10 Toxic Publishing Mindsets That SUCK

hello everyone alexa dunn here and today i am going to be discussing some toxic publishing mindsets that i really hate an incendiary title but pretty accurate these really bug me a few of them i have been prone to myself and are guilty of they are toxic mindsets they don't help you we're gonna talk about them some of them flat out make me mad there's some snobbery we're gonna be talking about but just generally unhealthy ideas unhealthy attitudes that lead to unhealthy behaviors unproductive behaviors that honestly are going to hold you back either from publishing period or just from publishing happily you can get published would be completely miserable because of some of these toxic mindsets and a few of them will mean nobody likes you and that's not helpful either it is possible to be frozen out of publishing socially meaning if you are awful to enough people no one likes to work with snobby [ __ ] so let's dive in and just have some fun the first super toxic publishing mindset is kind of the zero sum game mentality this is taking kind of competitiveness to an unnatural level to a petty level we're gonna talk about jealousy and jealousy is kind of part of this but there's like jealousy that only hurts you versus jealousy that hurts other people this is jealousy that hurts other people because you basically get it in your mind that other people's success actively holds you back from being successful thus you feel competitive with them you dislike them in some cases you see people who go after people who they see as competition because of this mentality it's inherently selfish but there's also an aspect of fear to it because it's the idea that if someone else gets a book deal and they are like me or they're writing things that are similar to me or they're better at doing what i want to do and you will usually it's when they relate to them on some level they have taken something for me they're horrible i hate them they're my enemy now and i've seen people sub tweet their competition just feel gossip behind the scenes socially exclude them that's a big one i've seen where there's someone who's clearly got this mentality and they feel threatened by anyone coming up after them who writes in a similar vein and instead of being welcoming and being like hey welcome to the fam they're like i'm gonna try to if not destroy your career simply starve you of oxygen so that you won't be as successful as me it's tacky it's an [ __ ] move don't do it this is possibly the number one toxic publishing mindset you can have the other ones are pretty bad this one though is it hurts you it hurts others and it's just malicious yeah so the second super toxic publishing mentality i call this one comparison is the thief of joy something you have probably heard before and it is very very true this toxic mindset is one that i am prone to that many people are prone to and i will also let you off the hook in the sense that most of us naturally do this you gotta fight this toxic mindset however cause this is the one where jealousy hurts you and can destroy you from the inside out so this is the mindset of always playing the comparison game you don't have your eyes on your own paper most of the time you're always comparing yourself to other people why did they have that why can't i have this it's not fair that they had that or simply oh they're so much better than me i wish i was like them i wish i could have that so whether it manifests as kind of like the anger and the bitterness i see that a lot you see it i mean this is the trouble with kind of talking to other people and it's like why did they get that money and i was only paid this i think i'm better than they are there's that side of it and then there is the more wistful oh it's it's the it's the self nag it's the imposter syndrome of like you're always looking at other people and you're assuming that they are better than you that they're having a better time than you that everything's easy for them and it turns into the cycle of self-loathing either way you're constantly comparing yourself to other people you aren't easy on yourself or you or you're too easy on yourself in some cases it is a multi-faceted one but the idea is that you are constantly paying more attention to what other people in publishing are doing than paying attention to yourself and so while this one is a bit more of a natural instinct and it never completely goes away even as you get better at this toxic mindset it is indeed the thief of joy because what it ends up doing with the people who let this mindset eat them alive just take over them and it's what they take with them for it into publishing is they never really experience the highs of publishing the good things that happen to them because they're always comparing it to someone else so they're not able to be happy about that good review or this panel they got to do because well they didn't get to do that one or it wasn't a stard review and so on and so on you are allowed to have complex feelings about things like that don't get me wrong like i haven't thought wistfully about having a stirred review but it's the difference between like oh i wish it were a start review and that [ __ ] got a start review that's not fair and really leaning into the comparison and those sorts of bitter or down on yourself feelings something i'll say for both of these for the zero-sum game and comparison is the thief of joy is that i firmly believe that a rising tide lifts all boats while there is competitiveness in the industry of course and there are limited spots in a certain way and some people are going to have it easier than others generally speaking we are all in this together and it's more of a community than it should