I share your view that outright nihilism about the future of publishing is premature. Plenty want to read. I also agree the mainstream do not want us. No chance there.
But they are also dying. That liberal behemoth that needs all that propaganda is expensive to maintain. To use your little fantasy, those parties are very expensive. They are also incestuous. I suspect the implosion we are seeing with Hollywood is just a faster version of what will happen with publishing.
The article you referenced mentioned a lot of factoids about where they make money. Their back catalog and some celebrity books basically. Their real sin was not cultivating authors. Like the record industry before them they went for the easy profits and were unprepared when the industry changed.
So I think new publishing houses will emerge to serve customers. I think the future could be bright.
Great article, as always. Nice to know other people feel the same. I think we're all feeling the weight of the actual oppression these days. The fake and gay idea canard of 'just start your own twitter' that morphed into 'start your own visa' and then 'start your own monetary system' is all pretty blackpilling. And you're of course right that outlets like Substack can only tolerate dissent for so long, even if they are committed to muh free speech. They are committed in the same way that original YouTube was, Google once was, Cloudflare once said they were, and the list goes on.
Part of their argument is that there's no market for conservative ideas, something that I think has been pretty well debunked as fake and gay. The libertards say that this kind of artificial subsidy, resisting what the market naturally wants, will eventually break way. That at some point in the future, the market will prevail. That argument is similar to the one on the right that says that black swan event X is going to come along and 'set things back to normal' the same way 'that it happened in the Soviet Union: sudden collapse!' - these kind of dreamers imagine something coming along that will solve their challenges with a war/meteor/EMP event, etc., even though history is kind of hostile to such things making major course corrections as they imagine.
I don't have some hidden agenda proposed answer to these problems, but they are the real ones in front of us. Many things are being tried and their solutions found very wanting.
Self-publish? There's an audience of readers hungry for the passion and conviction your writing conveys. Certainly, use this platform while you can. I hope it will be available, unsullied by censorious moderation, for a very long time. Perhaps even offer the opening chapters of your book here. You know you have opinions and the ability to communicate that resonates with people who are awake and independent. The legacy publishers are no place for the likes of you.
I think self-publication is a great route for a lot of writers and it may end up being the route I go. To be clear, I am very grateful Substack allows me to publish my work for the time being. I am very fortunate!
The story of the left is the relentless desire of talentless people to be in charge. They derive fanciful theories and new ways of thinking to assume positions of power and authority. The Dada movement in art is a good example of this kind of hijacking where the ugly and shocking replaces beauty and artistic merit. Leftists journalists support censorship, leftist health officials promote death and sterilization. Leftist academics deny that the pursuit of truth is paramount to science and understanding the world. When my agent told me my novel was excellent but he could not sell it "in this market," I immediately moved to self publish on Amazon via Kindle Direct Publishing. Josiah's cynicism is the correct response to a world where being a reliable hack is the only sure road to promotion.
You can witness the degeneration of the arts rather easily by comparing walking into a book store twenty years ago, ten years ago, and now. I started seeing the writing on the wall a while ago, and it's just accelerated to the point where I don't even feel comfortable taking my kids to them anymore.
You might like to read THE OAK AND THE CALF by Solzhenitsyn, if you haven't already. It is autobiography, not fiction. He describes his experiences as an unknown writer after being released from the labor camp. He had to keep all of his writing hidden and concealed it constantly, because if it were found, he would be sent back to prison or to a labor camp (because of its anti-Soviet nature). He wrote because he had to write, but he did so with the certainty he would never be known. He showed his writing to no one, and wrote only for himself.
After a while he felt he had to show his writings to someone, come what may and he did so with great caution. After a while an unusual chain of events led to the discovery of ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH. He gave it to someone who gave it to someone and it wound up in the hands of an editor of the top Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir. He showed it to Khrushchev, certain it would never be published, but Khrushchev was going through his de-Stalinization campaign and thought the book would be useful.
I have self-published a Christian book against the modern feminist movement which no establishment Christian publisher would touch with a ten foot pole.
Maybe you know more about self-publishing than I do. I have found Draft2Digital an easy and helpful outfit to work with at least as far as publishing goes. Promotion is a different story entirely.
Hang in there. I am from the opposite end of the political spectrum than you. But I think it’s terrible that you were silenced on twitter, and I follow you on Substack to learn more and try to be more open minded
Keep writing. Your voice is important and you have ideas that deserve to be shared and thought over.
Then throw in the clearly observable fact that "big publishing" is nothing more than a money laundering racket for politicians and regime apologists, the nihilism gets a little more pronounced.
