When Publishers Peddle In Stereotypes: When Plagiarism Should Have Been The Second Dealbreaker

A good way to question your purpose is to follow book Twitter. It’s a great way to find opportunities to freelance or see which anthologies are open. You also see that we have not improved in terms of racism. And you find that apparently you can plagiarize! Who knew?

One publisher, in particular, has been awful. Namely, Flat Iron books is not an ally to people of color, though apparently they roped in Oprah Winfrey into praising a piece of plagiarism. After they got called out on it, they decided to break their silence.

Flat Iron, we appreciate you pretended to admit messing up. (That was sarcasm.) You tried to cover your butts by releasing an Internet apology, and then started a narrative about an author receiving death threats. There is no two-way dialogue; you have a history of enabling racist writing. Don’t blame us for our anger about this. You messed up and need to fix this.

This newest trash fire is supposedly a book about refugees. Instead, the lead is a widow and…