2023 Publishing Year in Review
I’ve never had a reason or opportunity to write a year-end list before, so I thought it’d be fun to use this month’s column to review ten publishing stories worth remembering as we head into the new year. This is neither a personal top ten nor a definitive list of the most important things that happened. To some degree, it’s a collection of happenings that have been on my mind but not yet made their way into this column for one reason or another, but more importantly, I’ve tried to focus stories that reflect or cast shade on this column’s mission to explore how publishing might shape our writing lives and communities. Not all the news here is good news, nor is it all bleak and foreboding. I’ve chosen notable events and general trends and mostly avoided news of individual authors, prizes, new publications, and other lists. So, in roughly chronological order, ten publishing stories from 2023 that remind us where we’ve been and hint at where we’re going.
1. Brecht De Poortere Ranks 1,000+ Literary Journal
In January, word spread that little known Belgian writer Brecht De Poortere had released a ranked list of more than 1,000 literary journals. “Along with the rankings,” De Poortere reports, “the full database also [includes] information on: cost of submission, pay, word limits, reading times, [and] location of the journal.” Prompting some conversation on the value of metrics and rankings—De Poortere devised a ranking system that values awards, number of anthologized stories published, and social media follower count—the list is most interesting for the picture of literary culture it offers, as well as the resource it provides writers seeking new markets for their work.
Dominating the top spots are institutions like The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Granta, with lesser-known journals bringing up the rear. But, like a class project gotten way out of hand, De Poortere’s list provides a lot of insight and resources for aspiring authors. As Jonny Diamond put it in Literary Hub, “Whatever you make of this list, it is certainly useful.”
2. The Assassination of The Gettysburg Review
For over thirty-five years, The Gettysburg Review has been the sole representative of Gettysburg College in the national media. “One of the country’s premiere literary journals,” GR published “such luminaries as E. L. Doctorow, Rita Dove, James Tate, Joyce Carol Oates,” and many others. It ranked twenty-first on De Poortere’s list of 1,000+ journals and was recognized as one of the country’s best literary journals in a variety of sources, including U.S. News.
That all changed in October, when the Gettysburg president decided the Review “did not significantly enhance the student experience” (despite their long history of training student editors, putting on literary events on campus, and otherwise bolstering the Gettysburg College community). Indeed, according to a Twitter poll conducted by GR, 82% of 2,500 respondents had only even heard of Gettysburg College because of the Review. No matter, the College “must have a more intentional focus on the programs and activities that directly and significantly enhance student demand and the overall student experience,” and, therefore, the Review had to go.
Despite on-site protests, social media activism, and the tireless work of GR’s editors, The Gettysburg Review published its final issue last month. In a climate that finds university humanities under increasing pressure to justify their value, it is particularly shameful that as obviously valuable a program as The Gettysburg Review couldn’t convince administrators hellbent on performing austerity. Gettysburg College is significantly weaker for this blow to its programs, as is the rest of the literary community. The surreptitious assassination of this esteemed program joins the ongoing tragedy in West Virginia and the creeping tyranny in Florida on a list of bad news for the humanities in 2023.
3. Clarkesworld Suspends Submissions in the Face of an AI Deluge
Not three months after the release of ChatGPT, editors were already feeling the crunch of machine generated submissions, especially at paying outlets like Clarkesworld, the renowned sci-fi and fantasy magazine. When the magazine temporarily shuttered its submissions in February, editor-in-chief Neil Clarke told NPR they’d “received 700 legitimate submissions and 500 machine-written ones … a rate that we figured that by the end of the month, we would have double the number of submission we normally have.”
As I reported in March, Clarke covered the debacle in a series of posts. By May, the magazine had lifted its temporary closure, but Clarke explained, “We’re only keeping our head above water this time because we have some new tools at our disposal.” He issued a statement on AI in Publishing and has since published code to fend of AI robots from scraping the contents of various websites and social media pages. In a year when AI transformed the way we think about writing, reading, teaching, and basically everything else involving text and images, moving or otherwise, the crisis at Clarkesworld was a canary in the literary coalmine.
