The Publishing Ecosystem: a Metaphor for Modern Authors?
- realityskimming
- Sep 15
- 9 min read
Updated: Oct 24
by Geoff Hart
About the Story Thing (2025) - 09
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"About the Story Things" is a thematic series of articles, sponsored by Reality Skimming Press. Pieces will appear every other Monday Jun 2 through to the end of 2025. Query us about contributing at https://facebook.com/relskim or info@realityskimming.com
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“Specialization is for insects.”—Robert Heinlein
Much though I enjoyed Heinlein when I was younger, sometimes he missed the boat in an effort to provoke his readers to think. In our increasingly complex world, it’s no longer possible for everyone to be a Heinleinian “jack of all trades” unless we’re willing to accept the cost—that we thereby become “master of none.” Some authors manage to acquire enough expertise in the specialized skills that make publishing possible to both write stories that keep readers reading and get those stories into the hands of readers. But pace Heinlein, those and other skills increasingly require specialization.
My academic background is in forest ecology, which has a few things to say about the importance of specialists. Years of study have given me an increasingly profound understanding of how an ecosystem’s parts fit together like the components of a complex machine. Recently, I began to understand that publishing is also an ecosystem—a complex entity that unites a diverse community of organisms through many, often enormously complex, relationships. Indeed, the more I study ecology, the less I see a system that is purely “Nature red in tooth and claw”, as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, lamented. Modern publishing more closely resembles the mutualisms (relationships in which both participants benefit) and cooperation that dominate natural ecosystems. The resilience provided by these relationships lets natural ecosystems survive all but the greatest of catastrophes. As a fabulist, I see parallels with the publishing ecosystem.
As authors, how do we fit within that publishing ecosystem? How does that ecosystem function? And how might the strength provided by this ecosystem arm us against the looming catastrophe that is ChatGPT and its descendants? To answer those questions, let’s consider the key roles from the perspective of an ecosystem’s network of relationships.
Authors
Authors are me and thee. We’re the ones who create the stories without which there would be no publishing ecosystem. In a sense, we’re like the plants that capture the energy of sunlight and pass it on to power all other components of the ecosystem. Without us, there would be no stories and thus no publishing ecosystem.
But do we exist solely to feed the other members of the ecosystem? Emphatically not! Members of the publishing ecosystem benefit us the same ways that herbivores benefit plants. For example, herbivores browse plants in ways that encourage the plants to regrow more vigorously—much like what developmental editors do (see below). They often protect us, the way some ant species protect the plants that are their home. And they recycle nutrients that subsequently nourish plants. In real ecosystems, most relationships are contingent, and even nominally negative relationships turn cooperative surprisingly often. For example, Rhizoctonia solani, the organism responsible for black root rot (a fatal plant disease) can also function as a mycorrhizal symbiote that protects its host against other disease organisms and environmental stresses, while improving the host’s uptake of water and nutrients.
There’s a recent concept called the “wood-wide web” that describes how trees and other forest plants work together cooperatively to maintain the ecosystem that sustains them. Though there’s some debate over the strength of these connections, these plants are connected through their roots and mycorrhizal networks, which let them exchange information and resources. They also pick up on signals emitted by other plants. For example, plants being browsed by herbivores release compounds that cause other plants to increase production of anti-browsing chemicals. Successful authors quickly learn to create and exploit the equivalent to remain aware of how their world is changing—in effect, word-wide webs.
Agents
Authors have always competed for the attention of publishers, but our number has increased drastically in recent years, particularly while people were stuck at home during Covid. The problem’s worsened as many would-be writers use tools such as the ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI) software to clog publisher slush piles with droves of cookie-cutter stories. During the past 5+ years, I’ve seen magazines that once replied to submissions within a month delay responses by 3+ months; many don’t even have the resources to notify authors when a manuscript is rejected.
