The Rise of the Antibiotic-Resistant Creator: How Based Creators Survive and Thrive Despite Mainstream Gatekeeping

A recent Twitter thread analyzing the 2023 Goodreads Choice Awards highlighted a striking trend: the near-total absence of white male authors across categories. At just 22% of the nominees, white men, who once formed a large segment of published authors, are now a small minority in this prominent awards program.

This is no coincidence. Over the past decade, the publishing industry has pursued a deliberate campaign to prioritize “diversity” in its ranks, which has become a codeword for the exclusion of male authors, particularly white male authors. Even the most highly credentialed mainstream authors have been sidelined by identity politics.

“People underestimate how bad this trend is,” explains author Isaac Young. “The mainstream industry has completely locked out young men, meaning any upcoming talent is denied access to the funding and marketing to take their talents to the next level. You've lost a generation of male authors.”

Fantasy author John A. Douglas, author of The Black Crown, points out the lack of male authors explains why men have turned away from reading.

Others have chimed in with their own analyses of the problem.

The mainstream’s relentless focus on diversity has led to a literary environment where talent and achievement are no longer the measures of success. Instead, authors are judged by their demographic profile and whether their stories align with fashionable ideological trends. This undermines the competitive spirit that drives excellence and limits the range of thought and creativity that can emerge when the field is open to all, regardless of identity.

The irony is stark: in claiming to broaden representation, the industry narrowed the range of voices it celebrates by sidelining authors deemed insufficiently diverse. In doing so, mainstream publishing has alienated large swaths of readers who are left to wonder why their tastes and preferences no longer seem to matter. This is both a problem… and an opportunity.

The Unintended Consequence of Gatekeeping?

The adversarial environment created by mainstream gatekeeping has an unintended consequence: it acts as a crucible for excellence. Much like bacteria exposed to antibiotics, creators who survive and thrive under these difficult conditions are often those with extraordinary talent, relentless perseverance, and an ability to innovate despite gatekeeping. These authors write stories so compelling, so well-crafted, that they cannot be ignored. They persevere despite being seriously handicapped, they serve readers whose tastes and preferences the mainstream ignores, and they employ innovative marketing and promotional techniques to accumulate those readers and fans despite the gatekeepers’ attempts to ignore them.

Mediocrity is not an option for based creators. Rather than relying on advances from publishers to fund their work, based creators bypass the gatekeepers and go over their heads, directly to their fans.

Comics and graphic novels require considerable up-front investment for art and lettering, so it is no surprise that innovative financing arose here first. The modern era of comic crowdfunds was kicked off by the Alt-Hero comic crowdfund which raised nearly $250k in 2017. This record was soon smashed by Ethan van Sciver’s Cyberfrog project which raised over $500k in 2018, and then Eric July raised $2.5M in 2022. These amounts were dwarfed by Brandon Sanderson who raised nearly $42M that same year to fund four novels.

All these successes were not uncontested, however. In 2018, Arkhaven Comic successfully crowdfunded just over $100k for the Alt Hero Q comic, only to have Indiegogo cancel the project after it had successfully funded, in violation of the Indiegogo terms of service. Arkhaven not only launched a stealth, two-day crowdfund a couple months later that recouped the loss, raising $130k, but also pursued a successful arbitration against Indiegogo.

There is a continuing pattern of crowdfunding deplatformings. Just last year, Kickstarter approved a crowdfund campaign for The Wise of Heart, an illustrated courtroom drama of biological science versus transgenderism that brought the Scopes Monkey Trial up to date for the twenty-first century. Kickstarter allowed the campaign to run until it was fully funded and about to close – at $4000 raised toward a $3000 goal – before abruptly changing their minds and cancelling the project for undefined violations of their terms of service.

Promptly re-platformed at FundMyComic, a newly launched independent platform, The Wise of Heart became the first project to raise a five figure sum on the site, a record since shattered by many other successful projects. More recently, Kickstarter has not only banned individual projects, but also based creators.

While some based creators still occasionally use mainstream crowdfund platforms like Indiegogo and Kickstarter for their projects, risking their capricious gatekeeping, FundMyComic is rapidly emerging as the preferred, hassle-free crowdfund venue.

The business model for comics and graphic novels requires mobilizing readers and fans to back the project in advance to pay for the art. Most novelists, however, struggle with a more basic problem: breaking through the Amazon algorithm to reach based readers interested in their based books. That’s where the Based Book Sale comes in.

John Carter writing at Postcards from Barsoom explains:

This is a promotional sale that recurs a few times a year, in which participating authors let their Kindle editions go for a mere $0.99. Obviously, the authors don’t make much money from this. The idea is to get their work into more hands, get reviews onto those Amazon pages, and let the best rise to the top through the social percolation of word of mouth.

With mainstream paths blocked, based creators work together to promote each other’s works to each other’s fans. The sale is an excellent opportunity to check out books without the diversity checklists, woke tropes, and cultural programming of mainstream traditionally published stories. When every book is only $0.99 or free, you can afford to take a chance and check out a new author. With about two hundred offerings, and seventy-five new to the sale, there’s something for everyone. The sale runs through Tuesday, December 3, and you can signup at the sale page to stay in the loop for future sales.

There’s an infrastructure of review sites like Upstream Reviews to keep based readers up-to-date on the latest releases and forgotten classics in science fiction and fantasy.

There’s also, “BasedCon,” a gathering for authors and fans of science fiction and fantasy. Whether you’ve never been to a con before or you’re a frequent con-goer who is tired of woke propaganda, BasedCon is the place for you! The tentative guest list for BasedCon V in September 2025 includes: Mike Baron, Bill Willingham, Blaine Pardoe, Rachel Fulton Brown, Alexander Macris, Travis Corcoran and more.

There’s even a Based SFF Book Club offering “science fiction and fantasy by independent authors who don’t toe the progressive line.”

Based book offerings now run the full gamut from pulp fiction to the highest quality leather-bound classics.

The Future of Culture

Mainstream publishing, once the gatekeeper of culture and ideas, is teetering under the weight of its own inefficiencies, ideological rigidities, and disconnect from audience demand. As it falters, a new breed of independent based creators — unburdened by institutional constraints and in tune with their audiences — stands ready to shape the future of culture through a broad-based and decentralized funding and distribution ecosystem.

Hobbled by ideological conformity, bureaucratic inefficiency, and a disconnect from readers, mainstream publishing survives only on revenue from their backlist and from celebrity authors. Elle Griffin observes:

I think I can sum up what I’ve learned like this: The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Britney Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies).

Based creators are poised to thrive in this challenging media ecosystem. Using alternate platforms, they bypass the gatekeepers, fund their projects, and pool their fanbases to enhance their reach and to connect with new fans and readers. They offer authentic entertainment and uplifting stories to readers tired of propaganda and cultural programming. They work in a decentralized fashion that bypasses gatekeepers and connects directly to fans and readers.

Mainstream publishing’s decline represents the end of an era dominated by top-down cultural control. In its place, a grassroots movement of independent, based creators is rising—innovative, adaptable, and deeply connected to audiences. Based creators are not just surviving; they are thriving, setting the stage for a future where culture is freer, richer, and more reflective of the audience it serves. The collapse of the old system is not a tragedy but a liberation, and the rise of based creators heralds a golden age for storytelling and creativity.

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