Book Price Increases Contribute to Censorship

Earlier this week, I dug into the methods wherein YA paperback books have elevated in worth. It’s not a shock that many noticed a rise of a greenback or two. There’s inflation, and paper prices are skyrocketing, amongst myriad different points. One writer, whose union has been on strike for a wage enhance and firmer dedication to range, has elected to elevate their paperback books by virtually 25%, ringing in at $15.99 a pop (up from $11.99).

Comments on that submit reiterated the truth that the dialogue of how widespread and harmful guide bans are is being not solely ignored, however outright dismissed.

Hundreds of feedback on that submit mentioned that if a child can’t afford to purchase the guide, go to the library and get it. Libraries are superb! They supply this stuff to individuals of their neighborhood.

Y’all: LIBRARIES ARE UNDER ATTACK BY GROUPS TRYING TO ENSURE THESE BOOKS DO NOT GET INTO THE HANDS OF READERS. This will not be solely college libraries. It will not be solely public libraries. There are states actually working to outlaw total classes of books from reaching the teenagers for whom they’re already financially inaccessible.

Not solely that, however librarians and educators are being put underneath the specter of dropping their jobs, their livelihoods, their medical insurance, and their precise lives by legislators throughout the nation who’re keen to criminalize them for having “inappropriate” books of their collections. These legislators are listening to right-wing Christian nationalists calling licensed educators and librarians groomers for merely having the books that replicate their communities within the assortment.

How do you anticipate a teen to get the books they will’t afford at $16 if the books are criminalized by the state? How do you anticipate a teen to really feel protected borrowing books that they want mommy or daddy’s permission to borrow, when mommy and daddy are exhibiting up to college board conferences calling individuals like them sick, incorrect, and fewer than human?

Book bans are driving children away from libraries.

It would possibly really feel good to wax poetic about how the library makes issues potential for these with out the means to have interaction in capitalism, however what are you really doing to guarantee these books can be found? Have you gone to a library or college board assembly and talked throughout public remark? Have you written your legislators to demand that First Amendment rights lengthen to everybody within the nation and never simply those that have the loudest voices and probably the most cash? Have you had your title smeared with the phrase “groomer” connected for standing up for younger individuals whose lives are being impacted by guide bans?

If you haven’t, you want to wake the hell up.

This isn’t concerning the guide worth enhance. It’s about how that guide worth enhance additional marginalizes already hurting communities of individuals and it amplifies how these with privilege completely don’t get it and don’t need to get it. This enhance in worth permits extra guide banning to occur. It revokes entry. It destroys precise individuals’s lives.

Here’s a useful chart. Think about this earlier than you make your subsequent little remark about how nice libraries are with out placing your toes on the group and exhibiting up to do actual work on behalf of that library.

Right now, that is what the world seems like for extra individuals than you understand. This is, after all, however a single instance of a problem that’s not going away. That requires you to take off your type phrases and actions, roll up your sleeves, and do one thing.

Image of a five step flowchart of how books are getting banned and teens cannot access them. The book OUT OF THE BLUE is the example, priced at $15.99. The text reads "Imagine you're a queer teen in Texas in 2023 and you want to read this book." The five notes state that 1. you can't afford to buy the book, 2. it would be banned at your school library, 3. it would be banned from your public library, 4. your librarian could be prosecuted for having the book, and 5. giving up because the barriers are too high."

If this doesn’t concern you otherwise you’ve been ready to transfer via the mass waves of guide bans and laws impacting queer individuals and other people of shade, congratulations in your privilege.

Now present up and do higher.

This is a pink image with a green circle. It has white text that reads "if your next thought is "well, it is Texas (or arkansas or utah or louisiana or florida or north cakota or indiana or iowa, etc.)," then you don't aactually care about the people impacted by book bans nor the fact this is not about the books at all.

Oh, and …

Publishers making these selections aren’t immune, both. Harper Collins has been particularly quiet concerning the books and people being focused by their books, until it permits them to revenue from “big sales.”

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