‘Genocide Bad’ author on how their book beat the bestseller odds

Books released by independent publishers rarely become New York Times bestsellers, and overtly anti-Zionist books about Palestine getting on the list are even more rare. “Genocide Bad: Notes on Palestine, Jewish History, and Collective Liberation” by social media influencer Sim Kern is the first Times bestseller in 20 years for Interlink Publishing, the only Palestinian-owned publisher in the U.S. 

Prism spoke with Kern and Interlink co-owner Hannah Moushabeck, the book’s editor, about how “Genocide Bad” beat the odds.

This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity. 

Sarah Prager: Let’s start with the story of how this book came to be.

Hannah Moushabeck: I had known Sim online for years before I reached out to them about writing this book. I was really intrigued by how they explained things so clearly in their deep dive videos after Oct. 7. As someone who’s been teaching about Palestine for my entire life, I didn’t think that I would get a unique strategy, but I found it with Sim. I felt like so many people were absorbing misinformation about Palestine, and they needed a real 101 course, and the way that Sim did this with respect and nuance—but also humor and wit and a little bit of spite—was exactly what I needed in that moment. And I think other people did too. 

Sim Kern: I had also followed Hannah online for a couple of years and was a big fan of her and of Interlink Publishing, so getting the offer to write a book about Palestine for them was simultaneously an enormous honor and terrifying—that’s a huge responsibility. But I really didn’t have to think about it for more than a second before I emailed back saying yes. 

It was also a little bit of inconvenient timing, though. I had just had a baby a few months before, so I completely baby-proofed my living room and would write between diaper changes with my baby crawling around on the floor. Somehow, we were able to write, edit, fact-check, and finish the book in a couple of months. 

Prager: Hannah, could you tell me about Interlink’s story and what having a New York Times bestseller means for your company?

Moushabeck: When my parents arrived in the U.S., my father realized that all the incredible Arabic literature that he grew up with in the Middle East wasn’t available here. He has always said he believes a people’s soul is through their literature, and that the reason why there was so much dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. was because they didn’t have access to our literature. So my parents started Interlink in the basement under Sahadi’s grocery store in Brooklyn in 1987. 

They started with a few books about the Middle East and started expanding. We now do literature in translation, mostly from Arabic, but also from around the world. We have children’s books, cookbooks, political nonfiction, history, travel … and we don’t just center Arab voices, but voices across the Global South. I came on board about a year ago when I left corporate publishing, and our parents transferred ownership from themselves to their three daughters and my brother-in-law.

Traditionally, indie presses don’t have a lot of resources to put into marketing and publicity, which is how a lot of books get on bestseller lists. With Sim’s book, I think it was simultaneously evidence of just how strongly their message resonated with readers and an incredible grassroots campaign of readers saying, “We’re sick of publishers buying their way onto the bestseller list. Let’s show that we have a voice and have power and get it on the list.” It really gave me renewed hope, not just in the industry, but also in the readers themselves. 

Prager: What about the response from outside of that grassroots community?

Kern: It’s been shocking to me how hard the mainstream book review world has been trying to ignore the existence of this book. My first book was a little sci-fi novella with a brand new, tiny Canadian sci-fi press that sold a couple dozen copies the first year it came out—it got way more reviews than “Genocide Bad” has gotten. Really, the only outlet that’s reviewed it so far in all of Western media is Publishers Weekly. And it came in a couple of months after the book was already a New York Times bestseller. The silence is loud.

On the other hand, not only has the grassroots response from my followers on social media and people in the Free Palestine movement been incredible, but also indie bookstores have come through for this book. Book Love, a Black-owned, U.K.-based pop-up bookstore, has been single-handedly making this book available to all of Europe because we don’t have distribution beyond the U.K. BookSpot in Cairo is making it available in the Middle East. I think independent bookstores like those are a huge part of why we ended up on the New York Times bestseller list.

Prager: The book takes down nine Zionist talking points one by one. How did you distill the list to nine?

Kern: I’m actually grateful, in a way, to Zionist trolls in my comments, because they trained me to write this book. After Oct. 7, when I started making videos educating people about the history of Palestine, about being an anti-Zionist Jew, I was inundated with thousands and thousands of comments from Zionists. At first, that fire hose is very overwhelming, but after a while, you start to see patterns in it, and I started to realize there’s really not that many tactics that they take to argue against Palestinian liberation and in favor of apartheid and genocide. Those patterns in the comments allowed me to organize the chapters.

The one that I think is the most important tactic to recognize is all of the different ways that they’re going to try to silence you. Zionists are going to try to convince you that you are not qualified to speak on what is happening in Israel. You’re either not educated enough, you’re not Jewish enough, or you’re not Israeli enough to have an opinion and share it publicly. 

The only qualification you need to speak out against genocide is to be a human being with a conscience, who values all human life, who believes in the universality of human rights.

Sim Kern, author of “Genocide Bad”

The only qualification you need to speak out against genocide is to be a human being with a conscience, who values all human life, who believes in the universality of human rights. That’s the only qualification that you need. And that’s the most important message in my book. 

Moushabeck: My favorite thing through the whole experience was watching Sim respond to a Zionist comment with “Oh, here we go. This is the classic ‘But Hamas!’ tactic,” or “This is the classic whataboutism,” and then I noticed other people were doing it too. Other people suddenly had the language not to get derailed by these comments. Instead, they would just identify it, and Sim provided the education to train the internet to do that. I found myself doing that in my own comments. I’d get all worked up and be ready to write a 10-page essay countering all of their points, and then I realized, “Oh wait, this is whataboutism. They’re just trying to derail this, so now I’m just going to ignore it.”

Prager: Sim, I’d love to hear about the complexities around making your Jewish identity a part of your public platform.

Kern: Israel has dragged all Jews everywhere into this genocide they’re doing in Gaza, whether we want to have anything to do with it or not. Speaking on it while saying “as a Jew” reinforces this ranking of humanity that says that Jews have more human rights and more right to speak on what’s happening in Gaza than Palestinians. At the same time, the reality is our voices are privileged in this conversation, and so to walk away from the responsibility to use that privileged voice to call for an end to apartheid and genocide is morally irresponsible. 

So I try to do two things at once, both in the book and in my online social media content, which is to claim my place and speak as a Jew and use my privileged Jewish voice to call for an end to genocide and apartheid. At the same time, I’m continually pointing out that this is ridiculous, that the fact that I have a Jewish grandmother should have no bearing on my ability to weigh in on property disputes. 

Ultimately, “Genocide Bad” is not a relevant book about what’s happening in Palestine because I’m Jewish. It’s a relevant book because the research in it is accurate, the ideas in it are cogent, and they’re clearly communicated.

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor

Related