4. Simon & Schuster Sells to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
After a judge blocked the proposed merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster late last year, high ranking employees at both companies resigned and talks began to sell off the smaller Simon & Schuster from its parent company Paramount. In October, those talks concluded with the sale of Simon & Schuster to the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) for $1.62 billion.
Known for leveraged buyouts, bankrupting Toys ’R’ Us, and “goug[ing] residents of Bayonne, New Jersey, for water and sewage” services, KKR reportedly borrowed $1 billion to make the purchase. Although straddled with this debt to pay off on its own, Simon & Schuster CEO Jon Karp says KKR “plan[s] to invest in us and make us even greater than we already are … What more could a publishing company want?” The weight of the debt, however, means Simon & Schuster will have to find new ways to increase their profits, so we can expect cost-cutting measures, downsizing, pandering publications, and, perhaps, even AI “innovations.”
5. Labor Organizes and Strikes
Even apart from the Hollywood Writer’s Strike, which resulted in what AMPTP describes as “meaningful gains,” for entertainment industry writers in the form of higher pay and royalties, better benefits, and some protections against AI infringements on writers rooms, 2023 saw a bustle of labor activity, which should ideally improve working conditions in the publishing industry. At HarperCollins, a 250-member union struck for 66 days. Made up of mostly lower-level employees, the union demanded, among other things, a new contract raising their base salaries and improved initiatives “to increase diversity” at the company. They ratified a new contract in February after working without one since November of 2022, and HarperCollins competitor Macmillan also announced it would raise its base starting salary as well.
In November of this year, the Scholastic Union also “staged a one-day work stoppage” after the “publisher’s rejection of the [union’s] proposal for annual raises.” This month, the union agreed to “a series of general wage increases” and a $3,250 bonus for each employee. The contract “also includes what the union calls a ‘fair and transparent hybrid work agreement … securing our right to work remotely’ as well as a ‘health and safety provision.’” In the midst of this success, workers at Drawn & Quarterly, a highly reputed publisher of comics and graphic novels, certified their own union. If these changes lead to improved conditions within an increasingly strapped and exploitative publishing industry so much the better.
6. Agent Diversity on the Rise
Underreported even within the niche publishing world, the Association of American Literary Agents released their biannual membership survey in September of this year. As with years past, white, straight women continue to dominate the field, but this year’s survey also revealed “slightly more divers[ity] than … two years ago.” According to Publishers Weekly, the number of white/Caucasian respondents shrunk almost 6%, and “the percentages of all BIPOC groups increased since 2021, though at a modest rate.”
Modest though these gains unquestionably are, they are essential, especially in the realm of literary agenting, where the gatekeeping and promotion power of individual agents can close off or open up whole categories of publishing for whole communities of readers and writers. Often an agent will represent 20-50 clients or more at any given time. With more agents representing diverse groups of people, that’s hundreds of new voices with increased odds of finding sympathetic representation in the industry and audiences among the reading public.
7. Revising Offensive Classics
Sensitivity reading is by now a well-established process of conglomerate publishing. As far back as 2017, pundits were already wringing their hands about the cancel culture implications of the process, meant to help alert authors to moments when their work might employ offensive stereotypes, reveal damaging bias, or garner unintentional controversy. And the panic hasn’t subsided in more recent years. At their best, sensitivity readers help authors write outside the bounds of their experience, do justice to minoritized cultures, and increase the diversity of literary landscape; at their worst, sensitivity readers are accused of censorious gatekeeping, moralizing manipulation, and marring creative freedom.
This year, the conversation came to a head when it was reported that new editions of the novels of Roald Dahl, notorious racist and antisemite, would be edited (not for the first time) to remove offensive depictions, language, and other elements. With this edition, Dahl joins the ranks of Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, and even Ursula Le Guin as classic authors who’ve been updated for our “more sensitive” modern times, and this spring’s debate over the practice promises to be a prelude as conglomerate publishing continues to rebrand, repackage, and re-exploit the growing stable of writers in the public domain.
