THE YEAR IS 2012 and I’m a publishing assistant in a Big Four publishing house. I look after two publishers: one who publishes adult literary fiction and one whose list is young adult and children’s fiction. Even though this is my dream job and I’ve been here for almost a year, things are hard. I’ve leaned heavily on my family for support but I’m still struggling to make ends meet; I’ve taken a weekend job in retail so I can afford to stay in Sydney.

In what little free time I have, I’m secretly working on expanding a short story I wrote as an undergrad into a novel. It’s had some good feedback from industry people, so when I finish my draft, I send it off to another publisher. Not the publisher I work for.

Less than a fortnight after submitting to an open slush pile, I get a request for the full manuscript, then a message saying it’s going to acquisitions. I panic and confess to my boss, the literary publisher, that I have a book that’s under consideration at another publisher. All hell breaks loose. She takes the manuscript and reads it overnight, texting me updates until she’s done: I want this book. I start to think that this is my moment. Two publishers are going to fight over my book, I’ll get paid an advance that will dig me out of my financial hole, and my life in Sydney will be set.

What actually happens is that the literary publisher decides to show my manuscript to my other boss, the children’s publisher, because of the story’s young protagonist. The children’s publisher is insistent she will take my book to acquisitions, and despite the fact I think the book is more literary fiction than YA, I’m so scared I won’t get published that I don’t fight back.

On the day before the acquisitions meeting, my boss phones and says she’s apprehensive my book is not going to pass the meeting.

‘I just have some questions,’ she says. ‘Why is the family in the book so poor? Why does the dad keep losing his job – is there something wrong with him? Why is his mother so suddenly depressed?’

The overarching themes of this manuscript – as I’d seen them – were intergenerational trauma, racism, discrimination, and the inequitable way that Indigenous peoples are treated in everyday situations. I realised, as she kept asking questions, that she hadn’t understood that although my book was fiction, it was a true and accurate depiction of life for some Aboriginal families. In the end, my book was passed over at both acquisitions meetings because ‘the subject matter [was] too difficult’.

Eleven years later, in 2023, my book had been through at least four acquisitions meetings, been shortlisted for the David Unaipon Award (twice) and received a highly commended award for the Boundless Indigenous Writer’s Mentorship before finally being picked up by Affirm Press.

WHILE MINE IS a unique pathway to publication, the length of time it’s taken, the number of rewrites I’ve completed, and the thinly (and sometimes not-so-thinly) veiled racism that I’ve experienced are not unique when it comes to the journeys of authors who are First Nations and People of Colour (FNPOC).

‘People of colour cannot be mediocre,’ says Jing XuanTeo in a recent article for Pedestrian. Teo, who co-owns Amplify Bookstore, went on to say that People of Colour ‘have to write a fantastic, incredible, stunning 10 out of 10 book to even be considered to be published’.

On the back of this story, we have another one that’s blown up recently in the media: that of the ‘BookTok Boy’, Luke Bateman. I hesitate to recap the story here because it’s likely you’ve already heard it. And I, like many other marginalised authors, am sick of handing him publicity. Similarly, a POC writer I’ve been speaking to while this spectacle has been unfolding says: ‘I want people to stop talking about him and giving him more airtime. It’s important we move the conversation to the root issue, rather than piling onto the individuals who benefit.’

And she’s right. What I’m more interested in right now are the ways in which First Nations and People of Colour, particularly women, have already been marginalised by the publishing industry, because getting the publishing deal is just half the battle.

I think about how, on the Not Your Token Hire podcast, debut author Emma Pei Yin explained the way she once received a rejection from an agent who said, ‘I loved your work, but I can’t represent you because I already have an Asian author on my list.’ Emma says it’s responses like these that have put People of Colour ‘into a situation by the industry to feel that they have to fight for this space they’ve been given’.

I can’t stop thinking about Chickasaw woman Danica Nava, who wrote the first traditionally published Native American romantic comedy book, The Truth According to Ember. The worldwide distribution of Nava’s book has been bungled by rights holders despite her success in the US. I’m thinking about how she got a romance writer’s dream cover endorsement quote from Emily Henry for Ember and one from bestselling cowboy romance author Lyla Sage on her second, Love is a War Song. All of this support, and yet she’s recently revealed on Threads that ‘there is no retailer placement’ in her home market for this new book.

