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Creative Writing Scholars on the Publishing
Trade

In Creative Writing Scholars on the Publishing Trade: Practice, Praxis, Print, Sam
Meekings and Marshall Moore, along with prominent scholar-practitioners,
undertake a critical examination of the intersection of creative writing scholar-
ship and the publishing industry.
Recent years have seen dramatic shifts within the publishing industry as well as
rapid evolution and development in academic creative writing programs. This
book addresses all of these core areas and transformations, such as the pros and
cons of self-publishing versus traditional publishing, issues of diversity and repre-
sentation within the publishing industry, digital transformations, and possible
career pathways for writing students.
It is crucial for creative writing pedagogy to deal with the issues raised by the
sudden changes within the industry and this book will be of interest to creative
writing students and practitioners as well as publishing students and professionals.

Sam Meekings is assistant professor of creative writing at Northwestern Uni-

versity in Qatar.

Marshall Moore is course leader and senior lecturer in English, creative writing
and publishing at Falmouth University, UK.
Routledge Studies in Creative Writing
Series Editors: Graeme Harper (Oakland University, USA) and Dianne Donnelly
(University of South Florida, USA)

Strategies of Silence
Reflections on the Practice and Pedagogy of Creative Writing
Edited by Moy McCrory and Simon Heywood

Theories and Strategies for Teaching Creative Writing Online

Edited by Tamara Girardi and Abigail G. Scheg

Creative Writing Scholars on the Publishing Trade

Practice, Praxis, Print
Edited by Sam Meekings and Marshall Moore

The Rise of Creative Writing in Asia

Edited by Darryl Whetter

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/

Routledge-Studies-in-Creative-Writing/book-series/RSCW
Creative Writing Scholars on the
Publishing Trade
Practice, Praxis, Print

Edited by
Sam Meekings and Marshall Moore
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Sam Meekings and Marshall Moore;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Sam Meekings and Marshall Moore to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
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without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Meekings, Sam, editor. | Moore, Marshall, 1970- editor.
Title: Creative writing scholars on the publishing trade : practice, praxis, print
/ edited by Sam Meekings and Marshall Moore.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge,
2021.
Series: Routledge studies in creative writing | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021006915
Subjects: LCSH: Creative writing (Higher education) |
Authors and publishers. | Publishers and publishing--Technological
innovations.
Classification: LCC PN181 .C744 2021 | DDC 070.5/2--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021006915

ISBN: 978-0-367-48541-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-05191-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-04155-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003041559

Typeset in Sabon
by Taylor & Francis Books
In memoriam – Peter Anderson
b.14 November 1958 – d. 30 October 2020

In late 2020 the Australian art community were stunned by the news of the
passing of independent poet, writer, art critic, researcher, and curator Peter
Anderson in Melbourne.
Peter was an experienced practitioner in the trials and tribulations of the ‘gig
economy’ decades before the term became part of the lexicon and the subject of his
chapter in this publication. While Peter’s ‘portfolio career’ may not have been as
eclectic as Kerouac’s, in the almost thirty years that I knew him it has included: jour-
nalist, historian, labourer, academic, fruit picker, lecturer, artist, songwriter, poet,
author, researcher, volunteer, statistician, archivist, handyman, curator, art critic,
commentator, performer, teacher, editor, columnist, presenter, event organiser, gar-
dener, and perhaps most importantly husband, father, colleague, and valued friend.
Peter carved his own individual path outside the academy and the professional
arts institutions and organisations, but his influence was felt through his work on
numerous projects, programs, productions, publications, performances, exhibi-
tions, and conferences.
A key figure in the closely knit contemporary art and poetry scene in Bris-
bane from the late 1970s until the late 1990s, he was involved in the formation
of artist-run spaces, artist co-operatives, and associations such as the Queens-
land Artworkers Alliance, Poets Union Queensland, and Eyeline art magazine.
He also taught at Griffith University, wrote for The Courier-Mail newspaper,
and freelanced as an independent researcher and consultant.
With a critical eye for detail and a passion for diving deep into data, Peter clo-
sely analysed cultural policies and government programs as a critic and commen-
tator in the mainstream press, arts magazines, and academic journals. As a writer
he contributed to a wide range of publications and supported many fellow writers
through professional development workshops, talks, and mentoring.
He moved to the Goldfields region in country Victoria in the early 2000s
where he befriended his neighbour, leading abstract artist Robert Jacks AO.
Later this enabled him to pursue his interest in artists’ books, zines, and print
folios by curating significant exhibitions of Jacks’ paintings, books, and prints
in Bendigo, Armidale, and New York.
After meeting artist Jennifer Bartholomew, he moved to the inner-city Mel-
bourne suburb of Fitzroy and they were later married. While pursuing his PhD
research into the creative writing process as an arts practice, he undertook a
variety of artistic and research projects. Together he and Jennifer have been
raising their son Benjamin Bartholomew-Anderson.
In 2012 he received the inaugural Siganto Fellowship at the State Library of
Queensland to research their collection of historical and cultural material on
artist-run initiatives in Brisbane. This became an ongoing project that culmi-
nated in him curating the exhibition Ephemeral Traces and a vibrant public
program at the University of Queensland Art Museum in 2016, and supporting
the development of a community-led online archive. This exhibition revealed
the neglected history of the city’s rich artistic ecology, driven by artists and
existing outside the commercial and government supported arts sector.
I have been fortunate to know Peter as a colleague, mentor, neighbour, and
friend over many years and miss his passion, wide ranging intellect, generosity,
enthusiasm, and energy. My thoughts are with Jennifer and Benjamin as they
deal with their loss during such difficult times.
Robert Heather, Executive Director, Art Gallery Society of NSW

Peter Anderson, 2012

Photo supplied by State Library of Queensland
Contents

List of illustrations ix
List of contributors x

Introduction 1
SAM MEEKINGS AND MARSHALL MOORE

1 Publishing processes for a digital age: Crowdsourcing and

patronage in online self-publishing 7
LILI PÂQUET

2 Emerging writers/established publishers: A ten-year study of the

Hachette Manuscript Development Program 19
KIM WILKINS, HELEN MARSHALL AND MARINA TULIC

3 Literary journals, editorial courses, and equity in the publishing

industry 33
MARCOS HERNANDEZ AND JANELLE ADSIT

4 The (selfish) power of book reviews: Reading, citizenship, and

platform 48
ANNA LEAHY

5 Revisiting the challenge: Rethinking Creative Writing ten years on 59

STEPHANIE VANDERSLICE

6 Science fiction’s women problem 68

BRONWYN LOVELL

7 Beyond the double life of writers: Creative writing as portfolio

practice 84
PETER ANDERSON

8 Toward success: A taxonomy for the creative writing classroom 98

MARSHALL MOORE
viii Contents
9 Mid-list novella publishing in the twenty-first century: The
Wisdom Tree experiment 111
NICK EARLS

10 The programmatic, the problematic, and the radical racial tradition

(or, On being stamped) 127
CHRISTOPHER B. PATTERSON

11 Refreshing the curriculum 140

JEN WEBB

Index 152
Illustrations

Figures
2.1 Publication outcomes for manuscript submitted via the Hachette
Program 22
2.2 Publication outcomes for different manuscript 22

Table
11.1 Reported experiences of career preparation, Creative Writing
graduates, Melbourne, 2018 147
Contributors

Janelle Adsit is an assistant professor of writing in the English department at

Humboldt State University, USA where she teaches courses in literary pub-
lishing and creative writing. She has published three books in creative writ-
ing studies, and she serves as co-chair of research for the Creative Writing
Studies Organization.
Peter Anderson (1958–2020) was an independent practitioner in the fields of
writing and the visual arts, starting in the late 1970s. He published poetry
and short fiction, essays, reviews, and exhibition catalogue essays in aca-
demic, art, and literary journals, newspapers, and other publications, as
well as curating and producing exhibitions and performance projects. For
two decades his writing and curatorial research focused on cultural policy,
copyright law, artists’ books, and alternative and artist-run spaces. At the
time this chapter was written, he was completing a PhD in Creative Writing at
Swinburne University (‘Art/Writing: A Portfolio Practice’).
Nick Earls is the author of 27 books for adults, teenagers, and children. In
2018, he was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing by the University of
Queensland, Australia, with his thesis comprising the five-novella series
Wisdom Tree and an essay examining novella craft and publishing in the
twenty-first century. He has appeared as a guest lecturer and creative writing
teacher at universities and schools around Australia, and in New Zealand,
Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Spain, Germany, and New Caledonia.
Marcos Hernandez is a lecturer in the English department at Humboldt State
University, USA, where he teaches courses in literary publishing and serves
as the faculty advisor for the student-run Toyon Literary Magazine. His
writing and research engages contemporary issues of diversity, equity, and
inclusion in literary publishing and higher education.
Anna Leahy is the author of the nonfiction book Tumor in the Object Lessons
series from Bloomsbury and the poetry books Aperture and Constituents of
Matter. Her edited collection Power and Identity in the Creative Writing
Classroom launched the New Writing Viewpoints series, her co-authored
and edited book What We Talk about When We Talk about Creative Writing
 List of contributors xi
marked the series’s tenth anniversary, and she has contributed to many other
collections on pedagogy and the academic profession. She publishes essays,
poetry, and scholarly work widely, and her essays have won top prizes from
the Los Angeles Review, Ninth Letter, and Dogwood. She directs the MFA in
Creative Writing program at Chapman University, USA, where she edits the
international poetry journal Tab Journal. See more at www.amleahy.com.
Bronwyn Lovell teaches creative writing and screen studies at the University
of South Australia. As a poet, her work has featured in Best Australian
Poems and won the Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award; as an essayist she
has written for the National Gallery of Victoria; and as a teacher she has
spent time as a literacy instructor in several remote Indigenous communities.
She has worked in the non-profit sector as an arts administrator for Writers
Victoria and Australian Poetry. She has also edited children’s books in the UK
and lifestyle magazines in Sydney. She holds a certificate in space studies from
the International Space University, and her research explores gender roles in
science fictional and non-fictional space narratives.
Helen Marshall is a senior lecturer of creative writing at the University of
Queensland, Australia. She has won the World Fantasy Award, the British
Fantasy Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award for her two collections of
short stories. Her debut novel The Migration argued for the need to remain
hopeful, even in the worst circumstances. It was one of The Guardian’s top
science fiction books of the year and was recently optioned by Clerkenwell
Films. Her research explores medieval and modern bestsellers, publishing
communities and genre fiction.
Sam Meekings is assistant professor of writing at Northwestern University in
Qatar. He is the co-editor of The Place and the Writer: International Inter-
sections of Teacher Lore and Creative Writing Pedagogy (Bloomsbury,
2021). As well as writing on digital writing practices and pedagogies, he is
the author of Under Fishbone Clouds (called ‘a poetic evocation of the
country and its people’ by the New York Times), The Book of Crows, and
The Afterlives of Dr Gachet. He has a PhD in Creative Writing from Lan-
caster University and has taught writing at NYU (Shanghai) and the Uni-
versity of Chichester.
Marshall Moore is course leader and senior lecturer in English, creative writing
and publishing at Falmouth University in the UK. He is the co-editor of The
Place and the Writer: International Intersections of Teacher Lore and Crea-
tive Writing Pedagogy (Bloomsbury, 2021). He holds a PhD in creative
writing from Aberystwyth University. With Xu Xi, he is the co-editor of the
anthology The Queen of Statue Square: New Short Fiction from Hong Kong.
His short stories have appeared in Asia Literary Review, The Barcelona
Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS), and many other
publications. His website is www.marshallmoore.com.
xii List of contributors
Lili Pâquet is a lecturer in writing at the University of New England, Australia.
Her recent research on digital literatures and publishing are available in
Journal of Popular Culture, Computers and Composition, and TEXT:
Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, among others. Her book, Crime
Fiction from a Professional Eye: Women Writers with Law Enforcement and
Justice Experience, was published in 2018.
Christopher B. Patterson is an academic and fiction writer at the University of
British Columbia, Canada. His first book, Transitive Cultures: Anglophone
Literature of the Transpacific, won the Shelley Fishkin Award for Transna-
tional American Studies, and his debut novel, Stamped, won the 2020 Creative
Prose Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. His latest
books are Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video
Games from NYU Press, and the novel All Flowers Bloom from Westphalia
Press, both published in 2020.
Marina Tulic studies arts/law at the University of Queensland, Australia, and is
currently completing her Honours in English Literature, while also pursuing
a career in publishing and editing. She is passionate about storytelling, ima-
gination, and creating opportunities for young Australian writers. Her work
has been published in the Cordite Poetry Review and Jacaranda Journal.
Writing is her first love.
Stephanie Vanderslice is professor of creative writing and director of the Arkansas
Writer’s MFA Workshop at the University of Central Arkansas, USA. Her
column, The Geek’s Guide to the Writing Life, appears regularly in the Huffing-
ton Post. Her essays and stories have been featured in the Fiction Writer’s
Review, American Literary Review, and many others. She has also written several
books on teaching creative writing, including the recently published The Geeks’
Guide to the Writing Life, a twenty-first-century guide for aspiring writers which
simultaneously shatters the most common myths of the writer’s world.
Jen Webb is distinguished professor of creative practice, and dean of graduate
research, at the University of Canberra, Australia. Recent book publications
include Researching Creative Writing (Frontinus, 2015), Art and Human Rights:
Contemporary Asian Contexts (Manchester UP, 2016), the poetry collection
Moving Targets (Recent Work Press, 2018), and Flight Mode, a volume of poetry
co-written with Shé Hawke (Recent Work Press, October 2020). She is co-editor
of the literary journal Meniscus and the scholarly journal Axon: Creative
Explorations, and chief investigator on the ARC Discovery project ‘So What Do
you Do? Graduates in the Creative and Cultural Industries’ (DP160101440).
Kim Wilkins is a professor in writing and publishing at the University of
Queensland, Australia. She is also the author of thirty-one novels of popular
fiction, and is published in more than twenty territories. Her latest scholarly
text is Young Adult Fantasy: Conventions, Originality, Reproducibility,
published by Cambridge University Press.
Introduction
Sam Meekings and Marshall Moore

