PUBLISHERS! YOU’RE MAKING A MISTAKE!
It’s taken me twenty years to say “I am a writer” without wincing. I was fourteen when I made the decision to pursue writing, and I’ve spent the last two decades reenforcing that terrible, short-sighted mistake. In that time, I’ve seen trends come and go. The YA Fantasy boom. The rise of cable and streaming dramas. The Impact of the 2008 credit crash. The erotic fiction of Chuck Tingle (Google him)! And the billion-dollar influence of BookTok. But there has been one constant. A policy, if not an industry standard, that has lasted for at least twenty years.
No Online Publications.
The majority of publishers will not accept works of any kind that have been published online in any capacity.
That sounds reasonable. Why would you want to publish something you can find online?
Here’s the kicker.
Many publishers, the same ones with the aforementioned policy, along with agents, managers, and art grant administrators, will not accept writers who are not already published. “Oh, no problem! I’ll just send them the online publication, since they consider it published.”
No! They don’t accept online publications as published works.
Did you spot that?
They consider online publications to be previously published, thus unavailable to be published, yet don’t consider the writer to have been published. It’s the literary equivalent of “you can’t get a job without experience, and you can’t get experience without a job”.
“So, what”, you say, “it’s not your business.”
But that’s the problem… It is my business. It’s a policy that affects not just a writer’s catalogue but also their representation, opportunities, legitimacy, and financial stability. It threatens the industry itself with outdated, technophobic, and snobbish views that only further alienate both writers and readers.
OUTDATED
Though computers were normalised by the 1990s, the Internet was still unexplored and complex. It was a different time. You used to have to buy time online, like a payphone. The most trusted man online was a butler called Jeeves. And there were magazines that told you what websites you should visit. It sounds crazy, but this was the reality. No one was in control of the Internet.
While this was an exciting time for expression, communication, and news, it was still tech-heavy, intimidating, and shadowy. One wrong keystroke and you could easily find yourself with a virus. Despite quickly attracting attention, there was no easy way to profit online for traditional print. And of course, there was the piracy. Before streaming, the Internet was awash in pirated songs, films, games, and shows. It was never established whether publishers suffered the same cut to revenue as studios did, but the threat remained; a Napster or LimeWire for books was just around the corner. The Internet was to be feared.
Fast forward to now and, despite the legitimisation of online platforms, there’s still this view the Internet is the wild west. The web is more heavily regulated, more concentrated and controlled, and has shrunk to a handful of websites controlled by a smaller number of companies, yet this attitude lingers.
I’m not saying concern isn’t unfounded today. You’re more likely to have your life ruined now by an off-coloured joke you made than by identity theft back in 2004. But the world now runs of connectivity. Most publishers outright refuse to accept anything other than online submissions. I feel like an old man explaining you use to have to submit a return envelope with your manuscript. Publishers have realised that the Internet is a great place for marketing, especially through social media, websites, newsletters, and AdSense. There’s even no issue with publishing the books “written” by solely internet personalities like the Paul brothers… so long as they mention it in their next million-view video. Yet that final leap, of accepting online publications/writers is a step too far?
There seems to be this digital gentrification going on here; you move into the cheap, cultural spaces, but expect the locals to adhere to the rules you’ve brought over.
TURNING DOWN CLASSICS
Many classics of literature were written, and even published, as episodic stories in the precursors of the Internet; magazines and newspapers. Writers like Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle made not just their names from serialised novels but created iconic characters and genres like Sherlock Holmes in crime mysteries, and Oliver Twist in social dramas. The Three Musketeers and the Count of Monte Christo appealed to the underclasses who could only afford them in instalments. And these weren’t just pulp fictions that stood the test of time. Stories like Uncle Tom’s Cabin showed the advantage the serials had in reaching wider audiences, discussing contemporary issues and sanitising controversies, proving there was a market for material that was otherwise considered taboo. Even one of the greatest novels ever written in the English language, Ulysses, by James Joyce, was episodic, published in The Little Review.
It’s easy to excuse these books as a bygone practice, left behind in centuries past, but you’re mistaken. Tom Wolfe wrote Bonfire of The Vanities for Rolling Stone. Alexander McCall Smith wrote 44 Scotland Street in The Scotsman newspaper. Stephen King, the king (ha) of productive writing, wrote The Green Mile in online instalments, specifically citing Dicken’s as an inspiration.
