White Men NOT Welcome in Book Publishing in 2026?

0:00You said you were over him, but his hoodie is stilling your rotation. It's time. Grab your phone, snap a few pics, and sell it on D-Pop listed in minutes, with no selling fees. And just like that, a guy 500 miles away just paid full price for your closure. And right on cue. Nope. But I've got tonight's dinner paid for. Start selling on D-Pop. We're taste, recognizes taste. List now with no selling fees. Payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website details. Hey guys, welcome back to ClownfishTV. This is Neon. I am here with Geeky Sparkles. And if you're wondering why men aren't reading fiction, maybe it's because men aren't allowed to write and have their fiction published anymore by certain publishers, including. Certain areas. And certain areas, including random house in Canada. There's an article on, uh, Phantom Pulse talking about this that apparently random house is not taking submissions from

1:01straight white dudes anymore. And this would explain a lot because we know in the publishing industry, the mainstream publishing industry that being a straight white dude is not a good thing if you want to get your book published in current year. And they're even hiding it. That's what gets me. They're just like, yep, what else? Yeah. So let's talk about this because I actually went out and I verified on the site and it depends on the the imprint, but even one of their smaller imprints like McClellan says that they want to amplify and prioritize the voices of black indigenous and racialized writers and underrepresented communities. Translation, if you're a white dude named John Smith and you want to write traditional fantasy or something and submit to penguin random house throughout a lot of kids, we're just going to throw it out. But yeah, it's like, you know, discrimination against race and gender, but whatever. You know, whatever. So let's talk about this before you get into it. Any further, please subscribe for more pop culture news, views and rants. Guys get woohoo if you do. So yeah, we like, look, even even if they didn't say the

2:08quiet part out loud, I'm going to be honest in the last 10 to 15 years, everybody knows in the mainstream publishing industry that straight white dudes are no longer welcome. Let's let's be real. Yeah, it's been like this for a while. Yes. We can tell you about our particular instance when we were trying to pitch some graphic novels to some some of the big mainstream publishers through a literary agent who was convinced I was a black dude. I think so. Yeah, because he never actually, he actually signed us without knowing what we look like. And, and then when he got the head shot, I noticed that everything cooled off. Yeah, well, then he tried to lecture me on what, what, you know, women want. And what, you know, yeah, you weren't feminist enough and, um, like, well, I don't remember that, you know, I was a teenage girl. Were you? So, you know, we, and again, it's not to be like, oh, sour grapes. I wish they, you know, whatever. Um, but it was, yeah, we, we saw that there were, there were projects that were very similar to ours that did get

3:11the green light. We were given, we were given excuses like, well, it's just not the right time. They're not looking for that kind of work, whatever. But then we would see damn near identical books get picked up by different people that were not like us. My day kicks off with the refreshing Celsius energy drink, then straight to the gym, pre-get pick up, back on to meal prep, time for my fire session shift. One more Celsius kind of keep the lights on. When the three alarm hits, I'm ready. Celsius, live, fit, go. Grab a cold refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now at socius.com. And, and that, that started, it's like, wait a second. What the hell is going on here? And we didn't know at the time that this whole, uh, the zeitgeist was in play that, that you weren't allowed to, uh, you know, uh, sign a straight white dude to write, to write books, graphic novels, whatever. That was starting to hit. Cause what happens is, it's like, these, you're three years down the road past something. You're like, why are they putting this book

4:13out now when it's a pass A? It's because they green lit it like three years prior, you know, there's a show, you know, a book or whatever. And then by the time it gets out, they're trying to predict the trends. Well, when it came to that kind of stuff, it was, it was, you know, there were people were questioning it when it came out. Cause it's like, this is no longer of the trend. And, uh, someone needs to let Canada know, Random House Canada that they're behind the times. They need to read the room. Yeah. Sick of this discrimination shit. Well, it's, it's always 2017 in Canada. It's going to be 2017 for Canada is, Canada is the, the, uh, blue sky is a country. It's always going to be 2017 in Canada. No offense to those Canadians who aren't sane thinking, uh, Canadians. But yeah, so this is apparently legal. I, again, I'm not a lawyer, but apparently this would fall under, technically under affirmative action. Um, you can't fly out, say, hey, we don't, we will not take manuscripts at all from white dudes, but you can say we

