#PublishingPaidMe just showed up in my feed & I believe it's important for many reasons. So, I'm in: White straight cis female nonfiction, author of Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. What #publishingpaidme is complicated in my case; full answer & context in thread below (1/n)
Henrietta was a black woman whose cells, codenamed HeLa, were taken by white researchers w/out her consent. Her cells are still alive; she died in '51. HeLa launched a medical revolution & multi-billion$ industry. Her children were also used in research w/o consent (& more) (2/n)
So, when #publishingpaidme I was a white writer trying to publish a book about a Black woman/family who'd been used in $research by white people without benefit, only harm. I was also writing about the history of the v earned mistrust between Black people & science (3/n)
I started working on TILOHL in '99 as a grad student & sold a 75 page book proposal in '01 to W.H. Freeman/Henry Holt. I was an MFA student with just a few clips from alumni magazines. I don't have my original contract here (will update w/it) but I think my advance was $15k (4/n)
There is a lot of #whiteprivlidge in just that version of my #publishingpaidme story; it would have been v different for a Black writer for many reasons. Then ... Several months after signing that contract & getting 1/2 the advance, W.H. Freeman went out of business (5/n)
My editor was fired & Freeman's contracts were absorbed by Times Books. Mine was assigned to an editor (white cis male) who read my proposal/progress materials (incl scenes now in the final book) & told me I had to remove Henrietta & her family from the book entirely (6/n)
He said the Lacks family's story was "melodramatic" & he just wanted to publish a biography of the HeLa cells & the (white) scientists. I refused to remove Henrietta/her family from the story (!!!!!!), which led to a long battle to get my book contract canceled (7/n)
During that time I finished grad school, built my bio, got national clips, became a book reviewer, etc. By 2004 when I was finally able to look for a new publisher in 2004, I'd done years of work on the book but the proposal/story I was trying to sell had not changed at all (8/n)
I'd revised my bio (with an "improved platform"), added a detailed "publicity plan" (including a long list of well known writers who'd agreed to consider blurbing it) & got a new agent. It went to auction & sold that time for $250k (I think, will update if this is wrong) (9/n)
I got dozens of rejection letters in response to my proposal in '99. I'm including a link to excerpts from them here because they're very relevant to the discussion of race & publishing: Every editor who read my proposal was white. (10/n)
There's a long story here about the business of writing, the publishing process & finally getting Immortal Life out to the world in 2010. Happy to tell that in another thread if it's helpful. (11/n)
Another thing then I'll stop: To those who will rightly question the fact that I am a white writer who sold a book about a black family whose legacy involves white people benefitting from their suffering. I'm with you. I think & talk about this often (12/n)
The short answer to that this is why I started henriettalacksfoundation.org and there is more in response to those questions at rebeccaskloot.com/faq (13/n)
OK: HEY, OTHER WHITE WRITERS! ... I pass the #publishingpaidme hashtag to you ... let's keep the information flowing. And now I have to go eat dinner (which I'm v late for). More soon! (14/n)
Thx to @nandi_taylor, just realized I should add this: My #PublishingPaidMe info was for North American rights, which meant I could eventually sell translation rights in >25 countries. Those advances ranged from ~$300 to 50k-ish? (UK) w/most in the 1k-4k range (I think) (15/n)
