PRESS RELEASE: Publication day for our first fiction title: ‘Jude’ by Elin Heron
Lucent Dreaming has been operating as a creative writing magazine since April 2018 from Cardiff. In 2023, we began our single-author trade publishing venture, launching
On 10 December 2023, 11.12am precisely, my sister messaged to ask if I should be made aware of ‘public criticisms’ of our books. My response to my sister was ‘!! Show me // that’s INCREDIBLE’. Post-watch, it was ‘Well the book is literally not for him 😭😭😭’, which continues to be the stance I maintain. And the one I want to delve into, two years after the fact. In his often anticipated round-up videos, Jack Edwards named Dominoes by Connor Allen, published by yours truly, one of his worst books of the year. To quote Jack:
‘This is the lowest of the low. This is a book called Dominoes and it’s a poetry collection. […] For me, this had the depth of a very – a very shallow puddle. It’s monosyllabic, it’s overly simple, and kind of juvenile. I – yeah – uh – I don’t know about this. As in like I don’t know how this was published but, it has been, so here we are.’
I was thrilled for our first, debut poetry collection. A publisher would pay for that kind of visibility. Nonetheless, it raised my eyebrows; Edwards’ concluding comments were not the premise of a debate I wanted to spark on social media. As a publisher with people of colour at the helm, we invite enough scrutiny. So, we did what sensible folk do: not give it more attention.
To clarify, this piece isn’t intended as an attack; it’s a springboard to comment on review culture as a whole, to open up an important conversation about the publishing ecosystem, from my perspective as an indie publisher of primarily new, underrepresented talent. I am of the opinion book influencers and commercial publishers are promoting an unhealthy approach to reading and reviewing that’s affecting the culture at large. Not all books should be produced, consumed, and reviewed in the likeness of fast fashion. In writing this piece, I came across Soaliha Iqbal’s Instagram reel on the ‘Sheinification’ of books – I second everything she says. I believe in letting art sit with you, and affect you over time. Art deserves space to develop, and to be processed.
I want to hold up Edwards’ video, now, as an example of what working-class, indie publishers of colour and writers of colour like me face. I’ve wanted to return to this moment in our short history for some time, because I feel there’s something humanising and worthwhile about speaking up, publicly, even long after the moment. So, let’s sit together and just think about why I might still raise my eyebrows to this day. White, middle-class(-adjacent) folk who review our books with no sense of curiosity nor willingness to understand, perpetuate ill-judged and ignorant perspectives. Even the bit-of-fun, dramatised, just-my-personal opinion pieces can, and do, reinforce casual classism and racism in the book industry.
This speaks to my issue with commercial publishing’s relationship with book influencers. Unchecked bias oils the capitalist machine of book production. Bookwormbullet Ayushi’s impression of a white Booktoker’s top 5 books is such a brilliant example. Might it be that books from writers of colour, reviewed online by young, white, middle-class influencers, are too often devalued, trashed, or engaged with superficially? It’s not typical of a publisher to comment on book reviews, and it’s not something I’d encourage or wish to repeat, but I feel I’ve been personally invited in this instance, as someone whose books will suffer most from this treatment.
Everyone is welcome to their opinions on books, to question how books are commissioned, to assess their quality, and evaluate their contents. But to your confusion, Jack, I have an answer:
Jack, babes, I say wearily, this book wasn’t written for you. You are least likely to relate, to value this voice represented in traditional publishing, to understand the historical significance of this book in the Welsh literary landscape. You won’t perceive depth in the restraint of simplicity, nor perceive the intertextual relationship with Grime. You live in a classist language system that assumes certain lexical choices indicate depth and intelligence. In other words, bigger words and complex metaphors equals better, more satisfying writing. Maybe, but GCSE English Language has something to say about establishing your audience. Better and more satisfying for whom?
Nurturing sincere and authentic voices is key in a world full of the posturing, performance, and pretence that’s slowing down real change. It’s radical to resist making yourself palatable and acceptable to people who care least about you and your art. That energy is better spent making art for people you care about.
To Edwards I say, you don’t even get what you don’t get. I imagine most books you pick up are nothing like this one, so it makes sense.
On a recent podcast Edwards himself talked about gatekeeping in the book industry. But I wonder what ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘better’ books actually look like to him. Is he aware of how his own past work might be contributing both to the weak review culture we collectively suffer from, and the intellectual snobbery he takes issue with?
I’m glad this book made Edwards’ list. I’m glad he picked it up, gave it a chance, and shared his honest opinion. Like he says, ‘all books deserve the dignity of criticism’. I agree. Books may evade every possible standard we have, but it behooves the reader to understand what their standards actually represent, especially when applied universally.
My issue is this: too many book influencers (non-exclusively) profit from casual classism and racism. Those who never interrogate their biases reinforce them, making things worse for society overall. I’m concerned about the negative impacts of the weak, and frankly, bad, review culture that has emerged from social media, which informs what gets picked up by agents and presses, what sells, what’s marketed, how and to whom. This is intensified by the ‘Sheinifaction’ of the industry.
Not all books are for all people. However, the people at the centre of the world – the loudest, the most visible, who designed the world to be this way – have resources to spend on books, to write books, to publish books, to review books, to market books… And consequently, books are geared to them, with all the exoticisation and fetishisation, neglect and ignorance that comes alongside, at every level. In my view, that is poor culture-making, because stories are universal. We could all enjoy more variety in traditional publishing across all genres if people at the centre contributed less white noise, and tuned in to our frequencies for a while.
Without introspection about how standardised tastes are acquired, this generation of centralised tastemakers – who can afford to take social media opinions and sales figures at face value – will perpetuate the cycle. They will decide what books don’t get agented, don’t get published, don’t get commissioned.
I’m not saying if a book isn’t written for you, you shouldn’t read and review it. I’m saying, on books that might not be your preference, question why that may be. Change your approach. Engage accordingly. If you care about accessibility in the industry, look again at your own output. Be willing to meet unfamiliar writing styles and themes with curiosity, humility, and understanding.
Ultimately, I’m asking those who experience privilege, and gatekeepers of all varieties in the book space, reviewers to agents, booksellers to funders, to question your assumptions – something that requires us swallowing our egos, the ones that have gotten us this far, in a system designed to advance some people’s success at the expense of everyone else.
Lucent Dreaming has been operating as a creative writing magazine since April 2018 from Cardiff. In 2023, we began our single-author trade publishing venture, launching
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