"I am earning my living, as every honest man must.
I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact that I must work in order to support it. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it and do it well. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it better than most people - the fact that my work is of greater value than the work of my neighbor and that more men are willing to pay me. I refuse to apologize for my ability - I refuse to apologize for my success - I refuse to apologize for my money.
Yeah white people have sooo much privilege that we're now openly attacked and treated like less than human by the trad publishing industry and the racist freaks and weirdos who now dominate it (mostly women too). I am so sick of them. Trad pub needs to die and it needs to die soon just to get rid of these vile people.
I remember before I self published my first book in 2020, I posted on my personal Facebook about the ludicrous wishlists and chances of someone like me (straight, white, Christian male,) were zero.
Someone tried to politely lecture me about how it wasn’t that my voice was reduced, but everyone else’s was elevated to mine.
It was bull crap then, and the stench has become more potent with age. Agents gatekeep, and faceless avatars are their minions.
They didn't explain the real issue in American Literature.
Here’s the rub, for too long the industry, i.e. mainstream, published nothing but white guys. Think Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon, that silent generation/baby boomer generation. We all know this at this point. Every now & again you get white women if they were “good”, think Collen McCollough, Jackie Collins, Agatha Christie. Then the 1970s happened and SMALLER IMPRINTS gave regular folks a chance, from a heroin addict locked up in jail (Donald Goines), to the white Jewish guy that loved exploitation (Leo Gold), to the black militants like Angela Davis or Melvin Van Peebles fiction (Bear For The FBI) to the white guy that wrote white detectives that somehow got culturally reappropriated to black then wrote nothing but black books for awhile (Ernest Tidyman). And that era WAS FUCKING AWESOME. There was room for everybody and smaller imprints got shine. Across the board people could write, even having black female writers in sci fi (Octavia Butler). Even going on into the 1990s, anybody that could write a good story no matter their politics or their story direction could get a DEAL (hence why it was so many black writers in the 90s).
That went on a good 20 years. Then we get post 9/11 “when the world changed” & everything went back to polarization. The black writers of the 1990s? Deals CANCELLED. The latino writers? Deals CANCELLED. No surprise this happened parallel to the digital revolution where we went from paper and pencil to computers and emails. The more involved with the digital world literature went the more it shifted back to the white guys leading the pack again but this time its IP, so we get way too much Tom Clancy, Michael Cricheton, Jeff Lindsay, George RR Martin, etc. Not only that, we get a shit ton of multimedia with it (which is still happening if you look at all the Dexter shit coming out). While that was going on the lipstick lesbian trust fund girls with too much money to get a real job became agents. Keep in mind that a chick like Jackie Collins, who made Harper Collins a fucking Billion Dollars in her lifetime, got kicked off the imprint because of Karens going for her. Were minority writers getting published, sure. Were they making the same type of money as a Jeff Lindsay as his contemporary, fuck no. It was a 360 deal essentially, leaving that writer without ownership of their work and in most cases little to no advance money.
Next thing you know we have genre based imprints. That never happened before. We have an entirely new publishing industry as the old guys retire/die off (agents & writers alike) and the new young generation is wearing their politics on their sleeve via social media and its about hype instead of substance. So now white men bad. Now lets put on the white women. Let’s not have black writers, lets have BIPOCS, which is a term i detest. Everything becomes marginalized, segregated, and even the indies follow this bullshit suit AND GATEKEEP THE SHIT.
So now, thanks to about 15 years of all of this, and yeah its a multifaceted issue and I’m trying to get through all the major points, we have anti-white, anti pro black, anti-everything that isn’t following a narrative of a high school clique of agents and publishers alike that, at the moment, are just collecting properties to sell to streaming. Now there’s really no literary home for anyone not ass kissing, siding with the Democrats, not using pronouns, and just speaking their own mind and writing their damn books.
No longer does it matter if you DO THE WORK. It’s all about checking boxes so the agents keep the hen peck order in line.
If I read you some of the rejections I’ve gotten over the years from agents who I know never read my novel because I would sent them a link to buy it and they send back a form letter of how they not passionate about it you’d laugh your ass off. And THESE are the people avoiding real talent like us and signing half ass writers that they really ain’t doing shit with either. It’s all a ruse.
I appreciate the depth of this response. Why did black and latino writers get canceled post 9/11, or is that tied to the digital growth?
Regardless, I agree with the outcome you’re showing, and it sucks. I feel like too many awesome things are just becoming shell games. It’s all a ruse, as you say.
Having queried quite recently and very intensively, Jordan is completely right. You can see everything most of these agents want on Manuscript Wishlist, and LGBTQ, queer romance, and #ownvoices (writers of color), are almost always at or near the top for agents who are currently building their author lists.
