So after four years of rejection, and three manuscripts Big Five publishers didn’t want, my second book is finally in production. And guess what? I’m the publisher. That’s right. I’m self-publishing my book. But hold on. Don’t look at me like that. I’m actually pretty good. Seriously. I’m not your goofy uncle publishing your family’s history through Amazon. I’m an actual writer with credentials, publications, and minor awards. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the Big Five don’t want me. They never really did. My first book came out in 2021 on Amistad Press, the Black imprint of HarperCollins, but that was all a fluke. (I’ll explain.) So what is a dope writer to do but take things into my own hands? In the year 2026, my publishing company, Black Heroics Book Co., officially enters the chat.
*
Like many writers, I’ve been through the wringer in corporate publishing and I’ve only published one stinking book. It’s a collection of unlinked stories that took a whole-ass year and some change to sell to Amistad. That entire time I kept thinking I should just publish this shit myself. Fuck these editors. I endured roughly 400 days of rejection, getting many indifferent passes, mean passes, and a few nice ones. When it finally sold, I was happy as hell. I was broke and in debt. I needed the money. My editor (we’ll call her T) seemed cool at first. I quickly realized we weren’t a good fit, but I hoped it would work. It was obvious she, like many editors now, was just a book packager.
Unsurprisingly, T couldn’t edit to save her life. That sounds harsh. I’m sorry, T, but you know it’s true. I don’t think she was even a real reader. A year after she acquired the book, she sent my “edits,” and they were vague as hell. I was hoping for a line-edited manuscript that contemplated word choice and sentence structure, with intelligent notes in the margins. No dice. She made a list of all the stories and their plots, and under each description was a short sentence or two that basically said, “Add tension.” That’s it. (I still have the edits as proof.) My agent, Dan, and I couldn’t believe how fuzzy her suggestions were. He said he’d never seen any this bad in his twenty years in the business. And, just so you know, T wasn’t some young, green editor. She was the head honcho at Amistad at the time. She’d been in publishing for a couple decades too. I asked a few writers who’d published with other presses about their editors, and they said, “Yeah, a lot of them are not all there. Some are okay but spread too thin.” A friend’s editor at Scribner forgot, let me say that again, FOR…GOT to include most of his changes in the final version of his book. For about a week, my friend thought of hiring an assassin from the dark web to eliminate his editor, but eventually he cooled off. It all got me thinking: Why the hell are we putting our precious work in the hands of people who don’t seem up to the job? And why do publishers hire these people?
*
T and I had a phone call about the edits, and of course it went terribly. She said things like “All great books ask one great question. What are you trying to ask?” That might be a Toni Morrison quote. (If it is, please forgive me, Auntie Toni, but I can’t stand lines like that.) T cited Toni the whole time because that seems to be the thing to do nowadays. No new ideas? Want to sound profound? Quote Toni. When T first acquired the book, she only talked about the first story, which is an autobiographical piece about every time a biracial Black man (me) had been called the N-word throughout his life. Dan and I were never sure if she’d actually read the whole book. We wondered if she bought the manuscript based on the first story, figured she’d get to the rest later, and eventually passed it all to her assistant.
Our phone call was so bad that Dan and I almost pulled the book. He said as long as I turned in a final manuscript I wouldn’t have to repay my advance. So that’s what I did. I acted like I revised the stories. I gave her bullet points of fictitious changes to “add tension.” In reality, I only tightened up the writing. To this day, I’m grateful to T for choosing my book and being too scattered to edit it. I was able to publish the exact book I wanted. She approved the final manuscript, and I almost thought I’d done such a good job that she finally saw the light. Not likely, Dan said. She probably just wanted to get to the next author on her roster. New books came out every Tuesday, he always said.
Next!
*
That was when the seed of starting my own press broke through the soil and grew. Publishing is very impersonal. Authors don’t have much control over the process. Over two years, I spoke to T three times. I’d never met Dan in person. I was in Oregon. He was in New York City. Excluding him and the HarperCollins publicity staff (who were amazing, by the way), I felt like I was dealing with dopes. I don’t mean just T but all the editors we sent my work to. They would say a lot of dumb shit in their rejections. One editor said she just didn’t understand my work, which I thought was a weird thing to say. Do you have eyes? And a brain? Can you read and process thoughts? Of course, I would Google these people, comb through their LinkedIn pages, and find they had no real editing experience. Dan had at least interned at the New Yorker after college before learning the agent trade. “You’re thinking like a Gen-Xer,” he said.
