#diversity in publishing
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Pay assistants a living wage.
#living wage#diversity in media#diversity in Hollywood#diversity in publishing#publishing#workers rights
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The Lack of Diversity in US publishing (yes, intersectional post)
I get that some publishing pros might think this will fall into a hate piece, but it's not. It's looking at systemic, not individualistic problems and asking that everyone pick up the slack.
Someone's going to try to chase me on the idea that I don't know how publishing works and never worked for a publishing company, even if both are patently not true. But whatever. You want a biography of my life, pay me. I'm not going to info dump all my life experiences into my bio page.
Anyway, as usual, I majored in Anthropology, concentrated in systems and if somehow people haven't been paying attention to all of the material I've produced over the years–yes I know world lit fairly well (I'm not saying top mastery because there is no such thing with world lit). I *also* happen to collect and know how publishing systems in other countries work and their rough histories and stats, so I know that this is mostly a US problem and I'm calling it out because !@#$, really? You want to call yourself the best when other countries are kicking your butt?
I have the history of publishing in my head. All the way from the Invention of paper, the objections of Plato to writing to the common era. So no, not that ignorant, and yes, I think I could beat some publishing pros that say they know publishing well on errata knowledge of publishing history given what they post on Twitter sometimes. Which isn't boasting per se, but more, I think publishing pros *should* know more than me, like international publishing practices and story structures so they are ahead of the game and can sell, say a client's book to the *correct* international publisher with the correct proposal, but that might just be me. (Especially since time and again, it's said international gets more royalties than domestic).
That said, I'm *not* going to run down the history of publishing, etc. I'm just establishing I'm not ignorant in case people want to challenge, and if they challenge they can do so with more academic papers/articles, etc, rather than starting from the bottom.
What we know is that the demographics of the publishing industry have drastically changed since the 1980's with Pew Research Center pretty much publishing their findings since then about race, etc. But the publishing industry has failed to meet the demand with supply. I want to examine the hurdles of diversity faces in order to overcome these barriers and why, even after the call for diversity, the numbers have not changed, even when clearly the demographics of readership has.
This is mostly theory backed with academia. And no, it's not a 101 on diversity, DEI and publishing–it's going to assume you know all this coming in, but not use snobby academia words to get there.
If there is one thing that South Korea faced when it decided to push the dramas on the rest of the world is that the Google App and Apple Store rule is true–people like celebration of diversity and most of all in this global economy–kindness—this is the flip that was experienced in Story structure, as well (Which I've well covered with things like reality TV shows where commenters LOVE seeing cooperation, not just chaos and competition.)
So, Korean published a lot of the issues facing it honestly when creating dramas, which is a long-standing tradition stretching way back in Korean history (And no, this is not dividing North/South because both try it.) What? No one watched North Korean dramas? North Korean dramas also tackle social issues.
This very reason is why South Korean dramas are loved and hated-too much thinking some say. (Because people should be paying attention to audience reception–*cough* Netflix)
Chinese are also pushing contemporary literature internationally. And Chinese writers are also doing their best to examine social issues. (unfortunately don't always reach international audiences because of Mango's terrible subs. TT) Though international audiences might miss some of it because it–by design needs to be far more subtle to pass censorship.
But the US is mired in book bannings and people thinking that media is dangerous and might change minds rather than media literacy.
And I honestly think this is slowing down the US publishers on several levels, even if their money would increase if they actually met customer demand as the Pew Research center says–because bad marketing and the richest people are more concerned with the wrong demographics. So these are the rough barriers, I think we need to get across, in general, as disabled, ND, queer, PoC, religiously diverse, etc.
Education
The asshats don't care about education unless it makes people think, thus the book bannings-the biggest threat is media literacy to conservatives, who by far, are not likely to be college educated as a group and don't want others to be either.
In terms of literature–having experienced this myself, a lot of the diversity is pushed into classes on a college level and boxed into "specialties"
Latin American Literature
East Asian Literature.
Middle Eastern Literature
And I've gotten this complaint multiple times–World Lit sucks and tends to overly focus on white Europe within the US–PoCs queer, etc are token in the class and either pushed to first or last without an even distribution.
Queer Theory is barely touched upon most of the time and not intersectionally, with mostly lesbians and gay theoretical texts being analyzed over anyone else. Let's examine Foucault for a PoC queer text, for example.
Generally, I've experienced more analysis of queer, disabled, etc texts with theoretical texts that don't belong to that sphere.
This honestly means a bottleneck effect happens where people who might be interested in diverse literature never get it. People who want to teach it, never get to read it. People who want to write about it, can't find academic papers to back themselves up without hodge podging it together (and if you think I didn't face this–you have no idea how much I suffered). People who should probably get the exposure to it–never do and don't know how to approach it because own voices never guided them through it.
And even if you do manage to force all of the lit classes together to get all 6 livable continents' worth of material somehow (even though the South Pacific is really ignored), if you're a PoC, you're more likely to be graded more harshly on your English, the language, thus your literature papers than anyone else by virtue of your name. (Some teachers get around this by insisting no names, only student ID numbers–but there's other systemic problems with this, which include, but are not limited to, dialects exist and are called "wrong")
So the most well-meaning white pro-publisher might exit college and their entire school career and never learn how to analyze say... Zora Neale Hurston properly, and thus automatically think that all Black Creole-ish language is "wrong" "bad" and "Not worth it."
"The writing didn't grab me." But are you sure it's not because of racism? And no, we're talking systemic racism here.
OK, say the person does get to read a bit outside of the "norm" they might then model all of the "good" submissions on that tiny little fraction. Say, they only read Natsume Soseki–no doubt a great, but what happened to them reading diversity within that? What about Sei Shonagon? or Nijima Yae?
This is where education becomes selecting of "What's good" in academia. And I'm going to say this—own voices for disability in academia for taught literature is absolutely miserable. WTF. I mean the best I ever got was maybe Holden Caufield from Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and Men—both taught at my preppy high school neither of which are own voices and we barely talked anything about what disability rep meant. I don't know if you can count The Sound and the Fury for autism rep, because he wasn't autistic... but again, just stating the fact he was without examination into the implications.
This leads to what I'd call privilege qualifying. I have a degree—and the submissions will show me how to analyze the text–I've run into this where I said the work was in qichengzhuanhe (A particular Chinese drama) and thus not conflict narrative 3-act and then white people particularly get upset at me and even slap down they have a college degree, and EVERYTHING is an 3-act conflict narrative. Then it devolves into "You're not being nice." towards me for pointing out the truth.
It becomes harder, too, when they don't know how to find books that escape the publishing norm of books that privilege qualify enough to be translated.
So the first summit is education. No matter what, if agents, editors, etc are not willing to educate themselves about other literary traditions and their frame of reference for analysis, they are never going to be able to properly sell the work in the first place or argue the importance to the core demographic.
(Really, though, they should be paying attention to the world market).
2. Come Back~~~ Mentality
Since the 1980's, the male demographic of readers has been falling sharply. First to 60/40 female/male (NBs not included in Pew Research center), then 70/30 in the 2010-ish. Then a sharp fall to 2023. This means that for cis males, they get an advantage in the market as the number of female readers, and thus writer increase. The number of writers is not surprisingly proportional to the number of especially repeat and avid readers. There is nothing like mass consumption to make you think you can, too, make/do that thing.
Watch enough how-to-make-a-chair youtube videos and you will think you, too, can make a chair.
The thing is that for all those decades, from what I've heard from multiple author interviews–publishers have been chasing the male demographic and failing.
Not only that, they've lost the white demographic overall such that the largest population of readers neck and neck is Black college-educated women and White women, who historically, from what I've observed are Liberal, and LOVE, love diversity and thinking about it. These are also the more likely repeat readers and consumers of things like audiobooks.
You'd think that publishing would try to hit this demographic harder, especially as publishing is losing money, but instead they are super focused on groups that don't matter: Conservatives, why don't you read more? White men, why aren't you reading more?