Recent years have seen dramatic shifts within the publishing industry as well as
rapid evolution and development in academic creative writing practice, pedagogy,
and programmes. Where once programmes had a strong and almost exclusive
focus on craft and theory, today many have an increased focus on the writing
life. Until recently, ‘creative writing in the Anglo-Saxon world and increasingly in
other parts of the world … [was] a complex phenomenon best considered from
the vantage point of three different realms: the university, popular writing cul-
ture, and the art world’ (Masschelein, 162). However, these realms are increas-
ingly overlapping. Agents and publishers are now frequent guests in many
departments, while programmatic goals and outcomes aim not only to create
better writers and editors with keen critical-thinking skills and multimodal con-
tent-creation competencies. Nonetheless, there is a significant gap between the
focus of the academy and the trends, innovations, and controversies that grip the
world of publishing. In a related and parallel set of developments, the presence of
so many writers and industry professionals on the Internet has changed the way
publishing works. There are countless websites and forums where writers can
discover and debate writing advice. Twitter provides an ecosystem where writers,
publishers, agents, and other professionals (and aspirants, for that matter) may
interact. There are numerous websites that function as indexes or gazetteers of
literary markets, and some of these double as submission portals: Submittable,
Duotrope, the Submission Grinder, and New Pages are some of the more promi-
nent ones. Newer platforms such as Wattpad and Fictionaut hybridise publishing
and social media in ways that would have previously been unimaginable. The
cumulative effect of all this is to demystify the processes of writing and publishing,
and to examine the ways in which they are interconnected.
According to the cliché, academics must publish or perish. Many students
and early-career writers seem to conceptualise success according to similar
standards, with the degree of success being measured by the size of the advance.
Although the world of publishing has changed radically, and continues to do
so, many programmes and courses still focus mainly on creating the work itself,
with less attention given to how it may be valued, disseminated, marketed, and
received. And while creative writing (CW) students today have access to a vast
range of diverse courses, encompassing literary theory, analysis, craft, and
DOI: 10.4324/9781003041559-1
2 Sam Meekings & Marshall Moore
editing, they may not always have a sense of how these are interlinked with and
pertinent to current issues within the industry and the world beyond the academy.
With a few notable exceptions, as Stephanie Vanderslice points out in
Rethinking Creative Writing and revisits in her chapter in this volume, CW as it
has long been taught within the academy sometimes seems to have a peculiar
stance toward the publishing trade, preferring to focus on interrogations of the
workshop and the development of craft than on what might subsequently be
done with the work. This trend is more pronounced in American CW pro-
grammes than in British and Australian ones, but it remains an issue across the
discipline. Recent scholarship within academic CW has tended to focus on
defences of pedagogy and on matters of social justice. While these lines of
inquiry are of great importance, they can sometimes appear to be a twin pair of
silos in the scholarship. Expanding on the field theory first proposed by Bour-
dieu, Darnton envisions publishing as a wider network of professions and pro-
fessionals: agents, critics, booksellers, publicists, printers, designers, critics,
pithily stating that ‘it now looks less like a field and more like a tropical rain
forest’ (66). All of these have a stake in what goes on in—and who comes out
of—university CW programmes. Recent debates online and in trade publica-
tions tend to centre on how the academy is churning out more and more writers
with MFAs, and on the ongoing debates about matters related to social justice.
This lack of engagement is peculiar, given the academy’s key role in the indus-
try’s supply chain. Even if we look at the academy as Timothy Mayers does in
‘One Simple Word: From Creative Writing to Creative Writing Studies’, in
which he argues that academic CW has diverged into two strands, we still see the
same subject-matter silos. In the former, universities employ practitioners to
teach CW courses. In the latter, the focus is on the scholarship (218–219). Neither
strand is looking very closely at the publishing industry, though, and the industry
for the most part doesn’t seem to be looking back.
If a disconnect between the academy and the industry is one idea that underpins
this book, another is to do with the status of the resultant scholarship. Just as
computer science has its roots in the older disciplines of engineering, physics, and
mathematics, creative writing within the academy has generally emerged—at least
in the Anglosphere—out of English programmes, with various borrowings from
other areas of the liberal arts. The scholarship around creative writing (or creative
writing studies, as Mayers would put it) is expanding rapidly, which means there
exists the same need to take stock, standardise, and decide what to call things. To
a certain extent, that is what we are attempting here: not only trying to fill a gap
we have identified in the scholarship but also aiming to clarify the ways we talk
about what we are doing.
The shape, organisation, and purpose of this book became clearer as a result
of a conversation between one of the editors (Moore) and a university friend
now employed in the tech sector. The catching-up part of the conversation
covered the topics anyone would expect in light of recent world events: perso-
nal developments, political crises in the countries where we have lived, the
pandemic. When the subject of this book came up, the friend remarked, ‘Oh,
 Introduction 3
it’s an SOK project!’ Here, it is perhaps relevant to mention that Moore’s hus-
band is the one who normally sets up the TV and deals with anything Internet-
related. Bafflement ensued: ‘What’s okay?’ The explanation: the acronym SOK
stands for systematisation of knowledge, a term that refers to the trend in tech
and other scientific disciplines for researchers to survey developments and pro-
pose ways in which terminology can be standardised. Because there is so much
that is genuinely new, coming into existence because of the advent of new
technologies, there is a need to keep track of it all, to identify areas of overlap,
and to keep terminology as consistent as possible—to let the scholarship catch
up with the industry, in other words, which is what we are attempting to do
here. As Adam Koehler notes,

when we consider the effects of digital technologies on conceptions of craft,

we can also begin to address a range of research directions—bigger than
craft—that require further examination … In this way, creative writing stu-
dies stands ready to better understand and assess the ways in which a creative
writer’s work is enabled and limited by her capacity to engage with the
opportunities afforded her, whether in print or digital tradition, or both.
(395–396)

The effects of recent technologies, industry developments, and programme changes

have led to a range of complex opportunities for writers and instructors, and it is
these opportunities that the chapters in this book attempt to both identify and
codify.
Our views as editors on the necessity of this endeavour are largely down to
our backgrounds as writers and as professionals in the publishing industry,
roles we both occupied before doing our PhDs in creative writing (Moore at
Aberystywth, Meekings at Lancaster) and moving into academia. Moore is a
lifelong and largely self-taught author who made his first short-story sale in his
late twenties. By the time he was thirty, he had published about a dozen stories
and had sold his first novel. Shortly after moving to Hong Kong in 2008, he had
the idea to start a publishing house, Signal 8 Press, which he still owns and runs
with a business partner. (At the time of this writing, it is on hold due to his
recent move to the UK and the disruptions caused by the pandemic and the
Hong Kong political situation, but he is planning a relaunch.) His BA is in psy-
chology and his MA is in applied linguistics, which is not what we might con-
ceive of as the traditional route into academic creative writing; nor is it an
exemplar of the standard academic pathway into a writing career. Meanwhile,
Meekings worked as an editor and textbook writer for Oxford University Press
for many years, and had sold his first novels and poetry collection long before
embarking on a creative writing PhD and a move into teaching and academia.
Neither of the editors followed a traditional route from creative writing degrees
into writing practice, and both are therefore alert to the diverse forms and pos-
sibilities of writing praxis, publishing, and career paths—and the need to discuss
their points of interconnection and divergence.
4 Sam Meekings & Marshall Moore
The chapters in this book are also alert to these diverse possibilities, and a
number of them focus upon current industry activities that offer students and
practitioners a different approach to writing. Wilkins, Marshall, and Tulic
(Chapter 2), for instance, provide a close analysis of an initiative that partnered
Hachette Australia with the local community and so provided an opportunity
for unpublished writers to develop their work with industry professionals. As
they point out,

publishers have much to offer creative writers, both in terms of sharpening

their craft through highly experienced editorial direction, and in terms of
providing industry context that can help writers understand who their
audience is, and develop the best skills for connecting to that audience.
(This volume, p. XXX)

This example illustrates a wider point: namely, that close consideration of industry
trends and practices provides different perspectives and potential opportunities to
student writers. Meanwhile, other chapters (e.g. Pâquet, Chapter 1) explore how
digital publishing platforms allow writers to create different kinds of connections
with their readers and to forge distinctly new routes to publishing. Industry con-
text thus shines a light on the way both instructors and practitioners might
reconceptualise writing practices.
A focus on contemporary trends in the literary industries also highlights the
need for discussions of representation and power. The publishing industry is no
stranger to controversy, particularly in an age beset by anxieties and arguments
about deplatforming and cancel culture, and it is here that issues that are
widely discussed and analysed in the academy play out with wide-ranging
ramifications, particularly those concerning the representation of gender, race,
sexuality, ethnicity, and religion. The issue of power, and how it is used both
by and upon the writing world, lies at the heart of many of these chapters. For
instance, Patterson demonstrates how literary industries have been complicit
in shoring up and disseminating nationalism and capitalism through control
of the definition of ‘creativity’ and ‘craft,’ drawing a link between the way
institutional power structures effect the efforts and ideas of writers both in the
academy and the industry. In another chapter, Lovell points out the issues and
effects that arise from gender bias in the science fiction publishing industry and
demonstrates the importance of affirmative action from publishers and editors in
order to promote gender equality. Other chapters focus on issues of diversity,
equity, and inclusion in the publishing industry and how these concerns might
translate to specific courses in creative writing programmes. Once again, it is the
intersections between the world of publishing and the concerns of creative writ-
ing programmes that raise questions about the writer’s relation to power, audi-
ence, and social justice. Indeed, these chapters point out one of this book’s key
conclusions: that creative writing courses can, and might, function as sites where
students can be empowered to analyse and transform the disparities and issues
within the industry.
 Introduction 5
Students who study how texts circulate in the world and how these texts
engage with readers, are primed for engagement with industry developments,
transformations, and initiatives. One important question, then, is how to make
this leap from one world to another. An answer proposed in this book is that
through developing a targeted and focused writing practice students might
make useful and important connections with readers and the industry. Thus a
number of the chapters in this book therefore consider the issue of how devel-
oping and sustaining a varied and focused writing practice can help writers not
only to develop craft, but also to make those connections. Traditionally, much
discussion of creative writing careers, both within and outside the classroom,
has focused on well-trodden paths: write a book, find an agent, get a contract.
The chapters in this book demonstrate how this ‘traditional path’ has been
modified, adapted, and challenged in recent years; underlining the difficulties
faced in initiating and sustaining a writing career in the current social and
economic climate.
Herein, there are also new discussions of the old problem of how to survive as a
working writer. Traditionally, critics of creative writing programmes have sug-
gested that the academy both creates and sustains this problem; as Hesse states,

Unable in large numbers to make a living by writing, ‘serious’ authors

depend on academic jobs, in programs that create magazines to publish
serious work and that must attract students—Master’s, MFA, and,
increasingly, PhD students—who cannot make a living by writing alone,
and so pursue academic jobs, and so on.
(32)

However, this would be to ignore the work done by modern creative pro-
grammes of preparing students for the world beyond the university. For
instance, Leahy (Chapter 4) considers why the writing of book reviews has been
little discussed in creative writing programmes when they serve not only to
build a record of publication and to develop literary citizenship, but also to
encourage engagement and links with contemporary events and publications
within the industry. Meanwhile, Anderson (Chapter 7) focuses on the gig
economy and, as he puts it, the ‘portfolio career’ of many working writers, to
suggest ways in which students might map a path through the early years of
their professional practice in order to survive in a challenging and rapidly
changing environment. The underlying business of being a professional writer is
one that necessitates an understand of the contemporary circumstances of the
creative market, something vital for both students and practitioners to under-
stand. Consideration of issues of practice thus highlight connections between a
writer’s creative and critical work, and between the craft of writing and the
needs, demands and ‘rules’ of the industry.
This leads us back, full circle, to one of this book’s key questions: how can
creative writing programmes and instructors best prepare students to engage
and work with the trends, issues, and disruptions affecting the industry? A
6 Sam Meekings & Marshall Moore
number of our chapters thus consider how new initiatives and trends within pub-
lishing might be reflected, and responded to, within higher education creative
writing pedagogy. For instance, Webb (Chapter 11) examines the pressures placed
on creative writing programmes and graduates as the academy has been pro-
fessionalised, noting the responsibilities now placed on institutions to help students
develop skills that will allow them to build successful careers and practices. By
highlighting the struggles faced by current graduates in generating income from
their creative skills and craft, Webb suggests ways in which curriculums and
courses can be revised to provide support for students in balancing their creative
desires with developing industry-friendly careers. Meanwhile, Moore (Chapter 8)
offers a reframing of how creative writing programmes conceptualise success, and
so offers key distinctions between pedagogy and outcomes, in order to rethink how
students might approach writing in the world beyond the academy.
At heart, the chapters in this book reflect an increasing concern with how crea-
tive writing at the higher education level—programmes, objectives, courses,
instructors, and students (both graduate and undergraduate)—can continue to
diversify in order to engage with knotty real-world issues, chief among them sur-
viving and thriving as a writer, along with dealing with the obstacles that might
stand in the way of this goal. With these concerns in mind, Vanderslice (Chapter 5)
considers ways in which programmes, instructors, and practitioners can advocate
for inclusivity in creative writing spaces, particularly as students move from classes
into the publishing industry, in order to truly begin to reflect the diverse world we
inhabit and to make writing and literature open and welcoming for everyone. The
lesson here is clear: creative writing courses have never been, and should never be,
spaces which focus only on craft and literary analysis. The ideas discussed within
have real-world import and ramifications. A considered and fundamental engage-
ment with the issues, initiatives, and changes of the publishing industry thus offers
both lessons and opportunities for future creative writing graduates.

Works cited
Darnton, Robert. What Is the History of Books? Daedalus, vol. 111, no. 3, 1982, pp. 65–83.
Hesse, Douglas. The Place of Creative Writing in Composition Studies. College Com-
position and Communication, vol. 62, no. 1, 2010, pp. 31–52.
Koehler, Adam. Digitizing Craft: Creative Writing Studies and New Media: A Proposal.
College English, vol. 75, no. 4, March 2013, pp. 379–397.
Masschelein, Anneleen. Who’s Peaked? Chris Kraus’s Writing Performances as a Case
Study for Twenty-First Century Writing Culture. Artistic Research and Literature. Ed.
Corina Caduff and Tan Wälchli. Brill, 2019.
Mayers, Tim. One Simple Word: From Creative Writing to Creative Writing Studies.
College English, vol. 71, no. 3, 2009, pp. 217–228.
Vanderslice, Stephanie. Rethinking Creative Writing in Higher Education: Programs and
Practices That Work. The Professional and Higher Partnership, 2011.
1 Publishing processes for a digital age
Crowdsourcing and patronage in online
self-publishing
Lili Pâquet

Introduction
Self-publishing and digital platforms occupy a contentious space alongside the
contemporary trade publishing industry. While some authors and scholars
approach digital self-publishing with trepidation, certain amateur writers have
used online platforms to create an alternative publishing route that suits them
at the beginning of their writing careers. They write in niche genres such as
fantasy, Western, romance, fanfiction, and poetry. By including their readers in
the writing and editing process, the writers are more likely to teach them the
value of creative practice. This inclusivity might then convince readers to buy
the writers’ books or pay a subscription to them via sites like Patreon. In this
chapter, I examine how digital self-publishers establish direct connections with
their readers to crowdsource editing, crowdfund or advertise their writing, and
foster their creativity. I examine three platforms of digital self-publishing: web-
serials, Wattpad, and Instapoetry. I avoid discussion of ebook self-publishing,
as it replicates traditional print publishing processes. Instead, I have chosen
examples that create distinctly new routes to publishing. In some cases, these
new routes allow the writers to cross into trade publishing, while other authors
use them as learning experiences.

Digital self-publishing case studies

Web-serials
Web-serials are books published in serialised instalments, usually once or twice
a week. A well-known web-serial is J. C. McCrae’s Worm, which was pub-
lished on his website in instalments equalling 1.6 million words between June
2011 and November 2013. McCrae’s site, like similar web-serials, has a contents
page with a list of chapters split into volumes. After finishing one of these
chapters, a reader can add comments at the bottom. The comments include
feedback on their experiences of reading the chapter, questions to the author
about certain characters or events, or feedback on edits that could be made.
Web-serial authors respond to the comments, making the format a very

DOI: 10.4324/9781003041559-2
8 Lili Pâquet
communicative process. Worm follows a teenager called Taylor who develops the
super-powered ability to control insects and spiders after traumatic bullying. The
web-serial follows her struggles with the ethics of becoming a supervillain. While
Worm is well written and engaging, its niche genre and length may have made it
difficult to place with a trade publisher.
Two other well-known, continuing web-serials are D. D. Webb’s The Gods Are
Bastards (August 2014–) and Pirateaba’s The Wandering Inn (July 2016–). The
Gods Are Bastards is a web-serial that blends the genres of the western with fan-
tasy, following a group of students at a magical university. Webb uploads new
chapters every Monday, and if funding goals are met, on Fridays as well. Each
chapter averages around 4,000 words. The Wandering Inn tells a fantasy story
about Erin Solstice, a teenage girl who is mysteriously transported to another
world, where she becomes an innkeeper. Pirateaba (the anonymous and genderless
online pseudonym of the author of The Wandering Inn) posts new chapters every
Tuesday and Saturday, with each chapter averaging around 20,000 words.

Wattpad
Wattpad is an online platform on which authors can post stories in instalments,
much like a web-serial but hosted through a website with a guaranteed group of
readers. Stories are much shorter in length than web-serials. To leave a com-
ment, readers can click on a plus symbol in the right-hand margin of any
paragraph within the story. Clicking on this symbol also allows them to view
the comments left by others on the paragraph. Each story lists how many reads
it has had, giving readers an indication of popularity, and they can ‘vote’ for
stories they like. Wattpad hosts the ‘Watty awards’ every year and publishes the
winning title through their company. In some cases, trade publishers have
found authors through Wattpad. Anna Todd’s story After (2014) had over a
billion reads on the site and attracted a publishing offer from Simon and
Schuster to adapt her work into multiple books, and a film adaptation was
released in 2019. Beth Reekles’s The Kissing Booth (2011) was adapted into a
movie by Netflix. Wattpad claims to have over 80 million users, including
celebrated authors such as Margaret Atwood and R.L. Stine, and aims to create
a writing community that includes both professionals and amateurs.
Many of the stories posted to Wattpad are hybrid genres, with elements of
romance, fantasy, and historical fiction. Elle Lawrence’s Requiem for a Soldier
is a romance thriller about an ex-soldier who was injured in a bombing in
Afghanistan and a woman escaping assassins. It won a 2019 Watty award for
romance. Romance genre books are niche in trade publishing and, along with
fantasy genre books, very ubiquitous in the online self-publishing world. Law-
rence’s story has had 2.2 million reads on the site.
Michael Estrin’s Wattpad story Peter’s Little Peter is another book that may
have had trouble finding a place with a trade publisher. It is a comedic Young
Adult story about Peter, whose peers find out that he has a small penis. The
author had some interesting comments on his reasons for writing the story:
 Publishing processes for a digital age 9
I’ve never written a YA/teen story. Equally daunting, as a 40-something dude,
I’m pretty far removed from my high school years … The reason I chose to tell
a story about penis size is because it’s such a profound, and terribly mis-
understood, source of insecurity for nearly all men, regardless of their size. I’m
thrilled to tell that story here on Wattpad, which continues to be a beacon of
safety, inclusion, and experimentation, on an otherwise bleak internet.
(Estrin ‘Foreword’)

His story won a 2019 Watty award and has had 645,000 reads on the site.
Another popular type of story that appears on Wattpad is fanfiction, such as
latibulefeeling’s lesbian fanfiction about teenage musical artist Billie Eilish
called The Artist. Gay and lesbian romance is a large area of publishing on
Wattpad, a site that has an inclusive and supportive atmosphere. The Artist has
had 1.8 million reads. Links to other fanfiction works about Billie Eilish appear
beside the table of contents.

