Why the Society of Authors Keeps Getting Blamed - And Why the Real Problem Lies Elsewhere
- David Salariya
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Every few months, the Society of Authors (SoA) finds itself dragged back into the culture wars accused of timidity, neutrality, or failing to defend writers who have been caught in the crossfire of public controversy. Julia Williams’ resignation from the SoA board is only the latest flashpoint, sparked by the BBC’s Anatomy of a Cancellation and memories of the Kate Clanchy affair.
The headlines always point in the same direction: Why won’t the Society of Authors take a stronger stand? Isn’t a trade union meant to protect authors?
But as with most moral panics in publishing, we’re asking the wrong institution the wrong question.
Let’s be honest: the SoA is being blamed for a leadership failure that belongs elsewhere - with publishers, CEOs, and the consultancy-driven culture that now shapes big businesses.
The Society of Authors Impossible Position
The Society of Authors is a trade union representing more than 12,000 individuals across every political, artistic, and ideological spectrum imaginable. Trade unions cannot - legally or structurally - take sides in disputes between members. The SoA is legally structured as a trade union / professional association for all authors - novelists, illustrators, academics, screenwriters, poets, graphic novelists, activists, agitators, eccentrics, and the quietly hermetic.
If Author A denounces Author B and both pay their annual fees, the SoA cannot issue a public proclamation in support of one against the other.
That’s not neutrality. That’s basic union governance.
The SoA is meant to defend professional rights, contracts, harassment cases, and the ability of authors to work without fear. It is not built to be a moral arbitration panel or a cultural court.
And yet, every time controversy erupts, many authors beg it to become precisely that.
The expectation is emotionally understandable - writers feel vulnerable and exposed in an environment where public opinion can scorch careers. But the request misunderstands the
SoA’s function.
It cannot become the Ministry of Truth for 12,000 people.
The Leadership Vacuum: Publishing’s Moral Backbone Has Gone Missing
If authors are turning to the SoA for moral courage, it is because publishers stopped leading years ago.
The modern publishing conglomerate is a creation of mergers, acquisitions, and management consultancies. Its executive CEO's spend more time with PowerPoint than manuscripts, and every cultural decision is filtered through risk assessments and brand management frameworks.
In that environment:
Creators become “content suppliers.”
Books become “units,” reviewed for efficiency, not integrity.
IP becomes “pipeline,” not culture.
History becomes an inconvenience - something to be rewritten for marketing purposes.
This is how you end up with CEOs celebrating the “10th anniversary” of a company that has existed for sixteen years.The story must fit the corporate narrative, not the truth.
When a company’s very origin is airbrushed, why would we expect it to defend the origins of a book or the integrity of an author?
The result is a hollowed-out, consultancy-flavoured culture where leadership is replaced with messaging, and messaging is replaced with silence. Better to say nothing than to risk upsetting anyone.
So when a controversy hits - Clanchy, Rooney, Rowling, take your pick - many publishers retreat. Not because they are wrong, but because they don’t have a philosophy of leadership at all.
They have a philosophy of liability management.
The Society of Authors Becomes the Scapegoat
In this leadership vacuum, the SoA gets blamed for not doing what publishers should be doing: providing a confident, principled, culturally literate voice about the place of authors in society. (Take a look at how the French treat authors in my blog here)
But a union can’t replace an industry’s moral compass.It can only:
defend contracts,
support individuals privately,
oppose harassment,
protect rights, and
promote fairness.
A union cannot - and should not - decide which views are acceptable in literary culture.
Those who resign in protest demand something the SoA cannot deliver without betraying half its membership. That is not cowardice. That is structural reality.
What Authors Really Need
The SoA is doing its job.The institution's failing authors are the ones that built their fortunes on authors’ work.
We need:
1. Publishers who stop outsourcing cultural judgment to consultants
Creativity is not a quarterly metric. Intelectual property is not an anonymous pipeline. Books are not “assets” to be strip-mined until the brand can be “reset” under a new imprint.
2. CEOs who understand that publishing is a cultural business, not a commodity business
A leader who doesn’t know what a book is - how it is made, who made it, what its history is - cannot lead a publishing house.
3. Corporate memory
A company that forgets its own past will always be tempted to erase the pasts of its writers. This is how creators get written out of their own stories.This is how legacy becomes a liability, not an inheritance.
4. Courage at the top
Publishing desperately needs leaders willing to say,“We stand by our authors, even when they are difficult, unfashionable, or controversial or just a pain. That is what the public thinks publishers do. It is what publishers once did.
The Real Threat Isn’t Cancel Culture - It’s Corporate Amnesia
The endless debates about “cancellation” are symptoms of a deeper sickness: publishing no longer knows what it is for.
When publishers abdicate leadership, the burden shifts onto unions, committees, sensitivity readers and social media storms. When CEOs treat books as interchangeable IP bricks for a content pipeline, the creative relationship collapses.
When history becomes marketing decoration, authors become dispensable.
The SoA is being blamed for not curing a disease it did not cause.
The cure begins with publishers rediscovering the courage -
and the cultural literacy - to lead.
Dealing with online abuse, harassment and bullying
Author Biography
David Salariya has been making books longer than many publishers have been making decisions. An author, illustrator, designer, and unapologetic meddler-in-all-things-print, he has written, drawn, commissioned, packaged, invented, produced, and exported more children’s books than most committees have meetings - and that’s saying something.
A proud (and paying) member of the Society of Authors, David has been in the trade long enough to remember when publishing still had a backbone and when “IP” did not mean “pipeline,” “content,” or anything that required a consultant to explain it.
He began at Reader’s Digest, escaped intact, and went on to found The Salariya Book Company in 1989 - a small, inventive powerhouse responsible for such long-lived series as You Wouldn’t Want To Be…, Timelines, A Very Peculiar History, and the kind of visual guides that children actually read rather than politely ignore. His books have been published in more than 35 languages, occasionally with his name still attached.
Educated at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, trained in book design and printmaking, and mildly haunted by the smell of cow gum and bromide cameras, David has always believed that design is thinking and that children deserve books made with craft, intelligence, and humour.
These days he writes about publishing’s stranger corners - creativity, literacy, corporate amnesia, the rise of consultancy culture - while developing new series for young readers and quietly rebuilding what the industry likes to call “legacy,” provided it doesn’t get in the way of this quarter’s KPIs.
He lives in Brighton, accompanied by pencils, projects, opinions, and the occasional raised eyebrow.
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