ow there has been a wide range of views about the book, however, it’s disappointing that there have been multiple incidents of abuse directed at our store team members. [To] keep our team and customers safe, the book will be available to customers online only,” the Big W spokesperson said. It follows a series of incidents of brands facing intense pressure to pull products and marketing campaigns – with staff reportedly being threatened or abused as a consequence. In particular, Bud Light withdrew its collaboration with transgender actor and influencer Dylan Mulvaney following public pressure and a drop in sales. Bookstores in particular have been the target of groups looking to ban books that they consider to be dangerous, forcing retailers and publishers to establish strategies to grapple with the issue.  It also follows a rise in staff abuse in recent years, with state governments in Australia increasingly implementing stricter penalties as a result.  With these types of campaigns continuing to gather momentum, brands are tasked with a considerable challenge: how to protect staff safety, without emboldening protest groups. Books shouldn’t be banned A company that is often subject to public pressure to pull its product from sale is Australian online bookstore, Booktopia. Head of product sales, Joel Naoum, told Inside Retail that he has had to deal with this issue many times over the years while working at the company. He cited the sale of Pete Evans cookbooks as one example, with Booktopia selling – but not stocking the book – due to his fringe views, which don’t reflect the brand’s values. He said that Booktopia rarely declines to sell a book, but there are certain measures the company can take to limit accessibility, if a book violates its terms and conditions, or is creating issues for its customer service team. This includes limiting promotion, and removing stock from its warehouse, which would increase the fulfillment time because Booktopia would have to order it from overseas. This, in turn, can discourage customers from buying the book. As Booktopia is an online bookstore, Naoum noted that staff typically don’t face the same level of physical safety and security threats compared to chains like Big W. However, he explained that Booktopia’s customer service representatives receive “vile complaints” due to the sale of certain books, so safety and well-being remain a constant concern. As such, he said the decision to pull back on promotion – or not stock a book – is usually about safety, rather than an aesthetic or political position. “For our brand, what’s important is that we make a [wide range of] books available for sale – it’s the core part of what we do,” he said. “Whether we agree with those books or not, generally speaking, we will mostly try to keep them available. “[Our position] is that books shouldn’t be banned and, because we’re an online retailer, it’s not like these books are sitting on the shelves for anyone to pick up by accident.” While Booktopia has removed books from sale in the past, Naoum pointed out that this was almost always because the books violated the law. The company has about six million products on its website, which filters through suppliers. The company itself does not have the capacity to vet all the products it sells.  And while the books it sells may not be to everyone’s taste, Booktopia’s collection covers an enormous variety of topics. “[We decided] to stock Welcome to Sex. I’ve read it, and personally, I think it’s fantastic, but I respect people’s decision to not buy it,” he said. “But [choosing to stock a book] is not up to my personal opinion. It comes down to what we think our customers want, what we think fits with our brand and what we think is best for our customers. “Unless there’s a legal reason for us to not sell the book, we will try to sell it. That’s our job.” Imperfect system Naoum pointed to Booktopia’s decision to stock Mein Kampf as an example of the company’s commitment to not preventing the sale of controversial books where possible.   Prior to being appointed head of product sales, he was Booktopia’s non-fiction buyer, and was actively involved in the decision to stock the book. He identified that a number of extremist groups were self-publishing, celebrating its contents, and profiting from their own editions. Thus, he determined that the book should be available for sale through official channels. “There was never any doubt that these kinds of books shouldn’t be available – as it’s an important historical document. But, we ensure that they are sold from ethical sources,” he said. “It’s an imperfect [system] due to the sheer number of books that we have on our website and the way that our feeds work. We aren’t in a position to perfectly filter, and that’s part of the reason why we can’t censor everything – even if we wanted to. “We don’t have the resources to do that, however that was the position I took on Mein Kampf.” Another reason that Booktopia may choose not to stock a book is often based on sales figures. This was the case with Pete Evans’ cookbooks.  “Once the backlash happened, his books don’t sell anywhere near the same numbers as they did in the past,” he said. “He was an unusual case where our customer service team were facing a huge amount of abuse, so [pulling the book from stock] was a difficult decision to make, but in line with other retailers.” We sell dangerous books Naoum believes that, in certain instances, controversy can help to stimulate sales, depending on the type of public response it generates, as well as the level of intensity. He also said that Booktopia would never rule out removing a book from its collection if it was harmful to staff wellbeing. Even as a purely online store, he said there are “human beings on the other end” of customer complaints, and this has to be taken into account with every decision the company makes. “I am very sympathetic to physical bookstores that have faced these sorts of public campaigns and have made the decision to take a product down. It’s a more straightforward decision in some ways [compared to an online bookseller],” he said “But it doesn’t endear me to the position to censor a book on the basis of people who are willing to [harass and threaten staff] in order to remove it from sale.” Naoum also said that Booktopia is in the business of all manner of books – from well-loved classics to those deemed dangerous. “It is important for information to be available to people. If they don’t want that information, they can choose not to buy it,” he said.