Instapoetry
While Wattpad includes some poetry, the social networking site, Instagram, has
become a popular platform for poetic experimentation, now commonly known as
Instapoetry. Instapoets share photos of their poems, often with accompanying
designs or illustrations. The most well-known Instapoet is Rupi Kaur, who rose to
fame in 2015 after sharing a photo series about menstruation that was censored by
the site. She began to use the platform to publish her poetry, which is emblematic
of Instapoetry with its brevity and lack of capitalisation or punctuation. Instapoets
at earlier stages of their writing careers include Nikita Gill and Beau Taplin. Both
have published collections of their poems following their success on Instagram.

Editorial crowdsourcing
Trade publishers employ staff as editors and marketers (Thompson 6–7), whereas
self-publishers must replace this human capital with other sources for advice and
support. In Spencer’s (2017) examination of how much the marketing of a book
relates to its sales, she found that there was a direct correlation. However, some
scholars have pointed out that publishers increasingly expect authors to take on
the burden of marketing themselves and their books online, by building an ‘author
platform’. Kim Wilkins writes about the negative effects of asking authors to build
an online platform. She describes how she wrote almost 18,000 words of self-
marketing material that was unrelated to her creative writing, concluding that ‘this
time and energy devoted to developing platform takes time and energy away from
the writer’s core business’ (69). Considering Spencer’s findings that books sell more
when the publisher gives them higher marketing budgets, it seems especially unfair
to foist this responsibility onto authors. It may particularly affect authors early in
their writing careers, as they would be expected to build a platform and, in the
process, lose valuable time honing their craft.
10 Lili Pâquet
Authors of web-serials, Instapoetry, and on platforms such as Wattpad use their
medium of publication to simultaneously build an author platform and to replace
the middle section of the publishing chain (agents, publishers, distributors, and
retailers) by communicating directly with their readers, who in turn give them
feedback on their writing. The authors effectively crowdsource their editing and
marketing from their digital readers. The quality of comments varies across the
different online self-publishing modes. On Wattpad, the comments from readers
are often more supportive than particularly constructive. In Requiem for a Soldier,
for example, there are many minor grammatical errors that pass unnoticed by
readers. Comments are mostly thoughts about character’s actions and the plot,
and are more directed to other readers than to the author.
In Peter’s Little Peter, Estrin has built stronger communication with his readers
by actively engaging them in conversations based on events in the plot. He explains
to them in his foreword, ‘I’ll be writing live to the internet. As a writer, that makes
me feel naked and vulnerable. Not only will there be a lot of typos, but I have no
idea if this thing is even going to work’ (Estrin ‘Foreword’). In the chapter ‘Date
Night’, the titular Peter goes on a date to see the French film Breathless, and
engages in a dialogue with his date afterwards. Many readers have commented on
the interesting premise and analysis of the film, and Estrin uses those comments to
start discussions (‘Date Night’). By involving readers in conversations, he seems to
have opened up more communication on the story editing than usual on Wattpad.
For example, the chapter ‘Chub Potion No. 9’ introduces a recipe to enhance penis
size that includes rhinoceros horn as an ingredient. Commenters complain that the
inclusion is unethical, unscientific, and improbable. Peter later discovers that the
recipe was not as exotic as advertised, to the relief of readers. Estrin ends the book
with some direct questions for readers, including whether anything confused them
in the story or if anything could be clearer (‘Thank you’). However, this kind of
interaction between author and readers seems generally rare on Wattpad.
Web-serial readers, on the other hand, focus more on constructive feedback to
help the authors hone their stories and their craft. In The Wandering Inn, for
example, after a chapter detailing a fight between the main character and a group
of knife-wielding goblins, a reader identified as Paul E. Kahl has written a lengthy
but constructive comment to Pirateaba pointing out some inconsistencies in the
scene. He ends the comment by reiterating, ‘But I can look past all of this, as long
as the story is good enough to overcome the lack of an editor’ (Pirateaba 1.03).
Interestingly, Kahl’s comments to Pirateaba are not only focused on lower-order
concerns in grammar, but also higher-order concerns about narrative consistency
and logic. They are constructive and could help if Pirateaba decided to edit the
story for commercial publication. The constructive comments are generally polite
and flattering to the author. Another comment on the same chapter that focuses on
lower-order spelling errors follows up by stating, ‘I hope it doesn’t come off as
rude, since I only noticed them because I’ve read everything five times now!’ (1.03).
This is a common theme, with repeat readers leaving comments after having read
through the entire web-serial. Pirateaba welcomes these kinds of comments, and
sees them as an opportunity to crowdsource editing. As s/he writes:
 Publishing processes for a digital age 11
I fully support comments, good and bad. But more than that, commenters
reveal weaknesses in my own story and point out things I wouldn’t think
of. That’s great. In fact, I take your comments on board and change my
story to address problems you point out. I’m not afraid to go back and
change things if I screw up.
(Pirateaba 1.08R)

Sometimes when chapters are edited, readers familiar with both versions
will comment on the impact of the edits. Under the first chapter of Worm,
readers called Anzer’ke and Pinkhair write to McCrae about how the emo-
tional impact of the original chapter has been negatively affected by edits
(McCrae, Gestation 1.1).

Financial crowdfunding
Related to crowdsourcing, crowdfunding is when authors receive financial backing
directly from their readers rather than from a publishing house advance. According
to Mustafa and Adnan, crowdfunding is an exciting new digital frontier that

can be used to strengthen the traditional publishing industry. The innovation

and efficiency offered by crowdsourcing and other digital tools have the
power to better connect authors with the audience … [W]ith the advent of
Web 2.0 technologies, individuals become active contributors, not passive
browsers.
(294)

Authors might have reasons to be wary of a changing publishing landscape that

moves away from offering advances. Advances are based on the projected sales
of a book on its initial distribution, following which an author will receive
royalties of somewhere around ten percent of additional books sold. In 2005,
40% of British professional authors reported earning their income from writing
only, but a decade later that had fallen to 11.5% of authors (Flood par. 2).
Often, the lowering of author incomes is blamed on digital publishing, and
sometimes on the rise of self-publishing. Morrison made dire projections in 2012,
writing, ‘When social media marketing collapses it will destroy the platform that
the dream of a self-epublishing industry was based upon’ (par. 2). Further,
Wilkins argues that digital-only publishers and overworked authors lead to poor
editing practices (74). She concludes, ‘our resilience as writers is being threatened
or has already been undermined by the growth of digital publishing and the
widespread use of Web 2.0 technology’ (Wilkins 67). Much digital fiction is self-
published. Ros Barber argues that self-publishing is a bad idea for serious writers
because of the necessity of good editors (Barber). In these arguments, it is clear
that the symbolic and human capital held by trade publishing companies still
hold much influence. Flood found that self-publishers made an average of 40% of
their costs back, a larger percentage than many would have received in royalties,
12 Lili Pâquet
and of the authors surveyed, 86% would self-publish again (par. 9). While
understanding the fear of changing publication landscapes, Earls argues, ‘it is
incumbent upon writers and publishers to attempt to navigate this evolving
landscape, rather than to crouch behind the parapet, hoping the siege is almost
over’ (Earls). It seems Wilkins has also come to a form of acceptance:

the writing life has already changed, and that change is being felt across
form and platform. As with all instances of large-scale change, the most
comfortable are those who recognise the change and take control of how
they engage with it.
(74)

The boundary between digital self-publishing and trade publishing is not dis-
tinct. Trade publishers can treat online self-published works as a kind of digital
‘slush-pile’ (Young 2014: 39) from which they may find new authors who have
built their own readership. Trade publishers can offer these self-starters sym-
bolic capital, which Thompson defines as ‘the accumulated prestige, recognition
and respect accorded to certain individuals or institutions’ (8). Online self-
publishers can access symbolic capital by moving to trade publishing after
building their online author platforms through digital publishing alternatives.
Many Instapoets use their Instagram pages to first build their readerships, to
secure contracts with trade publishers, and thereafter to advertise their published
collections and continue their interaction with readers. Kaur and Taplin publish
their poetry in collections with Andrews McMeel publishing, a global indepen-
dent publisher that has a sales and distribution partnership with Simon and
Schuster. Gill’s books are published by Ebury, an imprint of Penguin. With a
huge following of 3.9 million readers on Instagram, it appears that Kaur no
longer has a need to advertise her poetry collections on her page. However, both
Taplin and Gill share links to their books at the tops of their Instagram pages.
Taplin has a following of 662,000 readers and Gill has 623,000 followers. These
large numbers would have helped the poets receive their publishing contracts.
Perhaps because of their lengths, web-serials are less likely to attract trade
publishers. Authors instead write very long works and subsidise their writing
through the patronage of their readers. All three web-serial authors discussed in
this chapter use Patreon to advertise themselves as working writers. Readers and
fans can pledge recurring monthly payments to the authors via the platform’s
website. McCrae has 1419 patrons, from whom he receives a total of $7843US a
month (‘Wildbow’), which means that in two months he makes more than the
average annual earnings of an author in the US (Pâquet par. 26). Webb has 202
patrons who donate $1121US a month (‘D. D. Webb’) and, although the dona-
tion total is hidden, Pirateaba has 2597 patrons (‘Pirateaba’). In an update in
2017, Pirateaba announced that Patreon donations were high enough for him/her
to quit his/her day job (2.35).
Much of this income could be inspired by the interactive nature of web-serials.
The authors include their readers in editorial and creative decisions. For example,
 Publishing processes for a digital age 13
under chapter 3.10 of The Gods are Bastards, Webb discusses a scene that depicts a
female character in an objectified way and his reasoning for writing it the way he
did. He asks readers, ‘I’m left with a conflict between what feels right for the story
and what may be a good idea to publish. I’m not entirely positive I made the right
call. What do you think?’ His readers are supportive and agree with Webb’s rea-
soning. Similarly, under a chapter in The Wandering Inn, Pirateaba writes,

This latest chapter—the first part of it—was completely experimental. I

wanted to play with an unclear narrative, hence the lack of any line breaks
separating the two conversations. Now, I could add in section breaks it it’s
unclear, but the first wave of readers gets to tell me if I should or should not.
(1.34)

In another chapter, Pirateaba uses snippets of song lyrics when the protagonist,
Erin, sings. The author then comments on the questionable legality of keeping
the lyrics in the web-serial. Two commenters write that it should fall under fair
use laws (1.38). As Tushnet suggests, ‘participating in creative fandom is actu-
ally likely to make participants more cognizant of the value of creative labor,
and thus more willing to invest financially in creators who are seeking profit
than fans who don’t produce their own works’ (2017: 189–190). So, by crowd-
sourcing editorial and creative decisions from their readers, web-serial authors
include them in the creative process and are more likely to be rewarded with
financial patronage.
An important consideration in the future of the trade publishing industry is
building a community of readers using online media. Hamilton-Emery argues
that, until recently, the consumers of books have received very little attention
compared to the other links in the publishing chain (184–185). Further, he fore-
sees that the future of publishing is to position readers as editors (192), and for
publishers to have readers provide feedback on the value of manuscripts in their
slush piles (194). This reader-led editing and appraisal already occurs in digital
self-publishing.
In the trade publishing industry, the search for bestsellers is becoming
increasingly important (Colbjørnsen; Schmidt-Stölting, Blömeke, and Clement;
Sorensen; Yucesoy, Wang, Hunag, and Barabási), and bestseller lists can cause
publishers to avoid first-time authors, who are considered ‘risky’ (Pâquet par.
23). This is borne out by Kon-yu’s research, which found that in the Australian
trade publishing sector of 2017, only three of the top ten bestsellers were debut
authors and only one of those was published that year. The finding leads Kon-
yu to suggest, ‘If we are looking strictly at sales, then there is little to no
imperative to publish debut literary fiction in Australia. There’d be no reason at
all to publish poetry or anthologies either’ (8). Concurrently, according to
Thompson, authors who have been previously published with moderate success
‘carry their sales histories around with them like a noose around their neck’ (19).
Thompson argues that debut authors are in a better position than those with
modest successes, because ‘there is no hard data to constrain the imagination, no
14 Lili Pâquet
disappointing sales figures to dampen hopes and temper expectation’ (201).
Digital self-publishing can allow amateur writers to develop their craft and build
future readerships away from these pressures.
The focus on production, not just end product, is one of the most exciting
elements of digital self-publishing. As Hecq and Hill define creativity, it is ‘an
act, a process, or an event; and, at a more fundamental level, as a performa-
tive event whereby “I” am aware of an “other” … [I]t entails a process as
much as an effect’ (3). The authors of digital self-published texts are engaging
actively in creativity through writing as a process that is viewed by readers.
Similarly, Gilly Smith finds that having her university students write blogs
offers them an opportunity to ‘unravel their creativity, chronicling the process
for all to see’ (281–282). Readers are important to the process of creativity
and online spaces, as ‘the gaze, however cursory, is searing enough to sharpen
your game’ (Smith 282). As Barnard writes, collaboration ‘does not sit easily
with the traditional image referred to of the writer as someone working alone.
The collaboration that is an intrinsic part of social media adds a potentially
exciting new dimension to the experience of writing’ (Barnard ‘Testing’ 277).
Norman Foerster’s foundational creative writing workshops at the University
of Iowa were formed to toughen seasoned students to criticism on their writ-
ing (Vanderslice 79). However, Vanderslice writes that current undergraduates
are not the same as previous generations of seasoned writers, and ‘the tradi-
tional, product-centred creative writing workshop gives little to no attention
to invention and creativity’ (82). Despite the social idea of a workshop, Bar-
nard also finds that in current writing classrooms they ‘help perpetuate the
idea that the best creative work is done in isolation’ (Barnard ‘Tweets’ 7).
This idea of the workshop not suiting the modern student is repeated by
Uppal, who argues, ‘we need to encourage our students to think critically and
to pursue the reading of literature and its creation as an activity of social
relevance rather than a narcissistic pursuit’ (53). Digital self-publishing can
expose amateur writers to real readers and an appreciation of publishing as a
communal process.
Digital self-publishing can be a mixture of practical writing, workshop,
and blog. The author has a regular creative output with a deadline, can
explain difficulties and processes of their writing in the comments, and can
receive feedback from readers that helps them to edit and refine their writ-
ing. Particularly in web-serials, writers can return to chapters already posted
and edit them according to reader feedback, meaning that the books are
read in the process of being written and edited, rather than as a finished
product. The Gods are Bastards provides some interesting examples of the
state of flux that web-serials work within. Underneath chapter 1.16, a reader
named underwhelmingforce comments that s/he enjoyed the chapter and
character of Bishop Darling/Sweet more than earlier chapters. Webb replies,

I tend to agree with your opinion; Book 1 is heavier on University setup

and all-around exposition than anything to follow. Serial writing is tricky
 Publishing processes for a digital age 15
in that I can’t very well clean up patches of text that I’m less than happy
with. I do learn lessons going forward.
(1.16)

Thus, readers see the creative process as it happens, and Webb shows how he
has progressed as a writer since beginning the web-serial. In a later chapter,
Webb explains the process more explicitly, writing,

this does take a lot of time and I do have a day job. And bipolar disorder,
so creative burnout is a real concern for me. However, you don’t go any-
where by not trying things … While I don’t make a living as a writer at
present, I hope and intend to. Aside from TGaB, I also have a published
ebook, with more planned. I’m still pretty much in the ‘trying things’ phase
of my literary career.
(2.12)

These kinds of comments under each chapter of the web-serial give it a blog-
like appeal, keeping readers up-to-date on the writer’s process and life behind
the writing. It is also clear that Webb uses the digital platform to learn and
experiment, rather than seek trade publication.
Instapoets post poems as images to their pages, often alongside a personal
message. Nikita Gill often writes introspective updates on the insecurities she
experiences while writing. One poem she posted included the explanation,

Scribbling rough notes for other things whilst on the train. The problem
with struggling through depression is acknowledging that progress is what
a good day looks like to you and not drawing comparisons, even if it seems
like what would be a ‘normal’ or even a ‘bad’ day to someone else.
(‘Sanctuary’)

The post was liked by over 17,000 people, perhaps helped by the conversational
tone Gill adopts to address her Instagram community. In another post that
included a poem from her upcoming collection, Gill writes, ‘This whole thing
has been a process of self discovery in ways I never thought possible. Because
it’s semi autobiographical, I’m revisiting old experiences and seeing them
through a different lens’ (‘Things’). Many commenters respond to her prompts
with feedback on her poem and its relatability.
Wattpad authors also use the platform to hone their craft, rather than aim
for a transition into trade publishing. In the Afterword of Requiem for a
Soldier, Lawrence writes,

Several people have asked me about if I’m going to publish this book.
Probably not. I’ve seen the flak that a lot of amateur writers’ books have
gotten … and I’m not keen to invite that kind of criticism upon myself and
my story … I’d agree with most of the criticism and then my fingers would
16 Lili Pâquet
be itching to go back and change the story to improve it, but once it’s
already published … it’s kinda too late for that.
(‘Afterword’)

Wattpad has instead been used as a place to test creativity, learn craft, and engage
with a community of readers.

