For Writers Who Have Considered Literary Suicide When Talent Wasn’t Enough

One of the coolest Semper Fi chicks on Substack, Kristin McTiernan at Fictional Influence, did a piece about Talent Not Being Enough in the literary sphere, which was inspired on a mutual substack writer bud having a very public meltdown and calling it quits completely. That, of course, got me to thinking about the American market overall. I didn’t want to clog up her wall with a dissertation about how writers need to understand said market and its bullshit if they wish to be in the game for their own sanity so away we go!

Writers Are Sensitive Because Of Motivations.

Many writers, indie or commercial, started out writing because they have something to say about America in some way, shape, or form and chose to do that through the various genres of literature. That’s about the only thing we all have had in common at a point. From here we can have arguments about who cares/doesn’t care about money, fame, awards, agents, getting signed to PenguinRandomSchuster, learning the business aspect of literature, etc. Whatever the motivation is determines the passion behind their chase for the literary grail. Either way, it’s a hard hustle in the American market and not for the faint of heart.

The Hustle is Dead.

The reason why it’s a hard hustle in America is because technology has made it dead. Understand what I’m saying here – yes, it’s the easiest it’s every been because of tech making access easier. Nobody’s thumping away at a typewriter anymore, buying a book of stamps and mailing their flawless manuscript to publishers in New York and San Francisco and waiting a few weeks to hear back. We’re all online, and as such access to contact the industry has made it the easiest it has been to be a creative. That also comes with downfalls. PenguinRandomSchuster flat out puts up a barrier of access to the American writers. Unlike the UK, Australia, etc., they do not allow our word for the day – unsolicited submission. You have to go through the Literary Marketplace and get an agent they approve of to try and get a deal through them.

The American Literary Agents Hates American Writers.

No longer are the agents old Jews named Murray Kerbinowitz, with a tiny corner office in fancy schmancy NYC, who believes in your talent and knows a guy who knows a guy that can get him that private sit down with the editor from Bantam Books he knows from way back that owes him a favor to take a chance on you. No longer are Black Ohio housewives randomly applying for editing jobs and getting the green light to be one at Random House with no degree or experience (looking at you, Toni Morrison, on that one). Instead, your favorite regional imprint has been swallowed up by the Cerberus of publishing PenguinRandomSchuster, and they say you have to now go through their collective of lipstick lesbian trust fund kids who hate people, who virtue signal via only selecting things they like and have used their trust fund status to manipulate current publishing tastes. These are the same agents that want you to have 10K followers at least on every major social media platform, with 70% of your audience liking, reposting, and commenting all the time. These are the same agents that are looking for “pretty people” that believe in their partisan politics, posting frequently online about it and not the “bad other side” as prerequisites for representing you.

American Commercial Writers Write Boring Shit.

Unless you’re as old as Joyce Carol Oates and in any generation of writers before 2000, if you go the commercial route, flat out you’re a fucking slave to the rhythm without the benefit of Grace Jones singing it. The lipstick lesbian trust fund kid agent (who very well could be shopping their own book since more and more agents keep saying they’re “writers” now which is grossly a conflict of interest) will not take any book that does not feed into their virtue signaling. If you water down your product to get through their unique smell test you’re not out of the woodwork, because they are going to take your manuscript and knit pick through it, forcing you to do at least ten edits on it to get it “good enough” for it to be “commercial fiction” or “upmarket fiction”, homogenizing your entire plot and whitewashing it to a fault. Then, after those two sanitizing years of your life eat your soul with no income coming in, it will be thrown to second and third tier subsidiaries of PenguinRandomSchuster, who will then select it based on it’s potential to be bought up as an IP property. This is what you’re signing up for if you go that way with your “work”. You’ll be lucky if that agent doesn’t steal half the book for their own shit lit release or if you get the 80/20 deal with you barely receiving anything off that 20. Best possible scenario is a two book deal with a paltry advance with all your multimedia rights wiped away.

American Indie Fiction Is A Never Ending Literary Saga.

Indie writers, Gawd Bless Them, most times know not what they do. They are the innocent lit virgins who get their fiction and non-fiction hymens brutally broken in once they jump on a micro, mini, small, or medium imprint and find out how fucked the literary business is at a rudimentary level. It’s a shock when most of the indies find out that many imprints in the business of doing business have no idea how to do business and they don’t know because they don’t know the LITERARY BUSINESS.

Some of, but not all, of the indie writers love ignorance. They indulge in it like it’s a personal security blanket. They jump on micro, mini, small, and medium imprints unaffiliated with PenguinRandomSchuster, because they think it’s a shortcut to PenguinRandomSchuster. What they don’t know is that those imprints are literally doing what they could be doing themselves, since registering with Ingram Spark or KDP is FREE, and they are literally taking shit split deals because they just didn’t know or were too lazy to sign up and set up an account themselves for their book. This is the secret as to why micro, mini, small, and medium imprints now are considered self-publishers, contracts be damned. Only about 2% of American micro, mini, small, and medium publishers are registered businesses with S-Corp or LLCs, which means they are paying state and federal taxes. Half of them even bother to do that!

Many micro, mini, small, and medium imprints, while they spend zero money distributing the book and giving Amazon their 55% fee now, do pay for ISBNs, which in America is cost prohibitive. Granted, anybody can pay for them, as making an account with Bowker is free and if you got the money they are assigned to you once you pay an arm and leg for them.

