get published right now, outside of a very, very small number of publishers will know? And yet she's enriching the debate around, you know, certain topics around gender identity. So I guess that what we now have is, there is this monoculture, but that also leaves room for opportunity, doesn't it? Because I mean, like Andreas Little Brown, who's one of the few people who took on my book, but also you starting your own imprint, that's exciting, because that's a real opportunity, isn't it? I think so. And the market's there. That's the thing. The readership is there. The one thing I know which is definitely true is that having worked across those big three publishers I mentioned at the beginning and beyond is that what's quite odd is often that those divisions, often sell a lot of books are incredibly lucrative. I mean, they tend to get put in Nashville, or they tend to get removed from New York and from the scene, and that they're not part of the gang. But there is a commercial opportunity there. It's made harder, you know, for example, if you know, your Jordan Peterson, let's say, and the New York Times refuse ever to publish the fact that your book was the number one best seller for basically years in a row. And it means it means it's like with the pace of social media, you know, fear of missing out, and that sort of accumulation of good news is so critical. So, of all lots of outlets, don't cover it, or someone just decides, oh, you're not going to be on our best seller list. That harms the opportunity for that book. But it's, you know, Jordan's an interesting point. I don't, I don't love the books. I find them quite hard to read. But it's one of the biggest nonfiction books of the last decade. It's a huge book. I mean, 12 walls for life. I don't think there's many bigger non-fiction sort of polemics or books of the last decade. And yet, you know, most of the publishing industry was resisting it. You know, most of the sales were taking place online and on audio, because there's no resistance taking place. Do we think, do I think that a Canadian academic with a different world do you has a, you know, should he be published? Of course he should. Why should he be hindered from being published? Okay, we need to discuss underwear. Not a sentence I ever imagined saying on this show, yet here we are. The truth is, most men have been putting up with mediocre underwear for years and decided it's simply part of life. It isn't. Which brings me to sheath, sh-e-a-t-h, sheath.com. It's underweighed designed around a dual-pouch system. In plain English, everything stays exactly where it's meant to. No sticking, no chafing, no readjusting halfway through a point. 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What I've always thought is that if we talked earlier about, you know, the youngest, youngest staff imposed trying to impose the world view through sort of collective protesting or threatening to resign over JK Rowling or whatever, what I don't understand is why there hasn't been one person, one man or woman at the top who actually owns or runs the thing who just goes, okay, 80 people who are not mission critical don't like this. They've walked out. We're going to put a marker down. Sure. You're all fired. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you for your service. Bye-bye. Sure. Well, that has happened in that has happened, which is what was fascinating, of course, and again a slightly odd paradox here is that, you know, Penny Random House is owned by Bertelsman. Bertelsman, obviously, they are being the original publishers of my camp. You've got her shirt, which is owned by Vivendi. Don't forget that Vivendi is owned by Vincent Balleray. Vincent Balleray is sort of the, I guess, the tycoon who has always underwritten Marine England Pat, and he's a very, very, very wealthy right wing. I guess a right wing Rupert Murdoch, but French, of course, HarperCollins is a very Rupert Murdoch. But so what's so, so odd is that you do have these companies owned by what is seen to be or probably are quite right wing or right leaning financiers, but the editorial has sort of total self-governance, which I guess it should do. However, in France recently, there was a case where a very senior, very light publisher refused to work on a certain book and he had a big fallout with that management who said he had to do it or that he couldn't refuse to do it and the result was that 40 or 50 authors all left and all at once so you know the other example is actually so one of our founders is or our founders Neil Blair who is Jacob Rowling's agent he actually said look this is who I am this is our business if you don't want to work here you don't have to four people did actually leave I mean this is business survive business thriving yeah I imagine it's interesting well this is my point is this sort of like revolt in in the in in the kitchen sure it's it's it's not that big a deal and if more people had the balls to stand up to this I don't think we would have had this entire woke moment that we've lived through and and probably continue to because I don't understand this entire pending of hierarchy actually from just a broader perspective I don't understand when this thing happened when it was the children