be a competition and at least for your own well-being and nurturing of your soul you're always going to do better fighting against these mindsets by being happy for other people genuinely happy for other people and also genuinely appreciating the things that you do have happen to you because that way you can actually enjoy your own experience without being drugged down by toxic bitter negative thoughts so the next publishing mind set there's a couple of variations on this and now we're getting more into the toxic publishing mind sets that are going to hold you back from getting started in a career at all or can lead to you really stumbling even if you technically make it and not making it long term the first variation of this is publishing writing is a marathon not a sprint but people with this toxic mindset only focus on the sprint part they are so hyper focused on one book a very short period of time only the first hurdle or few hurdles of publishing that they lose sight of the longer game of course if you have this mindset in the short term you may be successful but you're gonna fall flat on your face in the long term so what i kind of mean by this with the sprint side is that these are writers who are so focused on i need an agent that's all i need agent that they might chase trends with their books they might hastily draft books and query it and if they don't get an agent in 10 queries they throw it away and start another one or they don't get an agent with 12 queries and they decide to self-publish instead i mean that's kind of i focus on traditional publishing obviously that's certainly a toxic mindset if you want to see success in traditional publishing if you hastily choose self-publishing not for the right reasons because you didn't immediately see success in traditional publishing but self-publishing in and of itself is not a bad thing or bad decision but what can happen with this you know like you you burn through many manuscripts because you're like agent agent agent it can mean that you're not learning proper editing skills editing and revising skills and those are going to be really really essential for later not really kind of digging in on your own writing and figuring out what's not working about a manuscript and then working to fix it is definitely going to hold you back in the long term because that's something that you need to learn the flip side of that is in this kind of sprint mentality can be the hyper focusing on one book because it's just like i need to get an agent and this has to be the one so whether you're bouncing book to book to books just chasing that goal but not putting in the proper editing work or whether you're editing a book to death and over queering it either way you were way too hyper focused on the short term sprint stuff and you're not thinking long term about you know it's not just getting an asian there's so much stuff that comes after that i've also seen this manifest socially where you know they burn bridges with people they don't think long terms in terms of relationship building a behavior on social media there i see this just a lot with people who are only thinking one to two years ahead and they're not thinking five years ahead and you do actually have to think five years ahead because once you get over that first hurdle it's not done i have also seen writers who do get over that first hurdle suffer from the sprint versus a marathon mentality and that's where they think they're done they gotta need it they might have even gotten a book deal it might have been a really good book deal and they're like i have made it i have arrived i am set for life i'm gonna be a famous awesome amazing writer and they dig into the short term and you see a lot of them not make it long term because they aren't prepared for some of the curveballs that publishing can throw at them because they were only like if i make it here i've made it and you see it with they fall flat on their face on book two or if their sales aren't good and like people stop come kind of blowing smoke up their butt they don't know what to do uh they aren't able to pivot to another book idea i've definitely seen the social bridge burning here it's kind of oh they made it so they can unfollow those losers who don't have agents yet or they're mean to their publicist or what have you that will potentially come back to bite you i mean publishing divas is a whole other toxic mindset that's not actually on this list but it kind of goes into this one anything where you are only focused on short-term thinking when it comes to publishing is a mistake because publishing is not a sprint it is 100 a marathon and a lot of people trip on the track part way through the marathon and do not make it to the end the fourth toxic mindset this one i understand it but it really makes me sad and that is pitch contest obsession i actually think this ties a little bit into it actually it ties into the comparison of the thief of joy thing kind of like observing other people and like comparing experiences and wanting what other people have as well as short-term mentality the sprint idea and but i don't fault people for it you see people blow up from pitch contests pitch contests can do amazing magical things for a lot of writers but revolving your entire publishing strategy a round pitch contest is definitely a toxic mentality i've seen far too many people get locked in to the cycle they attach their self-worth as a writer to these various contests whether it's the application ones the mentorships including like other mentor match or pitch wars it's like i'm just gonna keep applying until i get in and every time i don't get in i actually feel worse about myself and you know a lot often times i'll see these writers they