5:14give priority to everybody, but it's already hard to stand out in the slush pile, right? It's already really, really hard. And so now they're, they're just saying the quiet part out loud. And this is the way it's been in mainstream publishing for at least 10 to 15 years now. And it also, I think, explains why men don't read. They're like, you know, all these, all these, uh, newspapers, magazines, men, men aren't reading. They're not reading fiction. Why did the novel reading man disappear? Well, maybe there aren't books for them anymore. Yeah, because they're thinking, you know, these romanticies type books and stuff like that. Yeah. Before, I think we did another video on that before that, that, well, the reasons guys aren't reading is because they're not making books that they want to read. Right. It is what it is. Yeah. And there's, yeah, it's, um, it was this vulture, the anxiety, plaguing male fiction writers. I think I've read this one before. I'm not going to log in, but I read this one before and they basically said that they're all kind of like, oh, are people actually going to read our books and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. They're anxieties there because of the way society has behaved. Look, you know, you're all allowed to judge people

6:17based on their gender, race, sexual identity, because that's considered discrimination, unless they're white, straight and male. And then you can totally discriminate against them and it's acceptable. And that's a blow to shit. Dear men, I love these. Dear men, please read fiction. Why don't straight men read novels? We're doing men don't read books discourse again. Here's what we're missing. And then we've go to random house, we go to their website and they flat say that they don't, they're not giving priority to male writers. Bumps won't read random house books, I guess. So, uh, again, hat tip to fandom polls, go out to fandom polls and read this. But, um, I just think it's really interesting to get down here. Here's their submissions. Again, this is random house Canada, but random house. They would probably do the same thing here. They just won't tell you because they're not gonna tell you. But I'm sure if it's the Canada's probably going on here too. Random house Canada is excited to open our submission policy exclusively, exclusively to LGBTQIA 2s plus and by-pock writers as well as

7:18those. What's the new things? I thought this was code. I thought that was coding. They call that people for a reason. And by-pock writers as well as those from other traditionally underrepresented communities, translation everybody but white men effective immediately unsolicited and unagentive work can be sent directly to our editors within the random, uh, the R H C division at random house. Can the submissions at Penguin Brandham House dot com or hope is that this will go a small way toward removing some of the barriers. Okay. Yeah. So you were allowed to submit unsolicited before. But now they're like, okay, we'll remove barriers so you could be sick because they're probably getting complaints that, you know, you're, it's not fair because if you're not, if you're not white straight and milling that you can't get an agent on stuff, which I can tell you for a fact, it actually is not true. It works again worked against us because it turned out they they found that neon was a white dude. I can't, I can't, I can't say for a hundred percent. That's what happened. Oh, I can say.

8:18There was deliberately stalling us and seven. I called that immediately. There was definitely because we got in. We got signed based solely on metrics. And we're talking. This is like a big new. Based on merit based on merit. We got signed on merit metrics, um, almost immediately. We also did. It helped. We also had almost had a deal in play with. Yeah, we were second already, too. First sight in dark horse. We had a couple of people interested. Um, so we already had some interest in that. That's another secret to people don't understand this agents don't like to work. So, um, they want you to spoon feed them your contacts. You know, it doesn't make any sense to me. It's like your job is to get me a deal. If I have to do all the work to get a deal anyway, why the fuck do I need you? Because it's kind of like and give you a percentage. Yeah, it's kind of like the whole union system where you got to have the agent to get in the door because that's how they play ball. It's just, it's a weird way to do it. There's ways around it if you're good enough. Anyway, there are. And there are a lot more ways now with independent publishing. But, um, yeah, we definitely saw the switch get flipped in 2013. And, um, because we were cool in 2012,

9:222012 or golden 2013. I was like, Oh, no. And then we got stalled out and it did. I mean, look, again, I don't know for 100% if the memo went out or what happened. But I did know as a definite difference after I sent the headshot in, then all of a sudden they just cooled off on. No, I was still a girl. You're still a girl. But I think the straight white guy was, he was totally, you know, down with lecturing me on what feminism is. Yeah, and that's the irony in this. I know. That's the irony. Like, you know, I get these like you talk about people mansplaining you. The guys who I've had mansplaining me are the ones that are trying to prove that I'm not, I'm an internalized misogynist and they're going to show me why as they, they themselves act like misogynists, I don't usually get it from the guys they, they say I'm supposed to get it from. I get it from the, the feminist women quotes and from the feminist men and quotes. I don't usually get it from the people they, they, they accuse of doing it. They're the ones doing it. Yeah. Yeah. So let's um, take a look here and see what McClelland and Stewart submissions are like. They

10:27said that they're excited to open, again, this is Penguin Random House Canada. We're excited to open our submission policy as part of our ongoing commitment to amplify and prioritize the voices of black indigenous and racialized writers. So they weren't as, as blunt. But these are, again, these are the imprints and um, yeah, it's, it's just, I mean, this is not good guys. This is not a good situation. But they're just saying the quiet part out loud. And so this is why you're seeing so many people jump ship to independent publishing. Um, this is why I think you've got guys like Brandon Sanderson out there trying very hard to quote unquote virtue signal or whatever because he's, he's rare. Get paired to like, you know, the majority of people, especially in fantasy right now. Like he said, it's all like trashy, trashy women, right and trashy books for women. But uh, there we go. So if you're gonna, if you're gonna try to publish books for men, you're a man who wants to publish books for men, you're probably not gonna be able to do that through random house. Now I imagine it's probably that way in the US too. They're just not explicitly saying that.

11:32But you know, here's the thing I said again, you don't need, you know, like do you need them? Not really. And that says, I mean, it's helps to have a publishing company. It really does. But you can get your stuff. If you do it, you can get it into bookstores. You can get it into different things if you, if you know what you're doing. And it's not necessary. And like the agent thing had, had a couple of different agents, I don't know how many three or so, then through like, yeah, and for different things. And um, just to be clear, we fire them usually because, um, I fire them because they don't do their fucking job. The top one was like one of the top literary agencies in the country. And the guy, that's the guy that stole us out and then tried to lecture me on feminism. And then I pushed back and I'm like, why basically call him on bullshit? Why are you? Why are you stowing us out? And then he's like, oh, maybe we should part ways. I'm like, yeah, maybe we should. Yeah. And after you used all your context to get his, you know, people that may or may not have went on to Ruinshira deals. Um, but yeah. So like, you know, it's just, you don't need them. Like we already kind of had things

12:33in play with other places. And then, you know, what happened with the first second one was because the one guy had a project, in my opinion, it was very steam punky like ours. Yeah, it was for adults. It was for different audience, but he got, he got himself a position of leadership and then pushed his own deal through, which is conflict of interest. And then they're like, we only have room for one of these kind projects that were taking his because he made sure he, you know, he worked. He was one of the people hire up. But they got cleared to the meeting stage. And, and without an agent unsolicited, we got clear to the meeting stage on our project. And we, the other places were interested too. And then what happened was we got the agent. He pitched the other project instead of the one they're interested in and stolen us out. But my point is, why did you need him? Because all he was going to do, all he did was fuck us up. If we hadn't had him in there, we probably would have got through because he had to get in there and mess around that we thought we were doing the right thing by going and getting an agent. And he only took us because we already had deals in play and then ruined them all. And, and part of the reason they do this,

13:33I mean, I'm going to be honest, knowing, you know, the kind of machinations behind the mainstream publishing industry, they do this. They do it to gatekeeper. They also do it to filter competition. So you've got the, you've got a handful of editors and a handful of agencies that basically control the whole scene. So they're going to try to, and there are only so many books that are released a year, especially in graphic novels. You only have a handful of graphic novels come out through mainstream publishers every year. But they try to control the flow of spice. So they're not going to let somebody come in the back door with something that could compete with their darlings. And even if you pick her is the darlings, a lot of times don't even earn out. Like, that means they made, they made, they made enough money from selling their books that they don't know about their, their, their advance. They made money. You usually have to earn out to be worth bringing back. They don't even earn out. And they're already giving them other deals, which means they weren't selling to begin with. And instead of getting somebody in their fresh blood that could sell, they will like literally gatekeep people out to make sure that their darlings get to keep getting deals because they get a cut. And those darlings can't sell shit.

