I’ve been an Authors Guild member for 33 years. The following is a communication from todays Guild mailing.
The Authors Guild and a coalition of bookstores, booksellers, authors, and publishers filed a lawsuit on July 25, 2023, challenging Texas House Bill 900, the ironically-titled “Reader Act.” The law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution by regulating speech in a vague and overbroad manner and acting as a prior restraint of speech. It requires booksellers to rate books for any sexual content if they are to be sold to school libraries, without any clear guidelines on what that means. The law potentially requires the removal of classics like Romeo and Juliet, Of Mice and Men, and Lonesome Dove. The proposed system is highly impractical for booksellers who simply do not have the resources to review and rate every book they sell, and would especially harm small bookstores. The law would cause self-censorship and harm authors nationwide with the stigma attached when their books are publicly rated for sexual content.
The law’s effects could affect book sales across the country as educational publishers typically cannot afford to produce different versions of books for different markets. Publishers would likely not publish books at all for fear they might fall afoul of the Texas law, and authors of childrens, young adult, and classic literature could lose sales to the school market across the country. Moreover, labeling a book as having sexual content in Texas could trigger challenges in other jurisdictions.
Wherever you live, we urge all members to get involved in this fight. Please join our virtual event on September 25 to learn how you can help defend the freedom to read in Texas.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/19/texas-book-bans/
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/list-of-texas-banned-books-shows-state-has-most-in-us-17480532
