The Catch-22 of Publishing as an Autistic Author

Becoming a published author is hard enough. Doing it as an autistic author is like being told to run a maze blindfolded, while someone keeps shouting, “Make eye contact!”

Publishing claims to love “diverse perspectives,” which sounds great until you realize that they also want them written in the exact same cheerful tone as everybody else. That’s the Catch-22: autistic writers are experts at our own lives, but the industry likes to hand us a neurotypical script and say, “Just read from this.”

The Query Letter Dilemma

A query letter is the written audition every aspiring author has to send to an agent or publisher. In theory, it’s simple: introduce yourself, describe your book, and explain why you’re the perfect person to write it. In practice, it’s like trying to squeeze your entire personality, résumé, and life’s work into a single Tinder profile where the other person only swipes right if you sound witty, confident, and marketable.

For autistic authors, this is where the fun really starts. A query letter demands a “hook,” a synopsis, and a professional-yet-personable bio—all delivered in a very specific, very neurotypical tone. Which means the entire exercise feels less like introducing your book and more like role-playing “bankable extrovert” for an audience of gatekeepers.

So do you write it in the glitzy publishing tone the industry expects and risk sounding like ChatGPT’s favorite nephew? Or do you let your authentic voice shine and risk sounding like, well… you? It’s a lose-lose—unless, of course, you learn how to smuggle your real personality past the velvet ropes.

Marketing: The Joyless Paradox

Even if you land an agent, you then have to market yourself. Online. In public. With hashtags. For most autistic authors, this is roughly as appealing as getting a root canal on live TV.

The expectation is constant “engagement,” which sounds innocent until you realize it means posting selfies with captions like, “Happy Friday, book fam! Here’s a photo of my writing nook!” 

Meanwhile, all I want to post is, “I landed an agent and a publisher without setting myself on fire during the Zoom pitch. Where’s my medal?”

It’s a paradox: the more you market, the less energy you have for writing. The less you market, the less the industry wants to risk autistic and neurodiverse authors.

Authenticity: The Only Weapon That Works

Here’s the upside: readers want authentic voices. They don’t want me to pretend I’m the literary equivalent of a motivational TikTok coach. They want the real stories: the sensory overload, the awkward silences, the accidental truths that make people both laugh and wince.

That’s where autistic authors shine. We notice the oddities that everyone else skips. We make the invisible visible. And yes, sometimes we do it with gallows humor, because if you can’t laugh at the absurdity, you’ll just end up throwing staplers.

Surviving the System (Somewhat)

So what do we do?

1. Find allies — writing groups, autistic author forums, or even that one sympathetic friend who reads your draft and says, “Yeah, you sound insane, but in a good way.”

2. Practice query letters — until you can write one without Googling, “How to not sound like you're defending your thesis on medieval punctuation marks.”

3. Set boundaries — X and Facebook may eat your soul, but you don’t have to feed them three times a day.

4. Celebrate small wins — like writing two sentences without deleting them. Or surviving a bookstore event without pretending to be the cashier.

   
   

Final Thoughts

Publishing wants quirky voices, but only if those quirky voices can also act like extroverted salespeople. That’s the paradox. But we don’t need to become neurotypical to succeed. We just need to keep showing up, telling the truth, and occasionally slipping past the gatekeepers.

Because here’s the thing: our stories matter. And if we’re stubborn enough, and sufficiently caffeinated, we’ll get them out there.