Authors pull Palestinian American kids book from Penguin Random House

A children's book about displacement and the Palestinian American experience was supposed to hit shelves this September. It isn't going to, because its own authors pulled it.

Alana Hadid and Jenan A. Matari wrote Displacement and the Palestinian American Story for Crown Children's, part of the Race to the Truth series. According to the Guardian, as reported by Publishers Marketplace, the two withdrew the book over editorial disagreements with the publisher. That's the fact. We don't have the details of what the disagreement was about, and I'm not going to guess.

Here's the part that'll make any author's stomach drop: the publisher's own book description is still live on Edelweiss. It opens with the line "The creation of Israel didn't just redraw borders." A book that's been withdrawn by its authors, sitting in a publisher's own catalog system, description intact, like nothing happened.

I've seen this before in smaller ways — a cover still up after a deal falls through, a pub date lingering on a retailer page months after a delay. Usually it's just nobody got around to updating the record. But when it's a withdrawn book with a live description still circulating to buyers, bookstores, and librarians who use Edelweiss to make ordering decisions, "nobody got around to it" starts to cost real money and real confusion.

What this means for you: if you are ever in a position where you pull a book from a publisher — for any reason — don't assume the retreat is clean just because you walked away. Check every downstream listing yourself. Edelweiss, your publisher's own site, Amazon, Ingram, NetGalley if it was ever loaded there. A withdrawal on your end doesn't automatically trigger a takedown everywhere else, and nobody at the publisher may think to chase every node of that distribution the moment the deal falls apart. That's on you to verify, not them.

If you have a book in any kind of series deal with a traditional publisher right now, this is your reminder to read your contract's withdrawal and reversion language this week — not after a disagreement happens, now, while it's calm. Know what happens to the listing, the advance, and the rights if you and your editor hit a wall you can't get past. Hadid and Matari apparently decided a disagreement was worth walking away over. That's their call to make, and it was theirs to make because — one hopes — their contract let them make it cleanly. Make sure yours does too.