started running the house but it was technological right as in there's always been you know the young have always pushed against sure evolution but that's when we saw hashtag me to when we saw black wise matter you had a genuine the first global moments where entire countries of people were coming together online socially and that you know it's a generational thing whether the sheer weight of people all visible all at one shouting all at once but it's not like it's not existed before and I think that basically the publishers weren't used to that they weren't you know they're not brilliant technically or technologically the best of times and so what what you start to hear when these views come out on Twitter the way that you know comms teams work is like just just just just appease that person might only be two people because of course you know Twitter's only a very very small population you know potentially the population X but the the rational is always just path of the existence just a piece a piece keep it quiet because it feels like oh let that all go away that'll all go away but but going back to France's this point is there an arrogance here an entitlement well I was quite struck recently by two things one is that despite the fact for example the salt path was proven to be fiction how has the publisher responded to that I don't nothing they haven't said it's featured they didn't put a sticker on it saying by the way this is fiction in fact it's sold loads of copies and they've been loads more money from it you thought maybe they would have liked said oh look you know issuing statements saying oh no no no no I haven't done that and then it also you know inevitably we'll talk about the Jason Harday but you know the the UK publisher still pursued the publication of that book as a work of nonfiction you know the US publishing team decided not to and that you know that's still available to buy is a work of nonfiction now look you know wherever you stand on that particular topic it's more that publishers almost can feel a little bit like that maybe because it's a sort of slightly more tectonic industry but they're almost like oh this you know we don't have to do that but it's I don't know whether other industries would sort of be so happy to not adjust in that way yeah I think one of the things that happened I think it's interesting what you say because technologically perhaps that was a key part of all of this where big corporates just suddenly which their pan's cos 30 people on Twitter go on say about something you know and I think there was a massive overindexing of online sentiment sure converted into real action in the real world from people who really really didn't need to panic over this kind of thing exactly and and I don't know if that's if that's adjusted now or not perhaps people have kind of worked out that you know a bit of a social media storm as you say it may actually be a good thing you know and certainly not a terrible thing and not a catastrophic destructive thing which I agree in the sort of 2020 moment would have felt very real to a lot of people no I don't disagree with any of that but I still keep coming to the back to the fact that that people were feeling very discombobulated at that moment and that they were feeling lost and that obviously they wanted to gravitate towards some movements and things where they felt par something to get a church you know they're not actually going into the office and realizing that people who are not off their age group and not of their generation are actually okay just in their little mad bubbles but I guess it's the continuity because I actually think right now politically it's actually quite a nice moment because you've got labor and the Tory standing for different things and like for the first time in these party conferences you've got the Kemi Bay not stands for sort of old school traditional conservatism and then you've got Andy Burland who's standing for I guess in some ways sort of standard labour values and that's great but the problem is the publishing is still here in this identityarian madness where there's only one way to think and that's all about you know some of the big issues of the time critical race theory it's like okay it's always a little bit behind but it's a long way behind actually that the world moving into some very clear spaces right now and that's good I think you know again we're starting to see that when things feel a bit amorphous politically people don't really know how to think because they just go to the loudest noise whereas yeah that I think we're in a situation where the industry is behind the sentiment of what's happening in the UK do you think what they really need is to just feel the hip financially and then that's a moment they'll wake up like what has happened to a lot of movie companies like a lot of what's happened to people like Disney etc etc and go we out we can't keep doing this critical race theory stuff sure people are buying it and we I mean look at it look at the back balance well look it's hard to do a net to PNL on all the books that were acquired in the madness of 2020 onwards because one would suspect that they are hemorrhaging inordinate amounts of money but as always with