If you stick to your principles in the face of oppression, and if you resist the siren call of inducements, then you are an admirable man... even if you're invisible. You can lie awake at night with peace in your soul. As someone about to enter the foul leviathan of public education I must remind myself of this every day.
Those lickspittles you write about KNOW they are not worth their incomes and their status. That knowledge makes them even more dangerous than their ideas.
I agree with much of what you write about liberalism but how can you possibly follow that ignorant walking piece of shit that is Donald Trump?
Political Atheist
"One who is too intelligent and informed to believe any of the political ideologies being pushed today. Their knowledge of government has evolved to the point that they cannot trust, in any way, shape, or form the fairy tales and coincidences peddled by people in power, regardless of the party a politician proclaims him/herself to be in. A political atheist understands that these people tend to be the worst of humanity- greedy, sociopathic, narcissistic, lying criminals and are not worthy of supporting; especially not with a vote.
To trust a politician is the ultimate act of misplaced faith."
"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."
“All writing—all art—is the will to power.” Disagree. That’s one of the problems with Nietzsche. What we call the beautiful and power are likely very different things.
Write your book. If it’s worth doing it’s worth doing. It’s funny how it was not this restrictive in the conformist fifties. Subcultures flourished, and book publishers took a chance. Books found audiences. Eric Hoffer was nobody when he published True Believer.
I share your view that outright nihilism about the future of publishing is premature. Plenty want to read. I also agree the mainstream do not want us. No chance there.
But they are also dying. That liberal behemoth that needs all that propaganda is expensive to maintain. To use your little fantasy, those parties are very expensive. They are also incestuous. I suspect the implosion we are seeing with Hollywood is just a faster version of what will happen with publishing.
The article you referenced mentioned a lot of factoids about where they make money. Their back catalog and some celebrity books basically. Their real sin was not cultivating authors. Like the record industry before them they went for the easy profits and were unprepared when the industry changed.
So I think new publishing houses will emerge to serve customers. I think the future could be bright.
“Liberalism is a fake pseudo-religion designed to control credential people.”
This is pithy.
As for words, as you said yourself, they’re just too cheap.
Self publish on Substack and call it done, then head downrange.
Bello Fortuna is upon us.
Or downtown to get a job.
That’s boring but it pays.
You should reach out to Imperium Press or someone similar
I've had a good experience with Antelope Hill also.
Great article, as always. Nice to know other people feel the same. I think we're all feeling the weight of the actual oppression these days. The fake and gay idea canard of 'just start your own twitter' that morphed into 'start your own visa' and then 'start your own monetary system' is all pretty blackpilling. And you're of course right that outlets like Substack can only tolerate dissent for so long, even if they are committed to muh free speech. They are committed in the same way that original YouTube was, Google once was, Cloudflare once said they were, and the list goes on.
Part of their argument is that there's no market for conservative ideas, something that I think has been pretty well debunked as fake and gay. The libertards say that this kind of artificial subsidy, resisting what the market naturally wants, will eventually break way. That at some point in the future, the market will prevail. That argument is similar to the one on the right that says that black swan event X is going to come along and 'set things back to normal' the same way 'that it happened in the Soviet Union: sudden collapse!' - these kind of dreamers imagine something coming along that will solve their challenges with a war/meteor/EMP event, etc., even though history is kind of hostile to such things making major course corrections as they imagine.
I don't have some hidden agenda proposed answer to these problems, but they are the real ones in front of us. Many things are being tried and their solutions found very wanting.
These people forget that great men, not events, are the primary driving force of history.
Self-publish? There's an audience of readers hungry for the passion and conviction your writing conveys. Certainly, use this platform while you can. I hope it will be available, unsullied by censorious moderation, for a very long time. Perhaps even offer the opening chapters of your book here. You know you have opinions and the ability to communicate that resonates with people who are awake and independent. The legacy publishers are no place for the likes of you.
I think self-publication is a great route for a lot of writers and it may end up being the route I go. To be clear, I am very grateful Substack allows me to publish my work for the time being. I am very fortunate!
The story of the left is the relentless desire of talentless people to be in charge. They derive fanciful theories and new ways of thinking to assume positions of power and authority. The Dada movement in art is a good example of this kind of hijacking where the ugly and shocking replaces beauty and artistic merit. Leftists journalists support censorship, leftist health officials promote death and sterilization. Leftist academics deny that the pursuit of truth is paramount to science and understanding the world. When my agent told me my novel was excellent but he could not sell it "in this market," I immediately moved to self publish on Amazon via Kindle Direct Publishing. Josiah's cynicism is the correct response to a world where being a reliable hack is the only sure road to promotion.
