Many LGBTQ+ authors in the U.S. have reported falling royalty payments for titles in the face of ongoing book bans targeting the community. According to political website, The Hill, writers, agents and editors have said that the current political landscape has had a direct impact on the literary market, in particular how LGBTQ+ book are acquired and sold.
Those within the book industry have cited Donald Trump’s return to presidency and the ensuing book bans, many of which target LGBTQ+ authors and titles, as a reason for declining income. Book challenges predominately focus on children’s and young adult titles, creating commercial risk for publishers that rely on schools and libraries to market children’s and YA books.
Figures from PEN America during the 2023-2024 school year, tracked more than 10,000 book bans across the U.S. In the following school year, nearly 7,000 bans were identified across eighty-seven school districts. Many of these titles were from Black, and LGBTQ+ writers.
While some of these banned books did see short-term sales increases, these gains were reportedly not enough to offset the general market loss.
“This is the first year in like a decade that I’ve had [rejection] responses from editors specifically citing that it’s difficult to place queer books in stores, and they’re being selective about acquiring queer stories,” Rebecca Podos, a senior literary agent at Neighborhood Literary and young adult and adult novelist, told The Hill.
“I think queerness in big books is very largely being buried.”
Jim McCarthy, vice president at the literary agency Dystel, Goderich & Bourret, said he also received a rejection for a client’s LGBTQ+ novel: “I did have an editor pass on a project and specifically say that in the face of so many book bans and so much concern about decreasing school library sales of queer content that they were passing on a because they didn’t believe there would be enough of a market for them to have access.”
Amid the reportedly falling acquisition of, and income for LGBTQ+ titles, many writers have had to diversify their writing to continue to make ends meet, including Adib Khorram, the author of ‘Darius the Great is Not Okay’, an award-winning novel with a queer main character. Khorram believes that book bans account for a 70% drop in his twice-a-year royalties’ payment for the novel.
Dahlia Adler, a young adult novelist and the creator of the website LGBTQ Reads explains: “[Publishers] are going to invest in books that are safely going to go on shelves, that are not going to get banned, that are not going to have this kind of controversy.
“I just feel like they’re stepping back.”
Adler also added that when an LGBTQ+ title is acquired by a publisher, the language and marketing surrounding the book, particularly when it comes to YA titles, is subtler.
“I think it’s less explicit, particularly in YA, when a book is queer, in the announcements. I think that language is kind of being more intentionally left out to keep it from being a target.
“I think queerness in big books is very largely being buried by publishers, not necessarily by authors.”
“I feel like that’s kind of my biggest takeaway of this round of the Trump administration. [Publishers] are not necessarily not buying them, but they’re not necessarily being loud about the fact that they did buy them, and they’re letting people find out they’re queer in other ways.”
