Autism can be a huge publishing strength—and challenge

It was 31st January 2022 that I probably should have worked out I was autistic.

My editor had returned a draft with a note asking how a character was feeling while making a decision.This has been an ongoing question of me, across multiple books and genres; with different publishers and editors. And every time I’ve had a note like that, I’ve stared at it, utterly bemused. This time, the note came for a book I loved: the greatest thing I’ve done with my life. I was heavily invested, so I thought, properly, about what she was asking. And I finally realised. So I wrote back: "I really appreciate the bits where you ask what a certain character is feeling. I don’t believe I ever really think like that. I’m very practical — which probably explains my approach to writing and being an author."

That was the point at which I would have understood I was autistic, if I had any idea what autism was. I know now.

I won’t list a bunch of traits but in short, simplistic, terms, autistic people tend to make logical choices and decisions, relying on facts and reason, not emotions. That’s why I didn’t understand why characters would come to emotional conclusions.

[Scottish comedian] Fern Brady changed my life. I’ve never met her but she said a single sentence on a podcast: half a sentence, really. Something about always disrupting group activities while not meaning to. It was the "not meaning to" bit that gripped, because, my God, I’ve disrupted a lot of groups in my time.

And when I fully listened to everything else she was saying, I realised the core parts were also true of me — and always had been. All of it. It blew my mind. Imagine someone you’ve never met changing everything you ever thought to be true — and doing it with half a sentence.

From that beginning, it took me a fair while longer, but I slowly realised my entire bumbling entry into publishing was because I was autistic.

This not-being-literal thing isn’t only a problem for autistics, it’s likely a problem for everyone to some degree

I sold a lot of self-published e-books in the early 2010s, which got plenty of attention. People always wanted to know how I’d done it, and I was never quite sure what to say. I had read a lot growing up, wrote a lot, taught myself some stuff about self-publishing, and then... things took off. That is, technically, what happened. Except the "some stuff" is where things get woolly.

There are so many sites to help authors figure out self-publishing now. Back then, almost none existed. And so I read Amazon’s entire KDP site. All of it. Even the weird terms pages. I compared that to the front-facing sales pages, plus I owned a Kindle, bought e-books, and read them — which let me see how terrible the industry was at formatting files. So I taught myself how to create better mobis and e-pubs, then figured out the importance of categories, keywords, series consistency, a release schedule, blurbs... and a hundred other things I’ve forgotten.

To me, I assumed everyone who wanted to write and publish would have the same "special interest" as me, which was publishing. Now, it’s obvious that nobody’s going to read an entire website, including the T&Cs, then cross-reference the lot.

Over time, the industry — in particular digital publishers — has caught up and vastly surpassed what worked in 2011. But, though those traits were helpful to me 12 years ago, it has caused problems ever since.

I don’t want to bang on about my own autism. Nobody cares, and I’m a white man who doesn’t need a voice. Those voices should be women and minorities, who deserve to be heard. But what I do want to say is that the publishing industry is really hard because people never say what they mean.

This not-being-literal thing isn’t only a problem for autistics, it’s likely a problem for everyone to some degree.

To start, there’s the old shit sandwich. Say something nice but irrelevant, then make your actual point, then finish off with something else vague and complimentary. It took me quite a while of working with a publisher until I spotted it was happening. Is this taught somewhere? As soon as I realised this way of communicating, I couldn’t stop seeing it. I now understand it comes from a point of politeness and kindness but I found it baffling.

Essentially, every author I ever met reckoned they loved their edits. I’d frequently be told it was the best part of publishing and I assumed everyone was lying. For me, it was the worst. It probably still is. I’d have a date in the calendar for edits to arrive and spend every day leading up to it dreading what was to come.

I now see the main issue was that I struggled to read between the lines of what was being asked. With the shit sandwich, I would take those three points as equals, not understanding the foremost thing on which I needed to work was the middle bit. When there were multiple instances in the same edit or email, I’d see everything as having equivalent importance. Instead of having 10 things that needed attention, I’d think there were 30. And I would be SO STRESSED. "Why didn’t they just SAY THAT?" I’d think to myself, eventually. Or maybe whinge to my agent. I whinged to her a lot, often about how I didn’t understand what people were telling me.

A note like, "What is this character thinking?" could not be less helpful. If I knew, it would be in the draft already. This is like asking a dog what he thinks of a government’s economic policy. You’ll get a blank look and there’s a chance someone will shit on the floor. Plus, as I now know, I think literally and logically. I rarely make emotional decisions, and always assumed everyone else was like that. My characters probably do need a bit of emotional heft here and there. These notes are welcome, except something like: "This character probably feels scared. Can you describe that?" is so much more helpful than vague, open questions.

Over a long time, I’ve been able to feed that back to editors, who have always been accommodating.

The other thing is that, because I am direct, honest, and logical, it’s hard to communicate in the opposite direction. If I didn’t like something, I’d simply say I didn’t like it, along with a list of reasons why, plus — in some cases — a longer list of how I’d do it differently. All this makes perfect sense to me, because we all want things to be the best they can be. I thought I was helping! 

Look, you can even tell me my ideas are terrible, along with a list of quantitative or qualitative explanations. I’d be very interested in that list. If your logic and data is better than mine, I’m genuinely delighted and not remotely offended. If the explanation is: "That’s just how we do it", I immediately assume you don’t know why you do it that way, and it’s all a bit of guesswork.

Except, people expect that shit sandwich. And, even though I had figured out that’s how people communicated TO me, I hadn’t worked out that’s what they wanted FROM me. Then my agent would tell me I’d been rude and I couldn’t for the life of me understand what I’d done.

In short, I am dreadful at talking to people in the publishing industry. As I write this, I’ve just had a two-week ping-pong with my current publisher. They’re like, "Can you just sign this off?". And I’m: "Hmm... Why have you chosen that font? Is there any data about sans serif versus serif?".

They are very accommodating but they also know me a bit by now.

All that said, the reason I’m dreadful is because the entire industry is built on people talking to one another, while never quite saying what they mean.

And perhaps that’s fine... and maybe that’s what other authors and agents want. But for an industry that already pushes away non-white, non-middle-class people, it’s one more group left puzzled by it all.