Publishers have long supported specialty imprints that feature particular kinds of books: There are imprints that promote conservative books, such as Sentinel at Penguin Random House and Threshold at Simon & Schuster, and imprints that promote genres like romance (Flirt at Random House) and cooking (Anthony Bourdain Books at Harper-Collins).
But we have now officially entered the era of the “woke” imprint, with news that Jill Soloway, LGBTQ activist and creator of the Amazon series Transparent, about the adventures of a transgender man and his family, has struck a deal with Amazon Publishing. Bookforum’s website announced the venture, complete with politically correct, grammatically hideous pronoun use: “Jill Soloway is starting their own imprint.”
The imprint, Topple Books, borrows its name from Soloway’s television production company and likely shares its worldview. First among the “principles” listed on the production company’s website: “Our revolution must be intersectional.” (Other principles include: “Be Chill,” “Promote good vibes,” and “Gather Often” for something called “heart-connection.”) The Topple company has also published several “manifestos” that advise readers to do things such as “identify unused real estate in your area or neighborhood” and use it to “dig mass graves” for guns, and go to Jerusalem and “stand there, at the borders forever, holding hands to protect that space. We declare a new inevitable of peace [sic] in which the Female Face of God will show.”
Revolution appears to be the guiding force behind the imprint. “We live in a complicated, messy world where every day we have to proactively re-center our own experiences by challenging privilege,” Soloway said in a statement described by the Hollywood Reporter. “With Topple Books, we’re looking for those undeniably compelling essential voices so often not heard. I can’t think of a more perfect collaborator than Amazon Publishing to make our dream of a revolutionary publishing imprint come true.”
The life of the activist-TV-creator-publisher is busy, however (the Topple production company says both a store of Topple merchandise and a virtual reality component are Coming Soon!), so Soloway will serve as “editor-at-large,” which, according to BusinessWire, means helping existing Amazon Publishing editors “select books for publication and pen introductions.”
But Soloway might want to take a more hands-on (or rather, detail-oriented) approach to her publishing work than she has to her television productions. The home page of the Topple production company’s website features a lengthy statement that reads, in part: “We live in a country and world where the systems of power have operated in favor of men, and this is especially true in Hollywood. The egregious and heinous behavior of those who perform, perpetuate, or passively condone acts of harassment or assault is one of the worst manifestations of this patriarchal system.”
If this sounds a wee bit defensive, it’s because one of the recently accused perpetrators of this “egregious and heinous” behavior is Emmy-award-winning Transparent star Jeffrey Tambor, who was officially fired from the show after some women accused him of harassing them on-set.
Unlike many men caught up in the #MeToo moment, however, Tambor did not go quietly; instead, he protested the lack of transparency about the accusations made against him and the witchhunt-like atmosphere of Amazon’s response. “I am profoundly disappointed in Amazon’s handling of these false accusations against me,” he told Deadline Hollywood. “I am even more disappointed in Jill Soloway’s unfair characterization of me as someone who would ever cause harm to any of my fellow cast mates.” He also called out the “toxic politicized atmosphere” on the set of Transparent, which doesn’t seem like hyperbole. As one of Soloway’s writers and fellow producers, Our Lady J, posted on Instagram after Tambor was let go from the show, “We cannot let trans content be taken down by a single cis man.”
Which gives us an idea for Soloway’s first Topple Books product: a reissue of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, with an introduction by Jeffrey Tambor.
