The Publishing Industry Hates Conservatives

No, It’s Not About Writing Quality

“If you want to get published, write a better book.”

For the love of God, stop it.

I am fed up with the narrative that traditional publishing runs on quality. Prominent literature Substacker Henry Oliver of The Common Reader, for instance, wants us to believe that the reason that men aren’t getting published today is because they simply don’t write good books. Another Substacker echoed this sentiment in a recent response to my note on conservative agents, claiming that my search for conservative agents seemed “weak” and that I should focus instead on becoming “great.”

Several other comments scolded me for writing ideologically charged fiction, completely missing the point of my post about ideological bias in publishing and jumping to conclusions about my work. My writing, in fact, has nothing to do with politics—at the end of the day, I am not a conservative writer but a writer—but because I hold several conservative views in my personal life—and because I am not shy about broadcasting them on the Internet—the vast majority of agents don’t want to work with me.

At this point in my querying process, I know for a fact that the rejections I am receiving from agents have nothing to do with quality. I’ve received glowing praise from agents who have absolutely no reason to take the time to applaud my writing when they could just send a form rejection. Here are some examples:

Ultimately, however, these agents decided to pass on my work. While the first two agents passed because my writing would be “difficult to sell,” the last agent gave me a clear, politically charged reason for his rejection:

After many months of speculating that my novels were being rejected for political reasons, I received explicit confirmation from this email that I am being kept out of publishing for political reasons. The best part is that I did not write a political book at all—instead, because my book did not take a clear social justice stance, it was not good enough to make it past the gatekeepers. For some reason, agents are convinced—likely because of their own narrow-minded viewpoints—that readers only want to read books about race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, diaspora, trauma, and oppression.

Fellow Substacker

Michael Mohr

reports similar ideological bias. In 2023, his YA novel The Crew was rejected for the following reason:

Christ! What is this obsession that agents have with dissecting privilege? Are we not allowed to write stories about people who have worked hard and thus enjoy a more or less stable lifestyle? The vast majority of kids who read fiction for fun, after all, come from affluent backgrounds. The fact that this agent believes that a middle-to-upper class story would not appeal to young readers from that very background is wild and a clear testament to ideological bias.

The issue in publishing is therefore two-fold: Agents look not only for leftist writers but also for leftist writing.

I previously compiled a fairly robust list of examples of what agents seek on their wishlists here, and the results are astounding. Among the top contenders are “Queer YA based on Gilgamesh,” “Politically-minded road trip narratives that address the ways in which marginalized people explore and experience unfamiliar places,” and “Positive fat rep, and books with a diversity of body types.” Similarly, another agent explicitly tells us that she will “prioritize” “Black, Indigenous, and other people of color” and reveals that she does not appreciate “morality stories, trying to teach teens or tweens something.”

I wish this were satire.

The belief system that writers who are not getting published just need to “write great books” is not only myopic—it is also arrogant. Sure, we should all strive for excellence, if you are convinced that you are personally the next Shakespeare, you should probably quit the writing profession entirely and become a billionaire entrepreneur—or seek psychiatric support. There are enough egotistical maniacs in the world in other fields—a writer’s duty, on the other hand, is to focus on his craft rather than his place in literary history, which, if meant to be, will come in time.

And if history has taught us anything about brilliant writing, it’s that it often goes unrecognized for many years because it is often too mind-blowing to immediately appeal to the ordinary reader.

Just ask Kafka.

Unfortunately, however, we have all been brainwashed to believe that traditional publishing exists to crown the elite—the greatest writers of our time who deserve special recognition. Indeed, literary agents themselves certainly like to parrot this talking point, but if this were the case, then Fifty Shades of Grey and Colleen Hoover would have never made it through the publishing pipeline. The fact is that publishing is strongly ideological, and “who gets published” has very little to do with quality.

If you still don’t believe me, I come equipped with further evidence.

The most obvious example of ideological bias comes courtesy of Folio Literary agent Lauren Spieler, who, in the midst of the 2020 election, posted the following egregious tweet:

The vast majority of comments came out immediately in support of Spieller, praising her for her “candor and bravery.” Another commenter confessed that he has been “letting friends go for that very reason” and that “40% of the population” was now dead to him.