I’m also wondering how Malaysian-Chinese Australian author Tzeyi Koay is feeling right now. Her upcoming queer Chinese vampire book, A Curse Carved in Ink, sold at auction to the same publishing imprint, Atria (Simon & Schuster), as Luke Bateman and is slated for release in the same year. Selling at auction is usually a BIG DEAL for debut authors, but when your straight, white, cisgender male stablemate’s book eclipses your reach – a reach you’ve been working hard at building for years – then that’s got to be scary.

Koay and Bateman will likely go through the same editorial process. But I wonder what will happen in the lead-up to both their books being published. What will the marketing campaigns look like when put side by side? 

The cynical part of me says that we’ll see a lot more of Bateman because the publishers will have more money set aside for a book they know will sell. I anticipate huge book boxes being sent to influencers in advance of his publication – a campaign that will have plenty of money behind it designed to get the conversation going on social media. We might even see a re-stoking of the controversy flames because, as TikTokker Grapie has observed, ‘Atria Books [is] not new to chasing internet virality.’ But knowing this, I fear for how the marketing will play out for Koay.

Speaking to how the marketing and publicity of books excludes marginalised people, TikTokker and author Nisha Sharma points out that ‘those who control the literary canon also control the narrative about how we see…what is an acceptable form of identity’. For Sharma, paying an external publicist to work with her on Dating Dr Dil saw an increase in both where her books were placed and how they sold. There was a notable difference in sales between this book and the second instalment in the series, Tastes Like Shakkar, because she didn’t have the resources to pay for external support the second time around. Both books are traditionally published.

‘In order to participate in systems like publishing as an individual who is from a marginalised community, often it is dependent on the individual’s privilege, financial resources, and time,’ Sharma says. To support marginalised authors, the publishing industry needs to oversize their financial support for them because they need it more. And, unfortunately, that’s not something we usually see happening. ‘It’s often about your privilege that gives you access to different spaces,’ she adds. 

I’ve held onto Sharma’s words as my second book, Love Unleashed, came out with Penguin Random House in 2024. I worried about how my diverse romantic comedy would fare on the shelves next to massively successful white American authors like Emily Henry and Ali Hazelwood, who didn’t need advertising and marketing like I did. Thankfully, my publisher understood this reality and supported me with additional marketing as a part of Penguin’s commitment to advancing diverse voices. I credit this push – which saw Love Unleashed appear on shopping centre light walls, on posters near train stations and in publicity boxes sent out to book influencers – with garnering better sales for the book. But we’ll see how things really went when it comes time for me to pitch my second romance book.

AS FOR BURN, despite being promised big things by my publisher, its shelf life is coming to an end. Disappointingly, those first publishers may have been right about the story being difficult to sell. But I remain convinced that the book suffered from my own lack of access: I didn’t have the money to add to promotion, the access granted by large social media followings, or the publishing dollars. I failed to make prize lists or get the popular acclaim; that’s affecting me now as my agent pitches my next literary novel, a story about Aboriginal people and Pentecostal churches, which I’ve been told is going to be a tough sell after Burn. In some ways, I’m considered an established author because I’ve written and published three books, but right now I feel like I’m heading back into the aspiring phase, where I collect rejections and count the ways in which my stories are further sidelined.

I’d love to say there are no sour grapes on my behalf. But I’m speaking up because there are. I’m angry for myself: for how long it’s taken, for the bullshit questions I’ve been asked along the way and for the lack of support I’ve received compared to other, non-Indigenous authors. I’m sad that a story I poured my heart and soul into for over thirteen years has basically disappeared while others get reprints and reprints for books not as well written, not as hard won. But I’m also so angry for my elders, who have better – more important, more critical – stories to be told but who must work even harder than I have, despite their leadership, guidance and sacrifices being the only reason I’m able to write my own stories down. We should all be angry about this, we should all be talking about it, and we should all be putting pressure on the publishing industry to make changes and put its support behind the people who need it most.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash