It’s a shame to see what actress Ellen Page has done to herself. She’s been in a few movies that I like, but I can’t watch anymore because it disturbs me to think about the way she’s mutilated her body in the pursuit of happiness instead of getting the mental health treatment she needed.
Page’s bravery has been lauded by the media since she came out as transgender. We were all expecting to ooh, and ahh, when she shared a photo of her shirtless post-top surgery. She also got a lucrative deal for a book. That wasn’t the only thing that surprised me. Even a nobody today can be an influencer if they come out as transgender. I can imagine that publishers were on Page trying to capitalize on her Frankensteins-like transition.
She got a great deal.
Flatiron Books is an imprint of Macmillan Books and reportedly paid Pageboy a $3 million advance on her memoir about her transition.
Who wants to read the memoir of a young Hollywood actress, who has become more famous because she had a double mastectomy rather than her Hollywood work?
The book is said to have sold 68,000 copies despite all the publicity Page got and the marketing behind it. Most authors would love 68,000 copies sold, but they don’t enjoy the same advantages as Page. Her book received media coverage and endorsements from Hollywood. It was in a position to sell five times more copies. I’ve published a few of my books, but never received the same kind of publicity as Page. Flatiron Books, despite Page’s advantage, lost a lot of money on this project before even considering the money spent for promotion. An insider in the publishing industry told The Free Press, that when it comes to book advances, “If you paid $7 per sold book, you paid the right amount.”
Flatiron Books pays Page $44 for each book sold.
They paid $3 million to publish a book the majority of people do not want to read. They should have paid me just $2 million and I would have told them that it would not even come close in recouping the advance. It would have cost less money.
This sounds a lot like Disney, who keeps on releasing woke content while losing a lot of money because they don’t understand what the market wants. What’s going on with these large publishing houses goes beyond that. They’re not just publishing woke content, they’re actively discriminating against white male writers.
James Patterson, the best-selling author, called the difficulties white male writers faced in June 2022 “just another type of racism”. After backlash, Patterson quickly apologized, saying: “I do not believe racism is practiced towards white writers.” Please know that I support diversity in literature, Hollywood, and everywhere. But a month later, the acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates made an identical point. She wrote in a tweet: “A friend, who is a Literary Agent, told me he couldn’t even get editors interested in reading first novels written by young male white writers, no matter how good they were; they just weren’t interested.”
The Free Press was essentially told by a senior editor of a major publishing house. “I don’t think the language was as obvious as that. The question was phrased as, “Is it the right time to champion authors with more traditional backgrounds?” Often the language used was unclear,” explained the editor.
Hollywood and the publishing industry are going woke, but they’re also going broke.