8. Scholastic Backpedals on Ghetto Response to Censorship
In the words of PEN America, “the 2022-23 school year has been marked to date by an escalation of book bans and censorship in classrooms and school libraries across the United States.” According to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, “proposed educational gag orders in states increased 250% between 2021 and 2022,” and we’ve seen the fallout of that censoriousness this year. As I’ve written about here and here, books have been challenged in libraries, pulled from classrooms, restricted for sale at bookstores, and teachers like Katie Rinderle have been fired for broaching “divisive concepts.” Much of this activity has happened right here in Georgia.
In October, Scholastic announced they’d move ‘to protect’ educators and students from these laws by segregating frequently challenged books to an optional bundle they dubbed “Share Every Story,” allowing fairs in heated political climates to simply opt-out. I wasn’t the only one to point out the hypocrisy of publishing but not standing by these titles, and to their credit, Scholastic pulled the plug on the plan.
Now Publishers Weekly reports, “books once included in the optional Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice collection, along with additional books featuring inclusive content, will become part of regular book fair shipments.” With the political climate promising to get even more contentious as we approach the election, Scholastic’s recommitment to their values, along with other publishers joining the fight against censorship, seems like good news.
9. Indie Bookstore Revival Continues
In November last year, The New York Times published a lovely profile of up-and-coming independent bookstores. As of that reporting, more than 300 new independent bookstores had opened in recent years, and the American Booksellers Association reported “2,561 locations, up from 1,689” earlier in the 2020. The trend continued in 2022 with 254 more new bookstores opening in a variety of formats. Flourishing in the wake of the pandemic, new indie bookstores are driving access, diversity, and resistance to corporate bookselling models. 57 of 2022’s new bookstores are BIPOC owned, and many of the stores covered in The NYT specialize in diverse offerings from women, people of color, and other groups.
Even this year, when book sales are down, Publishers Weekly reports indie bookstores are recording increasing profits and going into the holiday season optimistic about their prospects. Independent bookstores are an essential part of a vibrant literary culture, maintaining access to out-of-print and hard to find volumes, supporting community literary events, and distributing work that doesn’t always get noticed on Goodreads or Amazon. Check out Community Books in Stone Mountain, The Crazy Book Lady in Acworth, and The Sweet Read in Woodstock for some of my local favorites, and here’s a list of other indie booksellers in Georgia to explore.
10. Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood and the Longtail Bestselle
In May, Twitter user @maskofbun posted the demand that readers “just read” Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This Is How You Lose the Time War. “DO NOT look up anything about it,” he wrote, “just read it … do it right now i'm very extremely serious.” Although I can’t say whether anyone followed through on reading the book, they certainly responded with their attention and their wallets. As of this writing, the tweet has 18.8 million views and more than 140,000 likes. Gizmodo profiled Wolfwood, and pieces appeared on El-Moltar, Gladstone, and the whole phenomenon in Slate, Tech Crunch, and The New York Times.
After it was posted, the book exploded on Goodreads and shot back onto bestseller lists, where it had already appeared when it was published in 2019, peeking this second go round at number three in sales of all books on Amazon and at number nine on the NYT Paperback Trade Fiction list. The tweet quickly spread into cosplays, memes, and all the other symptoms of virality, which El-Moltar chronicles in her post on the affair, “The Twelve Days of Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood,” showing how a little passion and some lucky viral marketing can drive interest, sales, and publishing culture.
Final Thoughts
Reading over this list, it’s hard to know what to make of the trajectory of US publishing in the months ahead. Conglomeration will surely continue until all the Big 5 are folded into the Big 1 or owned (and gutted) by private equity. Debates over censorship and the humanities in higher education will almost certainly get worse before they get better.
In my worse moods, I’m inclined to believe the spirit of advancing literature and community so present in community bookstores, online enthusiasm, and small press publishing has been all but stamped out of the industry, but there’s good news too: Diligent efforts begun in 2020 have moved the needle on diversity in the industry, more and more diverse books are published today than ever have been in the history of publishing, and the small press and indie bookstore markets continue to flourish, showing how publishing can continue to be a vital force in our increasingly corporatized culture.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this news roundup. I know I’ve missed big stories and fascinating details. Please share what you think are the most important stories of the year and what we should look forward to in the comments. Here’s to peace and tolerance in 2024.