[image description: An open book, set aflame. Note: this is a stock photo. I didn’t actually burn a book!]

I don’t mention it a ton on here because it doesn’t have much to do with reading, but another thing I like to do is roller skating. At the rink, at the skatepark, outside, on the hardwood floors of my living room, all of it. I’ve been doing it for about a year and a half and it brings me joy.

As such, in addition to the world of books, another community I’m immersed in online is the roller skating community. Recently, there’s been some drama circulating. I won’t bore you with the details because I’m immersed in the community and I hardly care myself. At one point, when the latest story of a person and brand behaving badly broke, I remember thinking to myself in a moment of frustration, “Jesus Christ, I just want to fucking skate! Not deal with all this shit.”

My next thought was: “Wow, is this how people feel when I write about publishing industry drama and authors behaving badly on my blog?”

On the one hand, I think it’s important to call out problematic behavior because problematic behavior is predicated on the assumption that the offender can and will get away with it. So holding people accountable for their actions is, I think, an effective means of discouraging the problematic behavior.

At the same time, I wouldn’t want the problematic behavior in the book industry to frustrate someone to the point where they no longer feel good about reading or no longer want to read.

I tend to “put up with” (though not condoning or accepting) more drama from the publishing industry without abandoning books and writing because I know this is my life’s work and my soul’s calling. I truly believe my mission in life is to encourage reading and literacy, connect people to books they love, and write stories that educate and entertain. It is not, however, my mission in life to roller skate. I do that purely for fun. Because skating is a stress-relieving activity for me, I’m less inclined to subject myself to industry fuckery.

With the skating world drama, I decided to curate the information I take in about the community more carefully. I started following individual indie skaters and unfollowed big brands and celebrity skaters, the chief sources of the upset. But with the book industry, I’m not sure how to do that in a feasible way. After all, I’m a writer. One day I’m going to have an agent and a publisher. I can’t opt out of taking in that information without doing detriment to the career I’ve wanted my entire life.

At the same time, I also recognize that my blog readers may not be in the same position with regard to the book industry. Consuming the products of an industry (in this case books) is not the same as wanting to actively be a part of that industry (in my case as a writer).

Reading, like skating, can be done in a vacuum. They’re both relatively solitary activities if you want them to be, though I tend to find them more enjoyable with a community, at least some of the time. Yet because I’m so immersed in the book world, I wonder if I’ve lost touch with what everyday non-writer readers actually want. Do you want to know about book industry drama? Does it turn you off from reading or make reading less enjoyable for you?

To be clear, I never intend for Off the Beaten Shelf to be all rainbows and glitter and “good vibes only.” That’s just not how life works in reality and there’s enough image crafting on the internet and people pretending to have it all figured out that you don’t need that from me. But knowing how you feel about book industry drama will help me better make decisions as I’m planning posts going forward.

Let me know. :)

xo
Mandy