So, starting in early 2025, we’ll be organising occasional non-virtual networking events in central London where you’ll be able to meet other literary and publishing professionals such as authors, booksellers, agents, editors, publishers and librarians. If you’re involved in the literary or publishing world and support our aims, then you’re welcome to come along.
Principles
- Freedom of Expression: We advocate for freedom of expression without harassment within the law in writing, production, publication, sales, lending, and all other aspects of the literary and publishing world.
- Intellectual Diversity: We believe that the literary and publishing world must support pluralism and should promote thoughtful engagement with a range of views. Organisations should not adopt institutional positions on contested issues.
- Civil Discourse: We encourage open, honest, courageous, and reasoned discussion of controversial ideas, inside and outside of organisation, in a spirit of having respect for people even when one does not necessarily respect their beliefs. We oppose harassment and discrimination against all literary and publishing professionals, including on the basis of their beliefs and lawful expression of their views. We support the right to protest and criticise but oppose attempts to obstruct the freedom of others to express their lawful views or hear others doing so.
Members of FLAPP are united only in our support for these founding principles. Supporting these principles does not necessarily imply support for any other position, including any issues of concern we may raise to campaign for. FLAPP seeks to promote free inquiry, including debate on the best way to promote the principles of literary and creative freedom.
What we do
- Visibility: By providing a place for London literary and publishing professionals to publicly endorse the principle of freedom of expression, we demonstrate the strength and breadth of support for freedom of expression within literary and publishing organisations.
- Social events: By holding non-virtual networking events, we make it easier for literary and publishing professionals who support freedom of expression to find each other and work together towards shared goals in their respective organisations, disciplines, and beyond.
- Knowledge development and sharing: We will develop resources to support literary and publishing professionals in influencing their organisations' policies and practices to promote freedom of expression. We will disseminate information and participate in consultations that relate to our mission.
Issues of concern
At the time of writing, a number of issues within the literary and publishing world are of particular concern to us:
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- Challenging the climate of fear: The literary and publishing world has sadly developed a reputation for classist cultural uniformity, which is enforced with routine social shunning, bullying, and intimidation. This has created a climate of fear where few are willing to speak out. In recent years, we have seen numerous authors, editors, and other literary professionals lose their livelihoods due to these abuses. We are concerned that this has created an unhealthy working environment that stifles creative expression. This issue in particular needs to be vigorously and openly discussed so positive remedies can be developed.
- Toxic Marketing: We are concerned with the recent trend of publishers and other marketers who continue to provide free review copies of books to hostile and abusive reviewers who rely on denunciations, inflammatory rhetoric, and unsubstantiated allegations, creating an emotionally charged environment likely to lead to intimidation and coercion that extends well beyond publishing world and into the entertainment sector and broader culture more generally. The cultural and professional impact of encouraging such behaviour cannot be overstated and has already had a chilling effect on freedom of expression and artistic creativity.
- Political censorship: We are concerned with the recent fashion for political censorship and rewriting of books to suit the claimed sensitivities of a tiny minority of politically motivated publishing professionals. The reputation and good standing of the publishing industry has been eroded by the continuing stories of political censorship and so-called "Sensitivity Readers" mandating changes to authors' works in an arbitrary and politically unidirectional fashion.
- Stay-in-your-lane-ism: We are concerned with limitations being forced on authors to only write from the point of view of their own ethnicity, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic, which we believe is a level of constraint that is incompatible with free expression, liberalism, and any literary endeavour. We support authors exercising their freedom of expression without restriction to write about what they want, whether they are from the group they are writing about or not.
- Retail censorship: We are concerned with the rise in bookshop staff, especially those in high street chains, hiding bestselling books from the public, thereby censoring the public's ability to engage with important matters of public debate. The public expects bookshops, especially those that are part of a high street chain, to cater to the tastes and views of the entire UK public rather than the narrow confines of any one tiny sliver of the political spectrum.
Register now
If you agree with our principles, please join us by registering your support. You can choose whether your details appear on this website and can optionally request to receive our occasional newsletter.