Letter


Issue 6,158 On the cover


Patrice Lawrence by


Dave Bebber


It’s time to lean in for the right to be heard, says Philip Jones


Editor, The Bookseller ‘T


his is not normal”. It is now just under two months since former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams gave her stand-out speech at


The British Book Awards. This is how it began: “To bear witness is one of the oldest moral obliga- tions in human civilisation. It means: I was present. I saw. I will not pretend otherwise.” Wynn-Williams was referencing Nobody’s Girl,


Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s award-winning memoir, co-written with the journalist Amy Wallace, that was joint recipient of the Freedom to Publish prize at the awards, alongside her own book Careless People. But the intent behind the words was wider than either title. Her speech was about being heard. “A book endures,” she said; it cannot be erased or shadow-banned. “It will speak – long after the woman cannot.” Since then, Wynn-Williams has had to sit in


silence at the Hay Festival having been invited to talk – more generally – on Big Tech alongside journalist Carole Cadwalladr and author Tim Wu, and most recently was asked to leave the studio of The News Agents podcast on which she would otherwise have spoken alongside Wallace about the Freedom to Publish award. In a moment of troubling theatre, presenter Emily Maitlis tells Wynn-Williams: “I have to ask you to leave.”


The official charts This week’s number ones


Contents In this week’s magazine p32


We can argue that we are winning this fight one book at a time. But that is just too sentimental


Since then, her book has been catapulted back


up the book charts, and this week is top of the Paperback Non-Fiction chart having sold 10,000 copies over the week (just in print, mind). Meanwhile, an independent bookshop audio exclusive has been released on Bookshop.org, with Wynn-Williams’ Nibbies speech included. Last month, Wynn-Williams filed a countersuit


in a US court petitioning for the interim judgement to be removed. She questions the unreasonable- ness of the original edict, as well as its chilling impact. “I have been left to police a boundary that no one has been willing or able to draw clearly for me,” she writes in her own statement. We can argue that we are winning this fight


one book at a time. But that is just too senti- mental. Wynn-Williams faces daily pressure to navigate the situation she finds herself in; if Facebook wins its case, or if the interim judge- ment is maintained, she faces years of litigation and unimaginable fines, while at the same time not being able to earn a living through her writ- ing or her expertise in this area. “Each day I make countless fine-grained decisions,” she writes, stating that that this could ruin her and her family. She is also being watched. In the countersuit, her lawyers state: “Meta’s sanctions campaign has been built on sustained surveil- lance of Ms Wynn- Williams… its representatives attended her public appearances in person, assembled photographs and written records of her movements, and travelled the length of the United Kingdom to do so.” As she said in her speech at the Nibbies: “We


know Virginia lived in fear. We know she felt very alone. I suspect there were days she recoiled at every knock on her door, regarded every camera with suspicion and felt a weary dread at the steady flow of lawyers’ emails, demands for discovery and surveillance of her life.” To echo Sarah, we are bearing witness to some-


thing truly extraordinary. Or as Maitlis said on the podcast: “This is not normal.” And yet, where is the clamour and outrage for an author – resident in the UK, and published by a UK publisher – who has been silenced now for more than a year by a US court at the behest of a tech mega-corp? I cannot dictate how you do it, but we need to


stand up for Sarah. No one can pretend not to have seen this. This is our fight.


Books Author Profiles: Louise Kennedy


Julia Gray & Imogen Russell Williams Non-Fiction Preview


PRINT E-BOOK AUDIO Religion & Spirituality Average selling price £9.47 Year/Year rise 1.8% 24-27


Trade interviews: Patrice Lawrence & Thangam Debbonaire 28-43


Classified Jobs in Books


p4 40


4 6 8-23


Charts The Official UK Top 50 Fiction


Non-Fiction Children’s


Indie & Digital Market Spotlight


32 34 35 36 37 38


03


Welcome


ALEXIS KIRSCHBAUM


Comment


Leader


10.07.26


London calling


Louise Kennedy with the


follow-up to her award-winning debut


Licence payer


Thangam


Debbonaire on protecting


creative work in the age of AI


Patrice Lawrence discusses her passion for social justice and shared stories as she becomes the next Waterstones


Children’s Laureate P28-29


Children’s champion


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