Grateful appreciation to a friend I shall name Jackie who told me about Elena Ferrante, an Italian novelist who wrote a letter to her publishing house explaining why she *would not* participate in the marketing of her novel.
Jackie and I were talking about writers and privacy.
Here’s a great blog post about Elena Ferrante’s letter. Read it here.
I sympathize with the novelist, and am delighted that her novel Troubling Love is doing so well.
To the novelist, congratulations!
Cheers, Andrew
(errr, I mean Matt)
Andrew Shattuck McBride, Writer's Blog 
Wow! Amazing stand. She just put her foot down and BOOM! Really interesting article. Thanks for sharing it, Andrew.
Oh, and sorry to miss your feature last evening…I missed a night of sleep and needed to crash. Hope it went well.
I agree with you. She has taken an impressive stand.
No worries, Susan. Thank you. Yes, my feature went well.
With warm regards, Andy
So interesting, and so different from how things work here in the U.S. Before reading this article, I hadn’t known that the major U.S. publishing houses became pubicly held corporations a couple decades back, and that this shift changed the priorities of those companies. I can certainly see how the imperative to earn profits for shareholders woud make publishing executives less willing to take risks, and more driven to choose marketability over whatever aesthetic or social missions may have driven their choices in the past. Helps me understand the double whammy for authors, who now have to work harder for, but benefit less from, their sales, from books that do get published.
Jennifer, thank you for your thoughtful and considered comment.
All the best, Andy