I'm Autistic and Traditional Book Publishing Sucks for Me
But the good news is that the world is changing!
Today I’m so excited to share about my new venture into the world of multimedia publishing — STRONGWILLED! It’s a Substack Newsletter and soon-to-be podcast, but really it’s a book my partner and I have been working on for the past year. Just like this newsletter, the majority of the content will be free (three chapters a month) and accessible, while community discussion posts, commenting privileges and more are available to paid subscribers. For loyal readers of my work I am offering 10% off for LIFE if you want to support/join in this new endeavor!
Now, on to the essay.
I’m autistic and traditional book publishing sucks for me.
For the past year or so, Krispin and I have been hard at work researching and writing a books-length worth of information on what we eventually came to call “Religious Authoritarian Parenting” materials. Starting with Dr. James Dobson but quickly broadening out, we wanted to hone in on the societal AND personal impact of what mainstream evangelicals in the United States believed about children and their relationship to authority. (If anyone likes Tik Tok, you can follow a little miniseries I have been doing on just some of the information we have looked into).
I’ve published three books (including a heavily researched biography) and Krispin has published one himself. So we had all the confidence that what we were working on would someday be a book that a person could buy in a Barnes and Nobles or (gasp) Amazon. We contracted an agent for the project, worked on a proposal, and researched and wrote feverishly when we could find the time in our busy lives.
As we worked on the proposal in particular I couldn’t help but notice my anxiety levels were rising. I was up to my eyeballs in researching awful books that were triggering to my own childhood lived experience and the pressure I started to feel about the publishing side was a tipping point for me. I was doing some big-level analysis that I felt might be helpful to discussions of America’s current issue with rising religious authoritarianism, but being yanked out of my writing process to think about dipping my toes back into the world of publishing and publicity/marketing was making me miserable. I began to realize that I had the capacity to write this book, but I didn’t have the capacity to publish it. At least, not in the way that traditional publishing works.
My first two books I published I had no clue that I was autistic. As a result, I consistently tamped down my own anxieties and did everything I was supposed to do (according to the publishers/publicists): take every speaking job offered, write articles, go on podcasts, go to conferences, and more. I had panic attacks before speaking at conservative Christian colleges but pushed through because I had been taught to believe that “God’s message” was more important than my anxiety. I would speak and talk with all the earnestness of an autistic person sharing about their special interest, only to be blindsided again and again by audiences that were combative and reactionary (pretty par for the course for white evangelicals!). I talked a lot about Jesus to people who claimed to be obsessed with him — but who became incredibly defensive when the ethics of Jesus seemed to contradict their own political values.
Not only did I hate so much of this process of getting my work out there, it was the only way to make a tiny bit of money. The rest of my work I did for free (both writing on the internet and teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and the book advances never amounted to anything near a livable wage. Public speaking and freelance writing were the only ways I could help support our family financially, so I did it.
My last book, the Dorothy Day biography, really clarified my thoughts on publishing. I was so proud to write a well-researched book on a woman who has so much relevance to our current issues with religious authoritarianism. But I simply couldn’t do what was needed of me to get the book in front of the target readers. I didn’t want to go to primarily Christian audiences and say what they wanted me to say. I didn’t want to uphold Catholicism as the best way to be a human, or to downplay all the deliciously weird and unorthodox parts of Dorothy. Not only that, but there were all the other unspoken rules that came with being a published author that both confused and enraged me.
For instance, once you are in the fold of published authors in a specific genre or category, you are never supposed to say anything critical of anyone else in the club. Even though nepotism, abuse, and toxic beliefs are rife within the Christian writing world — not to mention an overall lack of accountability for the harms caused to marginalized groups by irresponsible authors, editors, and publishers. They have about the same amount of emotionally immature / narcissistic types you will find in any job that deals with a bit of notoriety, but whenever I (in my autistic way) pointed out abusive systems or enablers within that world, I was swiftly condemned (sometimes by writers/thinkers I had previously admired). This seemed especially true if you were socialized as female and in the Christian writing world. It was a club, a group, and you must never upset the balance. You blurb each other's work and share about all the same books and never ever bite the hand that feeds you1.
And eventually I just couldn’t do it anymore.
I started Healing is My Special Interest instead of working on a book project and fell back in love with writing in community. Plus, over the past few years I have realized I’m primarily a researcher and reader and a writer who is deeply committed to reclaiming my autonomy and to encouraging that in others. So it makes a lot of sense to me why after a few years of carving out this little world on Substack I was loathe to have to enter into the world of traditional publishing again.
So I asked myself — what if I didn’t have to?
Which brings me to Substack. While this is not a perfect platform by any means2, it has been so incredibly helpful to me as an autistic person looking to find my ideal readers (that’s you!). Here are just a few of the ways it has benefitted me:
I get to talk about my special interests in REAL time, when I am in the thick of researching and making connections — instead of waiting 2+ years for the editing, marketing, and publicity schedule of a traditional book (by which point I am usually on to my next special interest!!!).
I get to have my research and reading informed by folks who are a part of the communities I am writing to. The readers of Healing is My Special Interest have changed my life with their comments, questions, and recommendations, and I can absorb their input and pivot or revise as needed (which is so cool!).