Instead of trying to figure out the core demographics likes and dislikes, they are spreading themselves thinner and more likely to choose books to appeal to a wider base.
But in doing so, they ironically lose the core demographic that actually wants to read the books. Because the rule is: In the specific is the general. People will find things that resonate with them in specific experiences, especially when they are educated to look things up.
But pro-publishing doesn't seem to care about the numbers and doesn't seem to want to hit the core demographic and then expand outward.
Instead publishing tries to blame video games, TV, streaming services, the internet—the long wait times to deliver books to market, self publishing, etc. It's everyone else's fault, even if this competition of attention was true also in the past with things like radio, playing outside, household chores and so on.
And thus in chasing the wrong demographic they never can grow. In marketing terms, this is like trying to set up a franchise when your core business isn't set up yet. You have no revenue–oh, let's set up another store to a different demographic.
And thus trad publishing is leaking money as it tries to chase the wrong people into reading books–with one exception–Teens have the most disposable income–though this is creating a bottleneck because they don't want to "risk" putting diversity into the *rest* of the bookstore. (I've covered this before.)
3. Abusing their employees and anyone below the owners.
Agents don't get paid until the writers get paid. And white abled cishet writers get more money, but agents are abused by the system because now they have to do the work of a publicist, the marketer, the editor, acquisitions and everything else US publishing doesn't want to pay for. This is not true internationally, as often the editor is the person doing acquisitions, as in Japan, Korea, and China. And the publisher might hire a manager for the more famous authors to work as a publicist and marketer. Thus the job is stressful, not very lucrative, and with a poor education system in place about diversity–sometimes hubris of the agents, they don't know what's good outside of their basic education. They might even hate PoC work without knowing it–the work that's too-PoC they abhor, but the work that white qualifies is absolute proof they aren't racist.
And with abhorrent education, it doesn't get better for anyone else up the chain, such as editors, copy editors, etc as more and more cost cutting from publishers comes as they insist so, so hard to chase after demographics that don't bring them money. I'm not talking about Talk Show Host book–but unknown, unproven white male cishet author, getting more advance and more royalties over a proven PoC author who did make back their advance.
This is true for other diversity too.
And that's a terrible business model, if you think about it---in basic business terms: If you have 1,000 sprockets you want to sell to market, and then you spent 500 dollars to get them, say. And know your core demographic is Sprocket buyers. But you also spend 2000 dollars on a spricket, because you think that you need to sell sprickets which you have no numbers in demographics to back up, and the number of spricket buyers is plummeting drastically, but try ONE MORE TIME, and this product repeatedly fails, people would rightfully yell at you, what are you doing? And this is the current model for publishing.
This means that editors, etc are getting paid less and less while the majority of the profit goes to the top of the food chain–the owners of the company.
The incentive to take "risky" books, therefore is less. Because diversity is seen as "risky" and these people really, really can't afford to lose their job to go with the book they really want to publish, but might be a total loss. (This is OK with foreign companies because their costs while suffering the same problems, they also learned how to adapt somewhat and still be able to publish the riskier books).
4. But Agents can't find the clients?
I think as more, and more agents do this as a side hustle, the cold marketing sell goes down the drain. Diversity books become that stretch book. This means more agents want "books that I really connect to" to sell rather than "Books that I just want to cold sell on merit."
The job of editing and acquisitions is down to them—they are barely getting money from it, so how are they going to sell a book they think has a chance in market, but probably will sell to a publisher?
As books have become less profitable for authors, as well, authors need to do side hustles, too, and so it becomes much more difficult to find career authors versus those who are interested in one-offs on a bucket list. (I know some writers might get mad at this, but I've met those people as well, and no hate to them, but this is difficult for agents)
Agents also have uneven submission guidelines, making it harder to put books in front of them for ND people as well.
So it's not just safer bets, but curated to what the agent likes, instead of thinking about what they can cold sell.
This is what is leading most likely to the push towards comps, which are "proven" though there is no such thing in art since the very thing that humans love in art is novelty.
