I have spoken with authors who were rejected not because their work wouldn't sell but because it WOULD. They were told, "Your (paranormal romance/urban fantasy/cowboy astronaut/etc) subgenre is popular with indies and we don't want to compete with them."
It's like if Blizzard rejected the WoW pitch because "MUDs are already dominating the MMORPG space."
It tells me major publishers have no idea what actually sells copies. They only know how to spam proven authors (King/Patterson/Sanderson) or woke shit, because at least that way when they fail they can blame it on racist whitey.
I have spoken with authors who were rejected not because their work wouldn't sell but because it WOULD. They were told, "Your (paranormal romance/urban fantasy/cowboy astronaut/etc) subgenre is popular with indies and we don't want to compete with them."
It's like if Blizzard rejected the WoW pitch because "MUDs are already dominating the MMORPG space."
It tells me major publishers have no idea what actually sells copies. They only know how to spam proven authors (King/Patterson/Sanderson) or woke shit, because at least that way when they fail they can blame it on racist whitey.
Disney straight up admitted that they've turned down a bunch of amazing scripts because the writers and/or the characters were too white.
I think most of this is ideologically driven, as opposed to being the result of not knowing what consumers want.