The book publishing industry has changed over the last several decades in ways that are hard to fully appreciate. Many have already pointed out how publishing has consolidated, that the “Big Five” traditional publishing companies are, in the end, businesses that need to make money, and that they often care more about being politically correct than artistically daring. Publishers, then, seem a bit less keen on discovering new literary talent. So where is all the talent going?
While it might seem like it’s the worst time to be a novice writer in America, mainstream publishing’s stultification is matched with an explosion of alternative options. Self-publishing is obviously one such option, and one that’s much less decried than it was in the past. The popularity of Substack alone is proving this point. But that’s not all. In response to what’s generally thought to be a progressive hegemony over the American publishing empire, a number of new right-leaning and independent ventures have begun to sprout.
Many of these ventures provide writers a way to write about subjects and characters that probably would never see the light of day in traditional publishing. These books I’m about to list are not my personal cup of tea, but the authors are talented and offer particular insight into the oft-ignored plight of young men, something that you won’t find articulated with much sympathy in today’s mainstream publishing world. For example, New Ritual Press, a small independent publisher started in 2024 by Dan Baltic and Matt Pegas, recently published a book called Dryback by Juan Ecchi. The novel introduces us to a first-person narrator, a man, who is addicted to technology and is sexually frustrated. Again, this type of character (sometimes referred to as a “gooner”) is everywhere in today’s society, but up until now, there have been few novels representing him.
Dryback isn’t alone in featuring a struggling male as its central voice. The 2025 book The Agonies by Ben Faulkner, published by Arcade (another popular destination for writers seeking alternatives to the Big Five) offers a similar portrait of the modern American male incel. There is also the novel literally titled Incel by the Chinese-American novelist ARX-HAN, which saw pretty decent success in terms of overall sales and which received some strong praise from critics. For example, as Scott Litts wrote in First Things: “Not only does Han (a pseudonym) succeed in personalizing this culturally reviled perspective; he shows that it isn’t isolated to the involuntarily celibate individual, but is rather a condensed expression of the scientism that suffuses modern society.”
I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention Panamerica, a new publishing house that focuses on well-crafted literary fiction and nonfiction in the spirit of writers like Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, and David Foster Wallace. It was started by County Highway, a new literary and cultural journal which comes out six times a year in the form of a 19th-century newspaper. Panamerica is directed by the legendary editor Gary Fisketjon, who has worked with the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, and Richard Ford. Panamerica hasn’t come out with much yet, but its first featured novel, Bloodline by Lee Clay Johnson, was met with acclaim.
County Highway itself is a good example of an alternative outlet started by exceptionally talented literary voices (such as novelist Walter Kirn), showing that this new world of publishing isn’t merely populated by a bunch of wannabe hacks. Kirn was in the center of the mainstream cultural and literary matrix for decades, writing his fair share for Harper’s, The New Yorker, and the New York Times. Now, though, like many others, he is venturing into new territory––and succeeding.
Still, people fed up with the publishing industry need to be careful. Andrew Klavan, a bestselling mystery novelist who works as a political commentator for The Daily Wire, has written compellingly on the need for conservatives to stop trying to forcefully change culture through public policy and political office. Instead, they should adopt more of a grassroots attitude. If conservatives want to “take back” the culture from the left, Klavan writes, they have to actually occupy the culture as writers, artists, and thinkers. I agree. The problem is that when conservative cultural figures position themselves against leftist approaches to life and art, they run the risk of being just as overtly political as their opponents. That, I think, is what the “opposition” needs to watch out for.
The most pressing task as writers, then, is to care deeply about telling good stories, wherever those stories end up getting featured. We often ping-pong back and forth with our conversations about the importance of representation and accessibility as aspects of literature, but ultimately, the job for the literary artist remains: Do your work, and do it with excellence.
Ultimately, I applaud the writers who self-publish and those who are forging new publishing companies, and as a writer who is also a conservative Christian, I’m grateful that the ways to “make it” as a writer have diversified. You don’t necessarily have to get an agent and land a deal at Simon & Schuster. You don’t necessarily have to know so-and-so in order to make it big as a novelist.
But the question of quality remains. Am I writing a good story that will delight, entertain, and hopefully instruct? My work, after all, isn’t automatically worth reading. In other words, I can’t blame the liberal publishers for dismissing me when my stories aren’t compelling or interesting in the first place.
This is the obstacle conservative or indie efforts to renew culture face. Alternative indie publishers might be offering a path for certain writers to find a voice, but that doesn’t automatically mean those writers are producing literary gold. We have to tell really good stories. And we have to do it in a way that’s rooted in values like goodness, beauty, and truth—the “permanent things,” in the words of Russell Kirk. A return to such verities might not immediately transform the culture, but in 100 years, those are the kinds of books that people are going to still be reading—as is the case with the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, Dante, Homer, Miguel Cervantes, and so many others. And I don’t think Homer or Dante had publishing contracts with HarperCollins.