Those are all either successes in hindsight or already established authors experimenting. We need breakouts; we need those who made their careers writing online.
I’ve two names.
Andy Weir.
E. L. James.
The authors, respectively, of The Martian and Fifty Shades of Grey. Not only were they both available online before being snatched up by publishers, but James wrote her story originally as Twilight fanfiction, self-published it on a dedicated website, then as an e-book, and then was picked up by her publishers. James was published online three times, yet that didn’t stop her career still taking off (we can debate the quality of that career another time).
Between Weir and James, their online published works have sold approximately 153,000,000 copies worldwide, accumulating $2.45 billion, with film adaptations grossing $1.6 billion at the box office. That’s a total of $4 billion from two books someone didn’t even look at because of an arbitrary policy that is irregularly enforced.
Not every online published book is going to be The Martian or Fifty Shades of Grey. But neither are most books published traditionally.
GATEKEEPING
While it is common for many musicians, actors, and artists to be self-taught or, in the strictest sense, uneducated, some publishers have taken upon themselves to ensure all writers who dare enter their domain are at least up to their pedigree.
An MA in Literature is relatively handy as a certification that at least someone you may know (or have previously published) has vouched their student meets your standards. I’ve seen publishers and agents outright refuse to accept submissions unless they’re sent with reference from a lecturer or accredited course administrator. Depending on the university, the entire course may be structured around preparing submissions for said publishers.
The appeal is obvious. Publishers get a near market ready product, catered specifically for their tastes and sensibilities, and students pay for the privilege. The courses already filter out the undesirable and, to protect their success rate, will endeavour to nudge writers to fit into what publishers are looking for. The next couple of years in publishing are being dictated by market projections with the illusion that these books just magically materialised without guidance.
For everyone else who can’t go to these courses, let alone comfortably exist within them, online publications have been a refuge, both as an outlet and as a form of higher education in of itself. The Internet has always been a place for the niche and experimental, exploring race, religion, culture, sex, sexuality, gender, feminism, class, politics, disability, nationality, ethnicity, culture, and history through writing. For many writers around the world, the Internet is the only place they can write.
It’s strange, therefore, that publishers who are hungry for diverse voices are so quick to not only disregard diverse writers who have committed the horrific sin of posting a poem online, but also to still support a system that is too expensive or too demanding to attend, especially when, ultimately, those diverse voices still need to be sanitised to the tastes of courses and publishers. There’s only so many grants to go around.
And then the kicker of all this is the positions within higher education, even in creative writing, is only for those published traditionally. Amazingly, you can have an incredible self-publishing career, have a regular income, and extensively be able to say you are a full-time writer with thousands of fans, as was the case with Chuck Tingle, and still not be eligible to teach the next generation of writers.
I’m not saying this is all intentional or nefarious, but unintentionality doesn’t fix the issue. Writers who can’t afford these courses, who arguably have the most to say about the state of the world, are being ignored because, ironically, they dared to speak to the world.
THE NEXT GENERATION
Once upon a time, Amazon was the big bad guy. It still is, but specifically in the book world. It’s easy to forget, but Amazon used to only do books. It was both a Mecca and a Sodom for book lovers. Every book you could wish for delivered to your house? Amazing! Every book you could wish for delivered without supporting the local book seller? Horrible!
Past a certain tipping point, the writing was on the wall for publishers; include Amazon in distribution or lose out on a global market. Publishers took the deal but never learned the lesson; the Internet is for reading.
If I’m lucky, I might be one of a handful of writers some will read regularly on Vocal, Medium, or Substack, in between sessions of their favourite e-book, or their latest chapter from Wattpad of Inkitt. Something that would have taken me days to write can be commented, reviewed, shared, subscribed to, and liked in mere seconds. I am still a person who enjoys going into book shops, both for purchase and ritual, but I’ve been able to read books on my Kindle, listen to audiobooks on Spotify, and even published my novella, The Trees Swallow People, and my poetry collection, One Year, online (in case you’re interested, you know (please)). I can get short stories, poems, essays, and news pieces through notifications and emails. And we have yet to touch the behemoth that is BookTok!
