Author Events and Free Speech

By Christopher M. Finan, President of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression

A bookseller called me for help last fall.

The bookstore had booked Stephen Jimenez to talk about his new book, The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard, which was being published by Steerforth Press. The book challenged the widely accepted story that Shepard had been beaten to death for making a pass at a man in a Laramie, Wyoming, bar in 1998. Jimenez infuriated many who viewed the murder as a hate crime.

The bookseller reported that she was being pressed to cancel the event with Jimenez. An activist had launched a petition on Change.org and was urging 23 independent stores to withdraw their invitations to the author.

The controversy that ensued following the publication of The Book of Matt is recalled in an afterword in the paperback edition, which has just been published by Steerforth. In the afterword, Jimenez thanks independent booksellers for refusing to bend to pressure. He describes how Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine, owners of Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., welcomed him warmly and introduced him with strong statements of support for free speech. In Denver, Tattered Cover Book Store owner Joyce Meskis sat in the last row, ready to eject anyone who might attempt to disrupt the event.

But the bookseller who called me last fall was in a quandary. The bookstore had many gay customers. What should she do?

It isn’t always easy to know. That’s why the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression will present a program called, “It Could Happen to You: Booksellers Confront Free Speech Emergencies” at the Winter Institute in February. Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books in Miami and Jamie Fiocco of Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, will discuss their experiences with controversial author events, which are the most frequent emergencies that booksellers face.

It is important to anticipate emergencies because it is exceptionally hard to think clearly when someone is denouncing you, when your store is being flooded with e-mails and phone calls, and when the media is demanding to know why you have “created” all this furor.

It also becomes hard to weigh the potential consequences of your actions. On the one hand, you fear alienating customers, but the role of a bookstore is to give people the books they want. Author events are a critical way of introducing customers to new authors and ideas. Canceling an event under pressure would be abhorrent to many of your best customers, potentially creating a damaging backlash.

My telephone conversation with the bookseller didn’t last long. A moment’s reflection convinced her that she did not want to do anything to undermine her store’s reputation for encouraging debate.

ABFFE was able to help in other ways as well. We distributed a model statement on author appearances to the stores that Jimenez was visiting and encouraged them to print it on store letterhead. The statement emphasizes the role the author events play in promoting debate over important issues. After all, these occasions are not solely for the author’s benefit. Customers can ask questions and challenge ideas with which they disagree.

ABFFE also issued a press release defending the right of booksellers to host events by any author they choose. It linked to a letter that we sent to the activist who was leading the charge against Book of Matt. We said that his protest “demonstrates a poor understanding of bookselling and has the potential to stifle discussion of a significant historical event.” He didn’t reply, and his campaign quickly evaporated. His petition on Change.org was a dud.

ABFFE would have taken the same position in a controversy about any book. This is an issue of free speech: The content of the book is irrelevant. But it was gratifying to intervene on behalf of a book that was the result of especially courageous reporting by Jimenez and publishing by Chip Fleischer of Steerforth. The revelation of a great deal of new information about the Shepard case was, for many, a painful reexamination of a crime that has great symbolic importance to gay men and women and their families.

Truth is never easy to find. Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the best test is the power of a thought to get itself accepted in “the competition of the market.” We protect free speech to let the people decide. If booksellers are going to defend the marketplace of ideas, we need to prepare: We never know when it will be our turn to be the target of protests.