The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem
thewalrus.ca – Wednesday October 1, 2025
Companies keep betting on the next bestseller. Literature is poorer for it
In 1970, a New York publishing company put out a debut novel by an editor and former teacher from Ohio. The press, then known as Holt, Rinehart and Winston, had taken a chance on the book, which had been rejected by numerous other houses. The initial print run was somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 units—modest expectations that looked justified when, in the first year, sales barely cleared 2,000. This despite getting positive reviews in the New York Times and The New Yorker and being assigned to freshman classes at the City College of New York. The attention wasn’t enough. Four years later, the novel was out of print.
The author stayed in the game, albeit precariously. While working on her second book, she was a single parent commuting to Manhattan for a job in publishing. At the time, she was “so strapped for money that the condition moved from debilitating stress to hilarity.” Despite her first book’s lacklustre sales, she found a publisher for her second. The debut had attracted the admiration of a high-profile editor, one who happened to work in the same building she did. He acquired her next title, and the next, keeping her in house as she steadily built acclaim and an audience.
Eventually, the writer scored an opportunity still regarded as a grail of book marketing: her debut was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club. Sales reportedly soared to 800,000 copies. Today, publishers hope that their titles will nab the book club stamp—and the ensuing bump in sales—straight out of the gate. But, in this case, the Oprah endorsement came only at the turn of the millennium, thirty years after the novel was first released. By then, the author had published some half dozen other books and cleared the stable of major literary accolades. She had won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, the Nobel. The author was Toni Morrison. The novel was The Bluest Eye.
Open Call - Getting Your Script Ready
bbc.co.uk – Tuesday September 30, 2025
This year the dates for our Open Call are from noon on Tuesday 4th November to noon on Tuesday 2nd December. Ahead of the submission window opening we turned to Hayley McKenzie for some tips and advice on making sure that your script is in its best shape.
How should writers get ready to submit their script to BBC Writers Open Call, or any other opportunity deadline?
Making sure you have enough time to do multiple revisions before the deadline is critical – don’t send your first draft! Building that evaluation and rewrite time into your process is important if you want to send your best work. So, aim to finish a first draft of the script a few weeks before the deadline to give yourself time to really elevate the script and make it the best you possibly can.
We also encourage the writers we work with to have done a lot of development on the idea/premise, characters and story, including outlining, before writing the first draft. That helps gives the first draft of the script more clarity of intent and a strong shape, which means there is less of the heavy lifting to do in the rewriting phase.
Are fandoms becoming the hottest wellspring of material for books and movies?
russh.com – Monday September 29, 2025
For those who have always harboured a deep passion for the written word – and perhaps aspired to write themselves – the world of fan fiction is hardly new territory. Both emerging and established authors have cut their teeth in the sandboxes offered by some of the most popular fandoms.
At the 2024 RUSSH Literary Showcase presentation, Tongan-Australian author Winnie Dunn spoke of one of her first forays into writing. Stolen moments tucked away in her childhood bedroom drafting fan fiction. The admission was met with a knowing smile by the other emerging authors in the room. Some of them later even divulged to me the particular fandoms they used to experiment with.
Reading and writing fan stories was once an activity kept strictly to LiveJournal and remote internet forums. It's undeniable that what used to be a clandestine guilty pleasure, a haven for hardcore fan culture, has evolved into something accepted by the mainstream.
DEI vs. Story: How Publishing Lost the Plot. Part 1 of 7: The Gatekeepers
pjmedia.com – Sunday September 28, 2025
Once upon a time, an aspiring fiction writer had a fighting chance. If you wrote a good story, polished your manuscript, and braved the slush pile, you might just get picked up. The system wasn’t perfect, but it was meritocratic enough that talent sometimes slipped through the cracks and found its way into print.
That world is gone.
Today, agents and editors, the self-appointed gatekeepers of publishing, increasingly use submission guidelines not as a way to filter for quality, but as ideological purity tests. Want to query an agent? You’d better make sure your story features “marginalized voices,” that your characters are “diverse,” and that your personal identity matches the preferred checklist. Otherwise, don’t bother. Some agencies explicitly state they will not consider manuscripts by authors from “overrepresented groups.” Some agents state baldly that they will not be able to represent white males. Others signal subtly or overtly that unless your work advances the current ideological line — the one centered on race, gender, or sexuality — they are not interested.
This isn’t just rumor. It’s been noticed by people inside the industry. In 2022, Joyce Carol Oates, no right-wing firebrand but one of America’s most respected novelists, said that a literary agent friend of hers couldn’t even get editors to look at debut novels by white male authors. “They are just not interested,” she wrote, calling the situation “heartbreaking.” Best-selling thriller author James Patterson said much the same: white male writers face a harder time breaking in, a trend he called “another form of racism.”
Mainstream media rushed to shut them down. CNN ran a feature insisting the data “disagrees.” Their proof? A Penguin Random House audit showing that between 2019 and 2021, 76 percent of their authors were white (only 34 percent were men, but they downplayed that). A New York Times study that found 95 percent of novels in major houses were by white people. “Not a thing,” industry insiders declared.
But look closer. Those numbers are backward-looking, reflecting backlist contracts and long-established names. They say nothing about what Oates and Patterson were pointing out: the front door is closing. How many of those 2019–2021 books were new debuts by white men, as opposed to reprints or ongoing series from long-successful authors? CNN didn’t ask, because the answer might have proved Oates right.
Mark Manson Used the 4-Hour Rule to Write a Bestseller. Science Says It’s the Secret to Doing Great Work
inc.com – Tuesday September 23, 2025
The author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k struggled for 15 months to write his best-seller before he stumbled on the 4-hour rule. It changed everything.
Back in the 2010s Mark Manson was a well-known blogger, leveraging social media algorithms to attract eyeballs to his Millennial-focused self-help content. His success earned him a book deal. But he was far from sure his online formula would translate into the world of publishing.
Then his book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k came out. It became an instant cultural phenomenon that spawned countless copycats, selling 20 million copies and counting.
“There’s no way to expect that,” Manson told an interviewer. “It’s [a] complete life change.”
So how did a guy known for slinging accessible but smart advice manage to write a book that you now see on basically everyone’s bookshelf? On LinkedIn recently, Manson revealed his struggle to write the book and the essential time management rule it taught him.
It’s a rule that’s backed by a ton of science and that applies to basically anyone who hopes to do great work.
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