don't query they just do twitter pitch after twitter pitch after twitter pitch or even if they do query it's this it's this cycle of i'm querying i'm applying to the mentorship contest i'm doing the twitter pitches and you're not getting the results back but you keep doing it and it's and i see authors who will spin for years and that is what's dangerous about this they don't move on to another idea or they just beat themselves up so much about not performing well in pitch contests that it can really impact their confidence as a writer and i hate that because simply not all projects ideas work well in pitch contests some of them pitch incredibly poorly but are great in queries querying works the slush works and so i'm constantly pushing people like don't hinge all of your self-worth onto a contest you can't have your entire publishing future riding on the pie in the sky idea of getting into the perfect contest doing the showcase being the vunderkind of the year because also part of this toxic mindset is also for the people who get in to those things or who do well in those things because it's an adrenaline rush and it's really exciting but it doesn't always work out and i've seen authors really chewed up inside by pitch contests and all of kind of the ups and downs that they involve and what this will sometimes be is you see it in pitch words especially where one or two or three entries do very very well but yours doesn't do as well and then you feel really terrible about yourself it impacts your self-esteem and it and that's the comparison as the thief of joy thing pitch contests naturally lead to comparison and it can be really really unhealthy so honestly sometimes for your mental health especially if you have a book that is beautifully pitchable in 250 words but not in 280 characters or what have you just clear he especially if you're ready to go don't hold on to your work for six months waiting for something move forward don't let hinging your publishing hopes and dreams on pub pitch contest success hold you back and another thing that i see here that's definitely not good is that there are writers who have gotten so wrapped up in the idea of all i gotta do is have a really sexy pitch and get it on twitter at the right moment and my tweet's gonna blow up but let me let you in on a little secret the book still has to be good i have seen far too many cases where the darlings of various pitch events uh sometimes the book isn't even done so you you can't get an agent on an incomplete book usually uh and then i've just heard from so many agents you know they'll say kind of privately uh 90 to 95 percent of the things that they fave in various pitch contests the writing's just not there yet so meaning you're not going to have a magical publishing experience just because you have a really great pitch the writing has to be there and so it's toxic about this mentality potentially is if it means that you're not still working on writing a great book working on the graph it all has to kind of be there all working together and i will just remind you again and again querying works and also just a piece of advice here to the ones that i see doing the same books in pitch contests over and over again for years i have seen this too many times it's really painful to me it can actually hurt you because agents do notice when something is over pitched they're going to assume it's no one else wants it because if they did you wouldn't still be pitching and that's actually going to work against you and it's also just typically a sign if it hasn't happened yet it may not happen at least not in public pitches pull back from those public pitches but very often i just want to say like it's time to start something new the fifth toxic publishing mindset i hate this one so much look i can be sympathetic about a lot of these but this one just like burns from the inside and the thing is no one actually likes this toxic mindset and yet it's social climbing yeah this is the individual who is obsessed with the idea of making the right friends of being in the cool clique of being accepted by the cool authors who approaches all of their relationships as transactional now there's obviously a thin line here a i mean networking is real networking is a thing and some relationships are in some ways transactional but it's a thorny it's a thorny rose bush in publishing and also there's a part of this is a lot of people see or perceive social climbing when it's not there because there is such a thing as you can grow apart from writer friends you can kind of move in new circles and it doesn't necessarily mean that you think you're too good for the other circles sometimes you do just grow apart from people sometimes you don't you just naturally do not click with people and also some people literally just don't have time to respond to everyone on social media and so while you might read a dis into something raise your hand i have over analyzed uh interactions with people on twitter and i shouldn't i have to stop myself from that but it's not always a diss sometimes it is and so this one i mean obviously if you have this mindset i would strongly advise you to stop because it will bite you in the butt so while on some level it is natural and okay as you move through publishing to want to make new friends who are kind of at the same stage as you that is natural so of course when i sold my book and joined my debut group i wanted to make friends with my fellow debuts to kind of have people to talk with and like ask questions of and exchange information with about the whole debut experience but what you always see in debut groups like that without fail is the individuals who are clearly they pick and choose who to talk to who to be friends