NORTON TAKES ROTH BIOGRAPHY OUT OF PRINT

W.W. Norton said in a memo to its staff Tuesday that it will permanently take Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth out of print, following allegations that Bailey sexually assaulted multiple women and behaved inappropriately toward his students when he was an eighth-grade English teacher.

The announcement came after the publisher decided last week that it would stop shipping and promoting the title, which it released earlier in April. It wasn’t immediately clear what would happen with existing copies of the book or the digital and audio versions.

“Norton is permanently putting out of print our editions of ‘Philip Roth: The Biography’ and ‘The Splendid Things We Planned,’ Blake Bailey’s 2014 memoir. Bailey will be free to seek publication elsewhere if he chooses,” the email said, which was signed by Norton’s president, Julia A. Reidhead.

Reidhead also said that Norton would make a donation in the amount of the advance it paid to Bailey to organizations that support sexual assault survivors and victims of sexual harassment.

Norton’s decision to take Bailey’s titles out of print marked an extraordinary response to the allegations against the author and raised questions about publishers’ ethical obligations to respond to controversies that extend beyond the contents of the books they publish.

Until the allegations surfaced against Bailey, Norton was heavily invested in “Philip Roth: The Biography,” which it printed 50,000 copies of and was heavily promoting.