What Author Care Should Actually Look Like

The Bookseller published a piece this week on LGBTQ+ children's authors having school visits cancelled after parent complaints, and aside from the main point of the article, there was something else that I felt probably hadn’t been fully addressed. Matt Cain, author and co-founder of Pansy Books, said publishers generally fail to prepare authors for the hostility they might face while promoting their own work. Usborne's fiction publisher talked about media training and a "robust internal protocol" for safeguarding issues. Between those two points is a conversation the industry doesn't have often enough: what does author care actually need to include, beyond the advance and the edit?

I think about this with every author I work with, and it has nothing to do with genre, subject matter or how newsworthy a book might be. It's a basic part of preparing someone to put their work, and often themselves, into public view.

Every author I work with gets a conversation about what they might face once the book is out. That includes the obvious things, industry colleagues who get territorial or unkind when someone else's book does well, and online trolling, which can range from a handful of unpleasant comments to something far more sustained. Most authors underestimate how personal this can feel, because writing a book is such a private act that having strangers respond to it publicly, sometimes cruelly, catches people off guard even when they think they're prepared for it.

I worked with a couple once whose book led to some genuinely awful bullying after release. It mattered more than usual in that case because one of the authors had previously disclosed dealing with PTSD from bullying earlier in life, which meant the stakes around launch prep weren't abstract, they were about someone's actual wellbeing. That's the kind of detail that never appears in a marketing plan, but it should absolutely shape one.

Then there's the no less difficult version of this problem: family. Not every relative is thrilled when a book comes out, particularly if they appear in it, especially if it’s in a way that's true but unflattering. People who feel exposed tend to act out, and some will make demands, ask for changes, or push back in ways that have nothing to do with the book's quality and everything to do with how it makes them look. Authors need to know that's a realistic possibility before it happens, not while they're already dealing with it.

If you're working with someone in the public eye, a well known name or a celebrity, the stakes go up again. Litigation risk becomes a real consideration, especially in the US, where the threshold for a legal threat is often lower than people expect. Honest writing is still worth doing. It just means proper legal and reputational planning needs to be in place before publication, not scrambled together after a letter arrives.

None of this is about any one category of author or any one kind of book. It's about treating author care as a genuine part of the job, handled proactively instead of fixed after something's already gone wrong. The Bookseller's piece on cancelled school visits is really a specific example of a much broader pattern: publishers, and anyone advising authors, need to plan for the world an author is about to step into, not just the book they've written.

Source: The Bookseller, "LGBTQ+ authors see school visits cancelled after 'complaints from parents'", 16 July 2026.