Conclusion
Digital self-publishing on Instagram or Wattpad, or through web-serials, can
provide amateur writers with some exciting opportunities to learn their
craft. They can blog their process, and build communities of readers and
fan-networks, from which they receive help with editing and also, impor-
tantly, enthusiastic support of their writing. The process of having their
writing viewed and commented on by readers helps new authors train in
their craft, and can aid the process of creativity. Additionally, by being part
of the creative process through editing and discussions, readers are more
impelled to financially support the writers, as they see the value of the
creative process. This financial support might be buying published collec-
tions of Instapoetry or donating monthly payments to favourite web-serial
authors through Patreon. Digital self-publishing is also not entirely separate
from the trade publishing industry, and instead has porous boundaries, with
publishers viewing digital works as a new kind of slush-pile. Authors on
Wattpad and Instapoets have already built an online platform for them-
selves, and can provide the numbers of their readers and their feedback. For
publishers looking for the next bestseller, these kinds of reader communities
deliver valuable insight into the possibilities offered by certain well-known
digital writers. In this way, digital self-publishing may offer writers an
alternative route to publication.

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2 Emerging writers/established publishers
A ten-year study of the Hachette Manuscript
Development Program
Kim Wilkins, Helen Marshall and Marina Tulic

Introduction
From 2008 to 2018, Hachette Australia (one of Australia’s largest fiction pub-
lishing houses and part of global publishing giant Hachette Book Group)
offered an opportunity for unpublished writers to develop their manuscript with
professional publishers and editors. Many participants have gone on to be
published and contribute to Australian literary culture, and the Hachette
Manuscript Development Program (hereafter, the Program) became a coveted
pathway to publication for Australian writers. When we think of institutions
who provide training for creative writers, we may think of universities, com-
munity organisations, and commercially offered online courses available via
platforms such as Masterclass.com. These training sites ostensibly get emerging
writers ‘ready’ for interactions with publishers. The publishing industry’s role
in training emerging writers is less visible, save the occasional paean for the
‘good old days’ when editors supposedly worked with writers extensively,
taking on a development role long before acquisition.
However, as the Hachette Program showed, publishers have much to offer
creative writers, both in terms of sharpening their craft through highly
experienced editorial direction, and in terms of providing industry context
that can help writers understand who their audience is, and develop the best
skills for connecting to that audience. This chapter aims to understand and
articulate the best-practice interaction between the publishing industry and
emerging writers, through a study of the Program. The Program was initiated
in 2008 by Hachette Australia, in collaboration with the Queensland Writers
Centre, a state-based arts organisation in Australia. Entries in the form of the
first 50 pages of a manuscript (fiction or nonfiction) were called from across
the country, and around two hundred were received annually for each itera-
tion of the Program. The chosen eight to ten writers would then attend a five-
day retreat in Brisbane or the surrounding area. The retreat comprised one-
on-one editorial sessions with Hachette staff, one-on-one discussion with a
literary agent, one-on-one discussion with a published author-mentor (the lead
author of this chapter served as author-mentor on several occasions), panel-
style presentations from booksellers, festival organisers, and writers, and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003041559-3
20 Kim Wilkins, Helen Marshall & Marina Tulic
classroom-based workshops on aspects of writing craft or publishing. Net-
working opportunities were also provided in the form of dinners and reading
evenings. After the Program, participants were encouraged to submit their
revised manuscript within a year for consideration by Hachette. In that year,
the writers were not allowed to submit to any other publisher.
The Program was sui generis in terms of what it offered and its 360-degree
approach, developing not just the manuscript, but also the writer’s networks and
knowledge base for thriving in the industry. While a range of prizes, programmes,
and mentorships are offered in Australia (Tang) they lack the comprehensive
approach of the Hachette Program. Internationally, Penguin Random House part-
nered with the Authors Guild Foundation for a series of no-fee writing and business
bootcamps across North America, focusing on literary communities in need of
support and access to educational and networking opportunities. Our research did
not reveal anything else similar to the Hachette Program, and to date nothing has
been written about their impact on the development of creative writers.
In terms of the institution most often cited in research about writer develop-
ment, the pedagogical approaches in formal university courses dominate the
scholarship (for example, from the last five years alone, see Harper; Peary and
Hunley; Clark, Hergenrader, and Rein; and Hewings, Prescott, and Seargeant).
The gold standard of university courses is the workshop model, where written
work is brought in front of peers for critique, and because it is the usual model of
creative writing pedagogy, its form, strategies, and dominance are relentlessly
debated (Breckenridge 426). Some of these debates do seek to encompass the
possibility of industry-oriented training. For example, in her discussion on the
limits of writing workshops, Roe advocates for masterclasses. Workshops are
focussed on the text and writing, whereas masterclasses add ‘the professional
business of publishing’ (Roe 195). This allows teachers to think beyond skills
development, and more about ‘Who do we want our students to become?’ (Roe
196). Masterclasses, by definition, have masters in the classroom, and Roe sug-
gests publishing industry personnel ‘are not only the best judges of what will
work in current markets, they are also well placed, and usually willing, to point
out to a student what works, what doesn’t, and what might be developed’ (Roe
202). Cantrell et al. argue for training of creative writers in vital career skills,
including resilience around criticism and rejection, which can both be developed
in workshops. However, they note that an MFA in writing is not ‘job training’
(Cantrell et al. 179). As Roe suggests, emerging writers may learn of the ‘rigours
demanded’ by industry from publishers. These learnings are, she writes, ‘not,
surely, really the business of educators’ (Roe 203). The Hachette Program gives
us an opportunity to see what writer training might look like, if it is conducted
by the industry that writers eventually hope to enter. While it may seem coun-
terintuitive to the persistent romantic dichotomy between writing as art, and the
marketplace as business, in fact ‘Writing is an art and a profession. Qualification
as an author requires certification in both spheres’ (Dietz 197).
Over the Program’s eleven iterations, 103 writers took part. Due to the
sample size of participants and the exploratory nature of the project, we chose a
 Emerging writers/established publishers 21
qualitative approach over a quantitative approach. This took the shape of sur-
veys comprising both short responses and long-paragraph responses. Not all
writers were able to be contacted or chose to participate in our research. Forty-
two writers took the survey. We also conducted one-on-one, semi-structured
interviews with selected Program participants, supplemented with information
(interviews, blog posts, social media) from web sources. We synthesised this
data to compose a holistic representation of writers’ experiences in and beyond
the Program. Our research might be said to fall under the interpretivist-positi-
vist model, or what Chandra and Shang refer to as ‘creativity with fences’,
whereby facts and events are ‘collectively constructed and understood’, focused
on themes rather than replication. In terms of interview methodology, an
interpretivist researcher will ‘flexibly adjust the interview protocol as the data
collection progresses [and] perform follow-up interviews with informants based
on insights from subsequent interviews’ (11). We decided to keep all inter-
viewees anonymous, even though some were comfortable to be named. In the
analysis of the data, we recognised in a concrete way the vulnerability of
emerging authors in the industry, and the power imbalance between them and
industry personnel. As an aside, protecting the respondents’ identity has meant
we have chosen to use the singular ‘they’ form throughout. We recognise this is
not to everyone’s taste, but decided it was the lesser evil. We coded our col-
lected data using NVivo software, allowing themes to emerge from the writers’
responses. We then divided the feedback we received into what we might think
of as the positive and the negative aspects of the Program. Positives included
publication, career development, enhanced community, and expert advice.
Negatives included the impossibility of managing writers’ expectations,
enhanced cynicism, and a perceived lack of genuine publishing opportunities.
Underpinning both positives and negatives was the inherent power imbalance
between emerging writers and established publishers: while the might and
money of a ‘big five’ publisher was one of the chief contributors to benefit, it
also undermined some interactions and outcomes. The chapter will end with
brief recommendations of the best way publishers and emerging writers can
work together.

The positives
The most immediately evident positive outcome is publication. At the time of
writing, of our sample group, 40% achieved traditional publication with the
manuscript they developed during the Program, while 5% self-published that
manuscript. When we look at participants’ submission of a different manuscript
post-Program, 38% achieved traditional publication (note: this includes, but is
not limited to, subsequent manuscripts by those already accounted for in the
first graph). The average time to publication was three years (which was also
the median and the mode).
Participants attribute their publications directly to the Program, even when
Hachette is not the publisher that acquires the manuscript. One participant
22 Kim Wilkins, Helen Marshall & Marina Tulic
Submied Manuscript
5%

40%

Published

Unpublished

Self-published
55%

Figure 2.1 Publication outcomes for manuscript submitted via the Hachette Program

Different Manuscript

35%

60%

5%

Published Self-Published Unpublished

Figure 2.2 Publication outcomes for different manuscript

said, ‘Would I have gone on to publish a book if I hadn’t have done that? No,
probably not at all’, while another suggests that ‘today I am a professional
writer and, looking back, I can say that the “professional” part of that began
with the Hachette MS Development Program’. In a purely instrumental way,
the Program results in publication for a healthy proportion of writers, if not all.
 Emerging writers/established publishers 23
For both published and unpublished writers, the Program boosted their
careers. As one respondent noted:

Even if it doesn’t have the direct result of getting that novel or book pub-
lished for the participants it still can open up possible opportunities and
give people more knowledge to aspire to their writing practice and create
the networks that can be very valuable, and possibly indirectly result in
advancing people’s prospects and career.

For most writers, creative writing careers ‘develop somewhat circuitously and
seldom at full speed’ (Craigo and Leahy 202). Many of the participants of the
Program, however, saw a noticeable acceleration in their careers:

The manuscript never got picked up but that manuscript started my career
because I won a Society of Editors Editorial Fellowship with Craig Munro
who edited bloody Johnno, David Malouf’s Johnno … I also got into
Varuna House for Writers Fellowship Program, so while the manuscript
was not published it was an incredibly successful first manuscript for me as
an emerging author.

This writer describes a series of opportunities that they perceive as arising rapidly
from the Program. In this account, the Program is a catalysing event that, while not
leading to publication, stands as one of the reasons an unpublished manuscript can
be considered as ‘incredibly successful’. Others echo this idea of the Program as an
accelerating event. Some spoke in a matter-of-fact way: ‘the first, solid step I took
towards becoming a professional author’; while others spoke in more rapturous
tones: ‘I know it sounds a bit dramatic but I actually really think it changed the
course of my life and where I think I’m heading’, or ‘the most significant impact on
my career trajectory of any single event’. The language of a pathway into publishing
is clear here: first steps, changing course, where I’m heading, trajectory. This path-
way is a result of enhanced access to the industry. Some respondents noted access at
a practical level: the Program gives them ‘something to put on my writing resume’,
‘an elevation from the “slush pile”’, or the ability to say ‘you’ve been chosen for that
programme, [so] you’re probably going to get read’. Access to the industry allows
professionalisation of work and self: ‘it definitely gave me professional recognition,
professional contacts, professional confidence in my work’.
Participants also noted the career-boosting impact of embracing a writerly
identity: ‘it changed the way I viewed myself, and now I guess I can call myself
a writer’. This new self-perspective has material effects on the way participants
now conduct themselves in the industry:

It fundamentally changed my perception of publishing as an industry and

the role of the writer within it. Meeting publishers, agents, and booksellers
helped me understand how the industry worked in reality and helped me
move on from any naive and romanticised notions I had been clinging to.
24 Kim Wilkins, Helen Marshall & Marina Tulic
This writer notes the difference between ‘reality’ and ‘romanticised notions’.
The contrast here is between professional knowledge and the speculation and
superstitions of the amateur; it is a key moment of professionalisation to be
able to look back on previously held notions and see them as romantic. This is
not the first occasion in which a transition from innocence to experience is
invoked, but it is the most positive.
The Hachette Program also provided an excellent opportunity for writers at
the same stage to connect, and that common experience was highly valued by
the participants. One wrote that other writers ‘in the same boat’ are ‘the only
people I feel I have always been able to count on for assistance’, while another
spoke highly of the experience of working with ‘a cohort of writers at a similar
career stage’, even though ‘we have all taken wildly divergent paths since’. The
joy of enduring relationships, forged in the Program, is evident in many of the
responses: ‘I’m still friends with all of them. That was the most amazing thing
about it’; ‘one of the most enduring positive aspects of the Program was the
provision of a group of writer friends’; ‘Meeting other aspiring writers who
have become friends, and a mutual support network’. In all of these quotes, and
in many others, friendship is cited as a welcome positive of the Program, and a
good thing in itself. But while the pleasure of making like-minded friends was
enough, many writers noted how this directly or indirectly impacted on their
careers through ‘the support and networking’ that came with ‘making friends
with the other writers’:

I met … my best writing friend and we beta read for each other on every
single manuscript and that’s absolutely critical to my writing because I am
writing into the void now … and [she] is the only one who reads my work
before it goes off to my agent and she reads it after I’ve done two drafts so
that whole time I have no idea what I’m doing.

The popularly used term ‘best friend’ has here become ‘best writing friend’.
Note how this writer suggests their best writing friend is ‘absolutely critical’
and suggests their own practice without the beta reader is directionless
(‘into the void’, ‘no idea’). In this quote, there is no separation between an
affective and a practical relationship. Wilkins, Driscoll, and Fletcher have
written about the way that ‘social activities interweave with creative
practice’:

Not only do they often demonstrably assist writers to be productive and

improve the quality of their projects, but they can be pleasurable experi-
ences that grow out of and forge enduring friendships: they work in both
creative and social terms.

The creative and the social are linked: they provide energy to each other.
Continuing relationships with publishing personnel are also important. One
writer noted the value of industry networks:
 Emerging writers/established publishers 25
I also met some publishers and editors who have moved on to work for
other publishers or in other roles and they’ve become really valuable ongoing
professional contacts as well as warm colleagues—I have a warm collegial
relationship with everyone who I met and worked with on that retreat.

Again the affective (‘warm’) and the ‘professional’ are co-located.

It is important to note, however, that the belief in the value of warm, pro-
fessional relationships within or outside of the industry is not universally held.
A handful of respondents were less enthusiastic about the social aspects of the
cohort and their networks from their Program. One writes that ‘the social side
was fun and I still communicate with many of the participants, but it didn’t
help with the writing’. Another lamented that they ‘don’t have any big pub-
lisher contacts and I lost touch—I wasn’t very good … I didn’t realise how
valuable those contacts were so I wasn’t old enough and mature enough to
retain them.’ It is interesting to note that this writer blames themself for their
inability to sustain networking relationships, when it must be acknowledged that
a cohort experience may reward some types of personality over others. As one of
the respondents told us, they are ‘not that social’. It is commonplace to advise
writers to build networks, but rarely do we unpack the assumption that everyone
has that ability, nor do we account for the unequal power relationships between
people in writer–publisher networks.
But it is not just relationships that bring value to writers and their work.
Publishing professionals have unique expertise in the way that writing works on
the page, that is not comparable to any other kind of editorial feedback, for
example from community arts organisations, or other writers, or university
MFA conveners. As one respondent noted, feedback from anyone ‘good in the
industry is astonishingly valuable’. Again, publishing professionals’ place and
power in industry is the key value here. Expert knowledge and industry insight
situate and evaluate the manuscript within the marketplace, which allows wri-
ters to understand their works as potentially for a broader public, and not
merely ‘family [who] read your stuff and say it’s wonderful’.
The fact that publisher feedback was delivered in one-on-one sessions added
extra value for several participants:

It was extraordinary. I mean she must have spent hours and hours on each
manuscript, because she’d really read the entire manuscript from start to
finish, and not just read it in a hurry, she’d read it—she knew the char-
acters’ names, she knew their motivations, she knew the shape of the plot, I
suspect she’d done some kind of scene mapping or something, but she was
just so familiar with the finer points of the manuscript. And so the feed-
back she gave me was just skilful and nuanced and practical and helpful.