with based on like how good their agent is and how good their book deal is i mean that happens at all stages but like it's more obvious than a debut group so if you're doing this stop it's not too late meaning like really focus on actually forging real deep friendships you won't regret it and don't ditch your friends just because they aren't as successful as you are i mean whether you're the successful party in the relationship or the less successful party in the relationship like their feelings on both sides but where this really hurts people is things can shift so quickly in publishing and that's why this is a toxic mindset and i i see it most often in either freshly agented writers who are just so excited they're like i have an agent but then they they'll play the social politics of like who am i gonna talk to um and or not not talking to people who aren't agented but also debut like once people get book deals is like the next phase where some people will go really really hard at this and the thing that i will tell you is a lot can change between getting your agent between selling your book and your book coming out a lot can even change between your first book coming out and your second book coming out meaning publishing is a constant social game it's not fun it's not good but meaning a person who is on top one moment can very easily be on the bottom at the next and it that sounds really like horrific but it won't matter as much so to speak if you have a high and then you have a low if you weren't a dick to everyone along the way and you have genuine friendships and people who you actually genuinely like and who genuinely like you so they're not gonna ditch you or ignore you when you go from a high to a low but if you were that social climbing person who considered a lot of the relationships transactional who stopped talking to people who you didn't think were as good as you but when the tables turn you're not gonna have any friends i have seen it far too many times and the really bad social climbers do develop reputations in publishing again i will disclaim no one is perfect and everyone has had that perceived slate and you always have to kind of like play the question mark of like was it or wasn't it and i try to give people the benefit of the doubt it's patterns that show up and just generally tied to the toxic mindset of social climbing or over focusing on social relationships and publishing the other part of this even if you're not social climbing intentionally but you do get kind of involved in click politics and being friends with the right people being cool on whatever your space is whether that's instagram let's be real it's mostly twitter where this happens this can be really bad and i've definitely seen it in pack some people because they'll focus so much on the social aspects of being an author and being cool and being friends with the right people and being socially accepted like of course we all get a high if we feel like oh hey we're cool i'm not cool for the record but i've seen people focus so much on that that they appear to stop actually writing books focusing on the the part that we're here for which is writing books publishing books writing good books and it becomes far more about like this is kind of when you see someone where it's it's more about who they are and their platform than it appears to be about actually writing books and i think this is a flip of the hyper focusing on the social aspect of publishing and fitting in and being cool i think for so many of us publishing is like this second opportunity at high school that's not a good thing but i think that's why we see this and if you find yourself in this mentality we've all been sucked into a toxic friend group or two in publishing and in high school and in college and in fandom like it's a pattern um it's it's okay to forgive yourself for being pulled into this toxic mindset uh identify who your real friends are stick to them and back away slowly from all the social [ __ ] that is my advice i think you can reform yourself if you were at one time a social climber but uh definitely definitely be wary and yeah which brings me to the sixth toxic mindset that i really hate and this ties into the social stuff a lot and that is agent slash publisher shaming now it is kind of natural to evaluate where someone is especially when it comes to i mentioned that whole debut thing you know you don't want to be the person who is going on and on and on and on about your problems uh let's say you're with a big five publisher and you're a lead title and you got a high six figure deal for your book you do need to be socially aware of who you were talking to in terms of like i personally wouldn't then complain to the person at a really small respected publisher who got a 10 000 advance so there does have to be an awareness there in forming your social relationships and who you are talking to but what persists far too often is snobbery i see this in a two-pronged sense i see it first before people get in basically get agented get a book deal and this is the one that's semi-forgivable because we all do it i have an entire video on why you shouldn't have a dream agent slash dream publisher but how it's okay if you do because we all do it's like you shouldn't do it but you're gonna do it but don't do it it's that thing but but there's a certain type of writer who gets way more toxic about this idea where they define their self-worth again as a writer by a very short list of so-called a-list agents they only want the best of the best and if they can't get the best of the best some people will respond to that as like i hate them they're horrible but others will basically hyper focus on this to the point of almost self-harm in the sense