I only have to do a minimal amount of self-marketing (mostly by posting on my instagram stories.) Substack has a pretty great way of connecting readers to other Substack accounts, and there is a lot of collaborative energy. If someone is a reader of one substack, there is a high likelihood they will subscribe to a few more and we can all find each other3!
I got to set it so that people have to pay to be able to comment. This is really important to me because throughout my writing career SO many people have felt like they deserved to have access to me and criticize me. Much of my writing has been free and available to folks, so I think they believe they deserve access to me somehow. But no, they don’t (or, they can at least pay me some money if they want to yell at me).
I get the majority of the money for myself. Of course a portion of the money goes to Substack and to the billing company they use, but it is a lot less than what ends up going to a traditional agent / the publishers. I then use that money to help my own neuroqueer family and support others as well! Win-win-win. 🙂
I get to live out my dreams of being a publishing empire and solicit, publish, and promote other autistic writers. For my new project, I will do the same thing (focusing on platforming the people impacted by Religious Authoritarian Parenting). I giggle when I say empire, but truly it has been so meaningful for me to be able to put forth work by incredible minds here on this Substack and to be able to pay people for their time!
I can be under the radar. Traditional publishing pushes high visibility as the ideal — but visibility without safety is just plain dangerous. As a non-binary person (along with being “out” as autistic) I unfortunately do have to consider my safety at this point in my life. But I don’t mind being small and niche, plus a part of me loves how I know all the reactionary conservative types simply won’t assume my projects will be all that meaningful or powerful because it is in a newsletter / podcast format. And I plan to use their own biases against them while I put forth damning evidence and gather a community of folks who are ready to own their autonomy and take down Religious Authoritarianism!
Footnotes. This isn’t a very important one, but I freaking love the footnotes feature on Substack and it sold me on the platform from day one. #autisticjoy
If I experienced all of these benefits from Healing is My Special Interest, why couldn’t I do it again with my next book project?
To me it seems evident that we are experiencing some rapid societal shifts — and of course this is also impacting the way the written word gets put out into the world. We perhaps have reached peak levels of social media engagement and pressuring authors to build platforms in the midst of ever-more-toxic social media sites. Twitter is dying, Instagram is mostly ads, TikTok might be banned, and on all platforms there are less and less every day folks sharing honestly about their lived experience. At the same time, I think a lot of people right now are deeply distrustful of institutions and celebrities. I think most readers are longing for authentic connection with real people who are struggling to figure out the world and how to be a human in it.
So, it’s up to us to build the world we want to live in. And for readers and writers, this means we will find and build those spaces for ourselves to truly connect and explore what we are passionate about. There is a vibe in the air that big name accounts are out and that micro-communities are the wave of the future. This resonates deeply with me — and if there is one thing I know about us older generations, we are used to adapting to changes in society and technology and know how to pivot!
If you grew up evangelical or in another high control religion, I hope you check out STRONGWILLED. We will also be launching a podcast series in a few months that will cover the basics of the project, along with our personal stories — and eventually we will interview other folks who grew up in the Religious Authoritarian Parenting movement or who have insight into this world. Eventually, we might work with a smaller publisher to put forth our work into a physical book but for at least the first year we will be releasing our content chapter by chapter every Monday (with lots of discussion posts and places for people to process/metabolize the info).
As for this newsletter, we will keep focusing on the experience of late-diagnosed autistic people with the occasional foray into the high control stuff. We have so much more to learn and hear from others — including talking about internalized ableism, revisiting autistic figures in media, PDA, and nervous system regulation.
I want to say thank you SO much to everyone who has made this community what it is. And thank you so much to the wonderful folks who have supported this newsletter financially. Because of you I have gotten to pay autistic people for every element of this newsletter — including copy edits, developmental edits, graphic design, guest posts and podcast interviews. I’ve been able to help my family pay some bills and help out other neuroqueer families in a variety of ways — and I’m so excited to keep doing this work in the future.
Cheers to figuring out our nervous systems, making accommodations, and finding ways to do what we love without causing panic attacks!
Not everyone fits into this generalization of course, and just as there will always be predatory people who are drawn to these kinds of careers there are also always the True Believers who are out there doing the best they can with their firm convictions. I met a lot of great people in the Christian writing world, and a lot of great thinkers as well that I still read and learn from.
Trust me when I say I have ethical OCD and I have anguished over what is the least worst place to publish my writing. for now, it’s Substack.
This one has the caveat that I have been writing / posting / being visible on the internet for about 13 years now so I have put in the work to build up a small and dedicated audience. They in turn help share my work! So this is sort of a long con I guess?
This is such an important undertaking! Looking forward to following the new publication and learning more.
Do you know of Difference Press? *If* you do pursue a publisher in the future, this is an indie made for autistic people to write about their special interests. (Doesn’t it feel like this should be every publisher??) Run by Angela from the Autistic Culture podcast/Substack.
I’m so stoked for this project!
You have already inspired me to reclaim my autonomy and voice. I’m looking forward to pointing others in your direction as this evolves. You and Krispin have already put a lot of work into STRONGWILLED and I wish for you that the conversations and connections that will take place as you share your thesis little by little will rewardingly delight you and bring you a modicum of hope.