Are Woke Publishers Going Out of Business?

By Rich Kozlovich

Does anyone know... or care.... what's on the New York Times best seller list?  When was the last time you saw Hollywood make a movie on a best seller?  In my youth everyone read books, everyone knew which were best sellers, and Hollywood fought to get the rights to make movies based on them.... which they often messed up.... and continue to do so with TV shows based on books, as they've done with the Lord of the Rings.  

I've read some articles that discuss the issue of publishers refusing to publish authors if the book has conservative content, and especially so if the author is a white male.  Take for example this piece, Getting Conservative Fiction Published Is Mission Impossible, which starts out with these quotes:

“Something’s going on and the bad guys are winning. The moral foundation of civilization is being undermined, not by politics but by the culture.” — Taki

“I am a failure as a writer. The publishers won’t publish me, the bookshops won’t carry my books, the critics won’t write about me. I am excluded from all anthologies, and completely ignored.” — Anais Nin

The author went on to say:

Recently, Lou Aguilar (a fellow Cuban, I recently found out) wrote about his experience of having his novel rejected because the publishers found the conservative plot and dialogue to be anathema (the same is true with conservative films, which I have repeatedly begged conservatives to support them by going to theaters). Such “literary abortionists,” as Taki so succinctly put it, are commonplace.......

Obviously, the problem here with publishers is the same that has occurred throughout society, a widespread systematic effort at suppressing free speech. And many liberals openly advocate censorship, be it journalists, university professors, young people, or politicians. Things have come to such a point that people have started to self-censor. The worst part is that this hell-bent drive for censorship has gone hand in hand with those persons in the literary field who do not agree with censorship but have neither the brains, the backbone, or the cojones to resist.........

Then we have this article, Fahrenheit Zero – The Freeze on Conservative Novels, with the appropriate accompanying cartoon and the author stating: 

The publishing industry is captured. Strict political conformity and fear of backlash means the public sees only progressive art. “A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?” Books& Literature — Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 I despise what the Left has done to art......The feminist gargoyles at their gates would melt down just pressing the download button on the document.......The hecklers’ veto takes precedence.........They won’t read the book, but they’ll condemn the publisher for printing it.......…. The problem is that a cabal of powerful monied people are declaring by fiat that a certain point of view is required and all others are banned.”

Then we have this piece, and the accompanying cartoon, Winning the Cultural Cold War: Why Americans Are Turning Away From the Literary Establishment saying:

Feminist Marxism was on an inexorable march to cultural victory this century. Not artistic Marxism, since feminism is inherently inartistic and catechetical. So, expecting good storytelling from its disciples is like seeking beauty from a brutalist architect. Yet they have dominated screen and literary fare for more than 20 years via two Sovietist methods — the relentless saturation of the feminist-“minority” narrative and the blockage of traditionalist truth. An opinion piece last week by the New York Times’s last conservative man standing, Bret Stephens, The Literary World’s D.E.I. Checklist, revealed the dysfunction......

They’re all about to find out what Hollywood already has, what the Soviet Union did in 1991, what hopefully America won’t post November 3 Election Day. That a system based on fantasy ideology instead of material reality cannot stand. The U.S.S.R. couldn’t keep Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago or Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago from getting smuggled out of the country — each to cause untold damage to the false communist utopia image

As I read these articles I couldn't help but wonder what possesses publishers to embrace works that don't sell and are economic disasters.  In America we've always had the idea that people produce to make money, provide jobs, grow the economy and provide for their families.  Well, that's no longer true among the woke who dominate publishing and entertainment and it's costing them million of dollars, and the leftists who run these establishments.... eventually into the ground.... don't care.  

So, I asked AI if woke publishers are going out of business, and found the answers a bit of a white wash starting with this:

No, major traditional publishing houses are not going out of business, though the industry is facing financial pressures, shifting reader habits, and criticism over high advances paid for certain identity-focused or politically trending titles.

It went on to say large publishing companies still remain profitable.... what exactly that means might be interesting to dig deeper into.... especially in light of the massive losses of companies like Disney and their destruction of once great properties such as their Star Wars fiasco.   

The answer went on to claim they're more stable than "print journalism or magazine publishing", and notes their desire to "rush to chase cultural trends or diversify catalogs" is responsible for their bad economic decisions.  Another white wash is the fact people's reading habits are changing to "e-reader adoption, shifting social media marketing (like TikTok), rising book prices, and the integration of artificial intelligence".

Then, "authors are now moving into independent "publishing and self-distribution via platforms like Amazon, driven by dissatisfaction with traditional royalty structures, marketing cuts, and editorial trends rather than the outright collapse of major publishing entities."

Ultimately no business or industry can last forever losing money and I liked Lou Aguilar's statement in his article linked above dealing with the future of the publishing industry. 

Thus, when you read the data about the steep drop in fiction reading, consider what they’re hiding. People haven’t stopped reading good mass appeal books. Mainstream publishers have stopped providing them. Like their entertainment industry counterparts, they would rather lose money offering woke slop to bitter liberal women and beta men who won’t support it than profit by providing traditional entertainment to normal men and women who will welcome it..........

History, time, reality and truth are on the same side, all of which is anathema to the left.  History has ably demonstrated that leftism, in all it's forms and manifestations, can only maintain control through lies, corruption, corrosion and eventually violence.  And that history is incontestable.