Since I\u2019ve had to use YouTube to learn how to perform the various tasks associated with publishing a book, my YouTube feed has filled up with the various subjects that authors seem to get involved with.\u00a0 So, I\u2019ve been bombarded with videos on every aspect of writing, editing and marketing books.\u00a0 But this week I seem to have arrived at the crazy outer reaches of the book publishing ecosystem; namely, sensitivity readers.\u00a0 Now I had heard of alpha readers and beta readers.\u00a0 These are the first people you give your book to in order to get feedback on the story from normal people.\u00a0 This all makes sense to me.\u00a0 But sensitivity readers are something entirely different.\u00a0 Apparently, these are people who go through your book looking for reasons to be offended by your story.<\/p>\n
Sensitivity readers will read your book and then provide you with hundreds of notes on all of the ways that whatever you say can offend a multitude of easily \u201ctriggered\u201d types of people.\u00a0 One video talked about how story lines and even characters can upset a whole host of fragile readers.\u00a0 Women, minorities, blind people, deaf people, paraplegics, quadriplegics, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, queers, \u201cnon-binary,\u201d all the various kinds of \u201ctrans\u201d people, women wearing septum rings, antifa supporters, pacifists, the homeless, meth heads, heroin addicts, other drug addicts, women with blue hair, the lactose intolerant, the gluten intolerant, vegans, poor people, pedophiles, other sex offenders, dyslexics, the neurodivergent, ADHD individuals and many, many more.\u00a0 The only ones they left out were the red-green color blind.\u00a0 That really ticked me off.<\/p>\n
I looked at this list and realized that many of the people on this list might be offended by my book.\u00a0 After all my protagonist unleashes a non-lethal chemical attack on an antifa riot that includes many blue-haired women with septum rings and several sex offenders in their ranks.\u00a0 Without even trying I had unknowingly transgressed against the boundaries meant to be protected by sensitivity readers.<\/p>\n
This made me sad.<\/p>\n
Then I found out how much these people charge for their service (0.5 to 2.0 cents per word).\u00a0 For my book that would come out to between $325 to $1300.\u00a0 So, that\u2019s a lot of money!\u00a0 Plus, I read that they literally come up with hundreds of items that must be \u201cfixed.\u201d\u00a0 Hundreds.\u00a0 That would take weeks to edit.\u00a0 So, I would be paying someone many hundreds of dollars to make even more work for myself at the same time as she made my book much less enjoyable for my target audience; normal people.<\/p>\n
Well, I decided not to hire a sensitivity reader.\u00a0 But I felt guilty.\u00a0 So, to assuage my grief I instead watched a bunch of videos about sensitivity readers.\u00a0 And it worked out great.\u00a0 These videos are hilarious.\u00a0 To hear the various absurdities that get brought up by sensitivity readers to these terrified writers is to experience comedic genius.\u00a0 The things these people worry about are stunningly stupid.\u00a0 They\u2019re worried about elves and goblins in fantasy stories being mistaken as dog whistles for different races and ethnicities.\u00a0 They worry about people being cured of diseases in the story making readers who have those diseases upset.\u00a0 And the funniest thing of all, the readers and the writers look exactly how you would imagine people who worry about such things would look like.\u00a0 It\u2019s a wonderful life.<\/p>\n