The YouTube version of this interview required a mute list for my editor.
Twenty-three timestamps. Slurs, f-bombs, a detailed explanation of how she’d storm Penguin Random House and hold the building hostage until they gave indie authors book deals.
And it just didn’t seem right to leave all that on the cutting room floor.
Tia Ja’nae has been banned from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit. She calls herself the president of the Fuck Amazon Fraternity Incorporated, so you might imagine she’s some never-was in the literature world. Far from it.
She’s a Pulitzer-nominated playwright whose debut crime novel got shadowbanned, bootlegged, and sold overseas by Amazon without her seeing a dime. One copy resold for $750.
By necessity, Tia is truly independent with her writing, in a way most of us never will be. Never could be.
This is the full conversation—over an hour of Tia walking through the entire history of American publishing, from the 1970s golden age where a heroin addict could mail a manuscript from prison and get a book deal, to the “lipstick lesbian trust fund baby agents” who now decide what gets published. She explains exactly why she spelled certain words correctly in her novel and refused to change them, even when Amazon tried to bury her for it.
She talks about why indie authors are too scared to say what they actually think. Why writers selling books to other writers is a trap. Why fan fiction isn’t killing literature—corporate IP hoarding is. Why most of you are undercharging for your ebooks and should be embarrassed about it.
And she issues a challenge: What are you going to do about it?
Tia is also the managing editor of Black Market Fiction, so if you’ve been curious about the person reading your submissions—now you know exactly who you’re dealing with.
Fair warning: If you’re easily offended, this isn’t for you. Tia doesn’t do disclaimers and neither do I.
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