For those who blame social media for what’s gone wrong with the world today, Twitter is one of the most favored targets and often for good reason. The latest treatise in this regard is Did Twitter Break YA? by writer and bookseller Nicole Brinkley. In one of the most quoted paragraphs of the piece, she writes that, on Twitter, authors are “hearing from the reader who plucks single lines out of context and declares that they’re offensive, then demands that the author agree that they’re offensive, then further demands that they be changed in future printings, even if the point of the line in context is that a character is saying something the reader is supposed to disagree with.”
Despite some questionable and extreme assertions, Brinkley correctly identifies a real sickness that affects not just YA literature, but adult literature too. While not all the blame can be laid at the feet of Twitter (or traditional publishers, who also come in for a fair amount of criticism), there is indeed a dark problem here. The solution? Brinkley advises everyone quit Twitter, which is unlikely to happen on a scale large enough to offer much remedy. Plus another platform (TikTok, anyone?) could succumb to the same problems. But acknowledging the mess we’re all in is a step in the right direction.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