This writer clearly values the labour and skill of the editor. From the quality of
the feedback they received, they assume the editor has invested many hours, and
‘some kind of’ specialised, time-consuming tools. The editor knowing the
26 Kim Wilkins, Helen Marshall & Marina Tulic
characters’ names adds an extra layer of personalisation to the process. Other
writers echoed this feeling: ‘She talked about my characters as if they were real
people just like I did.’ Here we can see the writers’ pleasure in seeing their invest-
ment in the manuscript shared. This kind of deep and connected critique is pre-
sented as ‘extraordinary’, rather than the ordinary work of publishing professionals
who edit books, which it is. Again, the difference in power is visible here: amateurs
do not usually receive this kind of attention: this kind of ‘real’ reading.
Some participants were particularly effusive in their commentary about their
editorial feedback. One described as ‘really exciting’ the way their assigned
publishing professional offered ‘suggestions that I hadn’t thought of to make
the book better’. Another was so delighted with the feedback process that they
‘went to sleep that night feeling like every cell of my body was being kissed by
fairies’. Even those with a less rapturous tone could pinpoint the exact value of
one-on-one expert editorial feedback: ‘It taught me to review the manuscript at
a deeper level and that writing can always be improved, and that a manuscript
is never finished.’
However, some respondents thought that one session was not enough, sug-
gesting a second session or even ‘several, long, deep sessions’ would have been
of more value: ‘I needed a few hours or a day to consider the feedback she
provided, then I discovered I was full of questions but didn’t have the time to
ask them.’ This initial reticence is potentially due to writers being under-
standably ‘nervous and apprehensive’ about their first encounter with publish-
ing industry feedback, which is ‘not the best environment to be not only
absorbing what the editor was suggesting, but remembering what she was
recommending’. The power imbalance between emerging writers and estab-
lished publishers is strongly marked here, as is the mismatch between what
writers need or think they need, and what the industry can reasonably provide
them. This misalliance of expectations underpins most of the negatives cited by
participants.

The negatives
First and foremost among the negatives, it appears to be impossible to manage
the expectations of the participants effectively. The promises the Program
makes are modest from the outset. According to erstwhile publishing director
Fiona Hazard: ‘[We] encourage anyone looking to further develop their work
and who wants an understanding of the publishing industry, to submit their
chapters’ (quoted in Books + Publishing). Manuscript development and a better
understanding of industry are unquestionably provided by the Program, as evi-
denced by the feedback from respondents. So why do so many writers emerge
with a sense of disappointment?
That disappointment was largely attached to publication outcomes: ‘I really
did think the fact that I was in the Program meant I was going to be published’;
‘I think everyone went into that thinking … you’re this close to a publishing
deal now, which is not the case at all’; ‘I don’t think I went into it with the
 Emerging writers/established publishers 27
expectation that I would get published—but of course we were all massively
hopeful’; ‘even though in the Program they say there’s no guarantee, all of us
knew or were well aware of [past writers] published out of the Program’.
Publication is explicitly the coveted outcome of the Program for the writers
who participate. This is not a surprise at all, but it is worth thinking about how
the sheer force of this desire shapes participants’ perspectives. The publishing
industry, from the position of the outsider (unpublished writer), appears tightly
gatekept. The Hachette Australia website, for example, does not offer the
names and contact details of publishers and editors. The information on sub-
missions offers a generic email address and a series of statements about what
not to send: ‘We are not looking for science fiction/fantasy, horror, illustrated
books, cookbooks, poetry, screenplays or academic works, and will not con-
sider any submissions within these genres’; ‘Please do not send hardcopy sub-
missions to our office’ (italics and bold in original). The tone elsewhere on the
submissions page is encouraging but stern. Writers may be forgiven for feeling
that once that gate is opened, publication is the next step. From the outside, the
gatekeepers are all that has been keeping them out. On the inside, though, there
are many more challenges for writers to face.
While one respondent calls for ‘extreme clarity at the outset about the low
chance for publication with Hachette’, they also note that ‘we writers are fickle
people, and probably wouldn’t believe it if we were told’. Other writers echoed
this sentiment: ‘We’re inherently irrational, we’re writing books.’ By pointing
to the ‘inherently irrational’ nature of creative writing, this respondent leans
into a stereotype about creative people as impractical as a justification for being
resistant to seeing reality. This putative lack of rationality results in an ‘unfor-
tunate clash between starry-eyed individuals who have no idea of what the
industry is really about and the pragmatic approach of business’. Even being
aware of this clash does not help manage expectations:

I remember, they even gave us a stern talking to in the beginning, this is the
reality. But no one’s listening. Because the moment you get that phone call,
that’s all you’re hearing—you got selected. So I don’t know how you’d
counteract that starry-eyed, tunnel vision, because you’re dealing with
people’s hopes and dreams and a lack of understanding about how the
industry really works …

The divide between amateur and professional, where romantic ideals (‘hopes
and dreams’) reside on one side and reality (‘how the industry really works’) are
on the other, is blamed for the persistence of the ‘starry-eyed’ perspective. It is
also explicitly seen as a block to teaching writers to keep their expectations
sensible. This is the negative version of the transition between innocence and
experience we discussed above, where the ostensible artistic temperament must
make its peace with the practicalities of the marketplace. As one writer said,
‘You put your heart and soul into your writing, but it is a business and that’s
good to remember.’
28 Kim Wilkins, Helen Marshall & Marina Tulic
That transition from the innocence of the amateur to the experience of the
professional also prompts a common lapse into cynicism for writers on the
Program. One participant saw that learning about ‘cynical side of publishing’
was a key outcome, though they note this lesson was not delivered explicitly
but available ‘just by observing the people that were there’, in particular the
way that some writers believed they were excluded from a perceived inner
circle. Another told us the Program made them feel ‘quite dejected about the
publishing industry’. Cynicism was more than once linked with what one
respondent called ‘Writer feelings’:

despondency, a sense of failure, self-criticism, feeling ‘left out of the party’,

even envy—are normal and far more common among writers than feelings
of accomplishment, satisfaction, or success. Counselling new writers that
they will experience these feelings (and more), that the feelings are normal,
and providing perhaps some ways to deal with them might be helpful.

Echoing these suggestions, another respondent suggested the retreat include a

‘down-to-earth day, sort of like, these are the realities—and the publishers,
there were days when they weren’t there, so that could be on a day they’re not
there’. This writer rightly points out that dealing with the group expression of
feelings of dissatisfaction is probably not the publisher’s remit.
Some of the cynicism arises from a sense that industry professionals are
unwilling to be specific and honest about how difficult the industry is: ‘It is an
absolute cut-throat business and writers are dispensable and treated poorly.
The pay compared with the hours required is ridiculously low. It would have
been good to know this from the outset.’ Such information was seen as more
useful than ‘blowing the smoke up everyone’s arses during the four days where
you think you’re going to make it’. One participant expressed particular frus-
tration about the real meaning of the advice ‘don’t give up your day job’:

I have honest conversations with people outside the field about what earn-
ings are actually like but I don’t have those conversations with my actual
writer friends, because it’s just not something that people like to talk about
it … Like you don’t have any idea—you ‘don’t earn much’, that can mean
$2,000, that can mean $45,000. Like, ‘Be specific.’

According to this participant, the simple addition to the Program of communicating

the average author salary might have given her a more realistic picture of her future
potential. The average annual income for a writer in Australia was $12,900 in 2018
(Zwar, Throsby, and Longden 2), but publishers (and agents and writers) are likely
to know many people who earn far less and some who earn far, far more. Pub-
lishers especially deal with high-earning authors all the time, as they are the indus-
try’s bread and butter. Although bestsellers are rare, they objectively do happen.
The truth is that knowing the average income is not all that useful in deciding how
much time and energy to invest in writing as a career; nor can knowing one or two
 Emerging writers/established publishers 29
or even ten authors’ incomes. Writing careers do not proceed the way other careers
do, with reliable milestones and increments set down along the way.
The evidence would suggest that publishing professionals could ameliorate
some of this cynicism with better communication post-Program. The phase
where writers prepared their revised manuscript and then resubmitted to
Hachette became a sticking point for many, as writers’ expectations and the
busy and practical nature of the publishing industry clashed:

We had about a month or something to resubmit, and other than sort of

just a rejection email, I think that was all we got. I mean, you know they
don’t have time to go into any great detail. But there was no closure of the
story of why, or what you could’ve done differently.

This sentiment contrasts deeply with the rapturous praise of one-on-one feed-
back received during the retreat, as the gates to the industry seem once again to
close. Publishing timeframes can be notoriously attenuated, and this meant
grindingly long waits for some participants: ‘My manuscript was rejected by
Hachette after 14 months … I think because of the time I waited and the
investment by the publisher, it was my most devastating rejection.’ The long
waits made it difficult for writers to know what to do in the interim:

I have not been informed, in the contracted nine-month ‘waiting’ period, of

the outcome of the review of my re-edited, re-submitted manuscript, and
have been unwilling to send it anywhere else until I hear back from the
Hachette editor/s.

In one case, communication seems to have failed completely: ‘Hachette did not
respond when I submitted the revised manuscript. This felt like a wasted
opportunity for both me and them.’ In these final two cases, the power differ-
ential, amplified by the fact the publishers had returned behind the gate, pre-
vented writers from calling editors and publishers to check on their work.
Waiting for an answer, in one case never getting an answer, restores the writer
to the amateur side of the divide, divested of the temporary power that being
chosen for the Program gave them.
Lack of publication is of course the biggest disappointment for writers in the
Program. When we asked participants what would make the Program better,
one of the most common answers was a version of ‘more genuine publishing
opportunities’. Writers overwhelmingly saw publication as the preferred out-
come of the Program—‘PUBLICATION is the aim’—and wanted opportunities
for ‘gaining a foot in the door’ to publication and ‘other types of writing
opportunities’ that would help them secure their careers in the future. As Fig-
ures 2.1 and 2.2 indicate, while publishing outcomes of the Program have been
good, the unpublished writers remain in the majority.
A possible downside of having the Program associated with a ‘big five’ publisher
such as Hachette, is the definition of publication tends to be circumscribed as
30 Kim Wilkins, Helen Marshall & Marina Tulic
publication with a ‘big five’, or at the very least with an established and traditional
publishing house. The learning goals of the Program are certainly based on this
model and understandably so: it is provided by a traditional publishing house so it
focusses on traditional routes to market. As Laura Dietz tells us, though, ‘the
definition of “published”, and by extension “published author”, is changing’ (Dietz
197). In the twentieth century, before print on demand and Kindle direct, anyone
who published themselves, or set up a small press to handle their or their com-
munity’s writing, was at risk of being viewed as a ‘vanity’ author or press. We can
no longer rely on ‘twentieth-century industry practices to categorise others, and to
define them as “genuine writers” or “pitiable aspirants”—while operating in
twenty-first-century marketplaces and intellectual communities’ (Dietz 197). The
ten-year period over which the Program ran also saw some of the most significant
changes to book publishing since the rise of the mass market in the early eighteenth
century. While these changes, largely driven by digital developments (books in
non-print forms, competing media, mega online booksellers), have made more
traditional routes to publication almost inaccessible, the answer to the publication
question may not be to continue to teach the same thing in a completely changed
market, but to make clear the opportunities that have opened up for authors.
Some participants in the Program show a keen awareness of the non-tradi-
tional publishing route in their responses: ‘When the industry is in flux like this
it also provides many new opportunities for a different kind of publishing’, said
one. Another spoke of genre and how some genres are oriented towards taking
advantage of these changes, suggesting they would like to see a programme that
reflected these changes ‘may be of more benefit to writers in SF or niche genres’.
One respondent had had notable success in self-publishing their work:

In the years that followed this event, I found myself an agent and I had three
novels commercially published. None were successful. I had five others that
went as far as publisher’s acquisition meetings before being rejected. I ended up
feeling I had wasted a great deal of time and effort on publishers. My first
attempt at self-publishing was a Kindle best-seller and a financial success.
These days I have nothing at all to do with publishers … I don’t go to con-
ventions, I don’t submit (even short stories), I don’t have an agent and I don’t
enter my books for awards. I feel liberated from the whole, miserable business.

This writer followed the traditional route, with inconsistent success. They
define their subsequent success in contrast, with no overlap in the worlds at all
(‘nothing to do with’), rejecting traditional publishing and the hoops that must
be jumped through to succeed as ‘miserable business’. In this quote, the power
imbalance is still visible, but only in the rear-view mirror. The author has
stepped outside of that paradigm, and it has worked well for them. Their
experience, however, is not universal nor necessarily easy for self-published
authors; can the Program really afford not to teach this industry knowledge,
though it is questionable whether doing so is a ‘big five’ publisher’s remit, or
even in their best interests?
 Emerging writers/established publishers 31
Conclusion and recommendations
In sum, writers developing their skills and knowledge alongside industry or within
an industry-provided programme can be a valuable contribution to literary culture
if operationalised effectively. The real-world experience of publishers can open
doors for writers, provide expertise to improve their manuscripts for the market-
place, help them form professional communities, and may ultimately lead to pub-
lication. These are far more practical outcomes for writers than, for example, an
MFA, which has different goals. However, the difference of power between emer-
ging writers and established publishers needs to be controlled for. We recommend,
first, that ongoing network opportunities with publishing personnel will be far
more valuable if that contact is normalised. Long silences, or a change of tone from
warm and collegial to terse and professional, are discouraging and many
writers find it difficult to maintain networks if they feel discouraged. We
also recommend utterly transparent communication from publishing person-
nel, and that this communication must remain alert to the lack of power
emerging writers have. We also recommend publishers offer serious pub-
lication options. One respondent talked about a ‘devastating’ rejection after
their MS had gone all the way to acquisitions with positive feedback, only
to be overturned by the Managing Director. If publishers wish to offer such
a programme, and reap the marketing benefits of its visibility in a commu-
nity of readers (as writers usually are), it would be more ethical if there
were at least one publication slot guaranteed. Finally, we recommend such a
programme redefine the term ‘published’, and demonstrate that established
publishers can embrace and recommend other routes to publication, recog-
nising that it all contributes to a stronger literary culture which is better for
all writers and all publishers.

Works cited
Books + Publishing. ‘QWC/Hachette Australia Manuscript Development Program adds YA
and Nonfiction.’ 16 July 2018. www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2018/07/16/
111423/qwc-hachette-australia-manuscript-development-program-adds-ya-and-nonfiction.
Breckenridge, Adam. ‘What’s Right and Wrong with the Workshop: A New Collection
of Essays Examines the Effectiveness of the Creative Writing Workshop.’ Pedagogy,
vol. 11, no. 2, 2011, pp. 425–430.
Cantrell, Mary, Rachel Hall, Anna Leahy, and Audrey Petty. ‘Peas in a Pod: Trajectories
of Educations and Careers.’ In Anna Leahy (ed.), What We Talk about When We
Talk about Creative Writing. Multilingual Matters, 2016.
Chandra, Yanto and Liang Shang. Qualitative Research Using R: A Systemic Approach.
Springer, 2019.
Clark, Michael Dean, Trent Hergenrader, and Joseph Rein. Creative Writing in the
Digital Age: Theory, Practice, and Pedagogy. Bloomsbury, 2015.
Craigo, Karen, and Anna Leahy. ‘Taking the Stage, Stage Fright, Centre Stage: Careers
over Time.’ In Anna Leahy (ed.), What We Talk about When We Talk about Creative
Writing. Multilingual Matters, 2016.
32 Kim Wilkins, Helen Marshall & Marina Tulic
Dietz, Laura. ‘Who are you Calling an Author? Changing Definitions of Career Legitimacy
for Novelists in the Digital Era.’ In Guy Davidson and Nicola Evans (eds), Literary
Careers in the Modern Era. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 196–214.
Hachette Australia. ‘Submissions.’ www.hachette.com.au/submissions. Accessed 29
September 2020.
Harper, Graeme. Changing Creative writing in America: Strengths, Weaknesses, Possi-
bilities. De Gruyter, 2017.
Hewings, Ann, Lynda Prescott, and Philip Seargeant. Futures for English Studies:
Teaching Language, Literature and Creative Writing in Higher Education. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016.
Peary, Alexandria, and Tom C. Hunley. Creative Writing Pedagogies for the Twenty-
First Century. Southern Illinois University Press, 2015.
Roe, Sue. ‘Introducing Masterclasses.’ In Dianne Donnelly (ed.), Does the Writing
Workshop Still Work? Multilingual Matters, 2010. 194–205.
Tang, Jackie. ‘The Prize is Right: Authors on Winning an Unpublished Manuscript Prize.’
Books + Publishing. 10 April 2019. www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2019/04/
10/130066/the-prize-is-right-authors-on-winning-an-unpublished-manuscript-prize.
Wilkins, Kim, Beth Driscoll and Lisa Fletcher. Genre Worlds: Popular Fiction and 21st-
Century Book Culture. University of Massachusetts Press, in press.
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No. 3: Authors’ Income.’ In The Australian Book Industry: Authors, Publishers and
Readers in a Time of Change. Department of Economics, Macquarie University, 2015.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Werk reich. Bis auf die Vergiftung und einige Flagellationsszenen
enthält „Aline et Valcour“ keine Schilderungen von Grausamkeiten.
[587]

