In an irony so delicious that even Jane Austen would have wished it flowed from her quill, writers fortunate enough to be contracted to HarperCollins — by some accounts the second-largest publishing house in America — are facing the prospect of their works being kneecapped by those tasked with midwifing them into the world.  

This plot twist comes 11 days into a strike initiated by Local 2110 of the UAW, which represents about 250 unionized HarperCollins employees in editorial, publicity, sales, marketing, legal, and design. They seek higher pay and more generous family leave. Globally, HarperCollins employs more than 4,000 people.

HarperCollins, which was bought by Ruper Murdoch’s NewsCorp in 1989 and now features an armada of imprints, counts E.B. White, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, Hilary Mantel, Mikhael Gorbachev, J.R.R. Tolkien, and many others heavyweights among its pantheon of authors.     

In addition to requesting that starting salaries spike to $50,000 from $45,000, the employees want HarperCollins to increase the racial diversity in its ranks. The union’s Twitter bio expresses this commitment, informing that its “office is on unceded Lenape land” and “Black lives matter.”

One tweet calls the publisher’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion training a “joke” and asks, in reference to HarperCollins’s assertion of a diverse culture, “Where?” Another warns “publishing hopefuls” not to “cross the picket line” and offers a graphic that reads, “Say no to Scabs.”

At a demonstration outside corporate headquarters on Thursday, striking employees held up signs emblazoned with the words “Passion Doesn’t Pay the Rent” and “Where the Wild Things Are Underpaid,” the latter a reference to the Maurice Sendak children’s book classic that is a HarperCollins mainstay. A call went out to send “gluten free and vegan food” to the picket line. 

In pursuing the demands of its members, the HarperCollins union is dealing a blow to its authors, many of whom are not literary royalty but Grub Street strivers. The striking employees demand of “book reviewers and blurbers: No new reviews until we’re back to work with a fair contract.” 

Without such early publicity, many books will have less chance of making a splash. For authors, future contracts and compensation are directly tied to sales. This makes the reviewing and blurbing game a high-stakes one, at least for the writers who have not yet secured a place on bookshelves across America.   

The striking employees are refusing to log into their email, leaving time-sensitive correspondence related to publication tasks to wither on the vine. The union argues that they don’t “want people to cancel their reviews” but rather to “delay until we have a contract.” 

One HarperCollins author, Craig Seymour, expressed concern over this hardball tactic. He tweeted that “this might work for BookTok” — the phenomenon of publicity via TikTok — but that it would “hurt new authors and writers of color” because it is “hard to imagine editors are going to be able to squeeze in a glut” of reviews of backlogged books.      

Another author, Kosoko Jackson, had little patience for expressions of his fellow writers’ concerns. He tweeted, “honest to god if I see one more ‘what about the authors’ post in relation to THOSE WHO HELP US MAKE OUR BOOKS NOT MAKING A LIVING WAGE AND BEING FORCED OUT OF THE INDUSTRY, i’m going to scream.” 

In an Instagram post, the HarperCollins Union insists that “we still support our authors and want them to succeed.” It urges readers to “support authors by buying Harper books from indie bookshops.” However, in the same post, it tells reviewers to “hold your reviews, nominations, and any other content until we have fair contracts.”

During an earnings call this month, HarperCollins disclosed that in its most recent quarter, revenue was down 11 percent relative to last year. Its earnings in that same period fell 54 percent. It has pledged to continue to “negotiate in good faith.” 

New York magazine reports that one striking 32-year-old associate editor expressed her desire to “live without a roommate at some point in her life, visit her family, and get Lasik so she can continue to read.”