Agents have been the traditional solution, as they take advantage of their industry relationships to slip past the slush pile. Unfortunately, many of the best agents already have full client lists; a colleague recently told me, only partially in jest, that the situation was so bad it would soon be necessary to hire an agent to escape an agent’s slush pile. Agenting is a lot of work, and agents charge accordingly. But without them, we face a difficult task getting noticed by publishers. In ecological terms, agents are like animals that disperse a plant’s seeds so that new plants can spring up elsewhere.
Publishers
Publishers publish what we write—they bring it to the attention of and make it available to readers. But equally importantly, they gather together teams of experts (discussed in the rest of this essay) who transform our words into published fiction. They also define the niches we’ll fill, and provide expertise within those niches. Unsurprisingly, niche is an ecological concept that defines the tendency of plants—or authors—to find a place where their characteristics let them thrive. In that context, publishers function as keystone species or ecosystem engineers: species that provide powerful support for all other species in an ecosystem and that may, in fact, create and then sustain the ecosystem.
Publishers often develop “imprints” that serve specialized submarkets (i.e., niches) that require different expertise to serve. For example, western and romance publishers won’t necessarily have the expertise to properly serve authors who write science fiction and fantasy. Yet fascinating hybrid niches are emerging where two niches collide, such as “space westerns” and “romantasy” (romantic fantasies).
It’s worth noting that distributors (the companies that take the actual product, such as printed books) and deliver it to places of sale (e.g., comic book shops) may also be important for some publishers. That’s particularly true for smaller publishers who lack the staff to handle their own distribution.
Editors
Editors prune and reshape a manuscript so that like a herbivore-browsed plant, it flourishes. When you mention editors, we older authors immediately picture ink-stained wretches who slave over piles of flimsy, poorly typed manuscripts while endeavoring to extract something that resembles a story. But just as some authors specialize in certain genres, editors also have niches, usually with significant overlap:
Acquiring editors evaluate a manuscript’s commercial potential and where it fits within their imprints and overall strategy (e.g., to fill various niches). They’re the ones who decide whether to pitch a story to their manager to persuade the manager to acquire the story.
Developmental editors work with authors to take the initial story and file off the rough edges, while eliminating chunks of text that don’t strongly support the overall story and tweaking characters and plots.
Substantive editors (sometimes called technical editors) are subject-matter experts. They specialize in science, technology, engineering, medicine, martial arts, psychology, and many other fields. They may be experts in specific historical periods. They work with authors to ensure that the story is plausible and doesn’t contain any overt errors that would throw readers out of the story.
Copyeditors revise manuscripts at the paragraph, sentence, and word level to polish the grammar and wording and ensure the author’s meaning is crystal clear. As an editor, I used to refer to myself as a “professional idiot”: the idiot part was my ability to stumble over obstacles that might only slow other readers, but the professional part was that I’m very good at fixing those problems so that nobody else will stumble.
Proofreaders are the thin red line who heroically labor, usually under tight deadlines, to spot any mistakes that made it through all the abovementioned forms of editing.
Terminology footnote: Editor sometimes refers to the publisher, particularly for magazines published by a tiny crew of fanatically dedicated individuals.
Designers
Designers also specialize. Illustrators specialize in creating visually compelling covers that make people stop and pick up a book or magazine or browse a Web site. They may also illustrate a publication’s interior to make it look more interesting by crafting graphical ornaments (whether medieval illuminations or simple drop caps) at the start of chapters or (particularly in older books) full-page drawings that illustrate visually dramatic scenes. Graphic (book) designers are typographic experts who make the story inviting and easy to read, whether in print or converted into electrons. Both designers shape stories into visually attractive objects, much the way natural selection shapes plants to attract herbivores and pollinators.
Marketers
Like the perfumes and spectacular flowers that attract attention to plants, marketers use various tricks to bring your story to the attention of readers. They’re experts in the marketplaces where readers hang out, including both brick-and-mortar stores and online forums and markets. To succeed, they must profoundly understand the cultures of these communities so they can choose approaches that will be appropriate and well-received while avoiding inappropriate tactics (such as spamming the audience) that can end up with an author or marketer excluded from the community.
