Why I’m Done with the Publishing Industry for My Fiction

It's time to focus on my craft.

Almost seven years ago, I started submitting my novel The Vitanauts to different literary agents and publishers. I’ve come painfully close to getting it published a few times, but it never actually happened for me. And after the latest near miss that took up a huge amount of time and energy, I’ve come to the realization that I need to stop waiting around for permission from others to get my ideas out there.
 
(For fellow writers who take solace or lessons from these trials, see Footnote 1 for a rundown of my efforts.)
 
Look, don’t get me wrong. The publishing industry exists for a reason. The people who work in it are well trained. They love books. They have great intentions. They know what has worked in the past and they know what the latest trends are that are working right now. When I quit my job to become a full-time writer, I dreamed of working with this industry and finding a team within it that could support me and help me become “a success”. But I have an MBA degree. I can read the prize-winners and the bestsellers to identify trends and analyze the market. And I can see that publishing houses are facing huge financial challenges that limit their choices and abilities to take risks. The problem, however, is that I *want* to be a risk.
 
Way back in 2012 when I started this website, I blogged my way through my book Evolutionary Philosophy and I wrote two main posts about aesthetics: “What is Beautiful is What is Good” and “The Purpose of (My) Art.” In these posts, I offered both a new definition of beauty and a new plan for how to create it. Talk about challenging the status quo! These ideas combined some of my peer-reviewed evolutionary ethics with a desire to produce what I now call “positive fiction”, which, like positive psychology, focuses on what can go right, rather than dwelling on what has gone wrong. I wrote statements about this such as:
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Beauty is just a word we use to name a quality that we like, that moves us, that pleases us. If we've already defined good as "that which promotes the long-term survival of life," how can we really like something that is bad, that is against that?
 
The longstanding and pervasive view that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" seems to suggest that aesthetics is something different, that aesthetics is a subjective field filled with personal judgments from sensitive souls set inside an influencing landscape of cultural relativism. But the purpose of art is to inspire life. Making bad things known can inspire good living by telling us what to avoid. Showing good things provides aspirations by showing us what to do or strive for.
 
Tolstoy was wrong [when he said in Anna Karenina that “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”] Every unhappy family is simply shortsighted in some way. Happy families have an infinite number of interesting and difficult ways to proceed with long and rich lives.
 
Art causes emotional responses so it often draws emotional people to it, but great art is created by rational processes, filled with knowledge, fueled by emotion, and executed with skill. Bad art is blind emotion that purports falsehoods for truth.

​I thought these ideals would resonate with *someone* in the publishing industry. But see Footnote 2 for a recent example of the blind emotion that clearly dominates there. I just don’t know why writing can’t be more like sculpture, painting, or photography. Artists in those fields create something beautiful to contemplate. Novels rarely, if ever, do. These days, they simply give us heartbreakingly depicted tales of woe. They follow Tolstoy’s example and give us more and more intricate details of more and more intersectional struggles. See Footnote 3 where I’ve conservatively calculated that 86% of the works of fiction in the 2023 New York Times 100 Notable Books fit this description. Is this really the best that books can be?
 
Problems in life happen naturally with entropy. We don’t need more examples to know that this is how the universe grinds on. Life is the struggle to *overcome* these problems. And I believe we could use more inspiring examples to keep us going. Rather than exploring yet another variety of distress with great precision, I want to leave that reality behind and produce art that shows possibilities of strength, resilience, adaptation, and other evolutionary virtues. I believe that imagining this kind of beauty should be a major calling for artists. But after almost 7 years of painfully dealing with publishers, I have realized that this is not aligned with their goals. In order to stay alive, they must make money in the current environment. They must be assured of making a profit by replicating what has already been done. They must take the safe route of simply depicting the reality of our sadness rather than risking rejection by imagining something new and better.
 
Although I haven’t seen anyone diagnose the aesthetics of the industry in precisely this way, I have been noticing other artists struggling with this as well.
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“I make myself feel better by saying you can’t both want to do things that nobody has ever seen before and then then be frustrated that nobody understands why it’s going to work or why you believe in it. This plagues me in my whole career.” —Director Patty Jenkins in Episode 5, Season 10 of Revisionist Historywith Malcolm Gladwell
 
“I’ve accumulated a vast reservoir of such rejections. Everyone I know is self-publishing. All that means is a somewhat smaller audience, but so what. Borges sold 34 copies of his first book and wanted to write thank you notes to each reader. Did Van Gogh sell any paintings? For me the pleasure is in the doing.” — Words of consolation and encouragement from an author friend.
 
