In July, 2025 I contacted the publisher of three of my books, asking why my author’s page showed this:
After five days and a follow-up email, they finally replied:
“I need to review with my developer. I had some glitches with the site a while back.”
Six months later this mysterious glitch, which seemed to affect only my books, had apparently still not been solved.
I emailed them again, stating that it was unacceptable that my books were still no longer available on the site, and asked if this was deliberate. I saw no reason to be confrontational, but the truth was already self-evident:
I was being shadow-banned by my own publisher.
Once again I had to send several follow-ups and wait nearly a week before finally receiving a carefully crafted response. Here’s the essential paragraph with which it began:
Rabbi Weissman,
Thank you for the email. After reviewing my publishing catalog and capacity, I’ve decided that I’m no longer able to continue publishing or distributing your books. This is a business decision and not a commentary on the content itself.
Just like that my publisher of more than 12 years terminated their relationship with me. They no longer even list me as one of their authors; it’s as if it never happened.
They returned the publication rights and I agreed not to use their name in my books or any promotional materials. (That request, while logical, is amusing, considering they had long ceased promoting my books anyway, and I probably sent a lot more traffic their way over the years than I received from them.)
I asked them what their publishing catalog and capacity have to do specifically with my books, and if this might have more do with some of the opinions I've expressed in recent years. Not surprisingly, they did not respond. The truth is obvious, but there’s no chance they would explicitly confirm it.
I do not believe my publisher received external pressure to remove my books or terminate their relationship with me. Maybe someone made a comment to them, but, despite being a crazy conspiracy theorist, I find it hard to believe that it was much more than that. The entire time my books were removed from their site they were available for sale on Amazon, the publisher’s primary marketplace.
It seems most likely that the publisher has a strong personal aversion to my outspoken views on the State of Israel, October 7, and the IDF, and felt that was reason enough to cease publishing my work on entirely unrelated topics, and completely disassociate his company from me.
Had I been writing kefirah all this time, I don’t think this would have happened. Writing kefirah, if somewhat subtle, is acceptable, even respectable; doubting God is intellectual, and looking down on Chazal is enlightened. But if you express anything other than unconditional love for the State of Israel and the IDF, and if you refuse to fall into line even when they commit atrocities against your people, you will not get a job as a rabbi, you will be blackballed by Jewish publishers and media, and getting a shidduch with a Jewish girl without an airport full of baggage will require a far greater miracle than splitting the sea.
Like the unwritten rules of baseball, no one will officially admit they exist, but everyone implicitly respects them. If they want to advance in their personal life and professional career, they fall into line and censor themselves.
Had I not pressed my ex-publisher after six months to explain why my books were still missing from their site, the status quo would likely have continued. They would have continued to profit from any sales I generated and send me a percentage in royalties, while shadowbanning me and hoping I never noticed. I was bad for business, but not bad enough for them to be up front with me and stop profiting from my books before I noticed the farce.
I have no problem with a publisher deciding they no longer want to continue working with a particular author for business or other legitimate reasons — we didn’t sign a lifetime contract — but this was the most weaselly way possible of handling the situation. I hope they realize that and do teshuva.
(Please don’t send them angry messages or boycott their other books. I’m glad to be moving on, and I don’t want their parnassa to be harmed over this.)
While this episode is very revealing about the state of affairs within the “Orthodox” Jewish world, my cancellation is not a setback in any way. First of all, I have been censored and canceled many times over the years, and, while unpleasant in the moment, it’s not the end of the world. On the contrary, it has often led to much better things, and having one door close was necessary for me to step through a better one. In any case, Hashem runs the world, not small people who get in your way, and you can’t achieve greatness in any capacity without overcoming adversity. This is nothing.
Not only isn’t this a setback, it’s an exciting development for me and for you. For me, because I’m no longer bound to a publisher that was doing nothing to market my books, and I don’t have to give them the lion’s share of earnings. Win-win!
But what excites me even more is that I am now going to do something I was thinking about for years. I am going to give away my best-selling book, my magnum opus on the shidduch world, EndtheMadness: Guide to the Shidduch World.
Not at all at once, though. A chapter every week or so, over the next seven months or so. I am doing it this way for a couple of reasons:
- I still want people to buy the book. If you enjoy my work in general, think the book is important, and can afford 20 bucks, you should support my work in one of the few ways you actually can, since I monetize practically nothing. (I didn’t give away the book from the beginning mainly because I was advised that people would respect my books more if they had to pay for them. I don’t know how true that is, but it was worth a try.)
- It can potentially have a great impact if many people are reading, sharing, and discussing the same chapter, like Daf Yomi. We desperately need for the shidduch world to change (for the better, for once). Making the book available for free, and releasing it chapter by chapter, can be a real catalyst for that — though whether or not that happens is up to you.
God willing, I will release the first installment of EndtheMadness: Guide to the Shidduch World on Thursday, and I’m very excited about it.
The book is currently out of print on Amazon, but I still have a small stock of personal copies in Israel for 70 shekels each. You can also buy the eBook for only $9.99 here.
At some point I hope to republish the print version, but it might take a while. Amazon’s CreateSpace publishing platform is giving me strange issues as well, which started the same time Google locked me out of my account of a quarter-century last year, pretended it was a security issue and they couldn’t verify me, gave me no recourse, and then deactivated it.
They can annoy me, but they cannot prevent me from continuing my mission, even if I have to reach one person at a time in the most low-tech ways.
It would make me happy if you buy a copy of the book (and my other books), because it is gratifying for a creative person when people appreciate their work enough to pay for it.
But even if you don’t, it would make me extremely happy if you share it with lots of people, discuss the ideas, and do something meaningful in the real world. That’s far more important to me than making a few bucks. If we want things to change, we have to put our money where our mouth is and do something, even if means being moser nefesh in the short term.
I devoted myself to making a real difference in the shidduch world, and I have been moser nefesh for that sake like very few people, including making myself virtually un-dateable from the time I first started dating. You don’t have to make extreme sacrifices, but you do have to do something if you want things to change. Sharing my magnus opus on the shidduch world with many people is one of the best things you can do, and now it will be easier than ever — and free.
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