publishing there's always a moment an unexpected moment which sort of offsets it all and that moment was was you know the the YA explosion almost a category between adult and kids and it's basically soft porn and he had do I agree with it I don't really know but you know we know that the readership likes rather than visual porn they like essentially narrative porn they're women the market being sustained right the markets the market's been sustained and if you look right now every single if you look at where employment's taking place in the market the categories in which people are actively recruiting for it's into a category which is essentially just dishing out sort of soft porn so my issue is that not only are we sensorious we're bringing that the main crux of the people coming to the business are of a certain sort of preference and what's the long-term effects of course I'm worried a little bit about the commercials of the hearing now why worry about more is the necessity of having cross-spectrum views being published making sure that all types of people want to love and read books in the future and that includes boys as well and creating an environment where as I say that the only thing that really matters to me is is is this place creative can we can we debate and argue and have fun or is everyone really quite similar now and as I say having just done a time as a as a consultant and working for the publishers it's quite difficult even though you know they're all different but they're all the same they're all the same it's not like Nike and Adidas and art with slightly different marketing campaigns and strategies or it is literally you can close your eyes and you couldn't tell the difference to any of them can I be slightly pedantic may I yeah go on Dean fact check me on this with Venice I you've both used the word sensorious I looked this up it doesn't actually mean practicing of censorship it means very critical really yeah Dean will fact check me on this but it's a weather people like to use because we talk about censorship but it doesn't actually mean practicing of censorship doesn't it so what is the word to that means to practice censorship I don't know is that censorous it's sensorious perhaps oh no no no but no we just said that is a separate word yeah for sensorious is it censorous yeah maybe yeah well anyway this is a literary side that willing just no one but it interests me yeah yeah it's sort of it's a really good topic that you're getting into there because of the people mistake mastery of the vernacular in publishing for mastery of the art and so people know how what to say and that but they don't they don't actually thinking this is his whole idea of I mean we can go on if you want to talk about that we can but it's it's fascinating people think they're really good at publishing because they're embracing the ideas which exist they should be they should be finally opposite to the ideas exist because the market's gonna change there was this really funny moment in publishing where about 2020 2021 when all these woke books started to be published yeah obviously we had the big you know the big you know the big boy for we shouldn't the big book which was obviously white fragility sure sure but you know like Ibrahim X candy's like anti-racist baby and all this stuff and you got this is mental yeah yeah didn't sell very much as well oddly shocking you know what's quite I mean it's scared to say this I guess but you know the one that saw really really well this was called we are no longer talking to white people about race oh yeah white people but the the takeaway from that is it it's like one book that's definitely appearing to white people right why am I going to white people race then you get the other ones which are not as overtly title led like that book they're selling far far fewer copies but you get going back to the going back to how publishing operates certainly you know the use of the vernacular in the words and keep me it incredibly complicated it's past strategy, right? That the more convoluted it seems. I mean, when you look at publishing contracts, you know, for example, you get a three fifths royalty on, you know, your TPB escalator or like, this is like, this is stuff that is, you know, it keeps out new ideas. You're posting is not a lover of innovation, I'd say. But oddly, it's on this particular aspect, it's been hungry for political change, but maybe not for technological or systematic or any changes actually improve the, you know, the number of readers and participants. Dean? Yeah, you're right. Of course I am. Of course I'm right. So there you go. Sensorious means very critical. It does not mean the practicing of censorship or a great, or a great to have you on. We always ask the same question before we go to questions from our supporters. What is the one thing that we're not talking about that we should be? Ah, that's a great question. I think that the one thing we have to be talking about now is whether, and this is a difficult topic, whether there is genuinely anti-semitism taking place within the publishing industry, because I didn't know the answer to that question when I embarked upon this. But I've had some really quite scary experiences. I'm not