Famed author Stephen King says he feels “very uneasy” over the Hachette Book Group’s decision to drop Woody Allen’s autobiography, “Apropos of Nothing,” a day after dozens of the company’s employees staged a walkout in protest of the book’s acquisition.
“The Hachette decision to drop the Woody Allen book makes me very uneasy,” King tweeted on Friday. “It’s not him; I don’t give a damn about Mr. Allen. It’s who gets muzzled next that worries me.”
“‘First they came for the pedophiles’ is NOT A THING, sir,” a fan responded, while one woman said she works at Hachette and “walked out at the risk of my job. We publish many conservative books and I don’t blink. Mr Allen has the ability to self publish and a publicity team to get him an interview. He wanted our respectability and legitimization and we fought to stop that.”
On Friday, the publisher said that it will not move forward with publishing Allen’s memoir, which was scheduled for an April 7 release, and will return all rights to Allen.
The book’s acquisition by Grand Central Publishing, a Hachette imprint, was first announced on Monday. The book had previously struggled to find a publisher; last year, the New York Times reported that executives at four of the major publishing houses turned down the book in light of allegations that Allen had molested his daughter Dylan Farrow several years ago. (Allen has repeatedly denied the accusation.)
On Thursday, dozens of Hachette employees staged a walkout in protest of the book’s acquisition in solidarity with Dylan and Ronan Farrow, both of whom had publicly criticized the book’s acquisition, and survivors of sexual assault.
See King’s tweet below.
The Hachette decision to drop the Woody Allen book makes me very uneasy. It's not him; I don't give a damn about Mr. Allen. It's who gets muzzled next that worries me.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) March 6, 2020