For example, the major complaint on the Love You Seven Times drama version is that it was forced away from the book version which was unique. But the drama version is very Cookie Cutter. What people loved was the newness–the pushing boundaries, it wasn't solely the characters. It was also the way that events were chosen and constructed.
But when you're not getting much money in the first place, doing this as a side hustle, effectively doing a ton of other jobs that don't allow you to do only your job, taking risk on novelty goes down and since they don't know the international demographics, international market, how are they supposed to know what the core demographic wants?
5. Marketing
What marketing? Oh, you're white cishet male.
Oh, you have built-in marketing. Then let's give you more.
Lower risk taking is death to art. Art by it's very nature is risky. It's supposed to push boundaries and the boundaries of other people. But when you're betting everything on it, why should they push the money towards marketing?
How do we fix this problem?
YA is doing really well because people like diversity. LET IT BREATHE. Let that diversity out into the rest of the bookstore. Take a risk on at least a few more books.
Educate yourself after college on classics the countries themselves say you should–not just contemporary. Read theoretical texts from a variety of intersectional own voices. Have you read Audre Lorde? She has queer Black theory in her works. Find own voices from the past and read those. Publicize it.
Stop saying the present comps only count. Open it up to all of history–if someone reads a book you don't know and uses it in their comp, then shouldn't you read that book? That's my attitude. You never read the biography of Helen Keller, but you saw that Helen Keller had feedback into the one listed? Then read it. It must have resonated wit that person to the present era for a reason. You have never read about Sun Wukong in Journey to the West? Then you should know about it and read it. If authors are expected to read everything, then publishing professionals should also do so, especially if they want to publish books from that region.
Understand the fanships, even niche fanships of international media–there are literally forums and comments sections–that's your marketing research and proof. Find out why they feel disenchanted with US media that they feel they need to go to other countries? Find out why they like that media and what the US is missing, and then when you pitch the books to the higher ups in the food chain–use those words as evidence that the higher ups are wrong and need to do surveys and it will result in better profit.
Pitch on what is novel, and unique and show how it fits into the market. Because of X and X I think this trend will hit in X number of years is literally your jobs. I understand the drudgery–I do. The words floating when you close your eyes, but your job isn't just editing the work, but also being able to actually meet the market–the future market.
An example of this would be... Because of the popularity of Spider-man and the fact that Marvel seems to be pushing more and movies such that they made a board, I think books will attempt to make a superhero genre–which then happened.
Another example. I think because of the push for diversity books that Westerns might get a revisit and we should have more Black cowboys and women instead of only white men which matches the current demographics–which then happened. (But books missed that trend? Or at least didn't show up in the bookstore when I went looking.)
And the thing with predicting trends is if you're the first one out there, you get the most cash over anyone else.
You need people to run surveys and present it with the pitching of books. Don't leave it only to the writers. You have to also put in that work. I get that you're overworked and underpaid, but literally beating people to the punch such that people want your magic–that's how we're going to get diversity in the rest of the bookstore and more cash. Present a stronger argument.
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I keep seeing posts talking about the WGA/Sag-Aftra strike, which yes, good, but in all this "support writers" sentiment I'm seeing no one talk about book writers, which I think is something people should know more about right now.
We are at an all-time high for book bans, namely targeting queer & PoC-authored books. This means that a lot of schools and libraries are no longer stocking diverse YA books, and if you're not in publishing, you may not realize this but school & libraries are by far one of the biggest markets for diverse YA books.
This means that in 2023, YA book sales are down. This is also in part because Barnes & Noble (the largest physical book retailer in the U.S.) is no longer really stocking YA hardcovers. This means that marginalized authors and debut authors are struggling to sell books.
But it's a LOT worse than that. In the past couple of years, marginalized authors are *really* struggling to get new book deals. Most books are acquired by a publisher about 2 years before they release to the public, so this isn't all that noticeable yet, but a LOT of marginalized authors I've spoken to (myself included) have been unable to sell a new YA book since 2020. So while I had a book out last year, even if I sell one right now, you won't see it until 2025-2026. That's three to four years without a new release or the income I get from publishing those books.