Jewish, but the one thing that really struck me about building high line was when I went over to New York. I spoke to a young female editor. She'd been an editorial assistant and then she got to editor her whole life. She'd want to work for a big company, a big publisher. That was her passion. She started to do really, really well. She started to be a choir book. So a career was going forwards. October the 7th happens. Suddenly she doesn't get invited lunch anymore. Suddenly the books that she brought to acquisitions don't get through acquisitions. The ones that people even approve start to get smaller numbers so that it's much harder to buy them. And so what you're seeing is that are we building an industry now which is more or less likely to buy some of the most iconic names in publishing, your Philip Roths, even your Larry Tatex, but I worry that there's a group that's playing a huge overly delivered for the industry. I worry now that that group has been so ostracized that it'd be very, very hard for us to discover those next big name authors. Holly, you've been a little bit cryptic for my, are you saying people don't buy books, publishing commissioners don't commission books by Jewish authors because of what's happening in Israel? I think that is the big question. And that one of the reasons why we set up Highland publishing studio is that we've got a dedicated imprint called a deser additions to create a safe home for Jewish and Israeli talent because people have been essentially culturally boycotting that talent as if it's going to make an impact on something far, far away which some of these authors or talents might not even sit on a particular side of the argument but they're just being cancelled slowly, sometimes overtly. And if I show you one example of that, so Delhi-Sharabi, who is the hostage or one of the hostages, of course, when that book was on sale, not a single UK publisher wanted to buy it. This was a hostage for October 7th, but not a single UK publisher, so yeah, and so, why? Well, because of the difference in world view, the difference in ideology. In the end, a very small but brilliant publisher came to assist. They don't necessarily have the infrastructure to make it huge, but I thought it was very, very revelatory indeed. I've seen it before, I mean, don't fake me wrong, like 20 odd years ago, George W. Bush, his autobiography. He couldn't find a UK publishing home. In the end, it ended up sort of virgin books and it may be laugh, actually, if you read Tony Blair's biography, which, of course, did get a huge amount of support. He describes George W. Bush as one of the most credible, brilliant men he's ever worked with. And yet, you've got George W. Bush's autobiography, couldn't find a home. So look, it's always been there a little bit, and so it might not be solely the Jewish question. However, I have witnessed what I think is not anti-Sanism, anti-Semitism, and I say that as someone who studied anti-Semitism at university, and it's a horrible worrying trend. Sorry, sorry, to dig in a little bit. I horrific, as I think boycotting a hostages book from October 7th would be from an ideological perspective I can understand it, because it challenges directly the worldview of the pro-Palestine people, the pro-Palestine worldview. So when you say you see anti-Semitism, I can see how somebody might boycott that book without being anti-Semitic, I guess. Sure, sure, sure. Maybe I'll go back again to the experience of that individual, so a young female editor who is working through the publishing industry and finds that the comms within the industry, the people working with her, that the environment is becoming cumulatively so so intolerant or so overtly supporting in one direction, it can only ever feel like something else than the other. And this is why for me, I'm now working with Highline and I want to support Jewish writers and I want to support. Look, during World War II, there wasn't a single institution, whether it's a charity or whether it's a business that supported the Jewish community. We've got the chance to do that now when there's a similar sort of situation occurring. And what's happening is that I'm picking up brilliant staff and hopefully brilliant books because it's not a safe space, and I'm sorry to use that very good term, but it's not a safe space for some of these editors, for these marketers, and I can only as well sort of speak from how they're treated at a personal level rather than the theory. And from a personal level, they are sort of saying, look, I need to leave the industry because I can't work in this environment any longer. So hopefully they don't need the industry. They'll come work with us. Well, no business has ever gone bankrupt employing Jews, so you're in no country's ever succeeded when it suddenly turns anti-Semitic. It's always a bad sign for the country itself as well as Jews themselves, of course. All right, Oli, thank you so much. Head on over to triggapod.co.uk where Oli's going to answer your questions. We've got a lot of people asking questions about George R.R. Martin. When's a book going to come out? Are we just going to wait till he dies and then take the unfinished manuscript and somehow bashing a book out of that? [BLANK_AUDIO]