“I had an actual epiphany…on a panel discussing science fiction in the age of President Trump. All these little bits of things that I've been taking in for the last several years all kind of hit me like a tidal wave. It was that we were great at dystopic fiction but we weren't telling the readers, who were now willing to fight, what to fight for! They had finished the battle. But now what?” — Author P.J. Manney in “Envisioning the Future Through Story”

And, of course, the evolutionary lens that I bring to this situation creates its own issues with the publishing populace as well. Alice Andrews — an author, psychotherapist, and former professor of psychology at SUNY New Paltz — has written about this with great perspicacity.

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​“[T]he traditional fictiphiles are purists who seem to believe that once we become aware of a lesson or of information in the story—once the author starts “telling us” instead of “showing us”—it’s all over. The pleasure is gone, its power is gone, and subsequently, the story’s merit and value are gone. The romantic fictiphiles believe the only good fiction is fiction shrouded in a kind of Dionysian mystery. … Hermione, in D. H. Lawrence’s, Women in Love characterizes the view quite well: ‘When we have knowledge, don’t we lose everything but knowledge?’ she asked pathetically.” — Alice Andrews in “A Mind for Evolutionary Fiction”
 
“Distant, enigmatic, and maybe even a little commitment-phobic, traditional fiction evokes desire and passion by ‘exploiting’ our evolved psychological mechanisms and preferences. … [But] I think there’s even more pleasure to be had than with the traditional pleasure of seductive fiction. And that pleasure, I think, can be found in the arrows of what I call ‘meta-seductive fiction’—traditional fiction’s sexy contender. Meta-seductive fiction seduces (if it’s successful) by countering the seductive ‘hiding’ strategy, with its openness—with hiding from hiding. Meta-seductive fiction flirts with truth and intimacy by telling the reader what it’s doing and by expressing ideas openly, unafraid of logic’s potential to prevent feeling. It isn’t afraid of wanting to affect (and having a relationship with) the reader.” — Alice Andrews in “A Mind for Evolutionary Fiction”
 
“Much has changed since Entelechy was first published, but it's been over 20 years and there still isn't a forum for the kind of fiction we want to read, publish (and write!). … What still seems to be true after two decades is that literary publications are politically uncomfortable with an evolutionary worldview and are aesthetically repelled by the integration of the sciences into fiction.” — Alice Andrews, considering the relaunch of her journal Entelechy

These 6 quotes from Alice and the other artists have helped me see the issues I’m facing with great clarity. But they are also part of a more general problem with innovation. The psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman illustrated this perfectly in these quotes from his recent essay “Talent is Underrated”:

​“Research has shown that creative people do tend to have a greater inclination toward nonconformity, unconventionality, independence, openness to experience, ego strength, and risk taking.”
 
“Creators rarely receive helpful feedback. When creators put something novel out into the world, the reactions are typically either acclaim or rejection.”
 
“Critics often disagree amongst each other, making it difficult for the creator to know which feedback is really helpful and which stems from other factors, such as obtuseness, jealousy, or bitterness.”
 
“As Kuhn noted, the standards for artistic and scientific products are constantly changing. What may be considered a ‘revolutionary’ best-selling book at one moment in time, may be considered utter drivel by future generations.”
 
“Creative people are not just good at solving problems. They are also good at finding problems.”

So, yes, I think there is a problem here! The world needs a new direction. And artists could play a leading role in articulating the right kinds of change. But the commercialized and highly competitive publishing world has become stuck simply rewarding tales of the troubles we’re in. It’s too risky for them to try anything else. In evolutionary terms, the publishing world has competed for high ground on a spot that turned out to merely be a local maximum. Someone must come down from there to go and find greater heights elsewhere. And this is precisely what the trials and errors of innovators are for. Even if I end up not having the talent to overcome these issues, I now realize it’s my job to try.
 
