The default user action is null. If they had the new one released separately, nobody would have purchased it. By replacing the old one, few will buy the original.
The bleaching will be much more complete this way.
This is true, and they wouldn't have wanted to do that, not least because it would reflect poorly on the changes, but this would have been an alternative honest way to have released the new editions had they wished to, in contrast to what they actually did.
Everyone knows demand For his books was going nowhere, the only change is these new people pretending they're the arbiters of everything proper and polite. Wasn't a fan of churchy nobodies telling me what media I shouldn't consume, nor will I kowtow to a bunch of Otherwise irrelevant art graduates.
Not any more.
The True Believers of Wokeness^tm are now completely sidelined and we're in the feeding frenzy stage of the fad. Wizards of the Coast cash grab for D&D was the first time that I was someone _completely_ transparently trying to fleece their customers while being draped in a rainbow.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1423-an-update-on-the-open-g...
In their own words.
Wokeness has reached its due by date. The great washed masses need to find something else to colonize and destroy now.
The very first sentence in the 'what's next' part of that post starts out, "The next OGL will contain the provisions that allow us to protect and cultivate the inclusive environment we are trying to build"
So sounds to me like they're doubling down on the ideology while relaxing (at least some of) the licensing terms.
It isn't an either/or situation. Seems likely they are motivated by both money and ideology. If it was purely money they could retroactively censor existing books without offering the original version at all (which would cost them money).
That doesn't make sense, how would that make them money?
Secondly, as these are e-books, how would releasing copies of the originals cost them money?
They are retroactively altering/censoring the books that people have already purchased, and offering the original uncensored version as a new purchase.
>Secondly, as these are e-books, how would releasing copies of the originals cost them money?
They are not "releasing" copies of the originals, they are selling them for money. People who bought these books as originally written are now going to be forced to pay more money in order to revert their purchases to the original, uncorrupted version.
But that wasn't what was said, unless it was a typo.
> > If it was purely money they could retroactively censor existing books without offering the original version at all
Implying that they wouldn't offer the originals if it was all about money. That was what I meant by "that doesn't make sense". It sounds like you agree so it was just miscommunication.
> People who bought these books as originally written are now going to be forced to pay more money in order to revert their purchases to the original, uncorrupted version.
You originally said it would cost the publishers money, which is what I questioned. But again, I think we agree and this is just a language barrier.
If it is ideology, how do you explain that they changed a reference of Conrad to Austen? A third option is that they acted clumsily in good faith by trying to keep the book up-to-date with the new generation. The fact that some people are offended and want so much believe into a culture war move tells more about these persons than the publishers.
Replacing male with female author.
I don't know if the reason is that Steinbeck is leftist or not. It is even possible that it is a woke agenda reason. What is worrying is that some people are just wanting sooo much for it to be a woke agenda, and the problem is that you can always turn everything into a woke agenda. If they would have replaced Steinbeck by Kipling, you would have said "it's because Kipling's books are talking about other cultures and Steinbeck talks about America, and for the wokes, it's bad to talk about America".
That being said, maybe I'm a bit biased, because so far, in a lot of cases, those moral panics turn out to be blown out of proportion: the "bad wokes threatening freedom" turn out to not defend the ideological position they are told they have. It may be the case here too: all this story may be just idiots who clumsily tried to keep the book relevant for what they think was the new taste.
>they did not replace Hemingway and Kipling
In fact, they replaced Kipling.
At the end, it's basically what I'm saying: they replace Conrad by Austen, and one says "it's woke because they replace men by women", but they replace Kipling by Steinbeck, and one says "it's woke because they replace a man with a right ideology with a man with a left ideology". They would have replaced Austen by Conrad and one would have said "it's woke because Conrad was anti-imperialist". They would have replaced Steinbeck by Kipling and one would have said "it's woke because Kipling is more multicultural than america-centered Steinbeck".
That's not clear. The person quoted as having it happen to them posted that it happened the same day as the announcement of the non-bowdlerized versions, and the linked article was also published that day.