White Men Can't Catch a Break, Part 2

On Monday, I published a piece about how Bill Bryson and others were complaining about the freedom of access EVERYBODY has, and how it means there is a forest of garbage to wade through. The truth is, while Bill is a very good writer, for as long as i can remember, lets say back in the 1940s (I was born in 1959 but read widely of pop lit from the 1940s on) the best seller lists have always been mostly garbage, in my opinion. and as to the garbage clutter, even when the big house combined published 20,000 titles, most of those did not sell.

But today, I want to address what Jewish woman friend of mine brought up.

"Reverse Exclusion" she worries about certain publishers having a bias towards one marginalized group over another.

The thing is there can be no reverse exclusion until we reach a just and equitable existence.

There are lots of publishers who give preference or even only publish work by women, or Black folks, or brown folks, Indians, indigenous people, queer folk, and yes even only Jewish women. none of these exclude access, as if there is someone who only wants to publish queer black Jews from Norway, they can do that. Bryson is saying we need to make more like it used to be. Right now, you or I could start a publishing house (I have started more than one) that was exclusive to XYZ.

He hates that, wanting the old gate keepers back in place. There are still gates (the big five still sell 80% of the books sold, even though they only publish 100,000-150,000 titles and the rest of the publishing industry publish over 3 million titles, but we have taken down the walls, so those they would keep out can no longer be kept out.

Again there is no reverse exclusion as long as everybody can ignore the gates and walk in. it costs literally zero dollars to publish you work, so one can no longer be excluded.