An important milestone article came out a few days ago, and it talks about (among other things) people like us — the independent writers of both fiction and non-fiction. While the term involved was new to me, the organizations and people mentioned are surely familiar to most of us.
From the article:
“The Rise of NewPub: How Independent Storytellers Are Rebuilding Culture”
“A few days ago, I came across a word I’d never seen before: NewPub. Curious, I looked it up, and to my delight, it described the very movement I’d once helped ignite without realizing it had a name.”
[A few excerpts follow — I recommend reading the full article.]
“In short, NewPub, or New Publishing, is the wave of independent, author-led publishing that rose against the stale hierarchy of “OldPub.” It’s defined by craft, ownership, and cultural renewal: writers publishing through small presses or selling directly to readers, building loyal communities instead of chasing institutional approval, and restoring storytelling as a moral and aesthetic art rather than an ideological tool.”
“Alongside Superversive fiction, it represents a renaissance still in its infancy: a reawakening of truth, beauty, and authenticity in literature long stifled by corporate culture.”
“A pipeline had formed: the MFA-to-publishing circuit. University programs trained “literary” writers, and publishers told them what to produce. It became a closed ecosystem. Where once a novelist might have been a pipefitter, a nurse, or a cop writing from life, now most were professors chasing tenure.
They shared the same backgrounds and psychologies, and their stories all sounded alike. MFA programs polished style but sacrificed voice. Students learned what to say, not what to see. Publishers rewarded sameness as sophistication.
Gatekeepers (who often shared the backgrounds and psychologies of the aforementioned MFA writers) stopped guarding quality and began enforcing ideology. Every acquisition meeting asked, “Is this the kind of story we want to be seen publishing?” What they wanted wasn’t truth but conformity.“
The Philosophy of NewPub
“If OldPub had become a cathedral to its own authority, NewPub was a forge. It was noisy and imperfect, but every strike meant creation.
The movement wasn’t about escaping corporate control; it was about rediscovering what storytelling was for. We had seen both extremes: the conformity of OldPub and the chaos of early self-publishing. What we wanted was something in between: freedom ordered toward excellence.
That became our unspoken creed.
We believed stories mattered, that art carried moral weight, and that freedom without discipline was as hollow as discipline without freedom. We believed in ownership, not only of rights and royalties but of craft and conviction. Most of us don’t make a living from it. We write because we can’t help it. The stories insist on being told. That’s the soul of NewPub: not commerce, but calling.
We began treating storytelling as moral architecture, something that could hold truth and beauty in tension and restore meaning in an age addicted to irony. We didn’t need permission to write about faith, courage, love, or redemption. We trusted readers to find what spoke to their souls.
And in doing so, we rebuilt something ancient: a Republic of Letters bound not by geography or institution but by respect. Writers, editors, and readers became allies in cultural reconstruction.“
I, too, consider myself one of the lowly contributors to this endeavor, from the moment I said “why not?” when I first thought of writing a multi-book series about a Virginian foxhunter drafted into becoming the huntsman for the Hounds of Hell, and taught myself the skills to do so, and then figured out how to publish it, almost 14 years ago, and never looked back.
How about you?
Mad Genius Club 
14 responses to “NewPub”
I find it interesting and amusing that I’ve been involved in all of this, and most of those organizations and I remember things… differently. Ah, well.
NewPub sounds like a riff on NewSpace, a term applied to more commercial space ventures. Rather than relying solely on government contracts, NewSpace entities look to commercial customers, venture capital, and their own funding. SpaceX is the best known example, of course.
I definitely feel like my writing career is part of NewPub. I put my first book up on Amazon in 2013. And what a long strange journey it’s been!
Noodling over the laudable goals listed above, I’d say my books match many of them. I like driven heroes trying to do the right thing, no matter the obstacles in their way. I wasn’t finding that in a lot of TradPub, so–like so many–I set out to write it myself.
I remember when Sarah Hoyt coined the term Human Wave to describe entertaining, people-positive fiction. Then John C. Wright used Superversive, and after a mild bit of cussin’ and discussin’ about which was broader, some of us sort of decided that H.W. comes under the Superversive arch.