“How do you mean?”
“You think people should pay dues and really be into this like you are. Dedicate their whole lives to it. They’re not. They won’t.”
“This is some scary shit,” I said.
From what I could glean, a lot editors just don’t have writers’ minds. Editors like Max Perkins and Toni Morrison are long gone. Editors now have short memories and really only know books from the last couple years. If you suggest comps for your work, they can’t be too old. That great story collection from 1978 that you love so much, that won the Pulitzer—these editors have never heard of it. I felt like many editors were just dabbling, dipping their toes in literary waters without really being about it, hoping to climb up an organization. They just happened to pick the book industry. I know musicians who say the same about corporate record labels and the A&R staff. I Googled one editor who rejected me (nicely, I might add), and the only thing I could find was an image of her at a party with the musician John Legend, whose book she was “editing.” Now publishers have resorted to hiring book influencers and bookstagrammers as editors, people with plenty of social media exposure but literally no editing experience whatsoever. Actors and musicians aka entertainers have publishing imprints now. Why? It just makes me think, How can things get any worse for literary books?
I’m sure corporate publishers are like, Here, hold my beer.
*
I wrote another novel. (I’ve written a few.) No one wanted it because my Amistad book didn’t sell well. Also, I write Black books, and there are only, like, three Black editors in all of publishing. Dan always said there are only fifty literary fiction editors in corporate publishing, period. Those odds are terrible for any writer. The one white editor to ever show interest in my work was an English guy at Melville House named Carl. He wanted to publish a new story collection I’d written, but there was a catch. His bosses would only offer a contract that took all the rights: movie, TV, any adaptation. They would get any and all potential money. And this was just a $2,500 contract. Dan told me, “I can’t let you do this. It’s an insult.” I was desperate to get another book out, but I took his advice. I was back at square one.
*
A couple months later, my homie Danny at Rescue Press wanted to publish my second collection, and I was jazzed. By this time, I’d figured out I wasn’t a “big press” writer anyway. But my ass couldn’t catch a break. Agent Dan didn’t like the contract. Rescue offered no advance and would take a percentage of rights and profit, which I was fine with since they were footing all the printing, design, and distribution costs. Also, I never got into writing for the money. Dan said, “I can get you a two-book deal on a big publisher. We’re leaving money on the table.” I said I didn’t care about that. Rescue publishes good books. He said, “But I have to make money too. And no one will know your small press book exists.”
“No one knows my large press book exists. It has fewer than 300 ratings on Goodreads.”
“It was in the New York Times though.”
“Allow me to reiterate. Fewer than 300 ratings.”
He said if I published a small press book, my inevitably low BookScan numbers would doom me forever.
But wasn’t I already doomed? In corporate publishing, you really only get one shot at success now. Poor sales with a first book kill a career before it ever starts. Like a dumbass, I went along with Dan because dollar signs faintly glowed in the back of my mind. I was still suckling on the teat of corporate publishing. I told Danny at Rescue I couldn’t do it and said I was sorry for wasting his time. He said, “Dude, I totally understand. I’m rooting for you.”
*
I was glad someone was. It’s easy for writers, even successful ones, to feel like the whole literary world is against them. It fuels the fire, but it pisses you the hell off. The older I get, the more I realize I’m not meant to be on the inside. I never have been. I’m meant to be a weirdo who rolls solo. I always thought that’s what artists are. Outsiders. Oddballs. For me, it all aligns. I’m Black but racially ambiguous. My last name is German. I know what corporate editors are thinking when they read my work: What the hell is this guy? I can’t sell him or his book. Not all editors operate on optics and perception of the author, but most do. They don’t want freaks. They want palatable salespeople with inoffensive books who make instant sense to a reader’s perceptions. They want copies sold. That’s all that matters.
An interesting author name that matches one’s ethnicity, a pretty or handsome face, the right background, and a catchy title is all some writers need for success. The book can be trash. My titles are pretty good, but I don’t write about the streets or Black Southern life or slavery. That seems to be the only things white editors want from Black writers. I aim to write about Black people in ways I’ve never seen before. But Dan always told me originality isn’t rewarded in corporate publishing.
“Well, why the hell are you still working in it then?”
“Because,” he said. “I live in New York City and I have to make money somehow.”
Maybe Dan wasn’t that different. Maybe I was expecting too much. This was after an editor said my work was too dark and jaded to sell. It made me wonder, When was art ever easy, light, happy, and lucrative to boot? I recently read that society has trouble telling the difference between art and entertainment now. For many editors, all they seem to think about is entertainment. What is this art you speak of?
*
At one point, Dan set me up with a few Black editors to see if we could find my soulmate in publishing. He was trying to make something happen, and I was grateful. An editor at Mariner was nice, but when I told her some novel ideas I was working on, with each she said, “Nope, won’t sell. Nope, won’t sell.”
“Really? How do you know?”
“Because I just do.”
“So you have a preconceived idea of what books you want? It hasn’t even come out yet.”
“Right. I know what my bosses will approve and I know what the market wants. And that isn’t it.”
I’ve noticed a few books she’s acquired haven’t sold well either. So what does she or her bosses really know? Dan said they want safe bets. Taking risk requires vision. It just made me think of that old gambling saying: Scared money don’t make money. Are publishers scared?
“Yes,” Dan said. “Scared shitless. Money is king and if their books don’t make enough, they’ll lose their jobs.”
One editor, a very popular Black editor at Simon & Schuster and former book influencer, asked if I wanted to remain an artist or did I want to cross over and sell.
I said, “I can’t do both?”
Nicely, he said no. “Right now, you’re like a jazz musician playing at the Blue Note. I want to take you to the Garden.” It took me a second to realize he meant Madison Square Garden, the big time! I rolled my eyes. Why am I here?
Of course, he referred to my first collection of stories as a novel and for some reason thought the first story about the N-word was what the whole book was about. Newsflash: He hadn’t read it.
“No, that’s just the first story,” I said. “It’s a book of nine separate stories.”
“So they’re not linked?”
“No. I’m not into linked collections. They always seem like a publishing tactic to trick readers into thinking they’re novels.”
“They are. But if you do another, you have to link them.”
“Is that another rule?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Publishers won’t accept unlinked story collections anymore. They underperform.”
With all these rules, it made me wonder if editors ever thought they were in a cult.
*
The last straw was my latest novel, which is strange and dark and different but funny. It’s about a Black couple who die and find themselves in a quirky part of the afterlife. Dan and I had high hopes with a Black editor at Henry Holt named Retha. She likes weird stuff and has a track record of publishing good books. She’s a rare risk-taker. After reading the manuscript last fall, she was interested in the novel and was showing it to her colleagues. It sounded like it would all finally work out. A twofer: The book would get acquired, and I’d find “my soulmate editor.” But of course, nothing is that easy in publishing. After a couple weeks, Retha said she had to pass. Dan said her colleagues, who I will note just happen to be white and not as literary as Retha, weren’t into it. Editors have to get approval from everyone at the publishing house for a book to be acquired now. Lovely. So you don’t have to convince one editor to publish your book. You have to wow multiple ones.
How any good books get published, I’ll never know.
*
After seven frustrating years, I finally moved on from Dan this February. I didn’t fire him. We parted amicably. He really did do everything he could, but we’d exhausted all the options. So I’m done. I’m not looking for a new agent either. I’ve peered behind the curtain and seen how broken the corporate book world is. They can have that shit. It’s not for me. Many of my writer friends are still baffled by this decision, thinking I’ve lost my marbles. They either totally believe in the system and think publishing anywhere other than the Big Five is a failure or they’re clinging to their agents, desperate to keep an industry connection. I understand. They’re holding on to hope and whatever boost in self-esteem they get from having an agent, even if it’s one who ignores them. They want to win the literary lottery and strike it rich. I think most writers are in an abusive relationship with corporate publishing, always wanting it to want them and treat them right. It makes no sense to me. Why are we trying to get the attention of squares who can’t even do what we do?
Dan always started book submissions at the top-paying presses and worked his way down. At one point, I was just waiting to get to our smaller press submissions, where I thought I’d have a better chance. But if no one will know my book exists on a small press, I figured I might as well just do it all myself. If I told Dan about my self-publishing idea, he’d just try to talk me out of it. In our parting email, he said he was committed to getting my work into the hands of readers, that it should be widely read. I said thanks but I’m still moving on. I don’t see anyone’s work being widely read. The world is too big. There’s too much content. Dan said editors often make choices that have very little to do with the quality of writing and mostly to do with marketing and corporate concerns. He probably thought he was talking me off the ledge, but all he did was give me yet another reason to get while the getting is good.