Millennials and Zoomers are digital natives. They are capable of unplugging, contrary to what you think, and living in the real world, but they are engaging with the Internet in very much the same way. They’re sharing hobbies, planning trips, learning, reading the news. It doesn’t replace reality; it adds another layer. Love a show? Here’s the Wiki. Gone to an art gallery and found an artist you love? Here’s an interview of them. Visiting another country? Here’s a podcast with advice. For Gen Y and Gen Z, the Internet is a tool to use in conjunction with their real life, especially for reading and writing.
I know I’m not saying anything new… but that’s my point.
I’m aware I’m about to burn bridges with some publishers, but some of you are snobs. You want all the benefits of being online; engagement, reviews, fandoms. You want all this, but you also want to reject it as a source, as a place where, yes, the new, undiscovered voices are. Your reasons are understandable; professionalism, legality, exclusivity, control. Risk aversion is great for business. But you’ve been down this road before, you just don’t remember it.
Pulp novels were considered cheap, disposable thrills tupping into crass tripe. Yet from pulp we got Mark Twain, Issac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Tennessee Williams. Magazines were just pop dribble, meant to mildly distract in a dentist’s waiting room. But that didn’t stop Bram Stoker, Ernest Hemmingway, Maya Angelou, nor Hunter S. Thompson from cutting their teeth there. Comics were the rubbish you threw to kids in the same waiting room, considered barely reading with all the flashy pictures. But once again we have giants of writing emerging from the spotted, ink pages in the forms of Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, and Grant Morrison.
But surely fan fiction, with its dubious legality and fan service, is the resting place of rightfully derided writers, right? Well, “The Hurricane Wars”, “Point Pleasant”, “Wallbanger”, “We’d Know By Then”, and “City of Bones”, inspired by everything from Harry Potter, Star Wars, and even One Direction, would all strongly disagree. All of them were previously published online. All adapted for publishers. All with no legal issues.
The next generation of writers will always write where they can, where they’re accepted, and where they’re appreciated. Online is where the next generation is. Once again, as a profession, you’re turning down the next generation.
ON AI
In the film The Incredibles, about a family of superheroes, the villain’s evil plot is to sell technology enable customers to have superpowers without the need for talent or training, announcing “When everyone is super… no one will be”.
The debate of talent versus commitment will always rage in creative circles, but the core truism remains; the vast majority of people will not pursue creative aspirations, with even fewer ever succeeding. And while editors are inundated with mountains of submissions every day, there is at least only so many writers, with only so many manuscripts. Just as there is a careful balance between prey and predator populations, ensuring neither overbreed or starve, there is a balance between the number of writers keeping publishers printing and the number of publishers accepting submissions. There is a careful ecology to the writer/publisher relationship when it comes to submissions.
At least, there was…
Since the explosive emergence of modern AI, publishers like “Bards & Sages” have been so flooded with AI generated submissions that they’ve had to shut down, telling 404 Media they haven’t the time nor manpower to continuously evaluate the influx, especially when the result will inevitably be rejection due to poor quality and legal issues inherent in AI. Bards & Sages were quoted as saying they rejected as many as twenty AI submissions in a single weekend.
“Clarkesworld”, a sci-fi magazine, had to halt their submission window in January 2023, having the unenviable task of going through and rejecting five hundred submissions within a month. Amazon and their self-publishing arm, Kindle Direct Publishing, had their marketplace awash in a tsunami of quick, lazy, and even dangerous AI books, as was the case with a foraging manual that inaccurately described poisonous mushrooms as edible.
Most online platforms for writers now require submissions to declare if they’re AI. I have to declare I am a person and not a machine. While I do appreciate these efforts, I can’t help but feel that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy for publishers.
For any writer to create a piece and then withhold it from the general public, especially in these digital times with the alluring promise of virality, is a very costly endeavour. While online publishers may not always give out big payments, measured through views and subscriptions, the odd dollar, euro, or peso here or there adds up. It’s a little bit self-centred to ask writers to give up on what little they already make just for the unlikely chance you’ll take them on board. There are unacknowledged costs of the labour that goes into writing, rewriting, proofreading, researching, rewriting, submission requirements (font, spacing, format, sample pages, etc), rewriting again, and then finally submitting. These are hours of unpaid work for the chance to maybe be published.
