Tips on Banning Books

This gem of a human you see to my left recently tried to have manga (Japanese comics) banned from the library.

Why?

She says of the books, "My son lost his mind when he found this...Now he's in a home for extensive therapy."

I don't want to attack the victim too much here, but if a Japanese comic from the public library sent you spiraling into a loony bin, maybe you didn't have a super tight grasp on reality to begin with.

Could that dude in the middle of the picture look any more bored? He doesn't look like he gives one damn.

So why do people try to ban books? Really, what's the point, especially when most attempts to ban a book only result in a dramatic sales increase?

However, that sales increase is what I'm banking on should I ever crank out some shit book, so I would like to present a little advice on getting a book ban done right.

Tip 1: Try your best to come off as some sort of sane person. If you appear in front of some board or city council at some point, don't wear your loudest blue floral dress. I know you really want to draw attention to yourself, but you're taking it a little too far. Museum guides don't use those glowing orange popsicle things that the guys on the airport runway use, so let's calm it down a couple notches. Broadcast your sanity and people might take you a little more seriously.

Tip 2: Maybe be a little more realistic about your claim of a book's effects. For example, rather than trying to convince me that a teenager's psyche was destroyed by a scantily clad woman or someone with a sword slicing through his abdomen, you explain the realistic consequences. For example, in this case these books have the negative effect of you bothering everyone at this stupid meeting where they probably don't get anything done anyway, so they can reduce this effect by pulling the books.

Tip 3: Leave god out of it. I know you're really tempted to get god-y, but hold on a sec. What you really want to do is call someone out, not bring someone in. Tango Makes Three is challenged a lot because the penguins are gay(?), but let the others bring in the part where god's not cool with that. Call out the gays, the people who speak Spanish, or whoever, but let god be implied. Hell, he's everywhere, right? He doesn't need your help.

Tip 4: Actually read some of the material. The first questions a library or school are going to ask you will concern the specifics of what you found offensive. That means page numbers. That means passages. Luckily for you, when my shit book comes out it'll have a little card in the back that tells you where all the absolute worst shit is. That will help you speed up the process.

Tip 5: Don't hold a book burning or try to hoard all the copies or some such shit. And there's a damn good reason for this: Where are you getting the copies? Unless you're robbing an author of copies in his garage, the author is putting coin in his pocket when you bring one to toss on the fire. A book sells for the same money regardless of whether you take it home and read it a hundred times or use it to steady a wobbly table. Even if you steal it, the store absorbs that cost, not the publisher, definitely not the author. And they will order more. So again, don't waste your time trying to take away the copies from anybody else, except in the case of my book. In that case, you're lucky because I'm doing an extra print run of cheaply bound copies meant to be burned. Please buy enough to make an impressive fire and keep me in sunglasses.

In conclusion, stop wasting your time. More importantly, stop wasting everyone else's time. I'm a fan of a lost cause, but don't push it, freedom fighter.