Douglas Murray: The big publishers are becoming ‘weird NGOs’

When it comes to publishing, the problem these days is getting your foot through the door in the first place. You can publish Jordan Peterson now despite the controversy surrounding him because he's already broken through. That’s the obvious example. The thing I worry about here is: “How are young people at the very of beginning of their career allowed to say what they think?”

I remember when The Strange Death of Europe came out, I was face to face with a very nice lady at a drinks party who said she was in the publishing industry and working for one of the major publishers. She said she’d said to her boss: “Have you seen how well Douglas Murray’s books are selling?” And he said: “Yes.” She said: “Didn’t I tell you we ought to do something in that area?” The area, I suppose, would have been immigration. And apparently her boss said to her: “We wouldn’t want those readers.” So I said: “You must tell him at his next shareholders meeting that they are not a for-profit organisation, but rather a sort of weird NGO of some kind.”

So the publishing industry – like every industry – is susceptible to this same strange problem of wokeness. I was with an academic recently, who was gay, and had got into terrible trouble because he’d been pro-Brexit. I found myself saying at one point: “Why is it such a terrible sin to be in agreement with the majority of the public?” I don’t want academics to be pro- or anti-

Brexit; I just don’t particularly want this kind of conformity that a vociferous minority seems to want.

One thing we have to think about seriously as a nation in the years ahead is where the talented people go. I spent a certain amount of time in Silicon Valley in recent years researching The Madness of Crowds so this has been on my mind a lot. Would a smart person today go into politics? Would they seek to be an MP? Would they seek to be an academic? Probably not – and that accounts for the impoverished nature of this moment in both politics and education.

My friend Christopher Hitchens used to say that he couldn’t write fiction, and he knew why. He knew people who could – like Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie – it was because they were always interested in music. Well, I enjoy music, and I play the piano every day. Sometimes people try to get me to do fiction. First of all, I don’t think you should force it on anyone. Secondly, my view is that for the last 20 years we live in an age of reflection and that has made fiction feel secondary – it’s rather like trying to write the book of the age in heroic couplets. For example, if you wanted to read about the Vietnam War, for instance, would you do better reading a novel about it or a great book like Nothing and So Be It by Orianna Falacci. I would suggest the latter. There’s this feeling that fiction is not where the action is. But it does feel to me that poetry, on the other hand, always has such a small audience that somehow it never becomes irrelevant.

When prose-writing is exceptionally bad, as with for instance Judith Butler, it can be for one of two reasons. One possibility is that that person simply has nothing to say. But the second thing is rather more alarming – that they know that what they’re writing simply isn’t true. And there’s a lot more of the latter kind of literature around than you might think.

What happens in academia is that impenetrable language is used as a screen. You’re meant to think that if it’s unreadable there must be wisdom there somewhere. That’s why you can’t just critique these books, you also have to offer an alternative reading list. In that sense everything begins with Plato – and also with the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

The publishing industry is crucial to society. It gives us new perspectives, encouraging much-needed understanding of the world around us.

The content being published has the power to change perspectives and narratives in real life. However, what the industry publishes is a reflection on who is purchasing that content.

Currently, the core audience for publishers in the UK is white and middle-class. The whole industry is essentially set up to cater to this one particular audience.

Being mixed-raced means subjects or content in contemporary publishing that relate to my own lived experience feel few and far between.

I have always loved books and stories, finding it easy to be whisked away by dragons or follow heroes into battle. However, it has always felt to me like someone else’s adventure, someone else’s journey. To this day the content I consume, though wonderful, has very little to do with me or the cultures I am familiar with.

When I started studying publishing at university, it was originally because I wanted to be the one to discover stories like those I’d loved before first-hand. However, throughout my studies, it became clear that this lack of diversity in both industry staffing and output was an issue – and not just my issue, but an issue for publishing as a whole. How much of an audience is this current industry reaching? I knew I wanted to make a change for others like me.

When I handed in my dissertation and final major project back in May 2020, despite the global pandemic raging on, I entered the real world with a sense of naivete about how easy finding a job would be. At any given time, it is difficult to get a toe in the door of the publishing industry due to its competitiveness. One role at a Big Five publisher can have over 1,000 applicants. But what made it worse was that during the uncertainty of the pandemic no one was hiring.

I became frantic, spending hours writing and re-writing my CV. Cover letter after cover letter. Adhering to the advice of tutors to just keep on trying… and trying. Tailoring everything for each new role. Endless optimism…only to find hundreds of job rejections in my email.

It is evident that publishing companies have put some useful initiatives in place for potential graduates, however if the industry wants to transform and diversify, it needs to make far greater and more fundamental changes.

Putting more support in place for potential graduate employees is a must.

Having a BAME internship available is all well and good, but when only 13% of the workforce identifies as minority ethnic, this leaves a lot to be desired. The goal should be recruiting in a balanced way from all backgrounds, reflecting the demographics of real-life, to prevent gatekeeping of our published output becoming the preserve of a privileged few.

More needs to be done by the industry once the pandemic is over to ensure that minority groups have a chance to gain employment and in turn make the change needed for a more diverse workforce. It is our job as the young voice driving the next generation to find these solutions and drive for them to be implemented; I have so many ideas and such a thirst to get going –what a difference we can make for our future. I’m excited to see the view from the other side.