Dear authors: other people writing on "your" topic are under no obligation to read, use, or cite your work just because it exists

I know how hard it is to make a name for oneself as an author, let alone a living. Yes, and: territorialism hurts your prospects *and* other authors' and weakens the entire industry. Stop. STOP.

I almost regret texting Kent 5 minutes ago to tell him I had newsletter-topic writers’ block. I asked him if he’d seen any minor publishing scandals or Twitter discourses in need of a hot take this week.

Damn it: he immediately called me with a perfect one—one that just so happens to be an example of a phenomenon that drives me bananas and has needlessly traumatized several of my clients in the past. And it’s the end of the day on Friday. Which means I have rock-bottom blood sugar and an entire week’s worth of accumulated, completely unrelated rancor to channel into this situation.

But first:

The situation: a précis

Last year, an author named Sheila Liming published a book called Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time. She published this with Melville House, a tony independent publisher known for commercial, deeply intellectual books that appeal primarily to coastal literati—I mean, that and tiny advances. (Mind you, some of these tiny advances swiftly turn into gigundo royalties for sleeper-hit authors such as Jenny Odell, whose How to Do Nothing was theirs.)

As part of her publication rollout, Liming or Melville House placed a serial excerpt of her book in The Atlantic. It ran on December 31, 2022 and was called “Partying Feels Different Now.” Like most serial excerpts, it included the title and cover art of her book as a small sidebar in the middle of the text.

Two days ago, a reporter for The Atlantic named Derek Thompson published an article called “Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out.” This piece didn’t cite Liming’s work; it also didn’t plagiarize Liming’s work. There are no indications whatsoever that Thompson was aware Liming’s work even existed when he wrote the piece.

This piece made Liming mad.

The people: some disclosures

I don’t know Liming at all. I haven’t read Hanging Out. What I’m about to do is more just project all over her—a projection of my own industry experience combined with the contents of her Twitter bio and dozen or so most recent Tweets.

I sort of know Thompson. He was a client at the literary agency where I worked prior to founding Neon. He wasn’t my client, though, and while my interactions with him over the years have been uniformly lovely, they have also been nowhere near numerous or deep enough to tip the scales of my sympathies here.

And now: my hot take

Look. I get Liming’s frustration. It sucks to feel like you’ve had a great insight, then watch other people run past you with a less-developed version of the same or similar insight, getting more money, credit, or attention for less work. Especially if the people running past you happen to be of a type from whom you’ve experienced similar frustrations in the past.

Seriously: I know firsthand how much it sucks. I know it so hard that KENT AND I LITERALLY FOUNDED A COMPANY DEDICATED TO COUNTERACTING THAT SPECIFIC PHENOMENON IN PUBLISHING. Neon’s mission is to help early adopters, trailblazers, visionaries, and complex, nuanced thinkers secure Gladwellian money, credit, and attention for their work, which uniformly tends to be a lot better than Gladwell’s.

Which is precisely why I want to grab Liming by the lapels and scream, OH, FOR FUCK’S SAKE.