Rosemary Sorensen examines the practice of book packaging – where teams of editors, influencers and writers write books on demand – and, posits the silencing of cultural and literary criticism is causing a dangerous lack of accountability in cultural production.
WHEN LITERARY CRITICISM was still a thing, when there was an ecology of publishing that – despite the pouting of populist genre writers – worked to maintain the appreciation of quality writing, this description of a romantasy (romance/fantasy) novel would have set off alarm bells:
‘When Ruby feels the eyes of a stranger in the woods, she knows she should be scared, that she should run away, but she can’t. Instead, she feels a thrill, feels drawn to this stranger who follows her in the woods. Yearns for his eyes on her every night as she walks home, hoping to hear the crunch of leaves under his feet that signals he’s there.’
Apparently, A Curse of Blood and Wolves by American Melissa McTernan is a sort of retelling of Little Red Riding Hood as a werewolf romance.
Never mind that in real life being followed by a stranger in the woods is not likely to end with the lusciously orgasmic sex the most popular romantasy writers are read for, Ruby can’t help herself and ‘yearns for his eyes on her’.
Comical and silly as such soft-porn writing is — it’s serious business.
Last week, The New Yorker writer Katy Waldman published a long report on how American romantasy author Tracy Wolff is being sued for copyright infringement.
Her Crave series had, according to family-law attorney Lynne Freeman, so many similarities to Freeman’s unpublished novel that, in early 2022, she began legal action against Wolff, along with an agent who had represented her as well as Wolff, the publisher of the Crave series and Universal Studios, who had optioned a film.
That litigation is ongoing and costly, and Waldman carefully maps out the case that Freeman is mounting to try to prove that this happened.
Waldman is meticulous in quoting both sides, getting professional publishing opinions, and taking care not to overstep any legal lines herself, but she does eventually –after reading both the multi-million best-seller and the unpublished manuscript – venture the conclusion: ‘the composition of these details, the totality of how the obvious or ordinary beats are strung together in each, is startling’.
Waldman’s details of this writing scandal would make a terrific play, where the audience must listen and watch as each actor describes their version of events, and must decide for themselves who is telling the (most) truth.
But this is not just a story about copyright infringement: it goes to the heart of the way publishers commission books, and a process called book “packaging”.
Waldman explains:
‘Book packagers assign teams of writers and editors to create content for an outside client, who can request specific elements, such as “the fae” or “hockey-themed romance.” Often, the writers receive a flat fee for their work (“work for hire”), sign over their I.P. rights, and are not entitled to royalties. Packaged titles are relatively safe bets for publishers, offering agility and responsiveness to subtle changes in market demand. Still, many houses want to avoid the perception of either working with packagers or packaging themselves, so as to attract prestigious authors and dodge accusations of predatory contracts.’
The publisher of Wolff’s Crave books told Waldman she “tends to work more with its authors at the ideation stage to try to organically back in a high concept”, and said that the books were “a collaborative project … providing to Wolff in writing the main plot, location, characters, and scenes, and actively participating in the editing and writing process”.
This is, said the publisher, what happens in the big houses:
“They do the same thing, I’ve just been very successful at it”.
How common, then, is this practice of book packaging? Does it affect not just genre fiction, but general, even so-called literary fiction?
Beyond the ethics of where the ideas – “ideation”, as the Crave publisher called it – come from, how do you feel about a book that is written on-demand, based on what a publisher thinks they can sell?
This is a question I asked then Publishing Director at Penguin Random House Australia, Justin Ractliffe (who is now with Thames and Hudson), five years ago, when, having spent time in the United States of America with the assistance of a professional development grant from The Copyright Agency, he wrote a report titled “Instinct, Input and Insight: Reader-centricity in publishing”.
Back then, I queried Ractliffe’s enthusiasm about the way publishers were scraping social media to get ahead of trends so that they could publish books that people wanted almost before readers knew they wanted them.
Providing an example from the way McDonald’s “noticed lots of posts from customers about how they loved dipping their apple pie into McFlurry sundaes, so it combined the two and the Apple Pie McFlurry was born” – an astonishing example for the publishing director of such an important publisher to resort to – Ractliffe then triumphantly concluded:
‘As well as relying on their own cultural awareness, publishers are engaging in trendwatching to help generate ideas for books, identify “mass niche” audiences and catch and ride cultural waves before they crash.’
Five years ago, he then quoted a publishing consultant, Mike Shatzkin, who said this:
“It’s a logical step to learn from conversations and discussions taking place to publish a book if there is no book on those conversations. Publishers need to work out which genres and how fast. All that is evolving.”
Indeed and, in 2023, looks like Mr Shatzkin was part of that evolution when he wrote on his The Idea Logical Company blog about a new publishing model pioneered by Bindery Books. This model corrects the ‘structural deficiency’ in publishing that fails to find, promote and pay influencers.
He calls it a ‘Patreon for book curators’. Using subscriptions from their followers/members, the influencers/curators:
‘Can divert half their subscription revenue to fund the acquisition and production of new books, inviting their members to have a front-row seat to the publishing process and a feeling of investment upon publication…The influencers are in for 25 per cent of the revenue for the books they publish. Authors get half. Bindery takes the balance.’
Upfront, in the pragmatic and optimistic words of Mr Shatzkin, treating books like McFlurries seems modern and exciting, disrupting that fusty old publishing model where a book is a slow, unpredictable, surprising creation that sometimes takes until after the writer’s demise to be fully appreciated.
There’s now something called Penguin Publishing Lab, set up to work with influencers to create commercial non-fiction — such as the popular Bake with Brooki, one of 2024’s best-sellers.
But then a case like the one Waldman writes about comes along, raising more questions: about influencers, about the value of writing to perceived demand and about how such publishing might nurture an environment where corners are cut, ethically or legally.
Romantasy readers, as Waldman points out, can be passionately committed to authors in ways that seem over the top — character dress-ups, release parties, endless social media posting focusing on details and reactions.
While the manipulation of these readers’ desires does seem to me to be callous and cruel, the need to escape into fantasy soft-porn romance, described often as “escapist”, is a reader’s choice and right.
It’s important, however, to point out the hard-nosed, possibly cynical, ruthless methodology driving such publishing. That’s only fair to readers, and writers.
As for the writing itself, you’ve only to look at that blurb for A Curse of Blood and Wolves to suspect that some very dodgy stuff is being dished up under the cover of fantasy and romance themes.
Written and read mostly by women, and with cliched tropes of strong female characters who fall in love with bad men, have hot sex, and, like Little Red Riding Hood, survive to love another day, to call this harmless escapism is to misunderstand how popular culture works to shape value systems.
We used to have robust and lively debates about such things: the silencing of cultural and literary criticism is causing a dangerous lack of accountability in cultural production.
Rosemary Sorensen is an IA columnist, journalist and founder of the Bendigo Writers Festival. You can follow Rosemary on Twitter/X @sorensen_rose.
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