Doesnt explicitly deal with race/gender, except insofar as the characters have races and genders.

I did the usual diligence of identifying lit agents who specifically welcome queries for this genre and who indicate they are open to queries.

(As a side note, I cant imagine any other industries getting away with the lackadaisical timelines of publishing. Standard for agents to respond to queries [if at all] 8 weeks after submission. If they request a full-read, many will respond 5 months after that. If they want re-writes, a year will pass between initial query and submission to pub house.)

Anyway, despite my agent filtering Im still left with no one but completely repellent shitlibs. Ive read their twitter and blogs. Absolutely every one of them lists pronouns. One writes about transitioning her new "daughter". Nearly all use the hashtag #ourvoices to encourage non-white authors to submit. The books they promote are peak idpol, with non-white transexual protags. Even the least political are reflexively #girlboss and absolutely every single one voiced grief over RBG.

The rejections are streaming in, most formulaic, but many specifically critical of my writing BIPOC characters as a white author or failing to address the "root causes" of crime.

My writing may be utter shit, but I wouldn't know it because Im pretty sure they'd reject anyone from my demographics.

Sucks and Im tremendously discouraged. And best case realistic scenario is you get representation and published for a $20k advance.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4652097&forum_id=2,#41119040)

For literary fiction at least, I think there's slightly more space to break in to genre fiction with cold queries.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4652097&forum_id=2,#42400168)

then a bunch of drunks will stumble into Barnes and Nobles across the country to buy the rag

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4652097&forum_id=2,#42400804)

I previously had a literary agent at one of the big three houses in NY. Long story, he never sold anything of mine, but Im technically under contract so I submitted to him first.

Didnt like it, though it took him 8 weeks to say so. Fair enough, the previous book he liked was nothing like this one, which admittedly is pulpy, crimey, and squalid.

After that, as described above, I made a spreadsheet of ~80 agents. Always look for the male on the agency website, even if theyre gay. I was searching, in this case, for "thriller" "crime" etc.

Follow each agent's particular rules for queries, which is a PITA.

From the ~80, I ultimately received ~30 rejections, the rest radio silence. Of the rejections I got two that were thoughtful and detailed.

So the "book" sits on my hard drive.

Like RSF I always looked down on self-pub. Now I would be more interested, except for the fact that self-pubbing seems to rely entirely on social media presence. I have no social media.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4652097&forum_id=2,#42400447)

right or wrong, they had valid reasons for not wanting to invest their time, so I was grateful they took the time to explain why

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4652097&forum_id=2,#42400572)

Ive learned a lot over the various attempts, but never enough to crack the nut. One big thing Ive found, which takes a ton of homework, is to find a similar book that particular agent has sold and mention how much you love it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4652097&forum_id=2,#42401055)

The strategy to combat this is for writers to go find readers where they are and engage them enough to get them to buy the book. That's why it only makes sense to self-publish if you're connected into the online worlds of these kinds of people you want to access and can figure out how to grab their attention.

The market failure in publishing is the same as in music. People stopped paying for books when 1) they became easy to steal and 2) they got lots of other sources of entertainment instantly available for free when the internet came along. LOL at the kinds of people who want to be literary agents in the current version of the publishing industry being remotely capable of figuring out how to respond to that set of circumstances.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4652097&forum_id=2,#42400562)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4652097&forum_id=2,#42400586)

https://www.statista.com/statistics/188967/distribution-of-us-podcast-consumers-by-gender/

I still think you go to where dudes are, encourage the communities of users to adopt audiobooks as a format in the first place (likely should also get better deals with Spotify, Apple, Sticher, etc.) and then push your marketing into those same spaces to sell books. Bottom line is that Agents as a business model don't make sense when distribution is no longer gated by access to one of a handful of publishing houses. Specifically it makes no sense to try to recreate the agency model to address this problem of dudes not reading.

EDIT TO ADD: Also Audiobooks did 1.2B in sales last year in the U.S. It's a recovery from how bad things were ten years ago but it's still laughably SPS and it has to do with the fact that 95+% of the people in the publishing industry fundamentally hate and fear all forms of digital technology.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4652097&forum_id=2,#42400727)

Thanks for your letter. I would have

called you sooner, but I think I've

needed some time to think about

everything that happened and what

you wrote to me. Another reason I

didn't call sooner is that I wanted

to finish your book, which I finally

did last night.

I think it's really lovely, Miles.

You're so good with words. Who cares

if it's not getting published? There

are so many beautiful and painful

things about it. Did you really go

through all that? It must have been

awfully hard. And the sister character --

Jesus, what a wreck. But I have to

say I was really confused by the

ending. Did the father finally commit

suicide, or what? It's driving me

crazy. And the title.

Anyway, it's turned cold and rainy

here lately. But I like winter. So

listen, if you ever do decide to

come up here again, you should let

me know. I would say stop by the

Hitching Post, but to tell you the

truth I'm not sure how much longer

I'm going to be working there. I'm

going to graduate soon so I'll

probably relocate. We'll see.

Anyway, like I said, I really loved

your novel. Don't give up, Miles.

Keep writing. You're really good.

Hope you're well. Bye.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4652097&forum_id=2,#42400908)

Dealing with shitlib gynocentric publishers is a fools errand

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4652097&forum_id=2,#42400966)

I wish I never wasted so much time on this. growing up as a book kid I never knew how bad the world was; 80% of agents and editors are women, a majority of agents are obviously only looking for women/BIPOC writers, and a substantial minority explicitly discriminate against white guys. this would be hilarious if it weren't so sad and hopeless. the only people getting signed are marginalized types writing books about their marginalization (along with porn/smut). I am not even in literary/upmarket (most of my stuff is speculative with occasional YA appeal), but even in what most would consider slop genres like sci fi and fantasy, the only debuts are marginalized people (what I would give to be so marginal...) and people with big pre-existing followings (attractive women on TikTok)

I am only posting this now as a warning to others; DO NOT waste your time writing books if your aim is to share them with others. do literally anything else productive with your life

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4652097&forum_id=2,#49713047)

https://www.decentralizedfiction.com/

https://www.amazon.com/INCEL-Novel-ARX-Han/dp/B0CJLCZVCG

small but decent self-published result

AI slop has made it much worse, yes

have you considered trolling - create the most awful LGBTQZFAG bipoc material possible, make it 80 IQ, throw some shit on it, write it under a brown tranny pseudonym, and get published that way?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4652097&forum_id=2,#49713076)