Light the candles and roll out the red carpet: today is our 15th anniversary at Book Riot! All month long, we’ll be looking back on the last 15 years in books and publishing, and you’re invited to join us on a book nerd Eras Tour of sorts.
To stay in the know and up to date, be sure you follow us on social (@BookRiot everywhere), subscribe to the Book Riot Newsletter and the Book Riot Podcast, and visit us here at BookRiot.com for all of our 15th anniversary content.
We’re kicking things off with a hop in the time machine for a look at the biggest literary controversies of the last 15 years. The events we’ll cover run the gamut from fun and frivolous to serious and sobering, from breaking news that changed the industry to stories that lit up the staff chat and gave us a good laugh. We’ll give a rundown of each event followed by commentary from Book Riot Staff: Jeff O’Neal (JO), Rebecca Schinsky (RJS), Sharifah Williams (SZW), Vanessa Diaz (VD), Kelly Jensen (KJ), Danika Ellis (DE), and Erica Ezeifedi (EE).
To the time machine!
The National Book Awards Announce Wrong Title and Ask Wronged Author to Withdraw (2011)One of the biggest literary awards presented to books for young readers is the National Book Award. Imagine, though, what happens when the wrong book is announced as part of the award’s short list. That went down in 2011, when author Lauren Myracle learned her novel Shine landed on the short list. Unfortunately for Myracle, it wasn’t her book that earned that spot. It was a similarly-sounding book by Franny Billingsley called Chime. National Book Foundation staff had misheard the title of the book, but the error wasn’t caught until the announcements were made.
Upon realizing what happened, the National Book Awards elected to keep Shine on the list, but they then added Chime, creating a short list of six titles for the Young People’s Literature category for the first time after. But that wouldn’t be the end of the story.
One week later, officials with the National Book Awards asked Myracle to withdraw her title in order to maintain the integrity of the judges’ initial decisions. Disappointed after a week of ups and downs—going from being a finalist for such a prestigious award, to learning that her book wasn’t actually one of the finalists, to her book being considered a finalist because of the error, to then being asked to remove her title from consideration—Myracle agreed, but with a request. She asked the National Book Awards to donate $5,000 to the Matthew Shepard Foundation. They agreed. Myracle’s supporters, including those who were introduced to her through this error, not only helped increase sales of her books, but they developed a hashtag campaign on Twitter, #isupportshine, to raise its profile even more.
Staff Commentary
- This is a reminder of how important it is to write the things down when you plan on sharing them aurally. Also what a time capsule of YA book covers between Shine and Chime – KJ
- Clearly, the organizers/presenters for the Best Picture award at the 89th Academy Awards did not know of this event. – JO
And the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction is…nobody. It wasn’t the first year the prize went unawarded, but it was the first time it had happened in 35 years. Jurors select the final books that go to the Pulitzer board for a vote, but when no book gets a majority of the votes, no book wins. The three books up for nomination that year were:
- Swamplandia by Karen Russell: This was Russell’s debut and a big deal that it was up for consideration.
- The Pale King by David Foster Wallace: This was Wallace’s posthumous final novel
- Train Dreams by Denis Johnson: Johnson’s novella was adapted into a critically acclaimed film of the same name in 2025.
The literary world could not stop talking about and dissecting the premise that 2012 had produced no great American novel. At the time, we rounded up some highlights of the 2012 Pulitzer controversy. Here’s what Ann Patchett had to say about it over at The New York Times: “The Pulitzer Prize is our best chance as writers and readers and booksellers to celebrate fiction. This was the year we all lost.” Ouch.
The non-selection also drew a critical eye to the selection process:
“…let me also just note that the report that the three-person jury “read about 300 novels each over the course of six months” is, of course, ludicrous. This would require reading almost two books a day, seven days a week, for those entire six months while also being, at least in the case of Maureen Corrigan, a professor of English at Georgetown. Bullshit.”
– John Warner, at The Morning News
None of these authors faded into obscurity after the non-selection of 2012. In fact, they were the talk of the town.
Staff Commentary
- The fiction Pulitzer going to nobody was one of the first literary controversies that came to mind because the uproar it created is what made me start paying closer attention to literary awards. I’ve always been an avid reader, but the way people flew off the handle about this loss taught me a lot about why people in the world of books and publishing get so invested in major literary awards. Also, I cannot believe no Pulitzer Prize in Fiction was awarded the year The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison was published.
Non-awards are the biggest own-goal in the whole literary/publishing racket. This shouldn’t be allowed. – JO - Gone Girl was sitting right there! A miscarriage of literary justice on several levels. – RJS
It’s a story from Peak Book Twitter. In October 2011, just as Book Riot was being born, Jeffrey Eugenides was on one hell of a promotional tour for his novel The Marriage Plot. Eugenides was a big deal at the time; his previous books The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex had both scored the rarest combination of critical acclaim and commercial success, and publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux had its hopes up and its wallet open. Which is how Eugenides found himself on a billboard in Times Square sporting “a silly floral-print button-down (Paul Smith!), his ‘signature’ Shakespearean goatee, and a woven-fabric charcoal vest” unbuttoned and flying like Tyra Banks had pointed a wind machine at it.