Me? My early stuff fit no major genre, and only Baen might have looked twice at it, so I leaped into self-publishing in 2010. [I feel old in internet years.] I never really tried to submit fiction to a publisher, because of trying to find an agent who would take my stuff, which still barely fits into a shelving genre. It’s been great watching the Indie side prosper and grow, and start to push TradPub harder and harder. “Proud Producer of the Tsunami of Swill” I believe one of TPG’s* tee-shirts had it. 🙂
*ThePassiveGuy (RIP), lawyer and publishing watcher and manager of the late-and-much-lamented ThePassiveVoice blog.
I do miss Passive Guy…
Me too. I only really considered one “Trad pub” house, Baen, because that was the only one whose work I respected. I had bad timing, my first ‘script was on Jim’s desk when he died, and well they got flooded by ‘scripts from their front line troops that wanted to ensure that the house survived the loss of it’s founder. As a newbie you can’t compete with Webber and Ringo for press space. So I’ve been doing small press work, and while it may not pay as well, it’s a far better choice.
V/R
William Lehman
I was also there at the beginning of the indy-author wave. I had sort of broken into long-form writing as a blogger, and did try the trad-publishing method with my first two historical novels. Get an agent who would rep me to an established publisher … and … that’s where that plan failed. Most big agencies didn’t “do” westerns, and me protesting that my books were historical novels set on the 19th century trans-Mississippi frontier did not butter any parsnips with them.
So, on to the POD route, which was assisted by two big developments: the first being digital print service, which made it economically viable to do only a small print run, instead of the large (1000s of copies) provided by traditional lithographic process. I remember going to a local author meeting with my business partner in about 2006, where a rep from a local print provider outlined the process and the costs – at least $15,000 for a print run, which was not possible for me at the time. (And still isn’t!)
The second development was Amazon launching their Kindle e-reader, and asking authors – any author! – to provide content. The trad-pub houses were reluctant, or wanted to charge the same for an e-book that they did for a print version, and the independent authors in the group that I was part of at the time were all ‘let-me-at-it!!!’
There was probably a lot of drek provided thereby, but a lot of indy authors did very, very well out of sales of their books on Kindle or Nook. My own sales on Kindle and other ebook providers are far above print sales, even now.
I made some efforts to find an agent back when I first finished a now-trunked novel inthe mid-late 00s. I looked into Baen, but it really *was* my father’s Oldsmobile, publishing by and for people with tastes pretty different from my own, with a few exceptions (Darkship Thieves, Caliphate books, some reprints of classics).
I got into self publishing after a period of binge-reading on Kindle and picking up a book on self publishing written by Dean Wesley Smith. Started self-publishing in 2016 iirc. I am probably adjacent to the Human Wave/Superversive/noblebright crowd in terms of values, but I was never very good at joining movements.
I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum as most of you here. I’ve only finished one book, about 2/3 done with the sequel. I plan to take a break for nanowrimo and pick it back up in the new year, when my betas have (hopefully) returned the first book all scribbled over with red ink.
I’m dreading having to turn my attention to the other aspects of publishing: cover art, formatting, blurbs, advertising and all that. I never even considered publishing with a major press, but now that the time is at hand I need to either find a NewPress or self publish.
Advice from another newbie. And you know how much that is worth! Don’t even worry about advertising yet. 1) Formatting a book is a big learning experience but if you get desperate you can do some things by hand. My first Table of Contents was done that way because I couldn’t make a program do it for me. 2) There’s two different kinds of blurbs. The one to concentrate on is the explanation right next to your book cover on Amazon. There’s a lot of good advice scattered through MGC on how to write that thing. You can do it now while your book is out for editing. 3) The cover is the place to spend a little time and money since it’s the first thing people see. But I made a budget and stuck to it. My first book more or less dropped like a stone, but if I hadn’t gone all the way through the process I’d never have gotten to book 2 or 3 which have bought me a dinner or two and a cup of coffee. And some happy readers. Good luck!
When you’re ready to delve into the business of making your book look like a book, we have a handy checklist for that. https://madgeniusclub.com/2024/02/03/begin-at-the-beginning-2/
We’re here to answer questions.
Been indie for some time.
I collected rejection slips for awhile, then went Indie in 2011 with one book . . . then started in with my pile of rejects . . .
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