No natural resources and unfriendly neighbors. Sound familiar?

Writing the next chapter in the fight against antisemitism in publishing

It’s not in our heads. It is an established fact that Jewish and Israeli and Zionist voices have been unwelcome in parts of the traditional publishing world since October 7. Agents couldn’t place Jewish-themed work, manuscripts were filtered our of consideration with a quick ctrl+f search for “Israel”, authors have been encouraged to soften their stances on Israel or overall Jewishness.

I know this firsthand. After October 7 my literary agency shared constant anti-Israel vitriol on social media and began to describe me as an Australian author who had “relocated to Tel Aviv to work in tech.”

Literary agents make their living on commission. If they genuinely cannot sell a manuscript to publishers, there is a commercial reality underneath the cultural one. That doesn’t excuse the climate that should be named and prosecuted. But understanding the commercial mechanism helps us route around it, and routing around it is the most useful thing we can do right now.

Which is the question I’m more interested in.

The investigation into antisemitism in publishing should absolutely continue. But I hope it runs in parallel with learning to map the alternate routes. Because there are real ones, and they are opening faster than most people realize.

Israel itself is the proof of concept that this is far from some sort of consolation prize. No natural resources, unfriendly neighbors, and yet the forced necessity of innovation produced an economic powerhouse. Jewish publishing is at the same inflection point and can yield the same results if we work hard and smart.

One piece of the puzzle is parallel publishing infrastructure e.g. new boutique Jewish publishing houses being founded specifically to platform Jewish stories the traditional industry is deprioritizing. Jewish literary newsletters, book clubs, and reading communities are growing.

Technological tailwinds have blown apart the gatekeeping layer between author and reader e.g. self-publishing tools, AI-assisted marketing, word-of-mouth amplification through social and community channels.

We are people of the book. A book-buying people. The market for Jewish stories is not the problem. The distribution infrastructure was the problem, and that infrastructure is under construction.

I recently spoke about this with The Australian Jewish News. The lemons are real. The people responsible for them should be held to account. And while that fight continues, we can also make lemonade that might be better than anything the original orchard was ever going to give us.