*
How many writers have great books just languishing on their computers because they took every editor’s no for an answer? It has to be thousands and thousands. Millions maybe? With self-publishing, I’ll never have to go through executives to get my work into the world, whether anyone sees it or not. All those novel ideas that Mariner editor shot down? I’m free to write them. I’m free entirely. And that brings me to another reason for leaving corporate publishing: time. The average book takes a minimum of two years to be released. And that’s if it’s acquired. That’s not even factoring in rounds and rounds of submissions to publishers. The publishing pipeline moves slower than molasses. I am fifty fucking years old. I don’t have any more time to waste, especially with people who don’t get me.
The universe was telling me to self-publish. Luke Goebel had just bought a 50% stake in Tyrant Books, outbidding Catapult (owned by a daughter of one of the Koch Brothers, I might add). He said he wanted to keep Tyrant from ever falling into corporate hands. My friends, that is what you call gangster. I watched and rewatched Chelsea Hodson’s episode on Brad Listi’s podcast Otherppl about starting her press, Rose Books. I thought a lot about Sam Pink’s independently published books and a writer friend, also named Chris, who has been self-publishing his work for years. Someone even reminded me that the Black poet Audre Lorde had started her own publishing company: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. Virginia Woolf and all of the Bloomsbury Group self-published. Not long after this first realization, I was in Mexico City, soaking up all the creative freedom down there, and I had a second profound thought. The person I was looking for this whole time, the person who actually got me the most, is ME!!! What the fuck! It turned out my entire time in corporate publishing had been nothing but a wild goose chase.
*
I taught myself InDesign, which really isn’t that hard. If I hit a snag, I looked up a YouTube tutorial. I bought lunch for Kevin Sampsell from Future Tense Books and picked his brain on how to publish a small press book, which he said is again not that hard. From now on, every time I have a question, he gets a free lunch. I started an LLC and made a website. I designed and laid out my book, the story collection that should’ve come out three years ago, the one Melville House kind of wanted, the one Rescue Press really wanted. It only took me a week.
I thought about bringing in a business partner, to have a sort of literary beard who could act as my “editor” and be the face of my press so it wouldn’t seem like I was self-publishing. But then I thought, why not show people I was doing everything myself? Most of the underground hip hop I’ve always liked was put out on independent labels, no executives allowed. It actually warms my heart to see major record labels slowly dying off because artists don’t need them to release music anymore. Am I a terrible person for hoping the same happens to major publishers? Things might be heading that way. In 2025, over 2.5 million books were self-published, and only 642,000 were traditionally published. But there’s still a stigma around self-publishing. Kevin said some people might not take me seriously anymore (like I give a shit). With self-publishing, people think there’s no barrier to entry, no gatekeeper or tastemaker to approve the work. But for me, that’s the point. Total artistic freedom. Having a friend publish your book isn’t the toughest barrier of entry either. So fuck it. All I’ve ever wanted was the bound book anyway, my work no longer a Word document on my computer but an objet d’art. I’ve never cared about attention or literary events or reviews. So that’s how I’m thinking of this press, as an art project. I’m just a guy in his toolshed making books. If people find them, great. If they don’t, well, they weren’t meant to.
*
At our lunch, Kevin asked if I would ever publish anyone else, and after some thought, I said it would be nice to help other people put out work I liked and believed in, Black poetry and fiction, which corporate publishing overlooks constantly. But for now, I just have my books to work with. Most writers I know are still hoping for a payday and conventional literary fame anyhow. Down the road, if they ever want me to publish them and I’m able, I will. That was why Kevin started Future Tense, why Danny started Rescue Press, to help their friends. “But you know what’s next,” Kevin said. “A name. Do you know yours?” I did. Of course, there was a story to it: I was at a flower festival a few years ago and I happened to see a dark-colored tulip called Black Hero. It stuck with me. In a matter of seconds, the name was there, flashing in my head. Black Hero. Black Heroics. Black Heroics Book Co. My time in corporate publishing was finally over. I’d sprouted wings.
This is so true and it is exactly why everything put out now is perfectly adequate and boring as all hell. "They don’t want freaks. They want palatable salespeople with inoffensive books who make instant sense to a reader’s perceptions."
yes!