[alexitorg]

I wonder if the same thing is happening in genres like sci-fi. These trends sound familiar: Publishing books to appeal to critics, more prestige fiction published, less published white male authors, less published books on best seller lists (by published I mean published by a professional publishing firm). I am not sure that big authors of the 80's and 90's such as Iain Banks, Neil Stevenson, Peter F Hamilton would get published now days. I've noticed the big sci-fi awards seems to have a lot more books with social justice themes than I remember. I find I don't like a lot of the newly published sci-fi. I'm reading a lot more self published books amd, at least judging by best seller lists on amazon, so are a lot of other people. It is a pity, I think professionally published books are generally better written, perhaps it is the pipeline of authors writing about themes I like being broken?

[antupis]

Pretty much all the best stuff is self-published first weekly basis on sites like Royal Road, and then some mainstream publisher will pick it up when it gains momentum.

[thom]

I assume you're joking, but hopefully everyone will be aware that Ian (M) Banks was woke as fuck, and Neil Stevenson and Peter F Hamilton continue the noble struggle of publishing through such minor imprints as HarperCollins and Random House.

[philwelch]

This is a bad faith response. Of course publishers aren’t going to drop established best-selling authors; alexitorg’s point is that these authors would not get the same chance if they were starting out today.

Also, I think Banks was more of an old fashioned utopian socialist, which is very different from “woke as fuck”.