White Men NOT Welcome in Book Publishing in 2026?

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1:04And 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 not even hiding it. That's what gets me. Yeah, so let's talk about this because I actually went out and I verified on the site and it depends on the imprint, but even when they're 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 because we're just going to throw it out. But yeah, it's like, you know, discrimination against race and gender, but whatever. Whatever, you know, whatever. So let's talk about this before you get into it. And further please subscribe for more pop culture news, views, and rounds. Guys get woohoo if you do. So yeah, we like, look, even if they didn't say the quiet part out loud, I'm going to

2:11be 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 be real. It's been, 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 of the big mainstream publishers through a literary agent who was convinced I was a black dude. I think so. Yeah. He actually signed us without knowing what we look like. And then when he got the head shot, I know it's that everything cooled off. Yeah. Well, then he tried to lecture me on what, what, you know, women want and what, you know, what's that? Yeah. You weren't feminists enough and 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, so are grapes. I wish they, you know, whatever. But it was, yeah, we, we saw that there were, there were projects that were very similar to ours that did get the green light.

3:12We 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. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home with agents who close twice as many deals. When you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. And, and that, that started, it's like, wait a second, what the hell is going on here? We didn't know at the time that this whole, this zeitgeist was in play that, that you weren't allowed to, you know, sign a straight white dude to write, to write books, graphic novels, whatever. Right, and that was starting to hit.

4:13Yeah. Because what happens is, it's like, these, these, you know, why you're three years down the road past something, you're like, why are they putting this book out now when it's no pass A? It's because they green lit it like three years prior, you know, whether it'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 who were questioning it when it came out, because it's like, this is no longer of the trend. And someone needs to let Canada know, Random House Canada that they're behind the times, they need to read the room. Yeah. Do you have any 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 blue sky is a country. It's always going to be 2017 in Canada, no offense to those Canadians who aren't sane thinking 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.

5:13You can't fly out, say, hey, we don't, we will not take manuscripts at all from white dudes, but you can say we give 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 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 too busy thinking, you know, these romanticies type books and stuff like that. Yeah. We talked about before. I think we did another video on that before that, that one of 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 raiders. 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

6:14all kind of like, oh, are people actually going to read our books and blah, 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 based 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 load of 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 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. But this won't read random house books, I guess. So again, hat tip to fandom pulse, go out to fandom pulse and read this. But I just think it's really interesting to get down here. Here's their submissions. And 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 going to tell you. But I'm sure it's, if it's in Canada, it's probably going on here too. Random house Canada is excited to open our submission policy exclusively, exclusively

7:18to LGBTQIA 2S plus and BIPOC writers, as well as those from... I was wondering what they were just adding shit, what's the, what's the new things? I thought this was code. I thought it was coding. Is that a language? They're calling all of that people for a reason. And BIPOC writers, as well as those from other traditionally underrepresented communities, translation, everybody but white men, effective immediately unsolicited and unagent work can be sent directly to our editors within the random, the RHC division at random house Canada submissions at PenguinBrandomHouse.com. Our 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, 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 miln that you can't get an agent and all this 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 found that neon was a white

8:18dude. I can't, I can't, I can't say for a hundred percent, that's what happened. Oh, I can say. They were deliberately stalling us and said, and I, I held that immediately. There was definitely, because we got in, we got signed based solely on metrics. And we're talking, this was like a big new, based on merit. Based on merit, we got signed on merit metrics, almost immediately. We also did, it helped, we also had almost had a deal in play with, yeah, we, we, we, second already too. First sight and dark horse made a couple of people interested. Um, so we all 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, your, they want you. Yeah, 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 the door because that's how they play ball. It's just it's it's a weird way. There's ways around it if you're good enough. Anyway, there are. And there are a lot more ways now with independent publishing.

9:20But um, yeah, we definitely saw the switch get flipped in 2013. And um, because we were cool in 2012, 2012 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 notice 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. That's okay. 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 as it was. 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 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 say answers are getting 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

10:21the people 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 said 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. 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

11:21written trashy books for women. But there we go. So if you're going to if you're going to try to publish books for men, you're a man who wants to publish books for men, you're probably not going to be able to do that through random house. Not imagine it's probably that way in the US too. They're just not explicitly saying that. But 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 different agents, I don't know how many three or so we've been through like yeah, and for different things. And um, just to be clear, we fire them usually because 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 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 his bullshit.

12:21Why are you why are you stowing us out? And then he's like, well, maybe we should part ways. I'm like, yeah, maybe we should. Yeah. And after you saw your context to get his, you know, people that may or may not have went on to ruin Shira deals. Um, but yeah. So like, you know, it's just, you don't need them. Like we already kind of had things in 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 steampunky 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 it's conflict interest. And then they're like, we only have room for one of these kind projects that were taken his because he made sure he, you know, he worked, he was one of the people higher 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 and said the one they're interested in and stolen us out. But my point is, why did you need him? Because all he

13:23was 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 he wouldn't ruin them all. And, and part of the reason they do this, I 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 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 do picker 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 not only got their, their, their advance, but they made money. You usually have to earn out to be

14:24worth 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 keep getting deals because they get cut. And those darlings can't sell shit. The world moves fast. You work day, even faster. Pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 co-pilot is your AI assistant for work. Built into word, excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft 365 apps you use. Helping you quickly write, analyze, create, and summarize. So you can cut through clutter and clear path to your best work. Learn more at Microsoft.com slash and 365 co-pilot. Yeah, it's, it's really frustrating. Um, 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 the,

15:25why are there so many cartoonists from Canada? Well, they had grants for a while. That's a whole thing. But this is according again to Phantom Pulse in 2024. This is literary fiction elder, Joyce Carol Oates posting on X. She confirmed a friend who has 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 actually 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 books? Where are all the male writers writing the books for all the men? Well, the publishing company was smart. They would, they would go find the best, uh, books they could find from anybody in clean mail writers, publish them. And then maybe you'd have men write read the books again and then market to dudes. You might get people buying book, men buying books again. Why would you want half of your demographic not buying books? They don't. That's what they're complaining about men not buying books, but they're not going to buy your shit. It's because you, you know, oh, it's fantasy, which men like, they'll buy it. They're not

16:29just 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 the sea. So it's very, it's very different. It's very different. Uh, 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, you know, they were just, 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 different color plowing of fairy or something. By fairy, I mean, fairy, fairy, not it. This, this started, you know, 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 in, you know, being promoted in Target and Walmart, 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.

17:31You had very few graphic novel creators in the published space that were men. It was mostly women. There were a couple of men, but, 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 and 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 if they don't buy your shit, you're supposed to go away. But then you do that too, because they told you, like, they told you have to smoothies. If your dude 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. You know what I'm saying? Why can't, why can't, why can't, why can't, why can't, why can't, why can't Gen Z or Millennial women find men? Well, you spent the last fucking 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, it's, yeah, this is a problem that you created. And, you know, so if your sales fall off a fricking cliff because you don't want men

18:35in 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 to 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. Give me something I want to read. All right, we're going to wrap it up. Yes. Paul, please subscribe for more pop culture news, views, and rants. What's on later? Bye. Two good and co-copy creamers are made with farm fresh cream, real milk, and contain three grams of sugar per serving. That's 40 percent less than the five grams per serving in leading traditional coffee creamers for a rich, delicious experience. Whether you enjoy your coffee hot, cold, bold, or frothy, two good coffee creamers make every sip a good one. Two good coffee creamers, real goodness in every sip. Find them at your local croaker in the creamer aisle.