Fixing the publishing industry will require eliminating exploitation, not just improving representation.
I just published “The Politics of Publishing” in Current Affairs, and it’s about, well, the politics of publishing. It’s part of a long-term project of mine about the state of publishing (books and magazines), so look for more to come in the following months. An excerpt is below, and you can read the entire piece here.
You can also listen to a related podcast on the matter, on the Current Affairs podcast, here.
Excerpt:
The focus on money and prestige publishing does nothing to destabilize the immense inequalities perpetuated by a massive mainstream publishing industry. As it exists, the industry only traffics in identity and inequalities when these issues can be deployed by it to make…money. The state of publishing remains precarious as writers reconcile themselves to not making money as writers alone, and the industry throws massive amounts of money at books like those by Kristen Roupenian, whose collection of short stories featuring “Cat Person” (a story about pain, identity, and helplessness that went viral in 2017) failed in sales, despite her massive two-book “seven-figure deal.” How do we on the left, many of whose lives and careers are inextricably interwoven with the publishing world, think honestly and with integrity and with an attention to severe inequalities, about the American Dirt controversy? What can change in publishing that’s more meaningful than “Give writers of color massive amounts of money as well”?