After attacks on books such as Maus and Antiracist Baby caused their sales to skyrocket, the North Carolina Writers’ Network will offer its members the same chance to move their own titles to the top of the bestseller lists.
For a small fee, Network staff will contact the elected body of the member’s choosing and insist that they ban the member’s selected title from their jurisdiction’s schools and libraries.
For an additional fee, Network staff will initiate a social media campaign of outraged tweets, posts, and shares, all guaranteed to contain absolutely zero context, nuance, or rational information.
“The only way to get half of American adults to notice a book is to make it seem wildly offensive,” NCWN executive director Ed Southern said. “Telling a good story well is, like, boring and stuff.”
Network members who want to use this new service can indicate which of two Ought to Be Banned categories their book falls into: Discusses Race with a Bare Minimum of Honesty, or Depicts Actual Human Bodies Doing Actual Human Things.
Whether or not their book contains either one is irrelevant.
“We’re trying to get people to buy their books, or at least repeat their titles very loudly,” Southern said. “We’re not trying to get people to actually read them.
“What do we look like, nerds?” he added.
This service launches today, April 1, 2022. Interested writers can learn more, and join the NC Writers’ Network, at www.ncwriters.org.