Great comment. Can you link your book here?
https://www.amazon.com/Catastrophe-Theory-Neale-Martin/dp/B0D1NQ72BP/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
And here are links to the articles i wrote about the experience on LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-wrote-novel-validation-era-youtube-substack-kdp-neale-martin-rfcbe?trackingId=u6G9433fSNSbsrGGcgETNg%3D%3D&lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_profile_view_base_recent_activity_content_view%3Be%2BuPdq6HQHSCrzlyFyn0tw%3D%3D
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-wrote-novel-validation-era-youtube-substack-kdp-neale-martin-rfcbe?trackingId=u6G9433fSNSbsrGGcgETNg%3D%3D&lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_profile_view_base_recent_activity_content_view%3Be%2BuPdq6HQHSCrzlyFyn0tw%3D%3D
You can witness the degeneration of the arts rather easily by comparing walking into a book store twenty years ago, ten years ago, and now. I started seeing the writing on the wall a while ago, and it's just accelerated to the point where I don't even feel comfortable taking my kids to them anymore.
You might like to read THE OAK AND THE CALF by Solzhenitsyn, if you haven't already. It is autobiography, not fiction. He describes his experiences as an unknown writer after being released from the labor camp. He had to keep all of his writing hidden and concealed it constantly, because if it were found, he would be sent back to prison or to a labor camp (because of its anti-Soviet nature). He wrote because he had to write, but he did so with the certainty he would never be known. He showed his writing to no one, and wrote only for himself.
After a while he felt he had to show his writings to someone, come what may and he did so with great caution. After a while an unusual chain of events led to the discovery of ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH. He gave it to someone who gave it to someone and it wound up in the hands of an editor of the top Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir. He showed it to Khrushchev, certain it would never be published, but Khrushchev was going through his de-Stalinization campaign and thought the book would be useful.
I have self-published a Christian book against the modern feminist movement which no establishment Christian publisher would touch with a ten foot pole.
Maybe you know more about self-publishing than I do. I have found Draft2Digital an easy and helpful outfit to work with at least as far as publishing goes. Promotion is a different story entirely.
Can you send me your book or link it h here?
https://books2read.com/b/against-feminism
Hang in there. I am from the opposite end of the political spectrum than you. But I think it’s terrible that you were silenced on twitter, and I follow you on Substack to learn more and try to be more open minded
Keep writing. Your voice is important and you have ideas that deserve to be shared and thought over.
Deeply resonating thoughts. Thanks for sharing.
Then throw in the clearly observable fact that "big publishing" is nothing more than a money laundering racket for politicians and regime apologists, the nihilism gets a little more pronounced.
Exactly.
If you stick to your principles in the face of oppression, and if you resist the siren call of inducements, then you are an admirable man... even if you're invisible. You can lie awake at night with peace in your soul. As someone about to enter the foul leviathan of public education I must remind myself of this every day.
Those lickspittles you write about KNOW they are not worth their incomes and their status. That knowledge makes them even more dangerous than their ideas.
Real leadership versus the fake kind: https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/leadership?r=1neg52
Thank you! I will check out your substack.
Well said. I used to dream of publishing with a Big Five publishing house; now I dream of their implosion.
I agree with much of what you write about liberalism but how can you possibly follow that ignorant walking piece of shit that is Donald Trump?
Political Atheist
"One who is too intelligent and informed to believe any of the political ideologies being pushed today. Their knowledge of government has evolved to the point that they cannot trust, in any way, shape, or form the fairy tales and coincidences peddled by people in power, regardless of the party a politician proclaims him/herself to be in. A political atheist understands that these people tend to be the worst of humanity- greedy, sociopathic, narcissistic, lying criminals and are not worthy of supporting; especially not with a vote.
To trust a politician is the ultimate act of misplaced faith."
"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."
-Mark Twain, political atheist
“All writing—all art—is the will to power.” Disagree. That’s one of the problems with Nietzsche. What we call the beautiful and power are likely very different things.
Or one can say, the problem is this: The will to power is the will to overpower. Not sure this can be a premise for the beautiful.
Write your book. If it’s worth doing it’s worth doing. It’s funny how it was not this restrictive in the conformist fifties. Subcultures flourished, and book publishers took a chance. Books found audiences. Eric Hoffer was nobody when he published True Believer.
Oh I'm going to write it. I'm not depressed that I don't have a mainstream avenue to publish, but rather stating facts.