Shunned by some authors, championed by others: those who work in the book publishing industry as “sensitivity readers” have become the subject of hot debate in recent years.
Sensitivity readers can be hired by publishers, usually on a case-by-case basis, to read a book – generally before it is published – and make editorial suggestions regarding content that could be considered offensive, inaccurate or stereotypical.
Such readers are usually employed because they have an experience or identity that the author does not, but which the author is intending to portray in their book. The Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh, for example, has spoken about working with sensitivity readers when he was writing his thriller novel, The Long Knives, which contains transgender characters.
Recent news of alterations made to books by Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming and Goosebumps author RL Stine have sparked the latest bout of controversy over the way books are edited for “sensitivity” reasons. Some believe that the changes made to Dahl’s stories for children, which were made after a consultation with the Inclusive Minds, an organisation that works with children’s book publishers “to support them in authentic representation”, amounted to censorship, while others see them as a welcome update.
Sensitivity readers can become the implied “baddy” or “goody” (depending on where you stand) in such cases, their service seen as the reason that changes have been made. However, this view assumes that sensitivity readers have more power than they actually do, says Helen Gould, a sensitivity reader who advises on issues including race and mental health issues. “I’m never directly editing text,” she says. When asked to perform a sensitivity read, she will read it, annotate sections where she thinks specific changes could be made – for example, an author might have written an inaccurate description of how a Black hairstyle is achieved (“It’s amazing how much of the work I do is about Black hair!”) – and provide overall feedback. Authors and editors can then choose to accept her suggestions and implement changes, ignore them, or ask to discuss them further.
There has only been once since Gould started sensitivity reading in 2017 when the author did not accept any changes whatsoever. “But that was an issue between them and their publisher, not between them and me,” she says.
For the most part, from what she can tell from their feedback, the authors she has worked with “tend to feel sort of relieved that someone who is knowledgable and has lived experience has looked at their portrayal of a character, and has given their honest opinion”.
Gould suspects that there are two strands when it comes to why publishers employ her. “It’s a diversity and inclusivity thing on an organisational level,” but there is also “probably a PR aspect” too, she says. “The last thing you want is to publish a book, and then have loads of people social media saying this is offensive.”
That said, sensitivity reading is still a relatively small industry – a service offered by freelancers and small agencies that publishers use on occasion, rather than as a routine exercise. Sensitivity reading work is “not enough for me to have a steady living at all”, Gould says – her income comes from freelance writing and editing jobs.
And despite there being more public conversations about sensitivity readers of late, CEO of literary agency Curtis Brown Jonny Geller has not noticed a particular rise in their usage. Although, he says “in a sense, there have been sensitivity readers for ever”, given that an aspect of book editors’ job has always been to think about the way the text will be perceived.
Charlie Higson, an actor, comedian and author of young adult fiction including the first five Young Bond novels, agrees that in some ways the formalisation of sensitivity reading is “nothing new”.
“I don’t think it was a sensitivity reader who insisted on the change to the original title of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None”, he points out.
“Times change and sensitivities change, and thankfully we now accept that some things in older books can be very upsetting to some modern readers, and a more diverse readership,” Higson adds.
When Geller has worked with sensitivity readers, via publishers, “most of the time it is straightforward”, he says.
Occasional problems have occurred, however, “when suggestions are made without proper context, delivered as a fait accompli or insensitively presented to the author”.
To avoid such problems, agents and editors should be “sensitive to the author’s vision and serve the best interests of the writer and the work”, he says.
“No author – or reader – wants to be made to feel there is an agenda outside the interests and truth of the story provided,” he adds.
There are of course additional challenges when it comes to commissioning sensitivity reads after the books have been published, and in particular after the author has died, as was the case with Dahl’s books.
“Like many other people have already said, I think the main problem with the Dahl changes is that they were not very well done and don’t have his authentic voice,” Higson says. “I’m sure that in the case of the Dahl books, it wasn’t the sensitivity readers themselves who made the changes”, as sensitivity readers are generally only there to make suggestions. But if substantial changes are going to be made to a dead author’s work, “ideally a proper author would be involved – an experienced and respected children’s writer”. The issue with that solution though, Higson admits, is that “major writers wouldn’t want to do it and go down in history as the person who rewrote Roald Dahl’s children’s books”.
Gould is “really neutral” on changes being made after publication. “I don’t think that it’s particularly harmful,” she says, since the original books are still out there and have not been recalled. “But I’m also not sure it’s particularly helpful … it’s very much closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.”
A better approach might be to include an explanatory foreword in new editions of books that might contain offensive content. “That would be the approach that I would take if I was a publisher,” she says. But, crucially, she is not a publisher. What she and others like her do is “on a par with, if someone wrote a book about doctors, asking a doctor to look at it and let you know if you’ve gotten anything wrong”, she says.
It’s factchecking, it’s avoiding harm, it’s suggesting improvements, Gould says, but sensitivity reading is not – or at least should not be – “telling people what to do”.
• This article was amended on 15 March 2023. An earlier version misspelt Jonny Geller’s surname.