On top of that, Big 5 publishers have started closing imprints (namely their diverse imprints) and have started telling their marginalized YA authors to just go. I've had multiple authors tell me their publisher basically said, "eh, we don't care to put in the work for you anymore. You can just go somewhere else". Of the authors who *are* getting offered new contracts, we're being offered pay far below the cost of living and we're being handed contracts that split our payments 4 or 5 ways and require we sign over our work to be used to train AI so they can replace us a few years down the road.
Authors are freelancers who own our IPs, which means we can't unionize the way Hollywood writers can, and despite authors showing up in droves to support HarperCollins employees when they went on strike for fair wages, we're being hung out to dry when it comes to our own rights.
If you enjoy diverse books, especially diverse YA, please understand that many of the authors you loved over the past 3-5 years are being forced out of the industry. We're being exploited, and we have no way to defend ourselves. Our books sales are drying up thanks to anti-queer legislation, our rights are being eaten up by AI, and our publishers are degrading us while profiting of us and refusing to share those profits with us.
Within the publishing industry, we've all been watching this decline happen over the last decade, but outside of it, I know most people have no idea what's going on so please spread the word. And if you care about diverse books especially in YA, please support marginalized authors in any way you can. The industry needs to be reminded that it needs us before we're all eliminated from it.
#Books#diverse books#author#publishing#sag aftra#writers strike#writers#labor rights#workers rights#wga strike
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Submission Spotlight: Blackbird
A lot of literary journals have closed until fall. This gives us months to dust off old stories and see if we can whisk them up into something tasty. When that happens, the online journal Blackbird is a great place to send stuff. #writing #publishing
Okay, so the bad news is that a lot of literary magazines have closed their doors until fall. The good news? You’ve got a few months to pull up that piece you’d given up on, dust it off, and see what you can make of it. If it fluffs up into something pretty tasty, Blackbird might be the literary magazine for you.
Since 2001 (or 2002—different places on their website name different founding…
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#Blackbird#classism in publishing#diversity in publishing#Gregory Donovan#literary editors#literary magazines#literary marketplace#M.A. Keller#Mary Flinn#New Virginia Review#online literary journals#Patricia García Luján#paying markets for short stories#publishing fiction#publishing short stories#submissions#Submittable#submitting fiction#Virginia Commonwealth University
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“Antiracism puts pressure on mainstream white people to try and diversify their lists, and it gives them more leverage when arguing with acquisitions boards that they should make an offer. Without that pressure, the editor might think ‘this topic is too niche’ or, if they did try to acquire it, the acquisitions board might shoot them down.
So, there’s a push and a pull. Antiracist types are generally uninterested in my work, but they create an environment where their colleagues feel more incentive to buy it (which is maybe the reason antiracists don’t like my work. They think, even a straight white person could love this).”
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sorry if you’ve read this before and i just haven’t seen you post about it, but the book “hell followed with us” by andrew joseph white seems right up your alley
i need some kind of faq with a section where i explain that i consider andrew joseph white to be a poor writer except when it comes to describing excesses of body horror and gore because people keep suggesting hell followed with us to me and i'm sorry but his books are not good. aside from the vivid descriptions mentioned above they're incredibly devoid of compelling narratives, fleshed out characters or immersive worldbuilding. the guy can come up with some amazing concepts for a story, but his ability to execute them is consistently disappointing. i'm glad he's making money and having fun pursuing his creative passions but his stuff just does not appeal to me at all and frankly makes a hater out of me.
#i would be more forgiving if it werent for the fact that he markets his books as containing diverse representation#but nearly all his character tend to read like they were created using a checklist of things you need to include#in your story to advertise it as such#anyway none of this is to say i want him cancelled or to never make another buck off writing or whatever#but i cannot recommend his existing published works
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okay I need to leave, but I've been poking at wips, and after a month in the trenches trying to find romance authors I like, it's crazy to return back to fanfic and just be like oh. shit. this is good. why can't I find stuff like this published??