that they will only consider this small list of the top it's only these 10 agents let's say and it's it's big four now it's big four can we just moment of silence for the big five when i wrote this outline it was the big five uh it's the big four or bust and you won't accept anything else you you're disappointed if it's scholastic which just like chew on that for a minute like you're allowed to have feelings about the big four i relate but it still can be a toxic thing of like i've definitely seen this where someone is so into this mindset where they have said all agents who aren't these ten are garbage and they've said it to a person who doesn't have one of those agents and it leads to this snobbery that not only hurts yourself but can lead to burning bridges and social relationships of basically turning your nose down at what other people have you deny yourself opportunities you hurt yourself in the long run because what can happen with with this often and i said this in the dream agent video you'll be hyper focusing on a very specific type of agent or publisher and they're usually the biggest and the splashiest but if you don't write books like that if you are not that kind of writer you're only hurting yourself because you are telling yourself it's only good enough if it's this and you're never going to meet that bar that doesn't make you bad it just means maybe you shouldn't be with a shark agent and you're not going to get a 500 000 book deal from the splashiest commercial imprint it doesn't make what might be right for you garbage by any stretch so you hurt yourself and then you piss off other people when you look down on what they have and so the second prong of this generally regardless of where you are it's usually people who are already in the industry however and that is looking down on people who you see as having lesser agents or lesser book deals lesser success this is a tricky one i've actually talked about it in videos before where i have felt this as a writer um and it's also like a it's the kind of thing that's hard to prove but if you are an author who ends up not with like the biggest splashiest agent who doesn't get the biggest splashiest book deal who doesn't end up at the biggest splashier publisher you will encounter this more than authors who might happen to have that as their publishing experience and they might not believe you when you tell them this but it's just true it's like that person who blanks you at a party or is kind of dismissive toward you on a panel it's like a feeling that you get and that's a toxic mindset and it's it's not cool and especially remember how i told you how publishing is like and you'll be here and then you'll end up here that's my favorite thing i know this is terrible uh we're getting into my petty mindsets now um because i love it when like that person who was all like oh like you're not good enough and then they have like a major setback i am not happy about them having a major setback to arrest me but it's fascinating to me how you see their empathy just like rapidly expand and that's actually i mean hopefully hopefully it does that's a good thing um but that's why it's a toxic mindset because remember how i mentioned you're not gonna have any friends if you like are acting high and mighty and you're doing that social climbing thing very often that social climbing thing is based on this snobbery toward who your agent is who your publisher is whether you're a lead title or not whether you're a best seller and that can really bite you in the butt but got a cell phone here i have to self-own here um because this isn't a cut and dry one we naturally are going to categorize and judge people and especially in the publishing industry do i have an immediate reaction when i meet someone whether in person or online and i see that they have a schmeagent or a shmublisher a bad publisher yes and i definitely will go i make an assessment and i make a judgment most of the time me personally i go oh i need to save them that's me is like because i want to genuinely help authors who have maybe signed with someone that they shouldn't and so i am going to er more on the side of you know i'll always go kindness forward i'm not going to ignore someone necessarily ban with permitting because remember we're getting into that whole thing where it's not always a dig on you or a slight if someone doesn't have the bandwidth to be friends with you and so it's tricky because you're you might have those thoughts in your head and i mean even i am prone to if i meet someone and they tell me they have xyz agent or they're published by so and so or i've heard of their book and i know they're a big deal of course i'm gonna be like i might have my own like star studded moment but the the trick is the flip don't have the moment where you talk down to them you look down to them you totally lose interest in them just don't be the person who makes decisions on who is worth talking to based solely on things like their agent where they're published if they have an asian if they're published because that's the other thing like i felt it when i was an aspiring writer and i will tell you i remember the authors who still took the time to treat me like an equal human being god like a peer i definitely remember the ones i remember authors who treated me like a peer from start to finish the ones who were kind to me before i had even written a book before i had an agent i definitely remember the ones because i've gone to various publishing events i remember authors who talked to me straight on one on one like i was an equal peer even when they were a new york times bestseller and i was a baby debut that no one had heard of that sticks with you the slights don't stick with you as much