Who would not wish to be published by a large and well-established publishing house?
A publishing house which, with the help of a skilled editor, can improve the manuscript, which can sell the book on a larger scale through networks in the press and bookshops, which has the funds to advertise the book in the most profitable venues, and which provides a stamp that prompts editors to write a review?
Together with my co-author Frederik Christensen, I was fortunate enough to win Kristeligt Dagblad Forlag’s debate book competition on “war as heritage and a current challenge”, and that ensured that our new book “Tragic Realism” could be published by the venerable publishing house. Others, most, are not so fortunate.
But I believe that that time is coming to an end. Self-publishing will become more and more attractive. Not because artificial intelligence can both help to write entire manuscripts or provide the necessary sparring that editors previously provided. No one has any use for AI texts that are generic and impersonal.
We need, rather, personally engaged texts and authors who dare to break with the consensus. And precisely for that reason, I believe that self-publishing – in book form and online, in books and articles – will be the future.
For the established system is also a filtering system that keeps dissidents down. The system encompasses both publishing houses and reviewers, as I have written about recently, both here and here.
Matt Goodwin is currently in the spotlight with a bestselling book on immigration criticism, which he has published himself in the United Kingdom. His arguments for self-publishing are worth listening to.
Publishing houses are not neutral
Goodwin points out that the major publishing houses are not impartial institutions driven by a search for truth and literary quality. They lean towards a left-liberal worldview and care far more about race, gender and sexual diversity than about diversity of thought.
An author who challenges the prevailing consensus on immigration, national identity or multiculturalism simply cannot expect to be treated on the same terms as authors who confirm what everyone in the system already believes.
The few dissenting voices that nevertheless pass through do not receive the same support, the same sales apparatus behind them, the same attention.
Editing as censorship
Even if a controversial manuscript, contrary to expectations, is accepted, a new obstacle awaits.
It ends up on the desk of a young editorial assistant, newly graduated from one of the major universities and fully versed in the political correctness of the time. Here the quiet reshaping begins.
Passages are cut. Arguments are rounded off. What was sharp becomes harmless. What was provocative becomes acceptable. And after yet another round with sensitive readers and lawyers, the manuscript is something other than what the author submitted.
Goodwin does not call it editing. He calls it narrative control.
Marketing as a filter
The process does not end with the editorial department. The marketing department is the next obstacle, and it is full of people who are not passionate about the book, and may even wish that it did not exist.
An author who has spent years on his manuscript ends up sitting opposite people who at best follow the beaten track. The book is published, but it is not prioritised. It is present in the system without being part of it.
Goodwin’s answer is to take a detour. For him, self-publishing is not a sign that the system has knocked him off course. It is a conscious choice to bypass the system. To go directly to the reader, without filters, without dilution. He has thousands of followers on social media and can bring the book directly to them.
The result speaks for itself: the book “Suicide of a Nation” is in second place on the British non-fiction list.
The Danish picture
Goodwin’s experience is British, but the pattern is recognisable here at home. The publishing world is small, the circle of reviewers even smaller, and those who write against the current quickly feel the resistance.
It does not require prohibition or overt censorship. It is sufficient that the gates are quietly and discreetly closed, that the book is not reviewed, that the review is condescending, that invitations to literary salons fail to materialise. The dissident does not need to be silenced. He simply cannot be heard. A recent American example shows that even reviews that have already been published are removed after political pressure.
But this is changing. Substacks, podcasts and self-published books are in the process of building a new infrastructure for free thought outside the institutions that for decades have had a monopoly on what is worth reading.