According to Charlotte Gill in the Telegraph, U.K. literary agencies are prioritising authors from ‘under-represented’ communities, such as people of colour and LGBTQ+ individuals, over those considered ‘privileged’. Here’s an excerpt:
An investigation by the Telegraph has found examples of literary agencies making clear their preference for authors deemed under-represented or marginalised – normally meaning people of colour, disabled writers and those from the LGBTQ+ community – prompting concern that authors who do not meet the criteria are becoming “ostracised”.
Ash Literary, an agency looking “for extraordinary stories for children that reflect and celebrate the diversity of our world”, states on its submissions page: “We are not interested in stories about white able-bodied WW2 evacuees but would welcome that story from a disabled, LGBTQ+ or BIPOC [black, indigenous and other people of colour] perspective.”
It adds: “If your book is about an identity that is not yours, we will not be a good fit. This includes books based [sic] the experiences of family members and friends.”
The Good Literary Agency, which receives funding from Arts Council England’s National Portfolio 2023-26, was set up “to explicitly represent British writers from backgrounds under-represented in U.K. publishing”. It lists jobs that ask for applicants who understand “the issues within publishing and society more generally that have led to structural inequality and writers who are BAME, working class, disabled and LGBTQ+ being under-represented”.
Julie Gourinchas from Bell Lomax Moreton, which represents authors and illustrators, says she is “interested in hearing from authors traditionally under-represented in the industry, including but not restricted to writers of colour; queer, trans and nonbinary writers; working class writers; disabled writers; etc.”
On Ms Wishlist, a website in which literary agents state the types of literature they’re after, one writes that “BIPOC, queer and minority groups are always the most welcome”, and another said that he is “specifically looking for [works] written by #LGBTQIA + and/or #BIPOC authors”. Both were contacted for comment, the latter declining.
Kathleen Stock, the leading feminist and philosopher, told the Telegraph: “This is about the performance of moral goodness and guilt-expiation by posh, publicly-school educated people, and not much else. There is no link between talent and identity, though you can market identity to a certain kind of gullible reader.
“I’m lucky that I found a brave agent and editor to take me on in this otherwise suffocating climate, where people who think genuinely differently from the herd are often ostracised, and conformist authors doing the same thing as everybody else are lauded as iconoclasts.”
Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, said: “It seems the ideal client from the point of view of these literary agencies is a non-binary person of colour with a disability and a trust fund. Whether or not they can write seems largely immaterial.
“The problem is, the book-buying public knows when they pick up a book by an unknown author from an ‘under-represented group’ that, nine times out 10, it’s been published because of the identity boxes the author ticks and not because it’s any good. Consequently, they’re unlikely to buy it. I worry that if the woke capture of the U.K. publishing industry continues unabated, the U.K. won’t have a publishing industry left in about 10 years.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: In another victory for the Free Speech Union, Sybil Ruth, who was pushed out of a literary consultancy for questioning whether someone with a five o’clock shadow could really describe themselves as a ‘woman’, has been awarded compensation and given an apology. Read more about that here.
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Books by minorities for a minority of minorities. Success story.
It’ll be like TV and films – all that will be on offer will be different strengths of woke crap. Your only options will be offline, secondhand, old stuff. The sheeple will watch because that’s what is put in front of them.
There’s a simple solution.
Either set up a parallel publishing business or (like I do) go down the print on demand route.
The ‘go woke go broke’ truth will hit these publishers anyway.
Only slightly related – I have an interest in photography and bought my last serious camera from Wex Photography and so now receive marketing emails on a regular basis. The latest, just arrived, is a “Celebrating Diversity Week.”
I couldn’t give a F. about diversity but now it matters in picture taking. For crying out loud!
P*ss off Wex – your business is promoting photography gear. I am not interested in Wex Politics. W#n#ers.
Unsubscribe button duly activated.
It’s the constant ‘celebrating’ that grates.
I take comfort in “Pride comes before a fall”
A few niggles – “people of colour”, “writers of colour”??? Why not see how far we can go with this? Fauna of wing? Flora of petals? People of no colour?
Then there is the issue of authors having to be of a certain race or gender? Let’s just take Agatha Christie, for an obvious example, but she wasn’t a murderer or criminal (a person of crime) so how on earth was she able to write as if she was, and how could she know how murderers, victims or detectives thought and behaved?
How about this musician who because he suffered from brittle bone disease must have been ‘marginalised’? Here is a recording of his from 1997 and I do not recall ever thinking that he should not be playing because of his illness. I recall thinking (and still do) he was just bloody brilliant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb_UJromIp0
Michel Petrucciani Trio – Philharmonie im Gasteig (München, 1997) ,
The hypocrisy is out there for all to see. Bet you any money if everybody started saying ”coloured people”, which is out-dated ’80s-speak, as far as I’m concerned, we’d all be shot down in flames. But what is the difference between saying ”coloured people” and ”people of colour”? It might seem nit-picky but I’ll put money on the fact one is deemed acceptable and the other ‘racist’.
It is the fact that some self appointed language ‘person of police’ dictates what words a certain race can use. We must all speak freely and in every case it is up to individuals to communicate openly with each other so that meaning and intent are clear. Someone of ill intent will use all the right words and because so much store has been put in people using prescribe language there will be new generations incapable of reading people, thereby putting themselves at risk.
Also, pronouns. It’s something that’s seldom referred to but we have to spare a thought for those learning the English language in this time of peak wokeness. This is very funny;
https://twitter.com/goddeketal/status/1700837910470119783
Very funny.
Very nice.
The difference is that using coloured people means you’re a racist because nowadays, you’re supposed to use people of colour instead. There’s no reason for that, it’s just decreed. And it may change at any time. Eg, possibly tomorrow, you’ll have to call them most honourable members of the global majority (more complicated and more at odds with actually spoken English is always better) and calling them people of colour will mark you as racist. There’s a 1984-style undercurrent here: Wrt safe use of language, the cow is always supposed to remain on the ice (die Kuh vom Eis bringen, get the cow off the ice, is idiomatic German for getting back to safety out of a difficult/ dangerous situation). People aren’t really supposed to know for certain which formulations they may or may not use.
We can all agree it’s this then.
“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
Anthony Malcolm Daniels Theodore Dalrymple
This is the problem we have now that we’re down to a tiny number of publishers. Look in the one big book chain that still exists (Waterstones, who have even bought Blackwell’s and Foyles and are running small pretend ‘local’, apparently ‘independent’, book shops in towns) and you’ll find dozens of different book imprints. But when you look inside any books, it becomes clear they’re all sub-divisions of the same two or three giant, international companies, masquerading as different publishers.
This is where America is ahead of the UK: they have independent publishers and independent distributors, so that the publishing giants can’t control everything people read. They’re under constant attack by the left and have to operate out of Republican states only, but they keep going. We need to get the parallel economy going here.
I’m lucky to have a bookshop in my town which is part of a very small, private chain. It regularly promotes books which have been written by local authors and been independently published. The bookshop is a very active part of the local community/
Just buy older, second-hand books from authors who were writing before the Cultural Marxists colonised every institution.
The Publishing Companies will soon get the message “go woke, go broke.”
Oh dear, now authors are being told what to write about. Dangerous precedent.
Victimization is a lucrative industry.