Jon Yaged. Image: Macmillan Publishers
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Macmillan’s Jon Yaged: ‘You Need Critical Thinking’
The news last week that the Big Five publishers plus Sourcebooks, the Authors Guild, and several other plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit against the state of Idaho in the western United States, we’re glad to have had a chance to talk with Jon Yaged, CEO of Macmillan Publishers in the United States.
The new lawsuit, filed on February 4, alleges that Idaho’s House Bill 710 “restricts books in both public and school libraries in Idaho,” having been enacted into law on July 1, 2024. HB 710, according to the plaintiffs’ media messaging, “forbids anyone under age 18 from accessing library books that contain ‘sexual content,’ regardless of the work’s literary or educational merit.
“HB710’s definition of sexual content,” the plaintiffs say, “is exceptionally broad, vague, and overtly discriminatory.”
And this is one of several efforts that the major US publishers have made in the courts to try to blunt the far-right’s attempts to remove books from the reach of students—in this case, in public-library settings and including classics by such authors as Maya Angelou, Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, and Toni Morrison.
Yaged, you’ll remember from our reporting, was named by Stefan von Holtzbrinck in 2022 to succeed Don Weisberg, at the top of 2023.
“For democracies to work, you need critical thinking so people can come up with their own points of view. The more you ban books, the less that happens.”Jon Yaged, Macmillan
Weisberg would go on to be one of the trio of co-founders of Authors Equity with Madeline McIntosh and Nina von Moltke, who joined us last October at Frankfurter Buchmesse (this year October 15 to 19) in our Publishing Perspectives Forum programming.
Speaking with Publishing Perspectives on the threat that book banning poses to the freedom to publish and to read, Yaged goes right to the assault such censorship makes on an essential ethos of United States: the genius of critical thinking and compromise in a nation founded on disagreement—on its disagreement with a colonial power’s policies of oppression.
“If you want to boil it down to the most underlying piece that’s so disconcerting,” Yaged says, “it’s that reading enables critical thinking. Reading enables different points of view. And for democracies to work, you need critical thinking and different points of view to be fleshed out so people can come up with their own points of view.
“The more you ban books, the less that happens.”
‘That Foundational Skill’
“When you start banning books in schools—which is what we’ve been seeing in school libraries as well as in other places—you’re taking it a step further,” he says, “which is even more disturbing, because we want kids to read. We want people to grow kids up to be contributing members of our society, of our community. Learning to read and learning to decipher what information matters to you and how to make your own opinions from the variety of things that are presented is a critical skill.
Related article: US Publishers Sue State of Idaho, Alleging Book Banning. Image – Getty: Jason Finn
“It’s a foundational skill. And book bans stigmatize that,” Yaged says.
“What makes it worse is several studies over the last couple of years that show that kids are saying they don’t like reading. They’re reading less, and when they do read, they’re not reading full books: they’re reading excerpts from books. Part of that is related to testing preps. But now we have kids saying they don’t want to read. We’re stigmatizing reading with book bans, and we’re going to create a society where people don’t have that, that foundational skill.
“One of the things that we know is that if you don’t read at your grade level by third grade, the chances that you’re going to graduate from high school are dramatically reduced. I think one of the studies was four times less likely. And from a business point of view, those kids become the future buyers of adult books.
“All these things regularly go through my head on this.”
The Reluctant Reader Meets Mike
Yaged is an affable and focused conversationalist. Brooklyn-born and raised in New Jersey, he came out of George Washington University as a concert promoter whose grandfather was a professional jazz clarinetist. “So I had a little music in my world,” he says, remembering his grandfather’s chops. “He was pretty good. He could play.”
“I was a very stereotypical boy, a reluctant reader. I’d read books assigned in school. I was a very good student with an A average, graduated college. I was playing sports and doing car stuff. A car guy.”Jon Yaged, Macmillan
Going toward law school to become an attorney in the late 1980s and early 1990s, “when the lawyers were the movers and shakers in the music business,” he segued to film, television, “and a bunch of book publishing” in a firm handling entertainment law.
Gravitating toward books, he spent “about 80 percent of my day working on Barnes & Noble” before being tapped by Disney Publishing Worldwide and Miramax Books. He’d go on to become the publisher overseeing all the North American Disney imprints, as well as the international editorial team creating books for the company’s licensees.
When Yaged arrived at Macmillan, it was to run the children’s group for a decade before becoming president and now CEO of the US division of Macmillan.
And Yaged knew a few things about kids and reading—from first-hand experience.
“I was a very stereotypical boy,” he says, “a reluctant reader. I’d read books assigned in school. I was a very good student with an A average, graduated college.” But even then, reading for enjoyment wasn’t where Yaged was at. “I was playing sports and doing car stuff. A car guy.”
The friend of a girl he was dating, however, “gave me a book for my birthday. This friend Mike”—tipped off by the girlfriend that “Jon does read, you just have to spoon-feed him”—persisted in recommending and giving Yaged books, “like a teacher or a librarian might be that curator for you. That’s what Mike was for me. And I just fell in love with reading,” before he was in law or publishing.
‘Love of Reading Starts Critical Thinking’
What Yaged learned from Mike as a young man, when he “fell in love with reading,” today shows him exactly what’s “really problematic” about book banning: “It limits the books,” he says. “A kid’s picking a book they want to read and they believe that book’s not going to hurt them. And a lot of parents say, ‘Well, I might not want them to read what’s in that book.’
“Just because [another parent] has their rules doesn’t mean those rules should govern what my kid gets to read.”Jon Yaged, Macmillan
“Well, you know what?” Yaged says. “Talk to the librarian, talk to the teacher. Just because [another parent] has their rules doesn’t mean those rules should govern what my kid gets to read.
“So that’s the balance, and that’s why I’m really impassioned about librarians and educators, because they are the ones that do that spoon-feeding right there. They know how to give the right books to the kids to develop that love. And that love is what starts critical thinking, which develops this foundational skill.”
A booster of recently popularized formats—audiobooks, graphic novels—Yaged says he’s also concerned that “the stories we’re telling are relevant for people, not just on the coasts but in the middle of the country. We’ve got to make sure that we’re not leaving out any kind of groups, because we have a huge audience, and you want to make sure you’re offering something that that resonates with them.
“I think it’s a matter of just continuing to make sure we have those educators and librarians and parents who are encouraging reading and giving kids the right book that gets them to read it.”
See also:
US Publishers Sue State of Idaho, Alleging Book Banning
A US Censorship Victory: Arkansas’ Act 372 Ruled Unconstitutional
USA: A New State ‘Freedom to Read Act’ Bans Bannings of Books
US Election Eve: PEN America’s Book Banning Report Cites 10,046 Books Banned in the 2023-2024 School Year
Banned Books Week: A Renewed Court Challenge to Iowa
Censorship Action: US Publishers and Authors Sue Florida
More from Publishing Perspectives on book bannings is here, more on censorship in the broader context is here, more on the freedom to publish and freedom of expression is here, and more on the United States book industry is here.
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