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Originally Posted by hildea
But when changes are made/attempted by publishers because they think the changes will increase sales, they probably read widely.
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The original article, printed in yesterday's
Sunday Telegraph, is behind a pay wall, but my public library lets me see it through ONEFILE. Here's the only thing they say about the motivation:
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One warning states that the writer's prose has been altered because it was judged to be "unacceptable" by Penguin, a publishing house which enlists the services of sensitivity readers.
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You could be correct that this is driven by sales projections. But the extent to which PRH owner Bertelsmann Stiftung is driven by a pure profit motive can be questioned (as I have in at least one past thread). From Wikipedia:
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It was founded in 1977 by Reinhard Mohn as the result of social, corporate and fiscal considerations. As the Bertelsmann Stiftung itself has put it, the foundation promotes "reform processes" and "the principles of entrepreneurial activity" to build a "future-oriented society."
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My guess is that the kind of people who read P. G. Wodehouse will dislike these changes, with bowdlerization advocated internally by PRH employees pushing their vision of a future-oriented society.
Is there anyone here who is going to buy a Wodehouse book because it's new and improved? Didn't think so. Is there anyone who, on rare occasion, reads Wodehouse, and will avoid the improved version? At least one -- me.