Heena Sharma Blog

When you see publishers and authors chatting chummily at book parties, you’re likely to think that they’re on the same side — the side of great literature and the free flow of ideas. In reality, their interests are at odds. Publishers are marketers. They don’t like scandals that might threaten their bottom line — or the bottom lines of the multinational media conglomerates of which most form a small part. Authors are people, often flawed. Sometimes they behave badly. How, for instance, should publishers deal with the # MeToo era , when accusations of sexual impropriety can lead to books being pulled from shelves and syllabuses, as happened last year with the novelists Junot Díaz and Sherman Alexie? One answer is the increasingly widespread “morality clause.” Over the past few years, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Penguin Random House have added such clauses to their standard book contracts.   Read More Business Standard

In the wake of the # MeToo movement , almost 80 per cent of men have become overly cautious in their interactions with women colleagues, according to a report. The study by market research and analysis company Velocity MR, which had over 2,500 respondents across Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Chennai, noted that eight out of 10 people said that formal workplace interactions have been highly impacted as a result of the movement . It found that close to 80 per cent of the respondents said fear of losing their career, family reputation, social stigma, and scepticism could be some of the reasons for the victims not reporting the cases earlier. Also, around 70 per cent of the respondents agreed that even after reporting the cases, victims still face threats. The study further observed that close to 50 per cent of the respondents disapproved of victims reporting the abuse later, while two in five males supported the victims saying they are right in repo...