except sometimes they're memorable enough but be be the gracious kind person who sees a person in front of them who's also in publishing who is interesting that you might want to talk to and don't go ugh i've never heard of their agent by the seventh toxic publishing mindset i've ranted about this before it's it's debut and buzz culture this is so bad it's bad for publishing it's bad for authors it's bad so publishing creatinine has fueled this particularly nya but authors feed into this and lean into this authors do so do readers and like i get it from a practical level it's the whole reason this happened is because there is a marketing hook to being new to being fresh to being unknown and like it's like any one of these could be amazing i get it we get it and as creators if you are a creator or reviewer media et cetera you're always looking for something new as well new things are great but we have taken it to an extreme uh i've talked about the middle east shriveling up debut culture is a huge part of it i've talked about all sorts of market issues nya i have a whole video that where i put the fear of god into everyone about why dying it's not by the way but what has definitely happened we saturated y.a very very heavily and we also went hard on debut culture it's that excitement every year who are the new debuts who's gonna be our new potential darling and then when books don't break out we drop them like a hot freaking potato second book syndrome is very very real it's this awful uncanny thing and it can happen to the biggest of debuts by the way you can have an amazing debut experience and then your second book comes out no one cares your publisher definitely doesn't care twitter doesn't care buzz lists don't care i'm not even talking about myself by the way there are friends and it it is horrifying seeing how they were treated on book two when they were no longer a sexy new debut and the toxic mindset part is generally publishing but we're talking on an individual level the where this becomes really toxic on an individual level is it will eat you alive as an author you will hate yourself if you lean into debut culture mindset if you put all of your self-worth as an author on a being a debut on your debut experience honestly it kicks some people in the teeth so hard that they stop writing a lot of the washout post debut is authors who had such a bad experience the high and then the low or just the lows some people don't sparkle as much in debut season and debut mentality and that feeling will tug at them and make them hate themselves it's really hard to stand out in the crowd during debut year and it's like the hunger games honestly and i've seen it ruin really wonderful writers on both ends by the way i've seen it both lead to diva syndrome like huge egos treating people badly a lot of the stuff i've already touched on and i think that just ruins people um most often like sometimes they have a fall but where it'll also happen is someone who kind of really leans into that toxic debut mentality and the breakout mentality if they get that breakout if they get what they want they'll actually tend to um well they'll burn their social bridges but they're all they will also often not always but often rest on their laurels with subsequent projects and it can actually lead to their career stalling out later uh anyway because like their books don't get any better and i've also just you know i've just seen people where it's just like a lot of us are anxious a lot of us are nervous a lot of this is is a dream and so much rides on it but i've seen people just like get eaten up inside by hyper focusing it's the comparison thing it's jealousy it's focusing on sales it's attaching their self-worth to their sales it's i've seen people nurse the bitterness for literally years they cannot let go of not listing as a debut they thought they were going to because they bought into the debut hype machine don't believe half the smoke the publishing blows up your bud by the way uh and they nurse that they can never let go of it because they had an expectation for their debut year and that wasn't met and they can't let go of it don't do that it's bad i could probably go on more about this but this video is already very very long but you're here for it like if you're here at this part of the video you're all in you're gonna keep watching i i saved some of the juicy ones for last those of you that are still here i appreciate you so the eighth toxic writing mindset this one was kind of in my harsh writing advice video but it is one of the most toxic mindsets there is so you know i'm gonna talk about it i mean that video was basically for people who have this toxic mindset and that is people who want to be an author with a capital a but don't actually do any of the writing the craft the sucky parts they want the end result the fun stuff the glitzy glammy stuff but aren't willing to actually do any of the work and this kind of this is one that cycles back a bit to the short-term mentality the marathon but not a sprint this is when it's usually aspiring writers they get so locked into the idea of their dream being a writer being an author with a capital a getting a dream agent selling a book having the whole experience they focus on that building a platform you will most often see this toxic mindset manifest in lots of platform building lots of networking lots of the social stuff which is great do what you enjoy but at the expense of writing there's not actual writing going on or if there is there's not editing going on revision like really focusing on writing a book and either they rush their drafting i have seen this and they rushed their drafting on multiple books that was in the marathon not sprint one where it's