#but just. yeah. how fanfic writers just GET intimacy#and sex without it being purely physical#my ongoing theory is the prevelance of ace writers in fandom know how to write smut in a way that is sexy#without relying on basic descriptions of bodily parts and movements (pls no more shaft pistoning)#me i'm the ace writer#but also. a significant proportion of my favourite authors are ace okay#it's a beautiful phenomenon#but in general#smut in fandom communities >>>>>>> published smut#fanfic writers beloved#but really it's just about practicing the craft and sharing with people#practice is all it takes#and diversity of perspectives too#(plus like. actual diversity. which is also missing in published romance)
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hiiii! have you considered releasing tradewinds as a single purchase through a site like gumroad?
Hi anon!
So the reason Tradewinds was shelved and not published like 8 years ago, is because I couldn't find an Aboriginal sensitivity reader willing to read m/m with disturbing themes. I had sensitivity readers for the other side of things (like Matan and his heritage), but I kept either not finding anyone, or the one person I found took my $200 USD deposit and vanished and never spoke to me / responded to any of my emails.
As a result, I was uncomfortable distributing it anywhere broadly, even though I was relatively confident the novel isn't offensive, because I just don't know 100%.
I am a lot more confident releasing it via subscription as an exclusive novel, because the people who pay for subscription are often folks who are a) already used to my style of writing and b) generally know what to expect from me, vs. cold audiences who don't. I'm kind of kicking myself that I didn't realise that Tradewinds would make a great exclusive/paywalled release for subscription, because it means it's only ever going to find a very narrow bandwidth of readers.
Basically if I could release it for single purchase - as basically an ebook - I would have released it like 8 years ago, anon. And the reason I have actually released it this specific way is down to the fact that I'm just not really confident offering it for broader distribution.
That might change one day, if I happen to stumble across a sensitivity reader who is okay with my style of writing, who is reputable + has references (i.e. so I know I won't lose a fair chunk of money in the process, because that burned me pretty badly, not gonna lie). But until then, having Tradewinds be limited is the only way I'm comfortable releasing it at all.
Folks are more than welcome to sign up for one month, download the book (and read any other early access they want) and then leave. They can even just put 'I only wanted one thing and now I have it' in the exit survey so I know what they were there for if they want. Then it's still a single purchase (with some early access extras), and they still access the downloadable file. :)
#asks and answers#tradewinds#merchantverse#tradewinds was shelved not because i think it's a bad book#but because i wasn't comfortable going to broad distribution without a very specific kind of sensitivity reader#it was actually meant to be the series i started publishing with#long before perth shifters existed#and then i realised that through writing a highly diverse cast#i might have actually really hurt the future of the series#and had to shelve the whole thing and all the worldbuilding#i really don't regret tradewinds at all#i like the book and i love the characters#but yeah it was complicated#what i thought would be an 'easy' problem to solve was really difficult in part because#'sensitivity readers' is a very USA concept and certainly was back then#and a lot of the folks i enquired with who did offer sensitivity reading on Aboriginal Australian matters#didn't read m/m or didn't want to read anything problematic / with any disturbing themes#which i can understand#but literally reduced my pool to '0 plus that one person who took $200 USD from me at a time when i had to skip medical appts because of it#i'm sure it would be better now#but i'm also happy to offer a novel to folks who sign up to the patreon / ream account#since that is my main and primary income
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Early in my career, I co-founded and oversaw the title selection for WaldenEd Book Fairs, a book fair company spun off from the Waldenbooks chain. Our strategy was to differentiate ourselves from Scholastic fairs by offering a broader, more diverse, and challenging selection of titles representing a wider range of cultures and communities. It seemed only logical that to increase sales, you would want to increase the size of the audience you appealed to. Our initial plan was to launch regionally and grow slowly, but the response from schools and librarians to a title selection that mirrored the greater diversity of a bookstore serving the local community was so overwhelmingly positive that we quickly expanded nationally.
This was in the late 1980s. It would have been unimaginable to me that three decades later, Scholastic would have a marketing strategy that narrows the diversity of titles it offers and adds barriers to access titles representing any segment of the local community they serve.