Writers are the unpaid interns of literature.
So, I’m sorry, but you wanted this. You wanted previously unpublished, completed, and marketable material. So why are you surprised people who don’t care about writing, who don’t care about sharing their art, who don’t care at all, started flooding your inbox with BookTok knock-offs that read like the Voynich manuscript, and were crapped out in less than an hour, at best?
The irony of all this is proof of online publications would be a great way to discern legitimate writers from AI users. It would show a track record of earnest, artistic pursuit, as well as show evidence of copyright. AI is getting more indiscernible. It’s only a matter of time before a publisher is duped and legally liable for infringing upon copyright or spreading dangerous erroneous information. Even if these cases don’t go to court, it’s damaging to the brand to basically admit, because of your own policies, you don’t know what you’re selling.
The suspicion of online publications have led to a much realer nightmare; original, quality works being buried beneath a labour intensive, substandard, and borderline illegal mountain of AI submissions. The slosh pile has now become a slop pile.
IT’S THEIR CHOICE
I can hear the cries already. “It’s their choice! It’s their business! It’s their policy!” And yes, you’re correct. But that’s my point. It’s their choice to have outdated, technophobic, out-of-touch policies. It’s their choice to have a policy that disqualifies diverse, undiscovered voices they claim to welcome. It’s their choice to have a policy that stands in opposition to much of publishing history. It’s their choice to lose ground to competition, self-publishing, and big tech. It’s their choice to have an expectation that can only be met either at great cost to writers or else by soulless machines at great cost to themselves.
It’s their choice.
So, make a different choice.
CURATION
Literary editor and writer Timothy Green, who compares notions of publication to purity myths, stemming from the original meaning of the term, to make public, explains publishing was labour intensive, controlled, and inherently valuable back when you physically had to line up each letter on a press. Timothy makes the point that very little of publishing now has to do with that traditional definition.
Publishers are putting their seal of approval on a writer and their work. Publishers are promoting and selling writers. They are providing feedback, editing, translation rights, and sales forecast. They are steering their brand, writers, and audience in such a way that they aren’t solely making something public but are making connections amongst the public.
They are, as Timothy explains, curating.
“I propose that we adopt the term “uncurated” to replace “unpublished.” Previously uncurated work is that which has not yet appeared in any curated collection — no books or magazines or anthologies, in print or online. But it leaves open the ability to self-publish on social media or blogs or message boards. It allows the work to be shared on podcasts and open mics. Tweet your poems and flash fiction. Tag the person it was written for on Facebook. Workshop stories online. Blog chapters from your novel-in-progress. This is how a literary culture thrives.”
- Timothy Green, 16th of March 2023 (Lit Mag News)
This perspective is more in line with how other art forms and creative expressions are a managed. Photography and fine arts can be posted online but still displayed in exhibitions. Folklorists and storytellers can spend days listening to people’s stories, passing them along generations through adaptations. DJs who sample and remix preexisting music and audio speak about the intentionality and attention to detail they obsess over. Agents and producers rightfully take pride in fostering connections between writers, directors, studios, and actors.
There is art in curation. There is power in showcasing work. Especially good work. The Internet was built on communities sharing information, research, and their own work. These same communities have helped launch careers of those discovered online, whether they’re singers, comedians, dancers, or, on occasion, writers.
I believe part of the reason traditional media in the last few years has been viewed with scepticism is because it is separate from the very communities they once served. The term “legacy media” is apt in this setting, as it would seem the only justification for this enforced hierarchy is exactly that; legacy. There is nothing wrong with industries continuing on in their traditions, but it would be foolish to ignore that it’s the communities of writers and readers who have built that tradition. And that community will continue that tradition, with or without publishers.
There is a place for an exclusively print publisher, in the same way there is for high fashion brands, fine dining, or artisans. But I say this with the hope that publishers who still hold onto this policy reconsider. Publishers connect those who need to tell stories with those who need to hear them. But how can you connect if you’re disconnected?
#HI
