It's Exactly What It Looks Like

There are numerous classical truisms about the Art of the written word and the business of publishing that have proven themselves to hold strong, regardless of trends and practices as time has passed. ‘Write what you know’ is one. ‘Agents who ask for more than 15% aren’t to be trusted or wrangled with’ is another. ‘New York City is the industry’s central hub’ has been around for at least a century, and despite the prevalence of online publishing resources, seems to carry a lot more weight than one might assume in the Digital Age. One truism in publishing that holds across all media- ‘Sex sells’. If you want proof of that, I need only direct your attention to the covers of every Harlequin Publishing romance novel that has ever been placed on a bookstore or big box retailer or grocery store shelf (and don’t forget about the airports, though they seem to focus on spy thrillers, for some strange reason).

With the concentration of publishers having most of their corporate offices and literary agents and editors living and working out of the Five Boroughs, a lot of up-and-coming authors have found themselves asking over the years, “If they all live and work there, does that automatically mean that they are steeped in the socio-political leanings of that environment?” One could easily be forgiven for assuming either yes or no to this question, and the reasons are simple. If one assumes ‘yes’, it would be easy to point out that in an intensely and loudly one-sided socio-political environment, the pressure to conform and adopt the views of the community one lives and works within would usually be more than any one person could sanely stand against for any length of time. If one assumes ‘no’, they could point to the slow-moving nature of print publishing and the tendency for the larger, older and more staid entities within the industry to stick to traditional practices of the business. As such, when looking at the business of publishing from the wide view, one could come to either conclusion, and point to a reasonable explanation for why they did so.

But the publishing industry and the Art of the written word are not composed of conglomerates alone, ladies and gentlemen. No, they are composed of people, individual people, working as acquisitions agents, both junior and senior level, editors of various ranks (though usually bisected into junior and senior as well), marketing officers, distribution coordinators, cover art designers or departments, legal departments, and financial officers. And then, add on top of all of that the authors themselves, and, well, it suddenly becomes a lot more granular, and much more difficult to generalize.

So, this brings us back to the question of how the field of writing and publishing can be broken down along ideological lines, and what it means for those of us engaging in said field from the authors’ end of things. I’ve long avoided looking too hard into questions about this, because for most of my time as a storyteller, since getting my first commercial work of fantasy published in 2007, I either haven’t bothered to worry about this notion, or, as became more and more the case as I have aged and moved along in this arena, or haven’t wanted to find out for myself. It’s the sort of research that doesn’t really seem to move the needle with most folks, and the observations one could make are likely to be met with a resounding ‘Well, no duh’ of the sort that I have always detested.

Still, rather than making assumptions, I wanted to do some actual digging around and some surface-level research into the matter. I’ve been working on doing just that over the last six weeks, and what I write for you here today are the results of that poking around.

The Methodology

Before getting into the specifics of the numbers and zooming in on cluster examples, I want to first lay out what exactly I was looking for, who I looked at for that information, and what sites and services I referenced in order to get to the answers. For the purposes of this examination, I sought out information on 100 persons in each of these five categories:

Acquisitions Agents

Editors

Literary Agents

Book Marketing Specialists

Professors in various Creative Writing Courses

I originally was going to make ‘Authors’ my fifth category to look into, but as I was getting ready to start the task of looking folks up via a combination of LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Facebook and Predators and Editors (a truly indispensible website for many years), I found myself thinking, “A majority of authors who aim for commercial success as a primary goal are deeply affected by their education (high school and college), market trends, and what acquisitions folks and editors are currently calling for across the industry. Those other folks have more of an influence on an author’s perceived stances than the authors themselves might be aware of.”

The questions I posed to myself while parsing through all of these profiles and bios were as follows:

1) Does the person in question have an immediately apparent socio-political ideology?

2) If the ideology is not immediately apparent, can it be determined within five minutes looking into their background and body of work?

3) Has this person worked in the arena of political operations as either a volunteer or paid consultant/expert or staffer?

4) If the answer to any of those first three questions is “Yes”, was the ideology centrist/moderate, left-leaning, hard-left, right-leaning, or hard-right?

5) Did this person donate funds to a political party or candidate? If so, which party or candidate, or PAC?

I didn’t decide to take up this examination lightly, given that I have no background in socio-political research, am not credentialed as a researcher of any sort, and hold no degree from a post-secondary institution of any sort, all of which tend to be qualifiers that people practically demand before they’ll take someone’s work in even tangentially relevant fields seriously. However, I have seen precious little indication that anybody else is interested in doing this work, and so, I determined to do it myself.

Bear in mind that the following sources are where I gathered my information from: LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Facebook and Predators and Editors.

