An unnamed Little, Brown employee who participated in the walkout told Rachelle Hampton at Slate that the employees felt “betrayed” by the decision to publish Allen, particularly in the secretive way they’d handled the transaction. The first these employees had heard of the deal was a month before the book was to be released. This is decidedly not the norm in publishing and suggests that Hachette brass knew to expect backlash, but were perhaps calculating that the controversy could be good for sales.