Email Exchange on Woke Censorship of Men
RECENT EXCHANGE WITH A FRUSTRATED WHITE MALE WRITER:
Writer: Dear Glenn, I am a Pulitzer Prize winning writer… My latest novel XXX (2017) was represented by XXX Agency, which is no longer viable. It was described as “Guy Lit” by one reviewer, a male-oriented story of alienation in the family and culture. My ambition as a writer is and has always been to bring men to literary fiction.
Equus: Thanks for contacting me at Equus… I am looking for “guy lit”, it is a pet peeve of mine that men no longer read. If men don’t read, then publishers will be reluctant to publish “guy lit”. My own experience, traditionally published and self-published, is that not only is the male market small and shrinking, but that today’s male readers read mostly at a 6th grade level. I would like to fix that.
Same Writer: I’m looking for an independent publisher, knowing my white male voice isn’t getting past the XXX and XXX interns at literary agencies. My novel XXX about police PTSD was disqualifed by several agents because “publishers won’t accept a book about urban crime from a white writer.” … Literary fiction for men, cut from the cloth of Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Updike, et al., has all but disappeared. I think you’re onto something.
Equus: I think I will change the byline for Equus to “Books For Men”. That’s more memorable than “Books for Language Lovers”. I am trying to establish a publishing facility for white males who are tired of being delegated to the bottom of the Intersectional Ladder as a new class of ‘Untouchables’.
Same Writer: Thanks, Glenn. Maybe the new slogan should be Books for the Underrepresented & Marginalized!
– – –
If Pulitzer Prize winning writers can’t find an agent any more willing to represent them to NY publishers due to the writer’s ethnicity, what does that say in regard to Mr. Jacob Jans’ statements below?
MY EXCHANGE WITH JACOB JANS OF AUTHORS PUBLISH:
Glenn,
Thank you for the reply. I think we’re at an impasse here, as we seem to see the facts very differently… I do agree that it is harder to get published as a man than in previous years, as the imbalance towards men is indeed gone, but that is very different than saying that men aren’t getting published.
[Equus: Note Mr. Jans’ Woke message again: ‘The past was evil, and because of your identity I am therefore justified in oppressing you today.’ This sounds suspiciously like: ‘Your great-great-great grandpap once had a black slave, therefore we are justified in discriminating against you today, though you know nothing about this ancient history and in no way benefited, but it justifies us in taking your job and your money away from you and keeping it for ourselves.’ That’s called illegal Woke identity politics, which unfortunately permeates publishing today.]
All the best,
Jacob Jans
Authors Publish
Dear Jacob,
Thank you for your prompt reply and for the additional info.
However, I am sorry to say that your message is what I expected to hear from the Woke world of publishing and that you have confirmed my outlook. It is clear that you apply your standard of “Does not align with our guiding principles” only to the usual writers and viewpoints traditionally disfavored by Wokism since Equus is open to publishing works by anyone at all and my policy therefore is no different in that regard than any other publisher that you list. But you are still unhappy with Equus and will not list it and you justify this Woke censorship by talking about pendulums, a form of affirmative action, which is illegal and morally indefensible. People living in the prejudicial Woke bubble never seem to realize that’s where they live. I notice you did not comment on the new trend among New York publishers to no longer publish anything written by a man, sight unseen. [Equus Comment: I should have said ‘anything written of, by, and for white males, sight unseen’.]
Just to show my fairness in this matter, I freely acknowledge that the main reason most publishers don’t publish books for men is that Men Don’t Read. You are correct in noting that the market is elsewhere. I get that. And that fact is certainly not anyone’s fault. So maybe Equus is a quixotic venture from the start. But the publishing Blacklist on male-oriented books, and often on men per se, makes it more difficult.
Thank you again. I wish you the best.
Yours truly,
Glenn Lazar Roberts
From: Authors Publish Magazine
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2024 5:51 PM
To:
Subject: Re: the Blacklist, etc
Glenn,
Thank you for sharing your experience and the frustration that goes with it.
It’s very common to have the kind of perspective you’ve shared here, not in terms of the issue being that you are a man (although others have worried that), but I have heard the same perspective from others that they are just not being published because they are women, disabled, people of color, older, etc. This is a common view even though the specifics are incredibly different.
I understand how distressing and unfair this can feel, especially because it can feel like a very personal kind of discrimination that is both systematic and targeted at you. Of course this would be distressing — and, ironically, this is a distressing and common concern for people who are very much in different groups.
I am not saying that maybe part of the issue you are facing is this factor, or that any of those other specifics listed are not also obstacles depending on the specifics, but the fact remains that most publishers still publish male authors. In some genres, such as romance, it’s rarer, but in most it is still very common.
[Equus Comment: Some white male writers only write Woke books, these are often published. Why won’t NY publishers support white males who write of, by, and for other white males, just as NY publishers freely publish women who write of, by, and for women, and minorities who write of, by, and for their specific minority? Why is it only white males who write for white males or who promote masculinity, that trigger the publishing Blacklist, and not any other group? Why do publishers insist on sorting writers into identity groups anyway?]