It's not like Jordan was unaware of other things holding her back, too. She seems very thoughtful and aware. I mean, agents don’t want YA dystopian, either, or dystopian at all. They think it is passe. (They're over their skis on that imho.)
Agents also don't want minority writers, specifically black ones, that don't token. Let's not forget that. I had over 200 agents pass on my first novel, mostly because they didn't feel my Black voice telling a Chicago tale was appropriate for a "black woman". My latest novel just outright would scare the shit out of them since I say all the things they think black people in general shouldn't discuss, like racism from a non-victim perspective.
The fact that agent referenced the current news cycle when it takes about two years to get a book to print tells me she was looking for an out without just coming out and saying she didn’t want to sell a book about an upper-middle class white male.
I was told in 2019 at a Manhattan pitch conference “white men, don’t bother; we’re not interested.” I’m gay but that doesn’t matter because I had a thriller about a middle aged white man who’s fed up with mass shootings and goes after the next one. Too heteronormative. They’re such cowards.
I want to read that novel Johnathan Epps. Write it.
If it makes you feel any better as a black chick writing I've been told don't bother, we're not interested in non-token blacks that don't know their literary place.
Sad. I wanted to pile on in support, but there's not much point when she's already fled the field. Fiction that considers diverse characters with a wide range of viewpoints? From an author who was marginalized or cancelled? Her critics would probably clutch their pearls and have a stroke if they tried to read The Wise of Heart, my courtroom drama of biological science versus transgenderism that brings the Scopes Trial up to date for the twenty-first century: https://amzn.to/41lTk4Q
No, agents don't want fiction that has diverse characters if they aren't tokens. My latest novel Flicking The Bic tells the tale of a white French Canadian male and his issues dealing with feeling left behind in a ever changing demographic of Canada. They'd faint reading it because its unapologetic and by Canada's own speech laws the book can be banned: https://www.thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk/products/flicking-the-bic-1
This nonsense keeps up and eventually every dystopian villain will be written as a trans woman of color just to spite the cancel pigs. None of their behavior is beneficial to help those who really need help and only injure their "cause". It's so baffling. Didn't anyone learn anything from Chaucer? Don't create bitter writers!
Writing has always been political but when politics trumps story it is detrimental to humanity itself. I will fight this kind of crap to my dying breath
Yes!!! But they don't care. It's culture wars all the time now. The less governmental power the left has the harder they'll attack in the culture, especially in book publishing.
I don’t read books based on characters being white or cis. When I read Hunger Games I happily projected my gay agenda on Katniss thinking she was a he until like the third chapter hahaha 😂
What kind of a name is Grindstaff, anyway? Where does your lineage hail from? Is that like Schumacher or something, where your ancestors ground staffs for a living?
The publishing world has gotten so infuriatingly saturated with this shit. I remember querying my work only to run into countless agents and anthologies who explicitly stated they only worked with / published “marginalized voices.”
I moved to Substack, but there’s probably a lot more people who had a similar experience and then gave up altogether.
I came up with a hashtag recently that goes #amNOTquerying to rebel against agents’ ludicrous demands in their MWL and show them we can do better without them as indie authors.
After wasting months of my life querying to people who hate me, I’m going self-pub this year and couldn’t be more excited
I've ignored the woke crowd since its inception. They are anything but tolerant and inclusive.
George Takei, for instance, used to be a cool guy to talk to at conventions. However, once he got the mind virus, he went militant braindead. He went from cautioning that the government once put the wrong people in internment camps, to calling for the imprisonment of people who don't accept LGBT+pedo shit.
The idiots on Bluesky and X who constantly scream out about their sexual deviancy don't buy books, don't play games, don't watch movies. They live on the net and try to make life miserable for other people. They don't even know how to be happy.
Take it from an author who has been canceled several times:
Never kneel
Never bow down
Never apologize
Cancel culture is a participation sport
YES!!!!! So good to see writers with GUTS.
"I am earning my living, as every honest man must.
I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact that I must work in order to support it. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it and do it well. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it better than most people - the fact that my work is of greater value than the work of my neighbor and that more men are willing to pay me. I refuse to apologize for my ability - I refuse to apologize for my success - I refuse to apologize for my money.
This is my code - and I will accept no other."
Rearden's Trial,
Part II, Chapter 4
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Hell yeah.
Yeah white people have sooo much privilege that we're now openly attacked and treated like less than human by the trad publishing industry and the racist freaks and weirdos who now dominate it (mostly women too). I am so sick of them. Trad pub needs to die and it needs to die soon just to get rid of these vile people.
Agree 100%. Couldn't have said it better myself. I, too, went through this with my novel. Awful.
Good news, AI's killing them.
I remember before I self published my first book in 2020, I posted on my personal Facebook about the ludicrous wishlists and chances of someone like me (straight, white, Christian male,) were zero.
