The Bookseller - Comment - The digital picket line

Ahead of this past week's "tentative" agreement between HarperCollins and its union members, one of the requests made by the union was for reviewers and "blurbers" to pause reviews of HarperCollins titles and to post content around the strike to maintain what has become known as the digital picket line. Union workers had begun a strike in November 2022 over contracts, pay and diversity intiatives.

Anyone in publishing or even tangentially linked to the book world will be familiar with the changes TikTok has wrought, not only on the industry, but on readers and authors alike.

The question of the digital picket line was mentioned in an off-hand comment by a TikTok creator when they said other creators were avoiding talking about HarperCollins titles. As an interesting aside, I thought, could this be a prelude to BookTok's politicisation-a community of readers becoming the inverse, as active non-readers? A show of solidarity, not with publishing houses as brands, but with the workers who make them up? A subculture turning from the joy of reading towards examining what you read?