A large portion of the online book community has been participating in a months-long marketing boycott against St. Martin’s Press, a publishing imprint under MacMillan—a Big Five publishing house—and against associated imprints under St. Martin’s Publishing Group. The boycott started in October after community members found anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic posts as well as misinformation related to the genocide in Gaza being posted on social media by a St. Martin’s Press employee. As of writing, the boycott continues, with the publisher largely unresponsive to allegations underlined by the campaign, which include unequal treatment toward BIPOC creators and authors by the publisher.
Those boycotting St. Martin’s Press say multiple posts shared by the publisher’s employee on their Instagram page were full of pro-Israel propaganda.
“Palestinians must be freed of Hamas and Iranian proxies, not Israel,” the employee wrote while re-sharing content from an account that promotes ahistorical information regarding Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank. In another video post shared by the employee, they wrote “Pallywood at its finest,” a derogatory term used by right-wing Israelis to discredit videos showing injured Palestinians or civilians in mourning.
Leen, a queer Palestinian TikTok content creator, said she was “appalled” after being alerted about the social media posts by others in the online bookish community. When she reached out to St. Martin’s Press about her concerns with their employee, she received a response from their vice president of marketing, who stated the books she had previously requested for review were either unavailable or not under his purview, sidestepping the concerns raised in Leen’s email. She reiterated them in a follow-up email but received no response.
“It was very dismissive, very patronizing and condescending, [and] ignored the heart of the issue, which was the racism being displayed,” Leen said.
After Leen posted about the matter on TikTok, the bookish community rallied to hold the publisher accountable. A boycott against St. Martin’s Press and its affiliates was launched in October under the community group Readers For Accountability. Modeled off the HarperCollins union strike, which did not push for a consumer boycott, the St. Martin’s Press boycott is strictly a marketing and promotional boycott. Supporters can still buy books under the imprint’s publishing group and its direct affiliates—which include Wednesday Books and St. Martin’s Griffin, among others—and are only urged to avoid promoting the book. A petition organized under the campaign has garnered more than 8,000 signatories as of Jan. 18. Many have voiced their support of the boycott on the publisher’s socials, with some posting watermelon emojis—which have the same colors as the Palestinian flag— in solidarity with Palestinians.
Satoria, another TikTok content creator, said organizers decided to pursue a marketing boycott as an effective way to hold the publisher accountable while minimizing harm against its authors.
“When I post about a book, there are a lot of people who will say, ‘I’m going to go out and buy this book because of you,’” said Satoria, whose TikTok account has 43,000 followers. “I think it’s really important that, at a bare minimum, any company that is going to be relying on unpaid labor create systems where discrimination isn’t happening … and that there will be systems in place to adequately address the situation.”
After months of messages and comments to the publisher from the campaign’s supporters, Readers For Accountability received an email from St. Martin’s Press on Dec. 15. The publisher stated, “As a publisher, we unequivocally condemn racism in all forms, including Islamophobia and antisemitism. We also unequivocally support members of all of our communities, including our BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ members.” The publisher also stated it was unable to comment on employee matters but would ensure “equitable access to advance reader copies,” referring to allegations of discriminatory treatment against Arab and Muslim creators who have worked with St. Martin’s Press through its influencer program.
One bookish creator, who joined the influencer program in 2021, told Prism they began having issues with their early review book requests after another team took over the program last year. The creator’s last inquiry included a request for a book by a South Asian Muslim author. They were told by the employee at the center of the boycott—not explicitly named on the boycott campaign’s official website—that the window to request those books had closed, even though the creator had put in previous requests for the books within the proper period. Additionally, this creator received copies of books they had not requested, all written by white authors, and heard similar experiences from other brown and Muslim creators in the influencer program, some of whom never received any requested books from the publisher.
“That was also concerning to me to think that, does this mean this imprint is not really putting in the effort to promote this book by a Muslim Pakistani author, compared to maybe their titles by other white authors? Things like that were kind of raising some red flags in my head,” said the creator, who requested to remain unnamed to protect their privacy.
The pattern of alleged discriminatory treatment toward BIPOC creators and authors, combined with the blatant racism of its employee, are symptoms of a larger concern of systemic racism within St. Martin’s Press, Leen said.
“If you’re not willing to sit there and say, ‘OK, we’re going to take these concerns seriously, and we need to have a system in place to address and denounce racism,’ then that affects everybody,” Leen said. “Because then the system at hand is still mired in racism. And if the system itself is still racist, then it is going to inherently be doing harm.”
Prism made multiple attempts to reach out to St. Martin’s Press for comment but did not receive a response.
Jemila, another bookish TikTok creator, says the negative experiences shared by BIPOC creators with St. Martin’s Press are not surprising, as the publishing industry remains largely white, despite commitments in 2020 from giant publishers to increase diversity.
“It may not feel very important when there’s other larger corporations that are being targeted,” said Jemila, who also had issues with her book requests through St. Martin’s Press. “But I feel like the book community can be very strong and impactful … If there’s an opportunity to show our support within the community, we should do so and show our support for the people who are being harmed and our support for Palestine.”
Supporters have made clear the boycott is not demanding the termination of the St. Martin’s Press employee’s job, which remains intact amid the controversy, according to their LinkedIn profile. Instead, they are focused on equity demands, including a tangible policy from the publisher on how it will protect BIPOC and other marginalized authors, readers, and reviewers moving forward.
“What the boycott is trying to do is get to the root cause,” said Satoria, who experienced surveillance and harassment from those purporting to be friends of the employee. “There’s a systemic issue with bigotry at St. Martin’s Press, where it has been normalized. And we know this to be true because they haven’t said anything that would make us think that bigotry wasn’t accepted at St. Martin’s Press.”
Given the occupation State of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, for those who identify as Arab or Muslim, public shows of bigoted rhetoric, especially by someone who may have access to their personal information through the company they work with, can be dangerous.
“People underestimate stochastic terror and the way that rhetoric dehumanizing people can lead to real and true violence,” Leen said. “People are getting attacked simply for existing publicly as Palestinian or Muslim or brown. It’s kind of a resurgence of post-9/11 stochastic terror.”