Was Eugenides in on the joke, or was he the joke? The ad campaign was a great Rorschach test for the internet literati. The vest got its own Twitter account (@EugenidesVest). Jennifer Weiner parodied it in an ad for her book The Next Best Thing, a move that author Jami Attenberg described as “pretty insidery” but “freaking hilarious” regardless.
Staff Commentary
- Pour one out for the days when the internet was fun and publishers had money to burn. No way this ad was ROI-positive on any metric except joy. — RJS
- We need more fun, unhinged moments like this in publishing. – SZW
- This is the second time this month I’ve gotten a kick out of a famous American author and his slutty little vest (21:08) — VD
It might be hard to remember, but there was a time when New York City’s publishing giants were referred to as the Big Six–Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, Random House, and Simon & Schuster. But in 2013, they became the Big Five when Random House and Penguin completed their merger into one giant publisher.
Industry experts worried about the merger creating a giant conglomerate, and that each of the publishers would lose their unique identities in the process and create a monopoly in the market. One in every four books published in English would be published by the mega-publisher with the merger. Penguin Random House officials, on the other hand, said this would help the publisher better meet demands for digital books, as well as fight back against Amazon.
In 2021, the publishing world was rocked by the news that Penguin Random House wanted to acquire Simon & Schuster, too—but that move was blocked by a federal judge in late 2022.
Staff Commentary
- It should never be forgotten that there was a missed opportunity in naming the mega-publisher Random Penguin House. – KJ
- If you would have asked me how many Big X houses we would have in 2026 right when this news broke, I think I would have made the over/under 3. – JO
First of all, the title of this Vice article talking about this controversy is egregious: “Anne of Green Gables Is Now Totally Boneable.”
And just like that, my childhood and sense of self are irrevocably tainted. Eeyuckk
But yes, in 2013, someone thought that a new edition of Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery needed a new cover, and that that cover would be a young woman posted up in a plaid shirt and a sultry pose with blonde hair, not the iconic red we’re used to Anne having. Mind you, in case you don’t remember, Anne is a very young girl in the series. And who might commit such an atrocity, you might wonder? A self-publisher through Amazon’s CreateSpace self-publishing program. We can just add this to the list of crimes Bezos will have to answer for.
In addition to all of that, looking back at the articles written about the matter to refresh my memory gave me a bit of whiplash, partially because the cover is atrocious, but also because of people’s responses to it. One person said the cover was giving “kiddy pageant tramp,” while another said, “That whore is not Anne of Green fucking Gables.” Big yikes.
Staff Commentary
- Now, who cleared that “boneable” line? Whomst?! – VD
In 2014, BookCon, which was a fan-oriented event at the time loosely aligned with Book Expo America, released the slate of authors making an appearance at the show. And all 30 of the featured human guests (more on this in a second) were white. There was one non-human in the line-up: Grumpy Cat. This led to understandable and transformative pushback (and far less significantly, me being quoted in the New York Times for a tweet).
The organization released a statement that was as tone-deaf as it was evasive, which only brought more attention to the stunning lack of diversity at the event and in the wider industry. In many ways, this was a flashpoint for still ongoing conversations, efforts, and issues with increasing representation in all phases of the book industry.
Staff Commentary
- We Need Diverse Books, which was born directly from this situation, has been around almost as long as BookCon has now. What an incredibly needed organization not only for young people’s literature but for books, period. – KJ
- I wish I could say that more than a decade later, all-white panels and literary events featuring hardly any BIPOC voices was a rarity, but if there’s any silver lining here, it’s that this debacle was put on blast. I wasn’t part of the Book Riot team when it happened, but I’m so proud that we were among the loudest voices pushing back. – SZW
Try as he might, Jonathan Franzen just can’t avoid feeding the trolls.
It started in 2001, when Oprah selected Franzen’s breakout third novel The Corrections for her book club, which was then at the peak of its bookselling powers. Rather than warming up to backstroke through a flood of cash like Scrooge McDuck, the newly-minted superstar balked at appearing on Oprah because he was concerned that such an act would not be aligned with “the high-art literary tradition” and that the Oprah’s Book Club sticker might put off male readers. Always a class act, Lady O stood by her book rec but quietly revoked the invitation. Franzen went on to win the Pulitzer and learned to be (a little bit) cagier with his public commentary.
Jump to 2010. Franzen’s novel Freedom was flying off shelves. He was hailed as “Great American Novelist” on the cover of TIME, the first writer to grace the magazine’s cover in a decade (Stephen King preceded him in 2000). He and Oprah squashed the beef, and he appeared on her show. Jonathan Franzen was back IN, and that was exactly the problem. Female authors fed with up with structural sexism in book media noticed the rave reviews and fawning features for Franzen and began pushing for more equitable coverage. Franzen was a symptom, not the cause, but he made for good branding. Enter Jennifer Weiner (she really was everywhere, y’all) who coined the term “Franzenfreude” to describe “taking pain in the multiple and copious reviews being showered on Jonathan Franzen.” A hashtag and a movement were born, and one Book Riot contributor wondered why Weiner and her compatriot Jodi Picoult weren’t also mad at Jeffrey Eugenides and his infamous vest.