- eP
#softcensorship #literacy #librarians
#soft censorship#librarians#literacy#book fairs#book publishing#diversity#representation#childrens books
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publishing update
Moving forward with the publishing offer I received from an Indie Press in the spring. Editing rounds will start this fall! Expected publication date in 2025-2026 <3
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Submission Spotlight: The Chicago Review
Submission Spotlight this month at The Trailer Park MFA: The Chicago Review. They've been around since 1946, are affiliated with the University of Chicago, and will definitely bump up your rep—but you won't earn a dime. Your call. #publishing #writerslife
Their door is open for fiction and poetry submissions until June 15 (nonfiction submissions are open year-round), so if you’re looking to publish a story, now’s the time! The Chicago Review accepts work through their Submittable page, where you can also set up a free Submittable account if you haven’t got one already.
The downside? They charge a steeper-than-industry-standard submission fee of…
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#classism in publishing industry#creative writing#digital publishing#diversity in publishing#elite publishing#fiction submissions#literary journal#literary magazine#online issues#publishing a story#short stories#submission fee#submissions to magazines#Submittable#The Chicago Review#University of Chicago#where to submit fiction#writers with MFA degrees
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“Antiracism puts pressure on mainstream white people to try and diversify their lists, and it gives them more leverage when arguing with acquisitions boards that they should make an offer. Without that pressure, the editor might think ‘this topic is too niche’ or, if they did try to acquire it, the acquisitions board might shoot them down.
So, there’s a push and a pull. Antiracist types are generally uninterested in my work, but they create an environment where their colleagues feel more incentive to buy it (which is maybe the reason antiracists don’t like my work. They think, even a straight white person could love this).”
#antiracism#diversity#diversity in writing#diversity in publishing#Naomi kanakia#trans author#trans writers#trans writing
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looking to read more diversely in 2024? i’m the author for you! whether it’s coming of age or romance with a sci-fi twist—my books are always cast with poc, queer mcs, trans rep, aro/ace rep and other under-repped identities! pls reblog not only to support me but to help put this book in the hands of people who need it <3
#writeblr#read diversely#Black authors#trans authors#lgbtq authors#queer representation#trans representation#aro representation#ace representation#book recs#queerplatonic#aroace#achillean#mlm romance#m4m#t4t#self published author
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Not gonna lie, both vindicating but also deeply sad that every single literary magazine I've looked at recently, having visited those site in the past, has edited their submission requirements to specify that AI work will not be considered.
And at the same time, I'm extremely fearful of how many writers are going to give up writing when it becomes impossible to tell AI from real anymore, and markets are utterly saturated with content to the point that getting anything published is nearly impossible as scammers try to make some quick change.
I imagine it wouldn't be worth it in the long run as a scam, because it doesn't exactly pay to write these days even prior to this, so it may then die out within a couple of years, though that might be optimistic given the plagiarism that makes it into the Amazon self-publishing realm. But even still, I do worry that in the meantime it's going to push writers out and force already struggling lit mags to shut down, and I'm so, so worried about it.
#I have not been submitting anywhere for a few months cuz mental health hit me weird#but I've been going back to look now and it changed SO suddenly with the release of chatgpt#I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it—#like I REALLY do spend a lot of time thinking about this kind of thing. straight up where does art go from here.#like that question was bad ENOUGH before this but now#also this also applies to book publishing but I mention lit mags especially because they're actually a VERY low entry point#and also—and perhaps more importantly—this will only further cement the monopolization of the publishing industry.#which will then mean that any moves toward diversity will be instantly walked back#because you don't have to worry about the backlash queer authors get for writing anything besides fluff gay romance.#you don't have to worry about controversy about your writers of color being harassed on twitter.#you can outsource your content to a false faceless entity who doesn't need to be paid and create whatever you so desire.#I know it's been said constantly but we grow ever closer to the most sanitized and pacifist destruction of culture and story possible.#that sounds dramatic but it's legit the cliff in the distance and the car is hurtling toward it faster than you'd think.
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