Censorship

Are Literary Agents Seeing Changes in Publishing with Increased Book Bans (A Survey): Book Censorship News, March 24, 2023

Kelly Jensen

Editor

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She's the editor/author of (DON'T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.

There are a lot of suspicions that during this era of book bans, we’ll begin to see a different output of material from publishers. They may pull back on queer books and/or books by people of color, those books which approach “sensitive” topics like sex and sexuality, and even graphic novels. Unfortunately, because of how publishing works years in advance, we won’t be able to see how this plays out for another year or two.

But there is another element of the publishing ecosystem worth reaching to see if they have seen changes: literary agents.

For those who are not familiar with what agents do, the short answer is they represent the authors and books and work to sell those books to editors on the behalf of those authors. They are, for lack of a better way to describe it, the intermediaries. As such, they have a lot of insight both into what’s happening to authors and what’s happening in Big Five Publishing.

This week, I’ve put together a survey for literary agents to share what they’re seeing in the world of books with regard to book bans. Any agent is welcome to partake, and they may pass the survey along to colleagues — it is anonymous, with no required number of questions to be answered.

You can access the survey here.

Answers will be collected through the middle of April, with a late-April publication date of the information shared. There is room for including lengthier comments, though they may be edited for clarity or space if shared in the results.

Book Censorship News: March 24, 2023