Someone tried to politely lecture me about how it wasn’t that my voice was reduced, but everyone else’s was elevated to mine.
It was bull crap then, and the stench has become more potent with age. Agents gatekeep, and faceless avatars are their minions.
They didn't explain the real issue in American Literature.
Here’s the rub, for too long the industry, i.e. mainstream, published nothing but white guys. Think Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon, that silent generation/baby boomer generation. We all know this at this point. Every now & again you get white women if they were “good”, think Collen McCollough, Jackie Collins, Agatha Christie. Then the 1970s happened and SMALLER IMPRINTS gave regular folks a chance, from a heroin addict locked up in jail (Donald Goines), to the white Jewish guy that loved exploitation (Leo Gold), to the black militants like Angela Davis or Melvin Van Peebles fiction (Bear For The FBI) to the white guy that wrote white detectives that somehow got culturally reappropriated to black then wrote nothing but black books for awhile (Ernest Tidyman). And that era WAS FUCKING AWESOME. There was room for everybody and smaller imprints got shine. Across the board people could write, even having black female writers in sci fi (Octavia Butler). Even going on into the 1990s, anybody that could write a good story no matter their politics or their story direction could get a DEAL (hence why it was so many black writers in the 90s).
That went on a good 20 years. Then we get post 9/11 “when the world changed” & everything went back to polarization. The black writers of the 1990s? Deals CANCELLED. The latino writers? Deals CANCELLED. No surprise this happened parallel to the digital revolution where we went from paper and pencil to computers and emails. The more involved with the digital world literature went the more it shifted back to the white guys leading the pack again but this time its IP, so we get way too much Tom Clancy, Michael Cricheton, Jeff Lindsay, George RR Martin, etc. Not only that, we get a shit ton of multimedia with it (which is still happening if you look at all the Dexter shit coming out). While that was going on the lipstick lesbian trust fund girls with too much money to get a real job became agents. Keep in mind that a chick like Jackie Collins, who made Harper Collins a fucking Billion Dollars in her lifetime, got kicked off the imprint because of Karens going for her. Were minority writers getting published, sure. Were they making the same type of money as a Jeff Lindsay as his contemporary, fuck no. It was a 360 deal essentially, leaving that writer without ownership of their work and in most cases little to no advance money.
Next thing you know we have genre based imprints. That never happened before. We have an entirely new publishing industry as the old guys retire/die off (agents & writers alike) and the new young generation is wearing their politics on their sleeve via social media and its about hype instead of substance. So now white men bad. Now lets put on the white women. Let’s not have black writers, lets have BIPOCS, which is a term i detest. Everything becomes marginalized, segregated, and even the indies follow this bullshit suit AND GATEKEEP THE SHIT.
So now, thanks to about 15 years of all of this, and yeah its a multifaceted issue and I’m trying to get through all the major points, we have anti-white, anti pro black, anti-everything that isn’t following a narrative of a high school clique of agents and publishers alike that, at the moment, are just collecting properties to sell to streaming. Now there’s really no literary home for anyone not ass kissing, siding with the Democrats, not using pronouns, and just speaking their own mind and writing their damn books.
No longer does it matter if you DO THE WORK. It’s all about checking boxes so the agents keep the hen peck order in line.
If I read you some of the rejections I’ve gotten over the years from agents who I know never read my novel because I would sent them a link to buy it and they send back a form letter of how they not passionate about it you’d laugh your ass off. And THESE are the people avoiding real talent like us and signing half ass writers that they really ain’t doing shit with either. It’s all a ruse.
I appreciate the depth of this response. Why did black and latino writers get canceled post 9/11, or is that tied to the digital growth?
Regardless, I agree with the outcome you’re showing, and it sucks. I feel like too many awesome things are just becoming shell games. It’s all a ruse, as you say.
They were no longer useful nor needed. Industry politics and a downward trend to have more templated books killed "diverse voices".
The wordplay is real in the field.
Yep. It very much IS bullshit. We all just have to keep writing and moving forward. Down with the gatekeepers!
Having queried quite recently and very intensively, Jordan is completely right. You can see everything most of these agents want on Manuscript Wishlist, and LGBTQ, queer romance, and #ownvoices (writers of color), are almost always at or near the top for agents who are currently building their author lists.
It's not like Jordan was unaware of other things holding her back, too. She seems very thoughtful and aware. I mean, agents don’t want YA dystopian, either, or dystopian at all. They think it is passe. (They're over their skis on that imho.)
Agents also don't want minority writers, specifically black ones, that don't token. Let's not forget that. I had over 200 agents pass on my first novel, mostly because they didn't feel my Black voice telling a Chicago tale was appropriate for a "black woman". My latest novel just outright would scare the shit out of them since I say all the things they think black people in general shouldn't discuss, like racism from a non-victim perspective.
