Authors facing increasing pressure on 'morality'

The Royal Society of Literature’s president Marina Warner has lamented the increasing pressure on authors to “win gold stars for conduct”.

The novelist and academic spoke out about the pressure of marketing and appearances, and how writers’ personal lives are viewed along with their works, in her address at the society’s fellowship ceremony earlier this week.  Her comments have been supported by the Society of Authors chief executive Nicola Solomon, who is concerned about the increasing stringency of morality clauses in contracts.

Warner, who is the first female RSL president since its founding in 1820, outlined the problems around securing funding for literature as well as “a growing pressure to be a personality and perform in public”. Warner suggested that increasing focus on a writer’s personality and morality was unwelcome and that “being good” should not be conflated with “good writing”.

Festival appearances, marketing and social media were growing more important for authors, Warner said, with writers forced to present themselves and perform publicly.

"[There is] the demand for the human writer to put yourself in the frame,” she said. “Audiences want to see and hear in the flesh, the person behind the pen.”

The scrutiny on writers’ morality was also of concern to Warner. She claimed that "there’s another, deeper problem gaining ground … the writer’s personal data, their political views and moral conduct are projected back into the text and then invoked to assess the work’s value".

Giving an example, the professor of English and creative writing at Birkbeck, University of London, explained: "A student asked me the other day, ‘Do writers have to be virtuous?’ [Previously] the question would more likely be, ‘Does the writer have to be an outsider, an outcast, a delinquent, a criminal? The student has sensed an underlying principle, that writers are expected to bear witness to the age and often address the wrongs that are crowding in, in their books and in their lives… But striving to be good is not the same as good writing. Engaging in fictive truth-telling is not the same as winning gold stars for conduct."

Warner’s comments follow industry figures’ concerns over publisher’s increasing use of morality clauses in contracts with authors.

The Bookseller revealed last year how the clauses were increasingly giving publishers the right to drop authors who “act immorally”. The use of morality clauses were creeping into more contracts possibly as a result of the Milo Yiannopoulos case, industry insiders said, which led to Simon & Schuster US fighting a lawsuit with the controversial figure before the suit was abandoned.

Use of the clauses have reportedly continued to grow following the #MeToo movement, according to Publishers Weekly and one literary agent confirmed to The Bookseller that the clauses had grown more inhibitive over the last year, sometimes dictated by the "subjective whims of public outcry".

The agent, who wished not to be named, said: “Morality clauses are indeed becoming more prevalent in US contracts. The clauses we see are often far too open-ended and entirely at the discretion of the publisher – sometimes with loose definitions of past, present and future ‘behaviour’ or judgement by the subjective whims of a public outcry."

They added: "Whilst I understand and am sympathetic to publishers desire to protect themselves, morality clauses are of great concern for both the rights of authors and the nibbling at the edges of freedom of speech, and as a company we resist their usage - as should publishing as a whole.”

Solomon told The Bookseller Warner’s comments reflected writers' experiences and also warned on a threat to freedom of expression.

"Marina Warner’s comments reflect our experience of publishers attempting to insert ‘morality clauses’ into contracts," she said. "These are clauses that allow publishers to drop an author who behaves ‘immorally’.

“We are getting into dangerous territory here as such clauses are a real threat to freedom of expression. Why should a publisher be able to determine what constitutes ‘immoral’ behaviour? Authors should be valued for the quality of their writing rather than their personal characteristics, virtuous or otherwise.”