In 2015, just a few years after declaring that “Twitter is the ultimate irresponsible medium,” (where’s the lie?), Franzen once again dropped takes and made waves on tour for Purity, where his comments about race, birds, and the idea of adopting an Iraqi orphan set keyboards aflame.
Anti-Franzen commentary has quieted in the dozen years since Purity—maybe since his 2021 novel Crossroads was met with mixed reviews—but Franzen is getting back out there as he wraps up writing a long-awaited adaptation of The Corrections, which will star Meryl Streep.
Staff Commentary
- Having recently revisited The Corrections, I’m willing to drop perhaps the hottest take of all: Jonathan Franzen was right about (almost) everything. – RJS
- With all love and respect to the great Oprah Winfrey, she, too, must answer for her crimes! – VD
For a minute there, we thought we knew Elena Ferrante’s identity, but the author of The Neapolitan Novels remains one of literature’s great mysteries. In 2016, Italian journalist Claudio Gatti claimed he used forensic accounting to trace Ferrante’s money trail to one Anita Raja, a translator living in Rome. This is why Raja’s image pops right up at the top of searches about Elena Ferrante’s identity and perhaps why her face is unwittingly what you see when you think of the author. It sounded like a stretch even then, but the claim was published by The New York Review of Books and gained significant traction. Comparisons between Raja’s life and what autobiographical details Ferrante offered readers caused an uproar.
If what Gatti was claiming was true, Ferrante’s real-life connection to her literary work was a lie. It was enough to give a Ferrante acolyte an existential crisis, but most fans didn’t need to know who she was in the first place. Writing for The New Yorker shortly after the sensational story published, Alexandra Schwartz brought up this deeper point of friction produced by the claim, concerning an author’s right not to be known. Ferrante has made her desire for anonymity clear and the desperate attempt to unmask her read like a cheap publicity stunt.
Staff Commentary
- I’m still not sure where I land on this. On the one hand, Ferrante clearly doesn’t want their identity known. On the other, they are publishing hugely successful and influential novels and are now part of history. As time goes on, this seems more like real news and less like gotcha journalism. – JO
- Let her live in anonymity! And I do mean her, specifically. Anyone who thinks a man wrote these books? Straight to jail. –RJS
In August 2017, Twitter went abuzz over a new book landing at the coveted #1 position on The New York Times Bestsellers list for Young Adult Fiction. No one had ever heard of Handbook for Morals by Lani Sarem, and bypassing the 25-week reigning #1 title, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, was hard for many to believe. Turns out that skepticism had merit. YA author Phil Stamper began asking questions about the book’s origins–a small website named GeekNation–and why it was unavailable to purchase from the major book retail websites. What unraveled was a scheme by the publisher and author to bulk purchase the title from bookstores that report sales for New York Times list reporting. It wasn’t long before the book was removed from the Times list, with the list issuing a rare correction with the next week’s list.
It turns out that Sarem had a long history of wild storytelling that only made her story far more interesting than the poorly written and edited book she cheated to the top of the NYT list. This not only had a 23-hour bestseller, it had Carrot Top, N*Sync, Wayne Newton, and more,
In an era where it was easy to write off the YA community on social media as drama, this story was a reminder that the YA community cares deeply about young adult literature.
Staff Commentary
- This story was wild, start to finish, but one of my favorite aspects of this was one with a good ending. Sarem was the former manager of the band Blues Traveler, and I connected with Blues Traveler on Twitter while this story was playing out. I was trying to help fund classrooms across the country seeking books via DonorsChoose, and I asked whoever was behind the Blues Traveler account if they’d consider making a donation to an El Paso classroom. Not only did they make a donation, they fully funded the classroom. (I also was a guest on an episode of Worst Best Sellers talking about the experience of reading the book and spoiler: it was not good) – KJ
- It is wild that we are just OK with the secret incantation that the NYT uses to come up with its lists. “NYT bestseller” is marketing gold and it is a proprietary, secret, and flawed. Not awesome. – JO
- Let this be your (and my) reminder to live life with at least 50% more audacity. —VD
When you think of the sorts of goods you might receive in a bookish subscription box, you’d probably expect a signed book plate, a pen or pencil, maybe a pin or bookmark, or a jazzy little sticker. But once upon a time in 2018, a romance-themed book box got a little edgy with it: mixed in with a book sleeve, a pillow case, some lip balm, fanfic, and an art print was a sexy, soapy surprise: soap in the shape of a phallus.
Dick soap. The box had dick soap. Though as one BuzzFeed writer made sure to clarify: “It’s soap that looks like a dick, not soap for your dick, fyi.”
The internet had some pretty predictable feelings about this sudsy scandal. Mixed in with the camp of folks looking gleefully forward to bathtime (rock on) were a whole bunch of peo