Readers
Readers, of course, are why we put ourselves through the difficult process of nurturing an idea until we capture it in words. The writer–reader relationship is the most obvious mutualism in the publishing ecosystem: we feed readers with stories; in return, they feed us with money that pays our bills so we can produce more stories to feed them so they can provide more money to feed us. And so on.
What about self-publishing?
In ecology, “pioneer” species arrive at a site first, colonize it, and make themselves at home. Like pioneer species, self-publishers create their own niche within the publishing ecosystem, whether by developing some level of expertise in each role I’ve described or hiring that expertise. The latter is more common. For example, few authors are also gifted artists. Phil Foglio (https://www.studiofoglio.com/) is one of the few who successfully wears both author and artist hats. But even he has other people doing his marketing, production, distribution, and so on. Those self-publishers who lack the time or skill to wear multiple hats themselves must hire the necessary skills, just like the big publishers do. And many authors, particularly in media such as graphic novels, enter into mutualistic relationships with artists to combine their different strengths.
What about our AI future?
Like all metaphors, what I’ve written is a simplification of a much more complex reality. And it should not be extended beyond its role, which is to provide a perspective you might not have considered before. Do not, for example, infer that just as herbivores return nutrients to the ecosystem in their feces, publishers and editors shit on us.
AI is creating enormous pressure on writers. The best software makes it difficult for even skilled readers to detect stories that were not written or subsequently revised by humans. The difficulty will increase. Will this doom us as a profession? My ecosystem metaphor gives me some hope it won’t. AI software is like an invasive organism that attempts to take over an ecosystem by systematically replacing one or more key organisms in that system to create a niche for itself. AI is the purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) or zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) of software: where it successfully invades, it tries to crowd out all competitors.
Solutions such as the CAPTCHA family of software have been developed to let us prove we’re human, but AI quickly learns how to game these and other simplistic systems. We may soon need to resort to tricks like Zoom meetings in which we try to convince a publisher we’re human rather than an increasingly realistic “deep fake”. Will we eventually have to rely on in-person meetings and blood tests to establish our identity as real humans? Will we need to establish the equivalent of the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée system for wines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellation_d%27origine_contr%C3%B4l%C3%A9e), but with the goal being to restrict the word “author” to real humans? That is, will we continue to rely on some form of curation (“gate-keeping”)? This is how traditional publishers extracted the really good stuff from their slush pile, and it’s likely to remain essential in the future.
My ecologist brain tells me we’re not obsolete yet. Ecosystems persist because they nurture, strengthen, and broaden the relationships that hold them together—the relationships I’ve described in this essay. Tellingly, there are many more highly diverse natural ecosystems than low-diversity systems, and the low-diversity systems tend to become more complex and efficient over time. And the complex systems have redundancy and mutually reinforcing links that let them survive shocks. Even if AI software someday succeeds in writing as well as we do, it will be difficult for it to create the same densely connected publishing ecosystem that has evolved for centuries and that remains robust today. The profound human desire to feel like we’re part of a larger and more cohesive system centered around our fellow humans and that shares their values may prove to be our best defense against AI: it will encourage us to work together to preserve what we’ve built.
Geoff Hart
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Geoff Hart is a Canadian freelance writer, editor, and translator with a distinguished career in scientific and technical communication. Since 1987, he has specialized in editing scientific manuscripts, particularly helping non-native English speakers publish their research. He has edited over 6,000 works for peer-reviewed journals and authored a widely respected book on onscreen editing in Microsoft Word.
Hart also works as a French-to-English technical translator and has managed large translation projects. His expertise spans information design, technical writing, book design, and publication. He has contributed to documentation for software and hardware and collaborated with graphic designers on projects ranging from flyers to extensive books. Since 2004, Hart has operated as a full-time independent consultant, serving clients like FERIC, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, and Egawa Language and Scientific Services. His technical expertise includes a wide range of scientific disciplines and software tools.
Hart is also recognized for his contributions to professional organizations, notably the Society for Technical Communication (STC), where he has held leadership roles and received multiple honors, including being named a Fellow in 2006.
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Web: www.geoff-hart.com
Twitter: @diaskeuasis
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