like okay if this book didn't work i'm going to try another one and so they rushed their writing and they rushed through querying at the expense of learning how to edit and kind of focusing on craft which is definitely i mean it's going to hurt you period inquiring because your stu your work won't be good enough to get an agent and what sucks is it might have been if you put in the time but you don't want to do all of that work you don't want to spend six months editing something you don't want to wait you want now and then you blow your shot anyway or they never finish anything it's working on the same book for years and years and years and you have the dream but you don't actually finish anything or i've also seen this manifest this came up in the pitch contest one as the writer who clings to one manuscript one idea continuously for years and years and years writing it forever revising it forever querying it revising it again querying it again pitching it here pitching it there i'm talking years it's all the same wheel spinning at the end of the day two varying degrees obviously if you finish something you're slightly ahead of someone who doesn't finish something but because of the focus on the dream being a writer making it the end result is the goal there's skipping of steps in between and it's the skipping of everything in between that inadvertently actually holds you back from accomplishing the goal it's the hard boring annoying stuff that is going to get you where you need to go and the ninth toxic publishing mentality is attached to this and where i've seen this one get really toxic is how it drags the person who has this mentality down in the face of rejection and this is the toxic mentality of wanting publishing to be easy or expecting publishing to be easy and then getting upset when it is not taking the knocks especially hard be is this this ties into comparison game as well because you've observed other people for whom it appeared to be easy thus it should be easy for you to and if it's not you get angry this is often the people who are going to like send death threats to agents when they reject them often not always sometimes anyway so these are the individuals who think all they have to do is write a book and they're gonna be a unicorn success story here's the thing sometimes that is true sometimes it happens for some people but hyper focusing on this idea that it should be you and if it isn't you you've been done dirty essentially it's also going to stop you from doing what we just talked about in the previous toxic mindset which is doing all of the annoying frustrating hard boring work that it actually takes to get good enough to be published good enough or just it's literally just a skill set that you need to develop with this one i've also seen this tie into the pitch contest thing again it all comes together where part of that like publishing should be easy is hyper focusing on the pitch contest strategy which is i'm gonna have a sexy pitch i i just have to have an idea a book that sounds sexy enough it won't matter if it's written well because i've got the angle maybe you built a platform and you think that's enough to sell your book this is all basically short-sighted mindset the mindset of really wanting it to be easy but feeling it publishing owes you something that's kind of the danger zone that i see because also often these individuals tend to refuse to edit substantially no my idea is amazing like i'm ready like publishing should recognize how amazing i am and then do the work with me but no you actually have to do the work first to prove that you could do the work and look some celebrities are going to get that shortcut but you hyper focusing on the idea that you deserve that shortcut too it's just gonna hurt you and back to comparison is the thief of joy the person in this toxic mindset is so focused on unicorn routes into publishing they've read one too many stories or they might even personally know a unicorn or two or it could be observing celebrities people with massive platforms or just really unusual pathways into publishing and going it should be like that for me it should be that easy for me i should have that and if it doesn't come easily it's everyone else's problem but theirs and last but certainly not least a really toxic publishing mindset that is not going to earn you any friends and that is the toxic mindset of ip books aren't real books ip intellectual property is what that technically stands for but ip is a situation where the author is hired by someone else to write an existing idea or for an existing property this manifests in a lot of different ways there's ghost writing which is really its own separate thing but regardless you're hired to write someone else's idea or someone else's story there is package books these are companies that come up with ideas sometimes they outline the whole book sometimes they develop the idea with the writer but it is their intellectual property their idea and they are hiring someone to write it and then there are publisher ip books this is where the publisher itself and editor will be like oh i wish we had a book like this and they put feelers out with agents to hire an author to develop and write that idea and then there's licensed ip so those are the existing intellectual property books these are the big ones that are most obvious to everyone so that's writing a star wars book or a disney princess book so these are all cases where the idea the concept originates with someone else and the author is hired to write it and there's a toxic mentality that we see often it is privately but sometimes people say it publicly that these aren't real books that the authors who write them are creatively bankrupt there is no soul