Quérard meint, dass der Autor als Valcour sich selbst geschildert
habe und bisweilen dort seine eigene Geschichte erzähle.[588]
Die „Crimes de l’Amour ou le Délice des passions; Nouvelles
héroiques et tragiques, précédé d’une Idée sur les Romans“ Paris
1800, sind eine Sammlung romantischer Erzählungen wie z. B.
„Juliette et Raunai“, „Clarisse“, „Laurence et Antonio“, „Eugène de
Franval“ u. s. w., in denen der Kampf zwischen Laster und Tugend
geschildert wird. Gewöhnlich aber siegt die Tugend. Der Marquis de
Sade handelt über diese Sammlung in seiner polemischen Schrift
gegen Villeterque.[589]
Als Vorrede zu den „Crimes de l’Amour“ schrieb Sade die „Idée
sur les Romans“, eine nicht ungeschickte Uebersicht über die
Romanschriftstellerei des 18. Jahrhunderts, eingeleitet durch eine
historische Skizze der Entwickelung des Romans, den er als
„Gemälde der Sitten des Jahrhunderts“ definiert, das in gewissem
Sinne die Geschichte ersetzen müsse. Nur ein Menschenkenner
kann einen guten Roman schreiben. Diese Menschenkenntnis
erwirbt man durch Unglück oder Reisen. Am Schlusse weist er die
Vorwürfe, die man ihm über die cynische Ausdrucksweise in „Aline et
Valcour“ gemacht hat, als ungerechtfertigt zurück. Man muss das
Laster zeigen, damit es verabscheut werde. Die gefährlichsten
Werke sind die, welche es verschönern und in glänzenden Farben
schildern. Nein, es muss in seiner ganzen Nacktheit vor Augen
stehen, damit es in seinem wahren Wesen erkannt und gemieden
werde.
Endlich erwähnen wir noch das Pamphlet, welches Sade die
Ungnade Napoléon’s zuzog. „Zoloé et ses deux acolytes“ erschien
1800 in Paris. Zoloé ist Josephine de Beauharnais, die Gattin
Bonaparte’s. Sie wird als eine lascive, geldgierige Amerikanerin
geschildert. Ihre Freundin Laureda (Madame Tallien), eine Spanierin,
ist „ganz Feuer und ganz Liebe“, sehr reich und kann daher alle ihre
perversen Gelüste befriedigen. Sie und Volsange (Mad. Visconti)
nehmen mit Zoloé an den Orgien mit ausschweifenden Wüstlingen
Teil. Unter den letzteren erkennt man Bonaparte in dem Baron
d’Orsec und Barras in dem Vicomte de Sabar. Ein Wort allein würde
genügt haben, wie Cabanès sagt, um den Verfasser zu enthüllen.
Das ist das Wort „Tugend“ (Les malheurs de la vertu). Er erklärt in
„Zoloé“: „Qu’on se rappelle que nous parlons en historien. Ce n’est
pas notre faute si nos tableaux sont chargés des couleurs de
l’immoralité, de la perfidie et de l’intrigue. Nous avons peint les
hommes d’un siècle qui n’est plus. Puisse celui-ce en produire de
meilleurs et prêter à nos pinceaux les charmes de la vertu!“
Von den Komödien des Marquis de Sade sind nur „Oxtiern ou les
Malheurs du libertinage“ Versailles 1800, in der die Wonne des
Verbrechens gerühmt wird, und „Julia, ou le Mariage sans femme“
(Manuscript), eine Verherrlichung der Paederastie, erwähnenswert.
 7. Charakter der Werke des Marquis de Sade.
Von den berüchtigten Hauptwerken des Marquis de Sade gilt,
was Macaulay von den „Denkwürdigkeiten“ des Dr. Burney sagt. Es
ist kein Vergnügen, sie zu lesen, sondern eine Aufgabe. Wer sich
überzeugen will, eine wie trostlose geistige und körperliche Oede die
ausschliessliche Beschäftigung mit dem rein Geschlechtlichen im
Menschen hervorbringt, der lese die Werke des Marquis de Sade.
Man wird dies aus der blossen Analyse, die wir von „Justine“ und
„Juliette“ gegeben haben, entnehmen können. Und dann hat Sade
das gethan, was Fritz Friedmann in seiner lesenswerten Studie über
„Verbrechen und Krankheit im Roman und auf der Bühne“ als eine
„litterarische Sünde“ bezeichnet[590]: er hat das kalte und nackte
Verbrechen zum Ausgangs- und Kernpunkt der Handlung gemacht!
Diese Verbindung des Geschlechtlichen mit Verbrechen und
destruktiven Vorgängen aller Art muss um so furchtbarer wirken, als
sie durch eine Einbildungskraft ohnegleichen tausendfach variirt
wird. Schon Janin hat erkannt, dass de Sade die „unermüdlichste
Einbildungskraft besass, die vielleicht jemals die Welt in Schrecken
gesetzt hat.“[591] So allein konnte ein pornographisches Riesenwerk
von zehn Bänden entstehen, das „durch den blossen Umfang und
das Maass der damit geleisteten geistigen und rein mechanischen
Arbeit unwillkürlich imponierend wirkt“[592]. Diese enorme
Einbildungskraft spricht sich nach Eulenburg ferner aus in dem
„bizarren Entwurf dieser ungeheuerlichen, langgedehnten,
vielgliedrigen Komposition und seiner bis ins Einzelne gehenden
Ausgestaltung mit all ihren fast unentwirrbaren Fäden, mit der
Unzahl der nacheinander auftretenden Personen, mit der sehr
raffiniert durchgeführten allmählichen Steigerung und mit der fast nie
versagenden Treue der Erinnerung und Rückbeziehung!“ Dazu
kommt der Grundton der Sade’schen Werke, den Juliette als
„corruption réfléchie“ (Juliette IV, 87) bezeichnet, die endlosen,
immer wiederkehrenden, immer dasselbe wiederholenden
philosophischen Discussionen und Dialoge.
 Endlich, um das abschreckende Bild zu vollenden, die wahrhaft
ungeheuerlichen Behauptungen und Uebertreibungen, stupide
Hyperbeln einer ausschweifenden Phantasie. Minski trinkt 60
Flaschen Wein auf einmal (Juliette III, 332); der Karmelitermönch
Claude hat drei Testikel (Juliette III, 77); im „Theater der
Grausamkeiten“ zu Neapel werden 1176 Menschen auf ein Mal
getötet (Juliette VI, 22–26) u. s. w. u. s. w. Nicht selten sind auch,
wie sich bei einem solchen Graphomanen erwarten lässt, grobe
chronologische und geographische Irrtümer. So lässt er Moses die
Geschichte Loths während der Gefangenschaft der Juden zu
Babylon schreiben (Philosophie dans le Boudoir I, 195) und Pompeji
und Herculanum in Griechenland liegen (ib. 196), u. a. m.[593]
Mögen also auch die Werke des Marquis de Sade in
kulturhistorischer und allgemein menschlicher Beziehung sehr
wichtig und lehrreich sein, wie wir glauben, so wirkt entschieden ihre
äussere Form abstossend. Die Geistesöde und sinnlosen
Tautologien in den Hauptschriften müssen auf ein schwaches
Gehirn, welches sich nicht zu kulturhistorischer Betrachtung und
wissenschaftlicher Analyse erheben kann, eine verderbliche Wirkung
ausüben, wie schon Janin erkannt hat, wenn er in beredten Worten
diese Wirkung an einem Beispiel veranschaulicht. Weniger
gefährlich sind die den Werken beigegebenen obscönen Bilder.
Nach Renouvier sollen die berühmten Künstler Chéry und Carrée die
Zeichnungen zu diesem „Werke eines Maniakus geliefert haben, das
die Zeit der Freiheit beschmutzt hat“.[594] Wir haben die
Originalzeichnungen, welche noch in dem Besitze eines Pariser
Bibliophilen existieren sollen,[595] nicht gesehen, und können also
nicht beurteilen, ob diese den Angaben Renouviers entsprechen.
Nach den der „Justine et Juliette“ beigegebenen 104 Stichen können
wir nur dem Urteil beistimmen, welches der geistreiche Eulenburg
über diese Bilder gefällt hat: „Ganz abgesehen von der
Schauerlichkeit des Dargestellten ist der künstlerische Wert dieser
Illustrationen überaus gering. Grobe Fehler der Zeichnung, der
Perspektive, gänzlicher Mangel an Individualisierung, dürftige, fast
ärmliche Erfassung der Szenerie frappieren bei der Mehrzahl der
Bilder, denen man höchstens die kompositionelle Treue in
Anlehnungen an die oft recht komplizierten Gruppenbeschreibungen
des Textes als ein immerhin zweifelhaftes Verdienst zusprechen
könnte. Hier hätte es, wenn schon Derartiges gewagt werden sollte,
der entfesselten und vor nichts zurückschaudernden Phantasie
bedurft, mit der ein Doré die Gestalten von Dantes Inferno
nachzuschaffen gewusst hat.“[596] Etwas besser ausgeführt sind die
zehn Lithographien in der „Philosophie dans le boudoir“ in der uns
vorliegenden Ausgabe von 1805. Uebrigens zeichnen sich auch
andere pornographische Werke des 18. Jahrhunderts durch
schlechte Bilder aus wie z. B. Mirabeau’s „Ma conversion“. Die
Neuzeit leistet dank ihrer verbesserten Technik darin leider mehr.
 8. Die Philosophie des Marquis de Sade.
Der Marquis ist der erste und einzige uns bekannte Philosoph
des Lasters. Vergeblich wird man bei modernen Philosophen wie
Stirner und Nietzsche, die doch auch mit Nachdruck den Egoismus,
die „Herrenmoral“ und andere hyperindividualistische Ideen
predigen, jene — wir möchten es so nennen — „Vergeistigung“ des
nackten, gemeinen, teuflischen Verbrechens finden wie bei Sade.
Noch ein anderer Gesichtspunkt macht die Werke des Marquis
de Sade für den Culturhistoriker, Arzt, Juristen, Nationalökonomen
und Ethiker zu einer wahren Fundgrube des Wissens und der
Erkenntnis. Diese Werke sind vor allem lehrreich dadurch, dass sie
zeigen, was alles im Leben mit dem Geschlechtstriebe
zusammenhängt, der, wie der Marquis de Sade mit unleugbarem
Scharfsinn erklärt hat, fast alle menschlichen Verhältnisse in irgend
einer Weise beeinflusst. Jeder, der die soziologische Bedeutung der
Liebe untersuchen will, muss die Hauptwerke des Marquis de Sade
gelesen haben. Nicht neben dem Hunger, sondern mehr als der
Hunger regiert die Liebe die Welt!
Das an sich grässliche Gemälde der körperlichen
Ausschweifungen in den Romanen des Marquis de Sade soll durch
eine gewisse geistige Tünche verschönert werden, in Gestalt der in
denselben Schriften in grosser Ausführlichkeit entwickelten
philosophischen Betrachtungen. In ihnen offenbart sich ebenfalls
jene Gewohnheit der Franzosen, wie d’Alembert sagt, „die
nichtswürdigsten Dinge ernsthaft zu behandeln.“ Delbène meint:
„Man muss die Erregungen nicht nur empfinden, sondern auch
analysieren. Es ist bisweilen ebenso süss, davon sprechen zu hören
als sie selbst zu geniessen. Und wenn man den Genuss nicht mehr
haben kann, ist es göttlich, über ihn zu sprechen.“ (Juliette I, 105.)
Jérôme sagt, dass die in Sicilien gefeierten Orgien nur durch
philosophische Discussionen unterbrochen wurden, und man nicht
eher neue Grausamkeiten beging, bevor man sie nicht dadurch
„legitimiert“ hatte (Juliette III, 45). Diese theoretischen
Wollustgemälde sind auch nötig zur „Entwickelung der Seele“
(Justine IV, 173).
Gerade diese philosophischen Erörterungen beweisen, dass „wir
es bei de Sade nicht mit dem ersten besten pornographischen Autor
gewöhnlichen Schlages zu thun haben, sondern dass es sich hier
um eine ganz ungewöhnliche und litterarische Erscheinung, um eine
direkt aus dem Urquell des Bösen schöpfende antimoralische Kraft
handelt“[597]. Daher wird ein kurzer Blick auf das philosophische
System des Marquis de Sade gerechtfertigt sein.
Alle Anschauungen Sade’s entspringen, wie dies nicht anders zu
erwarten ist, aus seinem mit Consequenz durchgeführten
Materialismus. Er vergöttert die Natur, die er stets als das gute
Prinzip der ihr feindlichen Tugend gegenüberstellt. Das Weltall wird
durch seine eigene Kraft bewegt, und seine ewigen der Natur
inhaerenten Gesetze genügen, um ohne eine „erste Ursache“ alles,
was wir sehen, hervorzubringen. Die beständige Bewegung der
Materie erklärt alles. Wozu brauchen wir einen Beweger (moteur) für
das, was immer in Bewegung ist? Das Weltall ist eine Versammlung
von verschiedenen Wesen, die wechselseitig und succesive auf
einander wirken und gegenwirken. Nirgends ist eine Grenze.
Ueberall ist ein continuierlicher Uebergang von einem Zustande zu
einem andern in Beziehung auf die Einzelwesen, die nach einander
verschiedene neue Formen annehmen. (Juliette I, 72–73.)
Bewegung und Stoss der materiellen Moleküle erklären alle
körperlichen und geistigen Erscheinungen. Die Seele muss daher
als „aktives“ und als „denkendes“ Prinzip materiell sein. Als aktives
Prinzip ist sie teilbar. Denn „das Herz schlägt noch, nachdem es aus
dem Körper herausgenommen worden ist.“ Alles, was teilbar ist, ist
aber Materie. — Ferner ist das Materie, was Fährlichkeiten unterliegt
(périclite). Der „Geist“ könnte nicht gefährdet sein. Die Seele folgt
aber den Eindrücken des Körpers, ist schwach in der Jugend,
niedergedrückt im Alter, unterliegt also allen Gefahren des Körpers,
ist also = Materie. (Juliette I, 86.) Noch leichter macht sich Bressac
die Beweisführung. Als der Körper der toten Frau des Grafen
Gernande noch eine zuckende Bewegung macht, ruft er entzückt
aus: „Seht Ihr, dass die Materie zu ihrer Bewegung keine Seele
braucht!“ (Justine IV, 40.)
Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele ist daher natürlich eine Chimäre.
Dieses blödsinnige Dogma hat die Menschen zu Narren, Heuchlern,
Bösewichtern gemacht und „schwarzgallige“ Individuen gezüchtet.
Nur dort ist Tugend, wo man die Unsterblichkeit nicht kennt. Juliette
erlaubt sich gegenüber der Delbène die schüchterne Frage, ob der
Gedanke der Unsterblichkeit nicht tröstlich für manche Unglückliche
sei. Delbène antwortet, dass man seine Wünsche nicht zum
Massstabe der Wahrheit nehmen dürfte. „Habe Mut, glaube an das
allgemeine Gesetz, füge Dich mit Resignation in den Gedanken,
dass Du in den Schoss der Natur zurückkehrst, um in anderen
Formen wieder aus ihm hervorzugehen. Ein ewiger Lorbeer wächst
auf dem Grabe Virgil’s, und es ist besser, für immer vernichtet zu
werden, als in der sogenannten Hölle zu brennen“. „Aber“, fragt
Juliette angsterfüllt, „was wird aus mir werden? Diese ewige
Vernichtung erschreckt mich, diese Dunkelheit macht mich
schaudern.“ — „Was warst Du vorher, vor Deiner Geburt? Dasselbe
wirst Du wieder werden. Genossest Du damals? Nein. Aber littest
Du? Nein. Welches Wesen würde nicht alle Genüsse opfern für die
Gewissheit, nie wieder Schmerzen zu leiden!“ (Juliette I, 83–85.)[598]
Uebrigens sind diese Doctrinen von der Seele nicht die einzigen,
die man als Materialist haben kann. Die Durand behauptet z. B.,
dass die Seele ein Feuer sei, das nach dem Tode erlösche und
seine Stoffe in die Weltmaterie übergehen lässt (Juliette III, 247).
Und der Bösewicht Saint-Fond konstruiert die Welt aus „molécules
malfaisantes“, aus „bösen Elementen“. Er sieht daher im Universum
nur die Schlechtigkeit, das Uebel, die Unordnung und das
Verbrechen. Das Böse existierte vor Erschaffung der Welt und wird
nachher existieren. Warum ist das Alter schlechter als die Jugend,