99.9% of all micro, mini, small, and medium imprints and their authors invest little to zero money into marketing and advertising. Why? Because they’ve gotten too used to doing it all on social media for free. Now that social media has transitioned from social networking to content creation filled with AI, they are now lost and separated from their online market. Instead of figuring that out, they immediately go to selling their book to OTHER WRITERS. That’s a death spiral that will get you immediate sales but eventually stall out once those dedicated 25 people you harassed or traded ARCs with to buy said book fade into the background and bring you no new readers.

And that is acceptable by 2025 standards.

Then The American Bullshit Starts…

There are cabals of cliques in the literary sphere. These are the people with the magazines and imprints that pick and choose what gets published. More often than not, the people you do see published are ass kissing and licking to make sure their latest snoozefest makes it into a publication. It’s nonstop online campaigning and smoozing. Those are the people that get published, even if the story is shit. Piss anyone in those types of circles off or associate with someone that has pissed them off and your name is blackballed. That’s the reality and considered acceptable by 2025 standards. It’s something writers don’t notice at first, but then one day the dice are rolling and it all clicks because of some bullshit out of their control and then they realize their literary currency with their peers is zero. Some people can handle it and some can’t. Some feel they need a crew for validation and some like to run solo and need no one. Either way, keyboard warriors think its all fun and games until they piss the wrong person off and the offended party is ringing their doorbell with a pistol in hand. Neither side knows what’s going to blow up until it happens and the splatter is on the wall. That goes both in the literal and the physical.

In The Lit Business Running A Lit Business But Not Running A Lit Business.

90% of writers and publishers have zero skills at the literary business, have no interest in the literary business, and are over age 50 and are barely figuring out social media. This isn’t learned helplessness, but facts. Some people just can’t be bothered to learn, maybe don’t have an interest, or yeah, even in 2025 are not computer savvy enough to figure it out. These are the SAME PEOPLE that do not want to pay somebody who does know how to do these things to do them, or would rather wait for AI to do it for free.

This is a cultural American problem.

Indies are not going to magically learn marketing, advertising, book design, editing. They should, just so they know how their final product should be, but they won’t. Americans by and large do not value anything creative where a monetary price is attached. These are things, because of technology, they think they should get for free, not necessarily learn themselves. As it pertains to writers and the micro, mini, small, and medium imprints, they’re watching PenguinRandomSchuster acclimate into this same business model and do the same shit, so they figure since commerciality is the goal, why should they change? Those same ideals transcend into writers and start up micro, mini, small, and medium imprints entering the indie side of things with preconceived notions of how things should be versus what they actually are.

Indies Don’t Care About Industry Cavets – The Goal Is To Write And Get It Out There.

Indies don’t care about a lot of shit. Indie writers will put out 10 books on 10 different micro, mini, small, and medium imprints in the same month, proud of their achievement, without any editing, book design worth a damn, or anything in mind to sell these books that are competing with each other and oversaturating their limited market. Micro, mini, small, and medium imprints DO NOT PUT THEIR FOOT DOWN and sign writers for the long haul, at least a year, to make sure they are not competing with other imprints for the same author’s work. The idea that “indie is better because it isn’t a long term contact” hurts the indies more than they know, because they are not business people and don’t understand what competition is, no do they care to.

Launches Be Damned As Print On Demand Proclaimed It So.

Launches are to be damned. If an indie writer/publisher’s launch flops – most don’t have launches so it’s a nonissue. In dealing with Amazon (KDP) or Barnes and Noble (Ingram Spark/B&N Press) you can’t count on dates you set to be adhered to. Bookstores have closed and indies can’t think themselves out of a wet paper bag to have events. Potential readers do not want to go out in public, especially in cities like Chicago where ICE is fucking with people minding their own business. That’s one side. The other side is micro, mini, small, and medium publishers DO NOT DO LAUNCHES PROPERLY. They don’t make sure writers have 100 books on the table unless the writers pay for them. They don’t give banners with the imprint’s name for the event. They shell out zero marketing, and don’t promote it incessantly on social media or their website, if they have a website. So they just don’t care if it sells or not, since the expectation of sales coming from the publisher is that it won’t sell and that the takeaway is, they got it out. Micro, mini, small, and medium, are not doing SEO, they aren’t doing SMO. Neither are the writers. I know several imprints that refused to do ads, even if the writers paid for them. The goal for most indies is to write and get it out. Damn proper editing – can’t tell you how many indie books aren’t formatted and have misspelled words on the first page. All the publisher and most writers care about is get it done and get it out.

Building A Writing Career Is A Thing Of The Past So Accept It.

Branding is nonexistent to damn near all the writers and their micro, mini, small, and medium imprints, and in many circles looked down upon. This isn’t a business, remember, but a stair step to fantasy fame. Because, as Kirstin said, “The fantasy of being “just a writer” who produces work and has someone else handle everything else (with no out-of-pocket expenses from you) died with the mid-century publishing model—and even then, it only worked for a small percentage of writers” has wilted on the vine, writers have conditioned themselves, alongside publishers, to have the day one expectation of never making a living at the craft and being bitter about it. This is literally the entire landscape of the indie scene, and has been for over twenty years.

If you’re going to be a writer in 2025, you need to understand the terrain and move accordingly.