The Truth About The Publishing Industry

Insight from an author who saw the ugly truth up close

After Monday’s article about the vicious dog-piling of a young author, I had some amazing comments. Some from authors who had been rejected by agents for the same reasons, some who weren’t even writers but had still been targeted by these nasty idealogues. But like me, they didn’t have much first-hand experience with the big 5 publishers.

But then, author and Pulitzer-Prize nominated playright

Tia Ja'nae

read my article and left some amazing comments with her inside knowledge of the literary and publishing world. With her permission, I have compiled them here for you. Every author needs to read it. Read it again. And take it to heart.

From Tia Ja’nae

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).

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). Going into the 1990s, anybody that could write a good story, no matter their politics or their story’s direction, could get a DEAL (hence why there were 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… but this time it’s 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 it’s about hype instead of substance. So now, white men bad. Now let’s put on the white women. Let’s not have black writers, let’s 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, they 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—how they send back a form letter of how they are 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 blame THE WRITERS who take it upon themselves to self-gatekeep. Shut the fuck up and do your own work. Stay in the lane you're cool with. If you can't do that, KISS MY BLACK ASS. Four words I implore even white writers to say when they are given flack.

If those types of writers would just shut the fuck up and stay off social media trying to get a hand pat from PenguinRandomSchuster, the indie scene would be stronger, more put together, better collaboratives and no need for 1,001 imprints. Instead, all you see is endless anthologies no one asked for that no one is reading, fewer novels in certain genres being released, and more backdoor gatekeeping.

Throw AI into the mix, (as you know certain writers are definitely using it to churn out book after book), and you have a shit storm that has ruined literary culture in America. We should be in a golden age right now as indies - that word shouldn't even still exist right now.

Writers need to do the work and get the words on the page. Quit trying to please a niche group of people that are only in it for social media clout (which thank gawd after a decade of cancel culturing has died a slow death).

The bigger conversation needs to be about the state of modern publishing (in general but for this argument America). Between AI and Amazon being the absolute shit-fit worst of the print on demand PLUS the tariffs, indie publishing in America is dying on the vine.

Keep in mind, agents are typically trust fund babies who have no idea about what makes a good book, and lately are COMPETING with authors publishing books alongside picking up clients, which is highly unethical. This means writers need to have a coming to Jesus moment and determine which is better - self repping or 3rd party repping.

Some final thoughts:

1. Cancel Culture is not a participation sport. You can choose to ignore it but it does not stop the gossip folks who live to tear people down from doing just that, so taking the high road does not work. If you/your agent/your imprint love your book enough, YOU/THEM should defend it.

2. Writers do not understand how the LITERARY BUSINESS works. Typically they only know the literary part, not the business part.

3. Under no circumstances do you let assholes run you off your social media. Tell them to kiss your black ass and keep it moving. When these loudmouths go low, you go lower.

4. If the loudmouths from #3 can’t shut the hell up, tell them to knuckle up and meet offline. You have to bring ass to get ass.

5. Writers need to collab and be around people that get what they are doing instead of kissing ass to those who don’t.