verderbter und entarteter? Weil die bösen Elemente in den Busen
der „molécules malfaisantes“ zurückzukehren sich anschicken.
Saint-Fond glaubt daher, dass das Böse den Menschen nach dem
Tode erwarte, also an eine ewige Hölle. Wer auf der Erde böse
gewesen ist, dem wird die Vereinigung mit dem „Bösen“ leicht
werden. Die Tugendhaften werden grosse Qualen dabei leiden.
Giebt es aber eine Hölle, dann ist der Gedanke an den Himmel nicht
fern. Thatsächlich glaubt Saint-Fond an das Jenseits, an
Belohnungen und Strafen. Um nun zu verhindern, dass seine Opfer
in den Himmel kommen, schliesst er sich mit ihnen auf eine
geheimnisvolle Weise ein und lässt sie mit ihrem Blute auf einem
Stück Papier ihre Seele dem Teufel verschreiben, quam chartam
membro suo ano eorum inserit, wobei die Betreffenden schrecklich
gefoltert werden. (Juliette II, 287, 341.) Clairwil dagegen erklärt die
Hölle für eine Erfindung der Priester. (Juliette II, 292 ff.)
Nach dem Vorgange Holbach’s, der jede religiöse Regung als
geistige Verirrung bezeichnete, wird Sade nicht müde, über die
Begriffe „Gott“ und „Religion“ die Schale seines Spottes
auszugiessen. Sein Atheismus geberdet sich „in konsequenter
Weise zugleich als fanatischer Misotheismus, der von dem
bekannten Worte: ‚si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer‘, nur
Gebrauch zu machen scheint, um diesen eigens dazu erfundenen
Gott blasphemisch zu beschimpfen und zu verhöhnen.“[599] Die Idee
einer solchen Chimäre und die Aufrichtung eines solchen Monstrums
ist das einzige Unrecht, das Delbène den Menschen nicht verzeihen
kann. „Mein Blut kocht bei seinem Namen selbst. Ich glaube um
mich die zitternden Schatten aller Unglücklichen zu sehen, welche
dieser abscheuliche Aberglaube auf der Erde geopfert hat.“ Sie
erinnert an die Unthaten des Klerikalismus und der Inquisition.
Würde sie heute leben, sie würde gewiss die auch im Namen dieses
klerikalen Gottes erfolgte Folterung des unglücklichen Dreyfus nicht
vergessen haben. Delbène unterzieht hierauf die verschiedenen
Gottestheorien einer Kritik. Die Juden sprechen zwar von einem
Gotte, aber sie erklären diesen Begriff nicht und reden nur in
kindlichen Allegorien von ihm. Die Bibel ist von verschiedenen
Menschen und „dummen Charlatans“ lange nach Moses
geschrieben worden. Dieser behauptet, die Gesetze von Gott selbst
empfangen zu haben. Ist diese Vorliebe Gottes für ein kleines
unwissendes Volk nicht lächerlich? Die in der Bibel erzählten
Wunder werden von keinem Historiker berichtet. Und wie hat dieser
Gott die Juden behandelt! Wie hat er sie in alle Welt zerstreut als
das odium generis humani. Bei den Juden darf man Gott nicht
suchen. Da ist er nur ein „fantôme dégoûtant“. Aber vielleicht bei den
Christen? Doch hier findet Delbène noch grössere Absurditäten.
Jesus ist nach ihr entschieden schlauer als Moses. Dieser lässt das
Wunder durch Gott geschehen. Jener macht es selbst! La religion
prouve le prophète, et le prophète la religion.
Da also weder durch das Judentum noch durch das Christentum
die Existenz Gottes bewiesen wird, so müssen wir uns an unsere
eigene Vernunft halten. Diese ist aber bei Mensch und Tier das
Resultat des gröbsten Mechanismus. Erinnert man sich der Dinge
als abwesender Objekte, so ist das Gedächtnis, Erinnerung. Erinnert
man sich ihrer, ohne dass man von ihrer Abwesenheit unterrichtet
ist, also sie als wirklich vorhandene Objekte ansieht, so ist das
Einbildung, und diese Einbildung ist die wahre Ursache aller unserer
Irrtümer. Die Imagination besteht aus „objektiven Ideen“, die uns
nichts Wirkliches anzeigen, und die Erinnerung besteht aus „reellen
Ideen“, die uns wirklich existierende Dinge anzeigen. Gott ist nun
das Produkt der Imagination, der „erschöpften Einbildungskraft“
derer, die zu träge sind, um die lange Reihe der Ursachen und
Wirkungen zu durchdenken und mit einem kühnen Salto mortale zu
einer letzten Ursache greifen, deren Wirkung alle anderen Ursachen
sind, die selbst aber keine Ursache mehr hat. Das ist Gott. Die
„dumme Chimäre“ einer „débile imagination“, die nur eine „idée
objective“ ohne reale Existenz zu denken vermag. Gott ist ein
„Vampyr“, der das Blut der Menschen aussaugt. (Juliette I, 49–62.)
In Wirklichkeit kann Gott gar nicht existieren, da die ewig wirkende
Natur in fortwährender Bewegung sich befindet, sie aber diese Kraft
nur aus sich selber besitzt, nicht aber vom Schöpfer zum Geschenk
erhalten haben kann. Denn dann müsste man an das Vorhandensein
eines trägen Wesens glauben, das, nachdem es seine Arbeit gethan,
in Nichtsthun dahinlebt. Ein solches Wesen wäre aber lächerlich
wegen seiner Ueberflüssigkeit. Denn es hätte nur so lange gewirkt,
bis es erschaffen, dann aber hätte es während Jahrtausenden ruhen
müssen. (Philosophie dans le Boudoir I, 56). Wenn die Materie nach
Begriffen, die uns unbekannt sind, wirkt, wenn die Bewegung der
Materie inhaerent ist, wenn nur sie allein im Stande ist, nach
Massgabe ihrer Kraft zu schaffen, hervorzubringen, zu erhalten und
fortzuführen, wie wir dies in dem unseren Sinnen fassbaren
Universum erblicken, in welchem wir eine Unzahl von Weltkörpern
um und über uns sehen, deren Anblick uns überrascht, deren
gleichmässiger, geregelter Gang uns mit Bewunderung und Staunen
erfüllt, wozu brauchen wir dann noch einen fremden, ausserhalb des
Universums stehenden Faktor, da die bewegende und schaffende
Kraft sich schon in der Natur selbst befindet? Diese Natur ist aber an
und für sich nichts anderes als eine wirkende Materie (ib. I, 58).
Nach allem dem ist dieser Gott ein launenhaftes Wesen, welches
das von ihm geschaffene Geschöpf dem Verderben weiht. Wie
fürchterlich, welch ein Ungeheuer ist ein solcher Gott! Gegen ihn
müssten wir uns empören. Nicht zufrieden mit einer so grossen
Aufgabe, ertränkt er den Menschen, um ihn zu bekehren, er
verbrennt, er verflucht ihn, er ändert nichts daran, dieser hohe Gott,
ja, er duldet ein noch viel mächtigeres Wesen neben sich, indem er
das Reich Satans aufrecht erhält, welcher seinem Erschaffer zu
trotzen vermag, der im Stande ist, die Geschöpfe, die sich Gott
auserkoren, zu verderben und zu verführen. Denn nichts vermag die
Energie Satans über uns zu besiegen. So hat ihn die Religion
geschaffen, samt seinem einzigen Sohne, den er vom Himmel
herabgeschickt und in einen sterblichen weiblichen Leib bannt. Man
wäre geneigt, zu glauben, dieser Sohn Gottes müsste die Erde
inmitten eines Engelchores, beleuchtet von glänzenden Strahlen
betreten. Aber nein, er wird von einer sündhaften Jüdin in einem
Stalle geboren. Wird uns seine ehrenvolle Sendung vor dem ewigen
Tode retten? Folgen wir ihm, sehen wir, was er thut, hören wir, was
er spricht! Welche erhabene Mission vollführt er? Welches
Geheimnis offenbart er uns? Welche Lehre predigt er uns? Durch
welche That lässt er uns seine Grösse erkennen? Wir sehen vor
allem eine unbekannte Kindheit, einige Dienste, die er den jüdischen
Priestern des Tempels von Jerusalem leistet, dann ein 15jähriges
Verschwinden, während welcher Zeit er sich vom alten ägyptischen
Kultus vergiften lässt, den er nach Judäa bringt. Er geht so weit, sich
für einen Sohn Gottes zu erklären, der dem Vater an Macht gleich
ist; er verbindet mit diesem Bündnis die Erschaffung eines dritten
Wesens, des heiligen Geistes, indem er uns glauben machen will,
diese drei Personen seien nur eine. Er sagt, er habe eine
menschliche Form angenommen, um uns zu retten. Der sublime
Geist musste also Materie, Fleisch werden und setzt die einfältige
Welt durch seine Wunder in Erstaunen. Während eines
Abendmahles betrunkener Menschen verwandelt er Wasser in Wein.
Er speist in einer Wüste einige Faseler mit den von ihm verborgen
gehaltenen Lebensmitteln. Einer von seinen Genossen spielt den
Toten, um sich von ihm erwecken zu lassen. Er besteigt in
Gegenwart zweier oder dreier seiner Freunde einen Berg und führt
hier ungeschickte Taschenspielerkunststücke aus, deren sich jetzt
ein Tausendkünstler schämen müsste. Dabei aber verflucht er alle,
die ihm nicht glauben wollen, und verspricht den Gläubigen das
Himmelreich. Er hinterlässt nichts Geschriebenes, spricht sehr wenig
und tut noch weniger. Dennoch bringt er durch seine aufrührerischen
Reden die Behörden auf und wird endlich gekreuzigt. In seinen
letzten Augenblicken verspricht er seinen Gläubigen, zu erscheinen,
so oft sie ihn anrufen, um sich von ihnen — essen zu lassen. Er lässt
sich also hinrichten, ohne dass sein Herr Papa (Monsieur son papa),
dieser erhabene Gott, auch nur das Geringste thäte, um ihn von dem
schimpflichen Tode zu retten. Seine Anhänger versammeln sich jetzt
und sagen, die Menschheit sei verloren, wenn sie dieselbe durch
einen auffallenden Handstreich nicht retteten. Lasst uns die
Grabwächter einschläfern, stehlen wir den Leichnam, verkünden wir
seine Auferstehung! Dies ist ein sicheres Mittel, um an dieses
Wunder glauben zu machen; es soll uns dazu helfen, die neue Lehre
zu verbreiten. Der Streich gelingt. Alle Einfältigen, die Weiber und
Kinder faseln von einem geschehenen Wunder und dennoch will in
dieser mit dem Blute Gottes getränkten Stadt niemand an diesen
Gott glauben. Nicht ein Mensch lässt sich bekehren. Man
veröffentlicht das Leben Jesu. Dieser schale Roman findet
Menschen, die ihn für Wahrheit halten. Seine Apostel legen ihrem
selbsterschaffenen Erlöser Worte in den Mund, an die er niemals
gedacht hat. Einige überspannte Maximen werden zur Basis ihrer
Moral gemacht, und da man dies alles Bettlern verkündet, so wird
die Liebe des Nächsten und Wohlthätigkeit zur ersten Tugend
erhoben. Verschiedene bizarre Ceremonien werden unter der
Benennung „Sakramente“ eingeführt, unter welchen die unsinnigste
die ist, dass ein sündenbelasteter Priester mittelst einiger Worte,
eines Galimathias, ein Stück Brod in den Leib Jesu verwandelt.
(Philosophie dans le Boudoir I, 60–64.) — Man darf sich nicht
wundern, wenn nach diesen Anschauungen der Marquis de Sade oft
die Heiligenschändung für ein Pflichtgebot erklärt und in scharfen
Ausdrücken gegen Reliquien, Heiligenbilder, Crucifixe u. s. w. wettert
und z. B. Dolmancé sagen lässt, dass es sein grösstes Vergnügen
sei, Gott zu beschimpfen, gegen dieses Phantom unflätige Worte
auszustossen. Dieser möchte gern eine Art ausfindig machen, um
diese dégoûtante chimère noch mehr zu insultieren, und ist wie
Moberti böse darüber, dass es gar keinen Gott giebt, so dass er in
solchen Augenblicken seine Existenz herbeiwünscht (Philosophie
dans le Boudoir I, 125–126).
Von diesen theoretischen Maximen gelangt der Marquis de Sade
zur Begründung einer praktischen Lebensphilosophie, eben der
„Philosophie des Lasters.“
Um den Triumph des Lasters in der menschlichen Gesellschaft
zu verwirklichen, muss eine zweckentsprechende Paedagogik
gehandhabt werden. Der Marquis de Sade hat richtig erkannt, dass
die Jugend verderben gleichbedeutend ist mit der Untergrabung aller
Sittlichkeit überhaupt. Diese Jugend, von der Alexander von
Humboldt in seinen unvergleichlichen Briefen an den König Friedrich
Wilhelm IV. sagt, dass sie das „unzerstörbare uralte sich immer
erneuernde Institut der Menschheit“ sei[600], die muss man nach
Sade für sich gewinnen. „C’est dans la jeunesse qu’il faut s’occuper
de détruire avec énergie les préjugés inculqués dès l’enfance.“
(Juliette IV 134.) So hat denn Sade in der „Philosophie dans le
Boudoir“ gewissermassen einen Leitfaden der Erziehung zum Laster
nach dem Vorbilde von Mirabeau’s „Education de Laure“ geschaffen,
in dem er seine theoretischen Grundsätze entwickelt und ihre
praktische Anwendung in der Verführung und Demoralisierung eines
jungen Mädchens zeigt. — Die Erziehung muss alle unsinnigen
Religionslehren verbannen, durch welche die „jungen Organe“ der
Kinder nur ermüdet werden und an deren Stelle den Unterricht in
den „sozialen Grundsätzen“ einführen. Auch sollen sie in den schwer
zu lösenden Fragen der Naturkunde unterrichtet werden. Wenn es
aber Jemand versuchen sollte, religiösen Firlefanz einschmuggeln
zu wollen, so soll er als ein Verbrecher behandelt werden. (Phil.
dans le Boud. II, 62 ff.) Sade hat richtig erkannt, dass die
Gewohnheit in der Erziehung alles macht. Daher soll auch das
Laster dem jugendlichen Menschen zu einer Gewohnheit gemacht
werden. Denn diese hebt alle lästigen Gewissensbisse auf. „Also sei
so oft als möglich lasterhaft! Dann wird das Laster allmählich zu
einem wollüstigen Kitzel, den man nicht mehr entbehren kann. Das
Laster muss eine Tugend werden! Und die Tugend ein Laster! Dann
wird sich ein neues Weltall vor Deinen Blicken aufthun, ein
verzehrendes und wollüstiges Feuer wird Deine Nerven
durchglühen; es wird die ‚elektrische Flüssigkeit‘ entflammen, in
welcher das Prinzip des Lebens sich befindet. Jeden Tag entwirfst
Du neue ruchlose Pläne und siehst in allen Wesen die Opfer Deiner
perversen Gelüste. So gelangst Du auf einem mit Blumen
bekränzten Wege zu den letzten Excessen der Unnatur. Nie darfst
Du auf diesem Wege Halt machen, zögern und zurückweichen, weil
Dir sonst der höchste Genuss für immer verloren geht. Vor allem
nimm Dich vor der Religion in Acht, deren gefährliche
Einflüsterungen Dich vom guten Wege abhalten, die der Hydra
gleicht, deren Kopfe wiederwachsen, so oft man sie abschlägt.“
Diese Worte ruft Delbène der 14jährigen Juliette zu. (Juliette I, 27–
30.) Diese selbst wiederum erzieht später die Tochter Saint-Fond’s,
ihre eigene Tochter und Fräulein Fontanges in ähnlichen
Grundsätzen, deren verderbliche Wirkungen in der bereits oben
erwähnten Statistik des Grafen Belmor zur Anschauung gebracht
werden.
So wird das Laster planmässig in alle sozialen Verhältnisse
eingeführt, von denen wir nur die wichtigsten hervorheben.
Liebe und Ehe sind für Sade chimärische Begriffe. Mit einer Art
von jesuitischer Casuistik unterscheidet die Duvergier zwei Arten der
Liebe, die moralische und die physische. Eine Frau kann moralisch
ihren Geliebten oder Gatten anbeten und physisch und temporär