Many of the publishers we review are run by men, and according to Lee & Low’s Diversity survey 33% of most publishers are male run (62% are run by women). So while obviously there are a lot of women it involved it is not just run by women. I see lots of publishers still, especially in the SF and thriller genres who still mostly publish male authors and focus on that. I see this over and over again during my publisher reviews. (You can verify this by looking at recent debut book deals announced in Publishers Weekly.)
[Equus Comment: I invite Mr. Jacobs to re-examine the publishers that he promotes. Many of them state on their website that they either ‘encourage the historically underrepresented and marginalized to submit’, which is code for ‘White males need not bother submitting as they will be auto rejected’, or the sites explicitly state ‘We only publish women (or ‘we only publish blacks’, etc.) Yet Mr. Jans promotes such sites in his weekly lists, while refusing to list Equus Publishing.]
Back to my main point, in my experience, while identity can be a component, content, style, the current marketplace, are all bigger factors. Authors are choosing to focus on one aspect that is outside of their control to justify their experience, rather than to focus on the aspects inside of their control. I myself have fallen into this trap before, so I understand the appeal of it, especially when facing rejection again and again, which is always distressing.
That being said, if the focus of the books is on a particular brand of masculinity, that is not currently in favor by most publishers, and not just the fact that the author is male, there are more limited options.
[Equus Comment: This is code for the usual “we don’t publish stories that promote masculinity”, i.e., any story written of, by and for men. Yet they will gladly publish stories that characterize masculinity as ‘toxic’, even if written by a man.]
We’ve reviewed only a few publishers that fit this need of publishers that are “not woke” according to your request (please note that there are many other publishers we review that publish lots of work by men, and some might fall into this category, but these are two that clearly and directly fit there:
authorspublish.com/baen-accepting-manuscript-submissions/
authorspublish.com/skyhorse-publishing/
There are lots of other presses that are now finding there way into this space over the past two years. Sutherland House is one of them, and even though they are based in Canada their Substack might be helpful to you.
We don’t plan on covering Equus, because it does not align with our guiding principles, and it is not something that we personally feel needs more time and attention. This is because, among many other things, we only list publishers open to all writers around the world.
[Equus: Notice how Mr. Jans misrepresents Equus by claiming that Equus is not ‘open to all writers’ when the Equus website states plainly that it is open to anyone. And that Mr. Jans omits that his Authors Publish org promotes publishers each week that exclude whites or males. He is lying in commission and lying in omission.]
On a more personal point, as a man, I’ve observed that women were excluded from publishing for many years, even to the point where they had to pretend to be men just to get published. Personally, I don’t mind if the pendulum swings the other way for a while; and it certainly isn’t be a static situation.
[More Wokeness: ‘But you white males used to have it good, therefore we’re justified in discriminating against you now!’ This is the classic Woke pretext for implementing a policy of censorship and blacklisting white males that one sees entrenched in DEI / Woke institutions across the U.S. today, in violation of their constitutional rights. But Mr. Jans seems impervious to recognizing his own bias.]
Sincerely,
Jacob Jans
Co-Founder
Authors Publish
On 2024-11-15 6:08 p.m., Glenn Roberts wrote:
Hi Author Publish,
Thank you for the many publisher lists you have put out. I greatly appreciate the information and have attempted to follow up on many. However, my experience with the publishers I have contacted has not been positive. Despite the dozens of gushing reviews my self-published books have received over the years, my submissions of my latest novels to over a hundred publishers have all been rejected. This, although I have spent years as a professional editor, provided editing services to other writers, and I have led a long-standing critique circle, and have recently completed my 9th novel.
It is my view that my works are being rejected out of hand not due to the quality of my work, but to the fact that I am a man. Almost every publisher I see is run by women and a great many of these publishers declare up front that they only want to see works by women, or works that feature women, or works that promote women. My novels are by a man, feature men, and promote masculinity. I am also unable to feature my books in local venues as they are not welcome (as I am not) by the women who run these venues because, in their words, they only like to see books that promote feminism.
Of the hundreds of publishers I have seen online through Author Publish, I have yet to encounter a single one that specializes in books of, by, and for men. I search every Authors Publish broadcast looking for a male-oriented category of publishers but I never see any. I did manage to get one of my novels published several years ago – by one of the very few publishing outfits headed by a man! But his outfit does not specialize in men’s works, and he too is shy of publishing anything of, by, and for men.
My question: Do you know of ANY publisher that specializes in books that are written of, by, and for men? Sci-fi, men’s psychology, men’s sociology, anything. Or is every publisher today Woke?
Personally, I have given up finding any such animal. It seems to me that male authors are being Blacklisted by women-run publishers and I have actually been contacted at my new entity Equus Publishing LLC by published male writers complaining to me that they can no longer find even an agent willing to market their books to publishers. The agents say “I’m sorry, but today’s publishers are not publishing men so I can no longer represent you.”
I have setup www.equuspublishing.com in order to fill this vacant niche. Perhaps predictably, every list so far that I have attempted to insert Equus Publishing into so the public can learn of the existence of my Equus Publishing ‘unicorn’, has refused to list my publishing entity! Yet these same lists include ‘publishers’ by women that don’t have working websites or a single book published.
Well, that’s all I wanted to say. And thank you again. Maybe the publishing industry will one day decide to offer something to male readers and seek to include them instead of Blacklisting men.
Glenn Lazar Roberts
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