Findings: Acquisitions Agents

Of the 100 acquisitions agents with publicly available profiles on the aforementioned source sites that I parsed through, the following results were determined:

To question 1, regarding whether or not the agents’ socio-political ideology was immediately apparent upon initial inspection of their public-facing profile, I found that 78 of the 100 agents indeed had what I believe a reasonable person, approaching the inquiry from a neutral frame of reference, would determine was an immediately apparent socio-political ideology or framework of stances.

To question 2, regarding whether or not the agents’ ideology was apparent within five minutes of deeper digging into them individually, the rate climbed to 91 out of the 100 agents looked into.

To question 3, regarding whether or not the agents had worked in the arena of political operations as a volunteer, consultant or staffer, I found that only 38 of the 100 agents had worked directly in the field in either a volunteer or paid capacity.

To question 4, asking about the ‘lean’ or ‘directionality’ of these agents’ socio-political stances, I determined that 84 could be reasonably determined to be either leaning-left or hard-left, 4 would likely be considered centrist or moderate, while the remaining 3 were unambiguously hard-right/conservative. These acquisitions agents all worked for publishing companies who make it abundantly clear that they are publishers OF conservative material, FOR a conservative audience.

To question 5, regarding whether or not the agents in question could be found to have donated money to a particular party or candidate, and if so, which party or which candidate, I was able to discover the publicly available political contribution records of 77 of these agents. Of those 77, 63 donated directly to the Democratic Party, with several also giving secondary considerations to an organization known as Act Blue (48 such donors). 4 of the agents donated directly to the Republican Party. 8 donated to the Libertarian Party. 2 of these agents showed only donations directly to the Presidential campaign of Hilary Rodham Clinton.

Findings: Editors

Of the 100 editors (be they junior or senior) with publicly available profiles on the aforementioned source sites that I parsed through, the following results were determined:

To question 1, regarding whether or not the editors’ socio-political ideology was immediately apparent upon initial inspection of their public-facing profile, I found that 93 of the 100 editors had displayed information on their publicly-facing profiles on the aforementioned sources which could be determined by a reasonable person to indicate obvious socio-political ideology or stance frameworks. As a sidebar observation, I find this rather unsettling.

To question 2, regarding whether or not the editors’ ideology was apparent within five minutes of deeper digging into them individually, the rate rose to 96 out of the 100 persons looked into. These three only required one or two click-throughs to become obvious.

To question 3, regarding whether or not the editors had worked in the arena of political operations as a volunteer, consultant or staffer, I found that 57 of the 100 had worked directly in the field in either a volunteer or paid capacity. Of this grouping, only 10 had been listed as paid operatives. That’s a lot of volunteering going on!

To question 4, asking about the ‘lean’ or ‘directionality’ of these editors’ socio-political stances, I determined that 84 could be reasonably determined to be either leaning-left or hard-left, 1 would likely be considered centrist or moderate, while the remaining 11 would likely be determined to be leaning-right. There were 0 editors who portrayed an obvious hard-right bent.

To question 5, regarding whether or not the editors in question could be found to have donated money to a particular party or candidate, and if so, which party or which candidate, I was able to discover the publicly available political contribution records of only 31 of the 100 editors in question. This struck me as either oddly tight-fisted of them as a group, or that it might indicate donation to a SuperPAC, which donations are not required to be disclosed per elections regulations. Of those 31, 27 donated directly to the Democratic Party, while 3 donated to the Republican Party, and 1 donated to the Libertarian Party.

Findings: Literary Agents

Preface note: Literary Agents were, among all five groups, the most difficult to pin down, as many of the folks working as literary agents are chameleons by nature. Their entire livelihood relies upon the continued ingratiation with the authors whom they represent, and at the end of the day, most of them don’t really give a good goddamn who their clients vote for or support, they just want their 10-15% cut when all is said and done.

To question 1, regarding whether or not the editors’ socio-political ideology was immediately apparent upon initial inspection of their public-facing profile, I found that only 23 of the 100 literary agents had displayed information on their publicly-facing profiles on the aforementioned sources which could be determined by a reasonable person to indicate obvious socio-political ideology or stance frameworks.

To question 2, regarding whether or not those views could be made apparent with a slightly deeper 5-10 minute dive into their background and/or body of work, this rate only rose to 28 of the 100 literary agents examined.

To question 3, regarding whether or not the literary agents had worked in the arena of political operations as a volunteer, consultant or staffer, I found that 62 of the 100 examined persons had done so, and 54 of them were in paid positions as consultants, while 4 were staffers to members of Congress. These folks enjoy their paydays.

To question 4, asking about the ‘lean’ or ‘directionality’ of these literary agents’ socio-political stances, I determined that 23 could be reasonably determined to be either leaning-left or hard-left, while the remaining 5 would likely qualify as leaning-right.

