Women and Christian Publishing

And the aesthetics of platform

Last week’s letter, “The Day I Decided to Quit Book Publishing,” seems to have struck a chord, and I am grateful for the response. I had an email from one reader and longtime publishing professional that proved particularly insightful. It was his opinion that Eugene Peterson and Henri Nouwen would be hard-pressed to get book contracts today. While it is true that Eugene Peterson’s first book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, was rejected many times before it was found in a slush pile at InterVarsity Press, there is a shared sense in which people are saying, “Something has changed in the industry today, and it’s significant.”

It reminds me that there are always at least two dynamics at play in life: our choices and our conditions. We can make choices—and feel those choices constrained because of certain conditions. For example, I can pursue the necessary formation to become a good writer. I can work hard and risk wildly in my dream of being a writer. I can even write good things and even affect lives through my words. But what I can’t do is change the industry and the market demands. Changes in condition can’t be enacted by one writer, even one collective of writers, and hard work, while important, can have limited effect. That feels like a bit of a relief for me, who tends to be harshly self-critical. The response to last week’s letter was an affirmation that while I am “doing the work” of writing, the “work” may not be enough. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I am quitting publishing entirely because I continue to trust that God can make a way where no way seems possible. But it does mean that I am open for God to redirect my steps and use my energies elsewhere, beyond the world of publishing.

As an aside in last week’s letter, I mentioned some of the distinct challenges faced by women writers who “have none of the institutional benefits many male writers enjoy.” I promised to unpack that a little here, though I feel a bit nervous to do so.

First, let me say that I can only speak from my very limited experience within Christian publishing. I certainly wouldn’t want to convey any sense of certainty about the wider industry. I did find it interesting, however, that a Vox article titled, “Everyone’s a sellout” argued several important points. First, that self-promotion is an inevitable feature of the book and music industry today. Gone are the “traditional gatekeepers of creative success,” and work is now being discovered today on “algorithmic platforms like TikTok.” On the one hand, this could seem very democratic, giving a wide variety of people a shot at success. However, the writer of the Vox article perceptively pointed out that social media tends to reward the same people society already rewards: “[The] algorithms are biased against poor people, against people of color, against people who don’t conform to . . . societal norms.” In short, social media is a platform of the visual. It’s a game of aesthetics.

It's not a long leap to say that success in the Christian publishing industry—especially as a woman—might, in many cases, be related to appearances. To be clear, I am not crediting a woman’s success in Christian publishing to her physical beauty. Certainly other competencies are required. But I am a bit of a cultural realist as well as a watchful observer. Scroll your own favorite social media feed and see the pretty, young faces of many of the Christian women who are selling lots of books. As one friend said to me recently, “Thoughtful men don’t have to be pretty to write books. But it sure helps if thoughtful women are.” It’s the reason I’ve heard other women express sentiments like, “I’ve got to get out of publishing because I’m getting old,” or, “I’ll never get into publishing because I’m overweight.” They’re realists, too, knowing that for all their substantive and helpful content, this might not be enough.

Here's the thing: especially in evangelical spaces, women often have fewer in-roads to the professional credibility that sells books in the Christian market. They often lack the institutional affiliation that many men enjoy because they lack the academic and pastoral positions of their male counterparts. In many cases, they don’t pursue these positions because they’re either explicitly restricted (because of theological and biblical convictions) or implicitly discouraged (because of their domestic roles and responsibilities). Because they write outside of the spaces that might naturally lend credibility to their work, they are then forced to pursue the self-authenticating credibility of platform. But platform, as I’ve already said, rarely has to do with the substance of one’s content alone. It has to do with the visual appeal of the person, the aesthetics of the social media presence. You’re not far from seeing the defeating cycle.

Perhaps I’m identifying this dynamic because I see it in my own story. I was raised in complementarian spaces that gave voice to some unhelpful self-suspicion. I was educated and given a mind to think—and also told my primary ambitions should be to support my husband’s ambitions and raise my children. At crucial turning points in my own life, I did not pursue certain types of formation that might lend greater credibility to my work because I was supporting my husband and raising my children. There were real limits, of course, to dividing the family pie in certain seasons, especially because God gave us five children.

To be clear, I do not regret the time I have given to my husband and my children. My regret is simply that my desire to write and teach fell under a cloud of unnecessary suspicion. My regret—if I am to say it this boldly—is that more people didn’t affirm these desires (and gifts) as good and God-given. My regret is holding to an impoverished view of the family that did not creatively imagine interdependence and self-sacrificing love expressed by all members. My regret, in short, is the exhaustion of energy required, even now, not simply to do the work but to defend the work to myself. Do I want to quit book publishing because of the demands of the industry? Or do I want to quit book publishing because I feel the lack of support?

I’m turning 50 this year, and my questions about continuing in the industry are quite realistic. Given that I do not currently enjoy any institutional affiliation, given that this lack of affiliation seems to demand the building of personal brand, I can only naturally ask: how much money and effort would I have to exhaust in search of greater platform (and the aesthetics of platform)? And even if I did exhaust the money and effort, how many years would those efforts last?

Am I wrong to wish that Christians, of all people, might cherish personal qualities other than those that the world values? Am I wrong to wish that we could see all Christian women of all shapes and sizes and colors and ages selling books because their books were wise and spiritually formative? I may sound pessimistic about the future—and sometimes I am. But the real truth is that I hold to the hope of a story like Julian of Norwich’s, whose mystical revelations she recorded in the 14^th century. Those revelations were hand-copied for centuries and passed from community to community, and they didn’t really reach a wider audience until the last century! It’s to say that good words really do get shared, somehow or another. It’s also to say that so many of us will never see the fruit of our work in our lifetime. It’s to say that 600 years is about the time God sometimes takes.

You might be writing—or parenting or pastoring or teaching or caregiving or architecting or programming—and seeing little effect. But this reminds us to get clear and firm about our purpose and to heed the call to persevere in doing good because no labor in the Lord is in vain. It’s to remember what virtues are required for doing good work: “firm discipline, much prayer, and anonymity,” wrote Madeleine L’Engle in Walking on Water, when referring to the work of the iconographer. “In this way [the artist] is enabled to get out of the way, to listen, to serve the work.”