This is why I am done with the publishing industry for my works of fiction. I have plans for several major works going forward and I’m no longer going to wait around for a money-making team to steer me. If you are interested in supporting this, keep following me for options on how to provide a bit of patronage. But from now on, my writing is going to be based on love for the future, rather than concern about what has made money in the past. I hope this meta-seductive fiction excites you as much as it does me.
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Footnote 1
Here are the bullet points of just some of my efforts over the past 6+ years seeking publication.

• I started sending query letters for my second novel in October 2017. I scoured books and online lists about the thousands of options out there and picked out several dozen that seemed like possible fits. I submit letters to these places in batches so I can tweak subsequent letters based on feedback and results.
• In mid-2018 I found a local publisher who was interested in publishing philosophical works. They expressed great interest in my work. We met several times. I published some non-fiction essays with them. They said they were keen to publish my novel. But then in May 2019, after working with them for almost a year, they decided to change their publishing strategy and not publish any more books after struggling with their first efforts.
• It took me a while to recover from this and get back on the horse of submissions. But then, the pandemic hit. No one knew what was going to happen and suddenly my book about the prospect of ending aging and living indefinitely seemed extremely out of touch with all of the death and despair that was happening in the world. I threw myself into my philosophical work, completing a book-length treatment on consciousness on October 2021.
• In November of 2021, my wife and I lived in Oslo, Norway for her work. Then in January and February of 2022 we lived in Vienna, Austria for another project. These were busy times, during which I redesigned my entire website to get ready for another publishing push.
• As it happened, I was contacted by David Sloan Wilson in February 2022 to ask if I would work with him on the launch of his non-profit venture ProSocial. He asked if I would help him create an evolutionary philosophy group, the likes of which would never happen at a single university. This was a wonderful chance to test and spread my ideas so I threw myself into that for the next 2+ years.
• Meanwhile, in June 2022, a friend with an MFA, JD, and PhD in Criminology who teaches a class on speculative fictions heard about The Vitanauts and asked if he could read it. After I sent him a copy, he told me it was one of the best things he’s read. He told me:
  • “In no uncertain terms, I loved your book.  You have a real gift for taking the most exciting philosophical questions and presenting them in a clear, thought-provoking way, while still writing a "futuristic" or "sci fi" novel (neither seems like the right description) that is a page turner. Bravo! I'm also extremely impressed with the sheer amount of research that must have gone into this.”
• In January 2023, this friend recommended my book to a small publishing house he had connections with. He wrote:
  • “Ed Gibney is a writer/philosopher and author of The Vitanauts—one of the best books that I have read in the last few years. I'll let Ed describe the book to you, as well as his other work more generally, but in my opinion The Vitanauts ranks up there with works by J.G. Ballard, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Kim Stanley Robinson.”
• After a month, this publisher wrote me back and suggested I go ahead and send them my full manuscript through the normal submissions process. Three months later, I got word that they weren’t interested and they didn’t give any feedback as to why.
• Later that month, through my work with ProSocial, I met an acquisitions editor at another small publisher. She encouraged me to send her a query letter and manuscript. I did. After reading everything, she told me she was excited to pitch it to the president of the organization. In September, she told me the President of the company loved the concept and approach and would submit it to their Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) with the promise of a forthcoming developmental edit. I began looking for editors to work with.
• Then, in February 2024, after hearing nothing for five months, I was told the EAB voted 3-2 against going forward with the novel. The feedback they sent bore no resemblance to the feedback I have gotten from other readers throughout this saga, which indicates this was probably never a good fit anyway.
• After this latest setback, I’ve been struggling with how to move forward. Writing this mini-manifesto has been my way of sifting through the evidence for ideas about what I should do.

 
 
Footnote 2
In a story about Alice Munro story after her death, a writer wrote this in the New York Times:  “But the art of hearing the voice of a fictional person or sensing a fictional world or working for years on some unfathomable creation is, in fact, the opposite of saying something with the opinionated and knowledgeable part of one’s mind. It is rather the humble craft of putting your opinions and ego aside and letting something be said through you.” Ugh! This is a clear and painful example of the kind of anti-rationalism that casually saturates the publishing world.
 
 
Footnote 3
Here are illustrative summaries from 50 works of fiction in the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2023. I have bolded the only stories that might NOT be works about struggles in small segments of society.
 