in those books because they didn't pour out of their beautiful minds and hearts and souls and bodies and it's just such a toxic mindset because the thing is more books in publishing are ip than you know more authors who you know and interact with and respect are writing them and so you are basically saying to those writers that they are creatively bankrupt and that they are not as good as writers who write original books i have so many feelings about this first of all ip is really hard uh you have to write pretty quickly usually to deadline it's a collaborative writing experience and i'll tell you a lot of people like the collaborative writing aspect of ip don't knock it till you try it um i haven't done it but like that part of it actually appeals to me but i would not be able to uh write fast enough to do ib i know this about myself but also i have observed personal friends multiple personal friends work on ip on both sides i have friends who have written ip and i also have friends who have worked at book packages and the amount of work that goes into it it's very similar to original book quotes um and in most cases that i have observed some ip holders are a bit more strict about what a writer can write they're more likely to provide an outline like we want you to write this but in a lot of cases i gotta tell you there's a lot of creative collaboration that goes on with ip projects where the author is actually the driving force in what that book becomes and a lot in a lot of the cases of publishers doing ip that's exactly what happens they only start with a concept it's very high concept and they audition writers and part of the audition for writers is they you that author has to prove what they are bringing to the table their personal sensibility their own creativity how they would tell the story and move the story and then if they're hired they really mold what that book becomes there are books you would not believe are ip but they are but i also know what they became it was the author the author did all of that work as much worth work as any author who's developing their own idea from scratch so i don't like it when people knock ip so the reason this is a toxic mindset uh it's the snobbery thing something isn't a real book it's just like looking down on someone because they have a publisher that you don't think is as good as another publisher or because they didn't sell as many copies as someone else but also it's that you're up here and then you're down here thing so the reality is uh work for hire is also what this is sometimes called uh can save a publishing career i have seen people take work for higher opportunities in order to debut and it's the reason they have a publishing career and it was the springboard they needed into the industry i have seen people have a disappointing debut who turned to work for hire a disappointing debut or a very small press debut but then they got a work for hire opportunity with a major publisher and it made their career the reason you know their name is because they worked on a work for hire opportunity i know a lot of mid-listers work for hire has kept a lot of people who were formerly part of a very healthy mid-list employed it has kept them as working writers do not look that gift horse in the mouth because you don't know how your career is going to do and what's really dangerous about being such a dick about work for hire ip is if you find yourself in a situation where you are no longer able to sell your original work because you don't have a platform you don't have the sales whatever it is uh ip might save your career and also because so much is ip and we don't know what's ip you could insult a new york times best seller so maybe don't do that because that person could have the power to impact your career um yeah so those are some of the toxic mindsets half of them boil down to don't be a jerk uh a lot of them boil down to don't make it hard harder for yourself don't make it worse for yourself don't make it so that you hate yourself and hate others and uh some of them are just like work on these if you really want to move forward uh with writing with being happy with your writing and with being published these toxic mindsets will hold you back some are a little more like human than others and forgivable on a certain level but still need to be worked on others are pretty terrible and if you recognize yourself in some of these toxic mindsets it's okay you can work on them we are all human and i would not have a list of 10 toxic publishing mindsets if i hadn't experienced some of them myself observed them and people who i am close to and some people do fall flat on their face and shot in florida and all of that stuff but many people have come back from toxic publishing mindsets to be happier happier is the big one but also more successful in the long term so this one is juicy and fun and i knew even when i sat down to film this i'm sure there are more i could probably do a part two if pressed i wanna know what some of the toxic publishing mindsets are that you have seen in others or even felt in yourself give this video a thumbs up if you like it i will make more long rambly discussion style salty videos about writing and publishing and if you're not already subscribed to the channel go ahead and do that i post new videos two to three times a week as always guys thank you so much for watching and happy writing

Channel: Alexa Donne

Views: 51,620

Keywords: alexa donne, author tube, writing advice, how to write a book, publishing advice, toxic writer mindsets, toxic publishing mindsets, harsh writing advice, writer problems, publishing problems

Id: 6Dp8m0lD7zo

Length: 49min 0sec (2940 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 25 2021