I know. It's absurd. Happened to my novel too:
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/literary-agent-rejections
The fact that agent referenced the current news cycle when it takes about two years to get a book to print tells me she was looking for an out without just coming out and saying she didn’t want to sell a book about an upper-middle class white male.
Yoooo! That is awful! Hateful, jealous little super villains without an ounce of love in their heart
They really are the villains and I hate seeing people who don’t know any better give in to them
I was told in 2019 at a Manhattan pitch conference “white men, don’t bother; we’re not interested.” I’m gay but that doesn’t matter because I had a thriller about a middle aged white man who’s fed up with mass shootings and goes after the next one. Too heteronormative. They’re such cowards.
I want to read that novel Johnathan Epps. Write it.
If it makes you feel any better as a black chick writing I've been told don't bother, we're not interested in non-token blacks that don't know their literary place.
Your comments are amazing Tia. Is it okay if I compile your comments and make one big note? (Tagging you of course)
Sure. Have at it, lol.
They really hate it when we don’t play into type. I wrote it! And self-published it. ⬇️
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0821VBVJH?ref_=dbs_m_mng_wim_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks
Can’t wait to read it.
It’s intense! But thank you for your interest
That's absurd, man. I went through it, too: https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/literary-agent-rejections
Sad. I wanted to pile on in support, but there's not much point when she's already fled the field. Fiction that considers diverse characters with a wide range of viewpoints? From an author who was marginalized or cancelled? Her critics would probably clutch their pearls and have a stroke if they tried to read The Wise of Heart, my courtroom drama of biological science versus transgenderism that brings the Scopes Trial up to date for the twenty-first century: https://amzn.to/41lTk4Q
No, agents don't want fiction that has diverse characters if they aren't tokens. My latest novel Flicking The Bic tells the tale of a white French Canadian male and his issues dealing with feeling left behind in a ever changing demographic of Canada. They'd faint reading it because its unapologetic and by Canada's own speech laws the book can be banned: https://www.thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk/products/flicking-the-bic-1
Yep. Truth.
I saw a great quote that had Denzel’s picture on it but I’m not sure if he actually said it: “You can’t be canceled if you refuse to participate.”
This nonsense keeps up and eventually every dystopian villain will be written as a trans woman of color just to spite the cancel pigs. None of their behavior is beneficial to help those who really need help and only injure their "cause". It's so baffling. Didn't anyone learn anything from Chaucer? Don't create bitter writers!
Writing has always been political but when politics trumps story it is detrimental to humanity itself. I will fight this kind of crap to my dying breath
The shorthand trope for that will be "Blue haired freak with a mental health problem."
I'm considered a bitter writer because the term BIPOC is offensive to me. So I did something to present the ultimate kiss my black ass moment about it https://www.thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk/products/flicking-the-bic-1
Yes!!! But they don't care. It's culture wars all the time now. The less governmental power the left has the harder they'll attack in the culture, especially in book publishing.
"Cancel pigs" is an excellent term. We must all make regular use of it.
And then to have the temerity to call this person “unkind and ill intentioned”???? That is some shitty behavior.
I don’t read books based on characters being white or cis. When I read Hunger Games I happily projected my gay agenda on Katniss thinking she was a he until like the third chapter hahaha 😂
Unironically a completely normal thing 😆
I'm relatively unfamiliar with the hungry games but "Katniss"?
Can we pause for a moment and acknowledge that that has got to be the stupidest name ever?
It test marketed better than Dogness
True but wait a minute
What kind of a name is Grindstaff, anyway? Where does your lineage hail from? Is that like Schumacher or something, where your ancestors ground staffs for a living?
It’s an incel name 😂
The publishing world has gotten so infuriatingly saturated with this shit. I remember querying my work only to run into countless agents and anthologies who explicitly stated they only worked with / published “marginalized voices.”
I moved to Substack, but there’s probably a lot more people who had a similar experience and then gave up altogether.
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/literary-agent-rejections
Yeah, agent 2 absolutely passed on you for political reasons, which sucks. This all feels very familiar.
I came up with a hashtag recently that goes #amNOTquerying to rebel against agents’ ludicrous demands in their MWL and show them we can do better without them as indie authors.
After wasting months of my life querying to people who hate me, I’m going self-pub this year and couldn’t be more excited
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/literary-agent-rejections
I've ignored the woke crowd since its inception. They are anything but tolerant and inclusive.
George Takei, for instance, used to be a cool guy to talk to at conventions. However, once he got the mind virus, he went militant braindead. He went from cautioning that the government once put the wrong people in internment camps, to calling for the imprisonment of people who don't accept LGBT+pedo shit.
The idiots on Bluesky and X who constantly scream out about their sexual deviancy don't buy books, don't play games, don't watch movies. They live on the net and try to make life miserable for other people. They don't even know how to be happy.
Lotta truth here, man.