1. an alternate history of creativity at the turn of the 20th century, one that centers queer women artists, writers, and intellectuals who refused to accept society’s boundaries
2. about a Black sheriff in a rural Southern town, searching for a serial killer who tortures Black children
3. a once wealthy Irish family struggles with both the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash and their own inner demons
4. a polarizing female performance artist who made her way from the South to New York City’s downtown art scene
5. a collective of activist gardeners crosses paths with a billionaire doomsday prepper
6. explores what it means to be erased and how to persist after being wiped away
7. for the first time in fiction, Knoll pooh-poohs Bundy's much ballyhooed intelligence, celebrating the promise and perspicacity of his victims instead
8. prison inmates duel on TV for a chance at freedom 
9. generations of a family across 77 years in southwestern India as they contend with political strife and other troubles
10. uses a crime story to illuminate a singular neighborhood at a tipping point
11. tracking a cadre of scientists and activists from the gathering storm of the Obama years to the super-typhoons of future decades
12. a young Russian soldier on a trans-Siberian train decides to desert and turns to a civilian passenger, a Frenchwoman, for help
13. the kind of folkloric fantasy that remembers the old, blood-ribboned source material about sacrifices and stolen children
14. a British Palestinian actor returns to her hometown in Israel to recover from a breakup and spend time with her family
15. the story of a married mother, Valeria, whose life is transformed when she begins keeping a secret diary
16. successfully locates the social controversies of an era in a handful of characters
17. a svelte, intrepid foray into American racism
18. it explores the mundane and the horrific
19. to explore the town’s Black, Jewish and immigrant history
20. a fresh spin on the classic tale of four sisters and the man who joins their family
21. the story of an extended Indo-Ugandan family that is displaced, settled and displaced again
22. a missing-persons case that unfolds into a tale of Dickensian proportions
23. one family’s reckoning after the patriarch dies in a fire, as his widow, a Nigerian immigrant, considers returning to her home country and the entire family re-examines the circumstances of their lives
24. new translation of the “Iliad”
25. sisters raised to protect a collection of magic books that allow their keepers to do incredible things
26. a torrid, yearslong relationship between a young woman and a much older married man
27. traces the migrations of a Sephardic Jewish girl from turn-of-the-20th-century Constantinople to Barcelona, Havana and, finally, Queens, N.Y.
28. a chef who’s hired to cook for an “elite research community” in the Italian Alps
29. a fresh start as a single Black woman in a sparsely populated state
30. the titular character, abandoned by her mother as a child, endures a life of calamities before resolving to learn about her origins
31. a Senegalese writer brought low by a plagiarism scandal
32. a young Black couple, mourning the loss of their newborn daughter and disillusioned with the world, start a utopian society — but tensions both internal and external soon threaten their dreams
33. the occupants of a single house in Massachusetts over several centuries
34. An ex-conquistador in Spanish-ruled, 16th-century Mexico is asked to hunt down an Indigenous prophet
35. a new mother falling apart within the four walls of her apartment
36. mediums who can summon “the Darkness” for a secret society of wealthy occultists seeking to preserve consciousness after death
37. an upper-crust Brooklyn Heights family
38. an incisive examination of the lingering traumas of racism and a gripping, ghost-filled horror novel
39. Trained to kill by his mother and able to see demons
40. acerbic, comedic and lyrical odyssey into Korean history and American paranoia
41. the complex relationship between a young woman and her former stepmother
42. the true story of a devastating 1912 eviction in Maine that displaced an entire mixed-race fishing community
43. three sisters and their mother reflect on love and regret
44. a young mother trying to create a home for herself and her son in 1980s Philadelphia, and her mother, who is trying to save their Alabama hometown from white supremacists
45. the long life of Pampa Kampana, who creates an empire from magic seeds in 14th-century India. Her world is one of peace, where men and women are equal and all faiths welcome
46. queer midcentury romance that lingers on small, everyday acts
47. an 11-year-old Jain girl in London who has just lost her mother turns her attention to the game of squash
48. Set in Brooklyn, and featuring animal rescue workers, florists, volunteers, ghosts and UPS workers
49. a bored young woman in thrall to a boy band buys a one-way ticket to Seoul
50. a white woman who achieves tremendous literary success by stealing a manuscript from a recently deceased Asian friend and passing it off as her own