To question 5, regarding whether or not the literary agents in question could be found to have donated money to a particular party or candidate, and if so, which party or which candidate, I was able to discover the publicly available political contribution records of 87 of the 100 examined persons. Of those, 75 donated directly to the Democratic Party, 4 donated directly to the Republican Party, 6 donated to the Presidential campaign of Ron Paul, and 2 donated directly to the 2016 Presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.

Findings: Book Marketing Specialists (Marketers)

Of the 100 marketers with publicly available profiles on the aforementioned source sites that I parsed through, the following results were determined:

To question 1, regarding whether or not the editors’ socio-political ideology was immediately apparent upon initial inspection of their public-facing profile, I found that 89 of the 100 marketers had displayed information on their publicly-facing profiles on the aforementioned sources which could be determined by a reasonable person to indicate obvious socio-political ideology or stance frameworks.

To question 2, regarding whether or not those views could be made apparent with a slightly deeper 5-10 minute dive into their background and/or body of work, this rate rose to 91 out of 100 marketers.

To question 3, regarding whether or not the marketers had worked in the arena of political operations as a volunteer, consultant or staffer, I found that a surprising 78 of the 100 marketers had, in fact, worked in this field. Of those 78, only 14 had been in paid positions, while the remaining 64 had been volunteers.

To question 4, asking about the ‘lean’ or ‘directionality’ of these marketers’ socio-political stances, I determined that 78 would likely be considered leaning-left or hard-left, with 11 leaning-right.

To question 5, regarding whether or not the marketers in question could be found to have donated money to a particular party or candidate, and if so, which party or which candidate, I was able to discover the publicly available political contribution records of only 44 persons examined. Of those 44, 31 had donated directly to the Democratic Party, 5 to the Republican Party, 4 to the Libertarian Party, 3 to the Green Party, and 1 to the Democratic Socialists of America. That one threw me off.

Findings: Professors in Various Creative Writing Programs (Professors)

Of the 100 professors with publicly available profiles on the aforementioned source sites that I parsed through, the following results were determined:

To question 1, regarding whether or not the professors’ socio-political ideology was immediately apparent upon initial inspection of their public-facing profile, I found that 95 of the 100 had displayed information on their publicly-facing profiles on the aforementioned sources which could be determined by a reasonable person to indicate obvious socio-political ideology or stance frameworks.

To question 2, regarding whether or not a little more digging around could make this apparent, the rate rose to 97 out of 100.

To question 3, regarding whether or not the professors had worked in the arena of political operations as a volunteer, consultant or staffer, I found that only 38 of them had done so. Out of that 38, only 2 had been in paid positions as staffers to members of Congress.

To question 4, asking about the ‘lean’ or ‘directionality’ of these professors’ socio-political stances, I determined that 94 would be considered leaning-left or hard-left (with a definitive majority representing hard-left), while only 3 would be considered leaning-right.

To question 5, regarding whether or not the professors in question could be found to have donated money to a particular party or candidate, and if so, which party or which candidate, I was able to discover the publicly available political contribution records of 82 of the 100 persons examined. Of this grouping, 74 donated directly to the Democratic Party, 2 to the Republican Party, 1 to the Libertarian Party, 3 to the Democratic Socialists of America, and 2 to the American Communist Party.

That’s right, there are more professors in the creative writing field in the United States who are socialists or commies than Republican, folks. At least, from this sample grouping, that is.

Conclusions

A lot of hay is made online about the current state of pop culture and the general ‘vibe’ of entertainment, and questions about market forces and their influence on what gets published, filmed or distributed are posed on an almost hourly basis. People involved in publishing from the authors’ end of things, whether it be traditional, self-published, or small-house publishing, often wonder why it seems that the industry side of the equation seems to have a left-leaning or liberal bias. Folks on the left online often respond to these inquiries with a roll of the eyes and a patent ‘That’s not what’s actually happening, conservatives just can’t make good art.’

Well, I’m a borderline moron, folks, and with a few weeks’ time and effort and digging around, I came up with the results that I just relayed to you above, and it would seem to me that the educators and gatekeepers of the industry have a pretty outsized bent when it comes to who gets to present their material to the market in the first place, and who gets told to go away. For the longest time, I wanted to press my hands to my ears and squeeze my eyes shut, and pretend that politics didn’t or shouldn’t matter in the arena of the Art of the written word.

But it seems that all of my denial was, frankly, quite stupid of me. I don’t consider myself a conservative, but rather, a slightly right-of-center kind of guy overall, but one who tries not to let my personal inclinations bleed too overtly into my genre fiction material. If my above findings tell me anything, though, it’s that this doesn’t really protect me from rejections, because the industry as a whole has a pretty heavy left-leaning bias, and it is one that could very well be keeping the potential audience from being exposed to material and ideas that don’t fit their preferred socio-political perspective.

“It isn’t what it looks like,” I can hear some left-winger howling. Except, well, I did some digging around, and friend, it is exactly what it looks like.