Okay, let's talk about the Jodi Picoult thing

And that the "easy way out" is sometimes the only way out

If you’re new to this newsletter, don’t worry. I don’t usually send out posts back-to-back. I will not be inundating your inbox. This is very much a one-off, but I had THINGS TO SAY.

I’ve only ever read one book by Jodi Picoult and technically that one was co-written. It was okay as books go. I finished it, which isn’t true of every book I pick up, but that was mostly because two friends told me to read it. All of which is to say, I can’t speak much to Jodi Picoult’s skills as a writer one way or the other.

So why am I talking about Jodi Picoult in the first place? If you’re not all up-to-date on your book/literary online gossip, Jodi Picoult recently said on social media that indie publishing or self-publishing or whatever was “taking the easy way out.” People were, not surprisingly, pissed off.

One of many responses to Jodi Picoult

I’ve published two books through traditional publishing, plus one textbook with an academic press. Recently, I self-published a young adult novel. I know the tiniest bit about both sides in this conversation. Neither of my traditionally published books nor my indie published book have been very successful by the metrics of the market. Both traditionally published books came out in paperback, which isn’t true for every book. One of them won an award, so that’s something. My indie-published book found at least one of the readers it was meant for and that’s enough for me.

When I started on my mid-life writing journey ten-plus years ago, I probably would have agreed with Jodi Picoult about indie publishing. I believed “real” writers were the ones who slugged it out in the trenches. “Real” writers acquired rejections like notches on their bedpost or pelts on their belt or something similarly violent and manly. “Real” writers had the scars to show for their work.

There’s definitely some masochism in this view of writing and publishing. To be a real writer, you must suffer. Also, it does not in the least account for things like Britney Spears’ memoir debuting as a bestseller. I mean, Britney definitely has scars, but I don’t think they’re from the years she spent toiling away at sentence structure or story arc.

It’s a seductive narrative to believe that publishing works this way—that it rewards suffering. I mean, we’re Americans! Boot-straps and the American dream, for fuck’s sake! The people who stick it out rise to the top like cream. In fact, I think an agent said this once to a room full of writers at a conference I went to. “Cream rises to the top, you know,” they said. They might have winked. This was years ago, so I did not laugh out loud or throw anything at said agent. I probably nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, that’s right,” I probably whispered to myself. “Cream. I’m cream.”

Cream, which is also white, and so makes for an especially good metaphor. Photo by Nikolai Chernichenko on Unsplash

Sure enough, sometime after that, I got an agent. And a book deal. And then another. I’d put in my time and now I was rising! Watch me rise! I rose all on the merits of hard work and not at all also because I was a highly educated, middle class, white woman. No, that privilege had nothing to do with it. The fact that the shelves of our libraries and bookstores are still filled mostly with books by other writers who look a lot like me isn’t important. Pay no attention to that.

And, yes, still filled with those books. Are you kidding? You think that the little bitty and predictably temporary rise in the diversity of books coming out of publishing houses has made the least dent in the whiteness of the literary world? Are you crazy? Do you just ignore the stories marginalized writers tell about having agents and editors say to them, “Oh, we’ve already published a trans/Black/indigenous/disabled book this year,” like there’s a quota system, because, oh, right, there is? Do you not believe the stories about marginalized writers being forced into narratives that are more digestible for white/straight/cis/able-bodied/middle class readers? Are you ignoring the signs that even now that brief window in which marginalized stories had a chance in hell of getting published is closing?

But I digress. Or, wait, no I don’t. That is exactly the point I’m making. Indie publishing is not the “easy way out.” For a lot of people, it is simply the only way if they want people to have the chance to read their writing. A narrative in which self-publishing is the easy way out only works if you assume publishing is a meritocracy, a system in which talent and hard work always win out. It works only if you ignore the real structural barriers that exist for many people to being traditionally published.

Friends, publishing is not a meritocracy. Friends, I’m sorry, but there is no such thing as a meritocracy. It is a lovely myth. A fairy tale. A bedtime story we should really stop telling ourselves.

I am a damn good writer and I work very hard at it, but I could not get a single agent interested enough in my young adult novel to make an offer, even with all the privilege I have at my back. I could make a list of all the other damn good, hard-working writers I know, many of them who have written multiple books that were well-received or won awards, who now have no agent or publisher. But, frankly, making that list is too depressing.

Publishing is not a meritocracy, but if you are one of the people who have benefited from this system, you are, of course, highly invested in believing that you are where you are solely based on your hard work and talent. And probably, you have worked hard. Maybe you are talented. But in the end, you become Jodi Picoult partly due to being white/straight/able-bodied/neurotypical/cis/etc. Or you become Jodi Picoult because of the luck of the draw or being in the right place at the right time or knowing the right people (which is also related to race and gender and social class). For every Jodi Picoult, there are a hundred or a thousand or hundreds of thousands of other writers who worked just as hard and had just as much talent but weren’t the right kind of person or just didn’t have that luck. It sucks, but it’s true.

For many people, indie publishing is their first choice, one that they make happily and willingly for a wide variety of reasons. For many others, indie publishing is the only option for getting their amazing, beautiful, much-needed words out into the world. Either way, publishing your own writing is about the farthest thing from easy I can possibly imagine.

One way to tell Jodi Picoult what you think about indie publishing is to support indie publishing and buy my book. Just saying. And, no, it was not at all easy getting it out into the world, but, yes, it is an awesome book.