I'm a Ghostwriter—Book Bans Are Beneficial

You see them all the time at libraries and bookstores: A display of banned books.

Nothing sums up the current hysteria around books in the United States more than a selection of allegedly banned books ranging from To Kill a Mockingbird to a recent graphic novels and Young Adult (YA) books on LGBT themes on a large end cap at your local Barnes & Noble.

For starters, there's the obvious irony that these books are not really banned, or they wouldn't be on sale, much less on display.

In many cases, the books in question were either targets of a proposed ban, briefly pulled from shelves in one part of the country years ago, or were recently taken out of circulation at a school library, typically thousands of miles away from the display you're looking at.

To be strictly accurate, a book is banned when the government prohibits it from being published or sold. That rarely happens in the United States, thanks to the First Amendment.

When it does, it's typically either because the book contains graphic descriptions of sexual situations involving minors or descriptions of how to build certain kinds of explosives or weapons systems that no one outside of the military should be reading.

Even then, you can still find copies of these books online.

But you can bet that if the manager of your local bookstore decided to create a display of the Improvised Munitions Handbook or Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, customers would complain.

But that's not the case here. These so-called banned books aren't being suppressed, in fact, quite the opposite. Time after time, when some local school district decides that a particular book is a bridge too far for their students, the news gets out and that book shoots right up the bestseller lists.

It's the publishing version of the Streisand effect, named for the time that singer Barbra Streisand tried to suppress a photo of her Malibu home, only to draw even more attention to it.

It happened when the book was about the Holocaust, such as the graphic novel Maus. It's happened when the book is about contemporary race relations, like The Hate U Give. And it's happened when the book was about LGBT characters, like All Boys Aren't Blue.

Florida has gotten most of the attention recently, because of a 2022 law that made it easier for parents and others to challenge specific book titles in local schools. But according to one report, only 21 of the state's 67 counties removed any books over the course of a year, with only five removing more than 10 books.

News reports tend to focus on the more award-winning books and classics that are on the list, such as Toni Morrison's Beloved, while ignoring that some were removed from library shelves because they feature graphic scenes of intimacy that aren't age-appropriate.

To be fair, not every "banned" book gets a sales bump, and the bans tend to help established authors and well-known books more than works by first-time authors. But that may be because established authors already know how to get publicity.

When I was younger, I loved to read, especially two books by C.S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia series and The Space Trilogy. And reading inspired me to write my own books. When I was 20 years old, I received a two-book publishing deal from a small independent press for novels I'd written in college. As people began to love my writing and novels, I've since begun helping them tell their own stories.

As it happens, I worked with an author on a not-quite-banned book recently. Dilbert creator and bestselling author Scott Adams had his long-running comic strip ended by multiple newspapers and his forthcoming book contract canceled over some hyperbolic remarks on race that were intended to stir up discussion. Scott Adams' books were twice banned, but Amazon reversed the decision.

This was far more of a cancellation than a single school library pulling a book off the shelf, but because of Adams' libertarian-leaning politics, the story was not covered as another dangerous book banning.

But that didn't matter. Adams already had a connection with his audience through his YouTube channel, social media, and existing book sales, so he forged ahead. He was able to get back the rights to his book from the publisher and then worked with me to self-publish it. After a brief hiccup with Amazon's technical side, it went to press.

Adams then went to his audience and let them know that there were people who didn't want his book published and they responded by buying it, en masse. Sales shot up, making it a No. 1 bestseller on the Movers and Shakers list on Amazon, meaning it was the top, fastest-selling book on the entire website.

I suspect that many authors and publishers are following a similar playbook when it comes to the "book bans" in the news. As a publicity effort, I applaud these authors selling more books. But I'm still not going to call it a book ban.

I understand how negativity towards authors results in their simultaneous skittishness towards promoting their books, and readers tuning in more to books that are being banned and otherwise receiving negative attention.

That's why whenever I receive a critical review, I make sure to share it with my audience. I even took one of my harshest 1-star reviews and put it on a large poster, so it was the first thing people saw at my book launch event. People laugh.

The negative review is so poorly written that it's a tacit endorsement of the book. And that's what I am getting across with my own book. It's practicing what it teaches. Here's hoping it will one day be banned! Worried your book will get banned? You should be so lucky!

Joshua Lisec is an internationally acclaimed ghostwriter and persuasive writing coach who is author of the new bestselling book So Good They Call You a Fake.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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