denjenigen lieben, der ihr den Hof macht. Zudem hat die Frau von
Temperament stets mehrere Liebhaber nötig. (Juliette I, 268.)
Delbène, diese grosse Paedagogin des Lasters, monologisiert lange
für die Nutzlosigkeit der Moral für junge Mädchen und Frauen. Sie
fragt gleich im Anfang erstaunt: Ist ein weibliches Wesen besser
oder schlechter, wenn sie einen gewissen Körperteil mehr oder
weniger „ouverte“ hat? Nach ihr müssen die Sitten das individuelle
Glück verbürgen. Sonst sind sie wertlos. Man darf also ein Mädchen
nicht zwingen, die Jungfrauschaft zu bewahren, wenn es glücklich ist
und danach brennt, dieselbe zu verlieren. Je mehr ein Mädchen sich
hingiebt, um so liebenswerter ist es, um so mehr Menschen macht
es glücklich. Daher höre man auf, ein entjungfertes Mädchen zu
missachten.[601] (Jul. I, 108.) Was die Ehe betrifft, so handelt es sich
nicht um die Frage, ob der Ehebruch ein Verbrechen in den Augen
des Lappen ist, der ihn erlaubt, oder des Franzosen, der ihn
verbietet, sondern ob die Menschheit und die Natur durch diese
Handlung beleidigt werden. Der Coitus ist notwendig wie Essen und
Trinken, die Keuschheit ist nur eine „conventionelle Mode“, deren
erster Ursprung nur ein „raffinement du libertinage“ war. Jetzt ist sie
nur eine Tugend der „Dummen und Enthusiasten“. Sie schadet der
Gesundheit, da sie wichtige Secrete zurückhält.[602] Der
gemeinschaftliche Besitz der Frauen ist das einzig wahre
Naturgesetz, nicht die Monogamie, die Polyandrie und die
Polygamie. Die freie und schrankenlose Vereinigung und Trennung
der beiden Geschlechter entspricht allein den natürlichen
Verhältnissen. Und da auch die Ehre ein ganz subjektiver Begriff ist,
der nicht von Andern abhängt, so kann der Ehebruch der Gattin die
Ehre des Gatten in keiner Weise tangieren. Delbène erteilt daher
den Frauen mit gutem Gewissen Ratschläge, wie sie ihre Männer
am besten betrügen. (Jul. I, 109–131.)
Man kann sich denken, welche Stellung nach diesen Maximen
die Prostitution in der Gesellschaft einnimmt. Nur ein Weib, welches
genossen und Männer mit ihren Umarmungen beglückt hat, lebt in
der Erinnerung der Menschen. Man hat Lucretia sehr bald
vergessen, während man sich Theodoras und Messalina’s erinnert,
die in tausend und abertausend Gedichten besungen werden.
Weshalb sollten die Weiber den blumenbestreuten Weg nicht lieber
betreten, der ihnen noch nach dem Grabe einen Cultus zusichert,
anstatt sich dem verachtenden Lächeln der Aufgeklärten
auszusetzen, welches ihnen durch ihre Askese zu Teil werden
würde? (Phil. dans le Boud. I, 80.) Die Frau sei wie die Hündin und
die Wölfin, die allen angehören (ib. I, 76). So erscheint die Ehe
selbst als ein Vergehen.[603]
 Sehr merkwürdig sind bei Sade die vielfachen Anklänge an die
Ideen eines Malthus. Die heute ja zu einer brennenden Frage
gewordene Entvölkerung Frankreichs ist keine neue Erscheinung.
Nach einem Bericht, den wir der „Vossischen Zeitung“ vom 11. Juli
1899 entnehmen, veröffentlichte Professor Rossignol in Bordeaux
vor kurzem das im Jahre 1767 herausgekommene Werk des Abbé
Joubert „Die Entvölkerung und die Mittel ihr abzuhelfen“. Es geht
daraus hervor, dass fast im ganzen vorigen Jahrhundert diese Frage
die Geister beschäftigte. Schon 1700 bis 1715 wurde eine
thatsächliche Verminderung der Bevölkerung festgestellt. Das
Parlament von Dijon hatte 1764, das Parlament von Bordeaux 1765
auf die Gefahren der Entvölkerung hingewiesen. Der Abbé Joubert
gab 1767 als Ursachen der Entvölkerung an: Sittenlosigkeit,
Verwendung bezahlter Ammen, schlechte gesundheitliche
Beschaffenheit der Häuser und Strassen; Missbrauch geistiger
Getränke, Steuerveranlagung. Von den wohlhabenden Klassen sagt
er: „Um einen reichen Erben zu lassen, um einen zügellosen
Aufwand fortzusetzen, ist man taub für den Schrei der Natur und
zieht vor, die Zahl der Kinder nicht zu vermehren“. Der gute Abbé
betont besonders die tollen Ansprüche vieler Frauen, deren
schlechte Erziehung und Verschwendungssucht die Ehescheu so
vieler Männer erklären.
Auch bei Sade sind hauptsächlich Frauen die Vertreterinnen des
Malthusianismus. Delbène meint, dass die Natur sich wenig um die
Fortpflanzung der Geschöpfe kümmere, und das Aufhören aller
Zeugung würde sie nicht betrüben. Nur unser Stolz glaubt an die
Notwendigkeit und Nützlichkeit der Fortpflanzung, während die Natur
gleichgültig Tausende von Wesen vernichtet (Juliette I, 118).
Dolmancé behauptet sogar, dass dem Zwecke des menschlichen
Lebens die Vermehrung seiner Rasse sehr fern liegt. Es sei beinahe
zum Verwundern, dass sie von Einzelnen geduldet werde. Wie hätte
die Natur dem Menschen ein Gesetz aufbinden können, welches sie
ihrer Allmacht beraubt? Wäre es nicht vernunftgemässer, wenige
Menschen ewig jung bleiben und ewig leben zu sehen, als zu altern
und zu sterben. Die Fortpflanzung der Menschheit ist ein
„schwaches Ersatzmittel“ dafür. Es wäre sogar „schmeichelhaft“ für
die ursprüngliche Absicht der Natur, wenn das Menschengeschlecht
ausstürbe. Nur die Verminderung der Bevölkerung kann die
Uebervölkerung und alle Uebel, die damit verbunden sind, hindern.
Die Kriege, Seuchen, Hungersnöte[604], Mordthaten, Schiffbrüche,
Explosionen u. s. w. bewirken positiv die Verminderung der
Menschenrasse, während jene Handlung, die ein blödsinniger Jude
als ein solches Verbrechen bezeichnet, dass um seinetwillen eine
ganze Stadt durch himmlisches Feuer zu Grunde gegangen ist, nicht
nur kein Verbrechen, sondern lobenswert ist; denn sie verbindet zwei
nützliche Dinge, sie schafft Vergnügen und hindert die Vermehrung
der Menschenrasse. (Phil. dans le Boud. I, 100–101.) Daher ist eine
der Hauptsünden aller Regierungen die Vermehrung der
Bevölkerung, die ohnehin nicht den Reichtum des Staates bildet, da
sie alsbald in höherem Grade wachsen wird als die Existenzmittel.
Seht auf Frankreich und Ihr werdet erkennen, was daraus resultiert.
Die viel weiseren Chinesen haben seit jeher Mittel gegen einen
solchen Ueberfluss an Bevölkerung getroffen, indem sie Findel- und
Armenhäuser unterdrückten und Bettler ohne Almosen liessen (ibid.
S. 69). Wenn Delbène bemerkt, dass Frankreich’s allzugrosse
Bevölkerung zu einer künstlichen Beschränkung der Kinderzahl
zwinge und die überzähligen getötet werden müssten, die
gleichgeschlechtliche Liebe zu begünstigen sei (Juliette I, 124), so
bezieht sich diese vorübergehende Zunahme der Bevölkerung nach
dem oben genannten Werke von Rossignol auf das letzte Jahrzehnt
vor der Revolution. Madame Saint-Ange empfiehlt (Phil. dans le
Boud. I, 99) ähnlich wie unsere modernen Malthusianer, die längst
über Malthus’ späte Heiraten und „moral restraint“ sich
hinweggesetzt haben, die bekannten Praeventivmittel (Condome,
éponges etc....)[605] — Der entschlossenste Malthusianer ist Saint-
Fond. Er behauptet, dass Frankreich „einen kräftigen Aderlass nötig
habe.“ Die Künstler und Philosophen müssen vertrieben werden, die
Hospitäler und Wohlthätigkeitsanstalten müssen zerstört werden,
und ein Krieg, sowie eine künstlich zu veranstaltende Hungersnot
müssen das Uebrige thun. Auf diese Weise will er zwei Drittel der
Bevölkerung beseitigen. (Juliette III, 126, 261.) Ein derartiger
Versuch wird von der Borghese in Rom ausgeführt. Es werden 37
Hospitäler verbrannt, in denen mehr als 20000 Menschen
umkommen! (Jul. IV, 258.) In der „Justine“ entwickelt der Bischof ein
vollkommenes System des praktischen Malthusianismus. Erstens
muss der Kindermord nicht nur gestattet, sondern sogar befohlen
werden. Zweitens müssen Regierungskommissare jährliche
Rundreisen bei allen Bauern machen und alle überflüssigen, die
zulässige Zahl überschreitenden Familienglieder aus dem Wege
räumen. Drittens die durch die Revolution gewonnene Freiheit muss
dem Volke wieder genommen werden; es muss wieder unters Joch.
Viertens totale Unterdrückung aller öffentlichen Almosen und
Wohlthätigkeiten. Fünftens Ehrung der Coelibatäre, Paederasten,
Tribaden, Masturbanten, kurz aller geschworenen Feinde der
Fortpflanzung. Auch der Mörder muss belohnt werden! Sechstens
einfache Wegnahme aller Lebensmittel. (Justine IV, 280–293.)
Der berühmte „Essay on the principle of population“ von Th. R.
Malthus erschien zum ersten Male 1798 in London. Der Marquis de
Sade, der gleich Malthus die Gefahren der Uebervölkerung schildert,
kann also als ein Vorläufer desselben gelten. Indessen haben schon
die französischen Physiokraten wie Quesnay in seinen „Maximes
générales“ und Mirabeau in der „Philosophie rurale“ und im „Ami des
hommes“ sich mit den Problemen der Populationistik beschäftigt und
ähnliche Ideen wie Malthus entwickelt,[606] wenn diesem auch das
grosse Verdienst gebührt, in einer Spezialarbeit über die Theorie der
Bevölkerungslehre diese zuerst formuliert zu haben und ein Werk zu
schaffen, das „in den Mittelpunkt der Nationalökonomik
hinableuchtete, ja ihre Untiefen erst aufgedeckt hat.“[607] Jedenfalls
hat auch der Marquis de Sade dieser wichtigen Frage ein lebhaftes
Interesse entgegengebracht. Dass er nicht blos Personen
geschildert hat, die Praeventiv- und sogar positiv destruktiven
Massregeln in der Populationistik das Wort reden, beweist Zamé in
„Aline et Valcour“, der den Incest und die Paederastie verbietet, die
Klöster aufhebt, indem er die Nonne mit dem Paederasten
vergleicht, die beide „frustrent la société“. Auch sorgt er für Findel-
und Waisenhäuser und unterdrückt den sich breitmachenden
Egoismus.[608]
Seine Theorien des Verbrechens, welche mit den
malthusianischen Ideen aufs engste zusammenhängen, hat der
Marquis de Sade an verschiedenen Stellen seiner Hauptwerke
entwickelt, am ausführlichsten aber in der „Philosophie dans le
Boudoir“, wo er Dolmancé dieselben aus einer im Palais Royal
gekauften Broschüre vorlesen lässt. In „Justine“ erklärt Bressac das
Verbrechen überhaupt für eine Chimäre. Denn ein Mord verändert
nur die Form der Materie, vernichtet diese letztere aber nicht. Nichts
geht verloren in der Natur. Auch sind ja alle Handlungen von der
Natur eingegeben und daher keine Sünde. (Justine I, 209 ff.) —
Noch anders begründet Delbène die Notwendigkeit des
Verbrechens. Die Natur hat die Menschen verschieden schön und
stark u. s. w. gemacht. Dabei will sie auch verschiedene Schicksale
derselben, und es wird von ihr bestimmt, dass die Einen glücklich
werden, die Anderen unglücklich. Letztere sollen von den
Glücklichen gequält und gefoltert werden. Das Verbrechen liegt also
im „Plane der Natur“ und ist ihr so nötig wie Krieg, Pest und
Hungersnot. (Juliette I, 176.) Noirceuil findet das ganze Geheimnis
der Civilisation darin, dass die Schurken und Schlauen sich
bereichern, die Dummen unterdrückt werden. Der Schwache ist von
Natur schwach und dem Starken auf Gnade und Ungnade
preisgegeben. Man handelt also gegen die Natur, wenn man als
Starker dem Schwachen hilft, statt ihn zu quälen und zu vernichten
(Juliette I, 311–312).
In der „Philosophie dans le Boudoir“ (II, S. 77 ff.) werden die
Verbrechen mit dem „flambeau de la philosophie“ analysiert. Sie
können im allgemeinen auf vier verschiedene Hauptverbrechen
zurückgeführt werden, auf die Verleumdung, den Diebstahl, die
Sittlichkeitsverbrechen und den Mord.
Die Verleumdung trifft entweder einen schlechten oder einen
tugendhaften Menschen. Im ersten Falle liegt nicht viel daran, ob
man über ihn etwas mehr oder weniger Schlimmes sagt. Einem
tugendhaften Menschen hingegen schadet sie nicht, und das Gift
des Verleumders wird auf ihn selbst zurückfallen. Die Verleumdung
dient sogar als ein läuterndes und rechtfertigendes Mittel. Denn
durch sie wird die Tugend erst ins rechte Licht gesetzt. Dem
Verleumdeten muss nämlich daran gelegen sein, die Verleumdung
zu widerlegen, und seine tugendhaften Handlungen werden dann
weltbekannt. Ein Verleumder ist also nicht gefährlich im sozialen
Leben. Denn er dient als Mittel, um sowohl die Laster der schlechten
Menschen als auch die Tugenden der guten ans Licht zu fördern,
darf somit nicht bestraft werden. (Phil. dans le Boud. II, 78–81.)
Der Diebstahl war zu allen Zeiten erlaubt und wurde sogar
belohnt, z. B. in Sparta. Andere Völker haben ihn als eine
kriegerische Tugend betrachtet. Es ist gewiss, dass er Mut, Stärke
und Geschicklichkeit erheischt, also für eine Republik sehr
notwendige Tugenden. Es hat sogar Völker gegeben, wo der
Bestohlene bestraft wurde, weil er sein Eigentum nicht wohl
verwahrte. (!!) Es ist ungerecht, den Besitz durch ein Gesetz zu
sanctionieren, da hierdurch allen Verbrechern die Thüren geöffnet
werden, welche den Menschen dazu verleiten, sich diesen Besitz zu
sichern.[609] Viel vernünftiger wäre es, den Bestohlenen zu züchtigen
als den Dieb. (Phil. dans le Boud. II, 81–84.) Nach Dorval, diesem
grossen Diebe und Theoretiker seines Berufes, ist die Macht die
erste Ursache des Diebstahls. Der Mächtige bestiehlt den
Schwächeren. So will es die Natur. Die Gesetze gegen den
Diebstahl sind ungültiges Menschenwerk. Man stiehlt jetzt
„juridiquement“. Die Justiz stiehlt, indem sie sich ihre
Rechtsprechung bezahlen lässt, die eigentlich umsonst dargeboten
werden sollte. Der Priester stiehlt, indem er sich für seine
Vermittelung zwischen Gott und Mensch bezahlen lässt. Der
Kaufmann stiehlt, indem er Ware weit über den reellen Wert
verkauft. Die Souveräne stehlen durch die Auferlegung von Steuern.
Dann giebt Dorval eine Geschichte des Diebstahls bei den
verschiedenen Völkern und schliesst mit der Erklärung, dass gegen
Ende der Regierung Ludwig’s XIV. das Volk 750 Millionen Steuern
jährlich bezahlte, wovon nur 250 Millionen in die Staatskasse
gelangten. Folglich sind 500 Millionen gestohlen worden! (Juliette I,
203–222.)
Alcide Bonneau macht darauf aufmerksam, dass Proudhon in
seinem berühmten Buche „La Propriété, c’est le vol“ fast genau
dieselben Ansichten über den Diebstahl, wie Dorval bei Sade,
entwickelt. Proudhon zählt sogar 15 Arten des „juristischen“
Diebstahls auf.[610] Im 18. Jahrhundert waren diese Ideen häufig, wie
Roscher ausführlich darlegt.[611]