Chapter Twenty-Six:  The Bookstores Strike Back

Throughout all history, revolutions are often credited to moving speeches, angry crowds and men climbing statues. This one however, began with a single bookseller in Portland becoming annoyed by cardboard.

It all started off at a single book store in Portland, whose owner had posted a photograph of her front window: The studio’s publishing partner had sent all independent bookshops a promotional cardboard display featuring Brick Holland’s face, with the words NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE plastered across it and several plastic flames that could be attached to neighbouring shelves using tabs of doubtful loyalty.

Inside the display sat a tie-in edition of Purradise.

It had Localad’s name on the cover.

It did not have Localad’s ending inside.

It was a cover that did not, notably, correspond to the actual text inside it, because the tie-in edition, Localad and Priya would later confirm through some careful legal research, had in fact been produced using a rushed, unauthorized synopsis-style rewrite of the ending that the studio's publishing partner had commissioned to better match and promote the film, changes Localad had never approved and had, in fact, never been asked about at all.

The Portland bookseller read the last chapter, compared it with the plain black edition and posted a photograph of the display in a recycling bin. She had taken the tie-in display down entirely, replacing it in the photograph with a modest stack of Localad's own self-published edition, captioned simply: We're carrying the real one instead.

Normally, independent booksellers are a difficult people to organise because they have spent their whole lives reading about failed empires and recognise authority when it enters carrying a sales target. But they are extremely easy to quickly unite around a publisher behaving badly.

Similar photographs quickly followed from Chicago, Dublin, Brisbane, Toronto, Edinburgh and a shop in rural Vermont whose owner placed the tie-in edition beneath a handwritten sign reading FANTASY, BUT NOT IN THE INTENDED SENSE!

That photograph spread the way the earlier ones had, faster this time, carried by an audience already primed by months of the viral contrast, and within two weeks, dozens of other independent bookstores had done the same thing, posting their own versions of tie-in displays being removed, sometimes returned to the distributor entirely, replaced with modest, unglamorous stacks of Localad's edition, plain black cover, serif title, the same nine words on the back that had, by this point, become something close to a rallying cry.

Harbuor & Page received the news through Dara, who rang at seven in the morning speaking at the speed of scandal.

“Hey, have you seen the tie-in?”

“I’ve seen the cover.”

“Not the text? They changed the ending.”

Localad became very still.

There are angers that shout and angers that clarify. Localad’s anger had spent years being shy. It now stood up.

It was the tie-in edition's unauthorized rewrite, more than anything else, that finally pushed Localad past the careful, scrupulous silence he'd maintained for months. He called Priya the day he confirmed the changes. Not comparisons to the film, which he'd avoided discussing entirely, but a printed book, sold under his own name and title, containing an ending he had never written and had never been shown before it went to print.

Priya had obtained a copy by lunch.

By three, her calm had developed edges.

“This is not covered by the film-rights agreement,” Priya confirmed, after a day spent reviewing the licensing paperwork. “They licensed the branding. They did not acquire the right to rewrite the novel, put your name on it and distribute the result. That's a straightforward publishing rights violation. They had no authority to alter or reprint your text in any form without your approval, tie-in or otherwise."

“So they broke the contract?”

“They have not merely broken it. They have placed all the pieces in a box, labelled it authorised edition and invoiced the retailers.”

"So, can I do anything about that. Can we stop it?"

Priya paused, and Localad heard the faint opening of legal instruments.

"You can do quite a lot about that," Priya said, and for the first time in the entire process, Localad heard something in her voice that was not merely professional satisfaction but something closer to genuine anger on his behalf. "This isn't a grey area, Localad. This is them simply taking your words and changing them without asking, and putting your name on the result. I'd like your permission to send a formal letter."

He gave it.

The letter, when it landed on the studio's publishing partner's desk, was seven pages long, contained no insults and achieved the emotional effect of a sword being laid very carefully on a table. It produced results faster than eighteen months of polite emails ever had. The unauthorized tie-in edition was pulled from distribution within a month, quietly, without any public announcement, though the story of its existence had, by then, already spread through the same networks of independent booksellers who had first noticed the discrepancy, adding one more layer to a controversy that the studio's silence had done nothing to contain.

The studio made neither an apology nor any announcement. The distributor referred to and blamed a “metadata and production alignment issue.” This was impressive because none of the words was guilty individually.

"They keep thinking if they don't say anything, it'll go away," Marjory observed, watching the story develop across another wave of bookstore posts. "I don't think they understand yet that the silence is the thing keeping it alive." Meanwhile, Bookshops around the globe continued replacing the tie-in with Localad’s edition.

Marjory created a window display using black cloth, silver paper and one of the old shop ladders. Mrs. Alvarez added a handwritten card: THIS ONE HAS THE WOMAN IN IT.

“That’s not at all elegant,” Localad said.

“But it’s accurate,” said Mrs. Alvarez.

“It may imply the other book contains no women.”

“Does it contain Jasmine?”

“No.”

“Then I stand by the sign.”

Mr. Okafor came in carrying a parcel. Inside was the cracked bell’s missing clapper, he'd found in a box of old hardware at his house.

“I thought the shop might want all its original parts back,” he said.

Localad held the small piece of brass.

The tie-in had tried to turn his name into permission. The bookstores had answered by treating reading as a form of witness.

Across the world, shop owners who had never met him, had made room on their shelves for the book he had actually written.

Harbour & Page, which had once been far too small to ever interest anyone important, had now became the unofficial centre of a very firm but polite international refusal.

The shop approved.

Its History shelf collapsed during the busiest Saturday of the year, but this was quickly interpreted as applause.

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