I have inside information. From what I understand the entire SMP team (or the majority) wanted to make a statement long ago but have been unequivocally blocked by the macmillan legal team. The problem is that this situation is different to an employee making bigoted comments in most situations. To understand this, you need to know that here in the US, political beliefs aren’t a protected category, and so you can be fired for them, but religion is. If it can be argued that an employee was sharing a belief that is tied into their religion, it becomes federally illegal to fire them or reprimand them for it, and it has been determined legally that this is one of those cases. (Definitely not loving the conflation of Zionism and Judaism there, but that’s apparently the legal determination.)

Everyone is right to be surprised that these comments haven’t been addressed yet, as in any other case where an employee makes heinous comments like this, it would’ve been. However, this is federal law we’re talking about right now. It doesn’t matter how much SMP may want to address these comments on a moral level, or how much they suffer for it financially, there is no amount of pressure in the world that will make them break federal law. We are not going to receive a response from them, ever. It’s a horrendous situation, especially for readers who have been hurt by these comments and who rightly want justice and security moving forward. It might be a small comfort to some to know that the reasons behind the silence aren’t a lack of caring, or (intentional) condoning, but US law? I don’t know. I think the whole thing sucks.

The outcome to my understanding is that they now expect that while the big upcoming releases (for example Rebecca Ross) are unlikely to be affected by a boycott in any measurable way, the smaller authors without as much pull (debuts, midlist) will probably have their books undersell, and they will become tax write-offs who won’t have their next books bought. It’s a huge shame this employee has essentially doomed a number of authors’ careers to end prematurely—especially when smaller authors are the most likely to be marginalized to begin with, but I wouldn’t expect someone with their views to care much about the collateral damage due to their own actions. As usual, it’s the marginalized who have to pay the price while the actual people responsible get off scott-free.

Seems like this is a situation that’s going to hurt readers and authors alike, while sparing the person who actually deserves punishment here.