14:37Craft mac and cheese is better than 90s hip hop. We'll remind you of your childhood without making you feel incredibly old. Craft mac and cheese, best thing ever. Yeah, it's, it's really frustrating. And back to Canada, I mean, if I got free grant money to be a writer, I could sit there and not have to worry about earning out too. Oh, yeah. And that's well, yeah, because they're actually there. Why are there so many cartoonists from Canada? Well, they had grants for a while. That's a whole other thing. But this is according again to Phantom Pulse in 2024. This is literary fiction elder Joyce Carol Oates posting on ex. She confirmed a friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers. No matter how good, they're just not interested. This is heartbreaking for writers to me. It's like he's brilliant. Yeah. But they're not, again, they're just saying the quiet part out loud. And these two things are connected. Why are men not writing book? Where are all the male writers writing the books for all the men?

15:43Well, the publishing company was smart. They would, they would go find the best books that could find from anybody in clean mail writers, publish them, and then maybe you have men write read the books again and then market to dudes. You might get people buying book, mount men buying books again. Why would you want half of your demographic not buying books? They don't. That's why they're complaining about men not buying books. But they're not going to buy your shit. It's because you know, oh, it's fantasy, which men like. They'll buy it. They're not just going to buy it because you slap fantasy on it. It has to actually be decent. I'm not saying women in minorities can't write decent stuff. I'm sure they do all the time. The problem is what you're hearing about the most now is more like the slot that it is like the room and it's very, it's a very different. It's very different. I mean, it's fantasy in name only because it's mostly, this is just a romance novel with elves and minotars and shit. But it's the same, it's the same same stuff that they were just buying. I guess it's just not enough to just have Fabio on the cover anymore. Now he's got to have bull horns and you know, it's got to be

16:47plowing of fairy or something. By fairy, I mean, fairy, not it. This started more than a decade ago. And again, it takes years for these books to come out. This is what they want. This is what is being promoted in Target and Walmart and whatever. So yeah, men don't see anything that's interesting to them. And they're actively being pushed out of the industry. Then that's what's going to happen. Same with graphic novels too. You had very few graphic novel creators in the published space that were men. It was mostly women. There were a couple of men, but it's like, so you push, there's too many men in here and you push them out. Then we don't have enough men. Same with the gaming. What guys aren't reading because they're going on, doing gaming, other things. There's too many men in gaming. It's like, well, where are they fucking supposed to go? You know what I mean? And then they don't buy your shit. Oh, wait, you're supposed to go away. But then you do that too. Because they tell you, like they told you have smoothies. If you don't show up, dudes don't show up. And they're like, well, the movie failed because of men. It's like, you told them not to fucking shut up and show up. Do you know what I'm

17:47saying? Why can't why can't why can't why can't Gen Z or Millennial women find men? Well, you spent the last freaking 20 years almost demonizing them. So why the fuck would they want to go out with you? You know, it's like I'm sorry. It's just, I mean, look, it's yeah, this is a problem that you created. And, you know, so if your sales fall off a freaking cliff because you don't want men in the industry, you don't want men to create books that men will read, that's that's a you problem. And, you know, these companies, these publishers are shrinking because they're having a consolidate because it's like Penguin, Random House, whatever. There used to be like six publishers. Now I think we're down to three or four because they keep collapsing into themselves because nobody's reading books. All right, we're going to wrap it up. Yes. Paul, please subscribe for more pop culture news views and rants. But it's not later. Bye.