Many of the best writers I have met on Substack voted for Trump. Apparently, they are immoral, selfish monsters who do not deserve to get published.

Spieller is not the only agent who aggressively hates conservatives. Kaitlyn Katsoupis, an agent at Belcastro Agency, had this to say:

A TERF, apparently, is a “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”—someone who believes that the focus on trans rights harms women’s rights. (In other words, a person with a functioning brain.) Like Spieller, Katsoupis received mostly praise for her post from fellow writers, with one commenter thanking her for “speaking up.”

I would wager that Spieller and Katsoupis are both more bigoted than any of the wonderful conservative authors I have the pleasure of calling my friends.

In fact, I present to you the dictionary definition of “bigot”:

Sounds about right.

One comment on Katsoupis’s post says it all:

Edward, of course, received no response.

Is it not disturbing that Zionist writers have to wonder whether agents will consider queries from them?

But Edward from X is not at all delusional. Literary agents and writers alike have famously boycotted Zionist voices, demanding that Jewish writers who support their right to, you know, have a home, be ritually expelled from the publishing industry. The literary agent Thais Afonso, for instance, explicitly bars Zionist authors from querying her.

Even ChatGPT—an AI with a notorious leftist bias—admits that this is all f*cked up.

ChatGPT has never spoken truer words. “You deserve to find someone who will judge your novel on its craft, not your convictions.” Unfortunately, however, convictions seem to be the dominant force in publishing, leading the vast majority of agents to select novels based on theme over literary merit and leaving conservatives in the dust.

Leftist literary agents, furthermore, don’t only hate conservative writers—they also hate conservative colleagues. In 2021, conservative literary agent Colleen Ofelein was dismissed from her job at the Jennifer De Chiara Agency for literally opening a social media account on Parler, a conservative platform. As expected, the publishing industry applauded the agency’s decision.

Conservative writers are rightfully skittish. A conservative writer on Reddit, for instance, who dared to point out that literary agents seemed hostile to conservatives on X, was repeatedly slammed by fellow Redditors for her observations. Another writer whom I spoke to on Substack begged me to keep his views private, writing,

As far as I'm aware, my agent doesn't know about my political leanings… so I'd appreciate your discretion.

Presumably, this particular author is scared that his agent will blow up on him if she finds out that he is conservative. He is not wrong to be thus apprehensive.

When liberal agents come out saying that they don’t want to work with conservatives, they are applauded. When conservative writers, on the other hand, call out liberal agents for seeking stories that appeal exclusively to mentally ill people, they are called “problematic”—as one traditionally published author writes in the comments of my DEI piece, threatening me with being blacklisted if I do not quiet down about the absurdities of the industry because, presumably, the more the industry gets exposed, the less likely it will be that morons like her will succeed with her mediocre, ideologically charged writing. And while terrible writers like this commenter subsist on the narrative that publishing is meritorious, a quick glance at this except from her book pitch suggests otherwise:

“As she starts to figure out how to handle what she’s been left with, Zedwynne learns the man who abused her is dying, and she must decide if she’ll let him die without facing what he’s done, or confront him and risk upending her precarious progress.”

This is such a Nobel-Prize-winning sentence that I will have to call up the Nobel Prize committee and immediately demand that this novel, which comes with a plethora of trigger warnings, be immortalized in history.

So for those of you who think that writers who aren’t getting published just aren’t “good enough”—stop it! I have never seen more evidence for ideological bias, snobbery, actual bigotry for anything else in my entire life. And while I do not speak, of course, for every literary agent in the industry—there are bound to be at least a handful who are lovely and sane people—the general message is clear: the publishing industry hates conservatives.

I would love nothing more than to witness the return to an apolitical publishing world that runs on good writing, but as things currently stand, however, the publishing industry undeniably judges writing on the basis of ideology. Nothing else can explain why the story of “Zedwynne” (just why??) is being published traditionally and why Michael Mohr and I—alongside myriad other actually talented writers—are being kept out.

I will not be silent about ideological bias in publishing. The bias exists, and if no one else wants to speak out about it, then let me be a pariah. If calling out actual prejudice is the reason that I don’t get a publishing deal, then so be it. I will stop at nothing until conservative writers are given a voice—and until great literature returns to our shelves.

In the meantime, stop it.

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