2025 and the return to a GOP president, as well as ongoing efforts to ban books by and about LGBTQ+ people across the country, have created a chilling effect in the publishing industry, according to a new report fromThe Hill.Several industry professionals told the outlet that over the past year, more publishers have rejected queer book proposals and manuscripts, while authors have seen a drop in royalties for their queer books. The anti-LGBTQ+ rights fixation on childrens books has made things particularly difficult in childrens book publishing. Related Democrats are taking back school boards as voters tire of Republican culture wars As The Hill notes, PEN America tracked over 10,000 book bans across the country at the height of the book-banning craze which has targeted books by Black authors along with LGBTQ+ titles during the 20232024 school year. During the 20242025 school year, the group identified nearly 7,000 bans across 87 school districts in the U.S.Some authors of banned books have reported spikes in sales in recent years, and at least one bookseller told The Hill that sales of queer novels remain steady. Never Miss a Beat Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights. Subscribe to our Newsletter today But that may not be enough to reassure publishers of childrens and young adult titles. Young adult novelist and LGBTQ Reads creator Dahlia Adler noted that publishers are more likely to invest in books that will not get banned, while Irene Vzquez, an associate editor at independent publisher Levine Querido, explained that childrens and young adult publishers rely on wholesalers that sell books to schools and libraries for the majority of their sales. Those wholesalers, she said, have become more hesitant to purchase LGBTQ+ books.Darius the Great is Not Okay author Adib Khorram blamed book bans for a recent 70 percent drop in his royalty checks, and said he and other queer authors have turned to writing adult fiction because of the fraught climate around LGBTQ+ childrens and YA books. While Khorram said he intends to keep writing queer books for young readers, the current political climate has certainly led to more anxiety about how I will pay my bills. This is the first year in like a decade that Ive had [rejection] responses from editors specifically citing that its difficult to place queer books in stores, and theyre being selective about acquiring queer stories, author and literary agent Rebecca Podos told The Hill.Similarly, Jim McCarthy, vice president at literary agency Dystel, Goderich & Bourret, said that one editor who passed on a project specifically told him that in the face of so many book bans and so much concern about decreasing school library sales of queer content that they were passing.This really feels like its been the first backwards step in terms of publishing, worrying that they cant access enough readers because of sort of broad cultural concerns about queer content, McCarthy said. I cant imagine that five or 10 years ago, I would have received a response like the one I received. Adler told The Hill shes noticed fewer new queer novel announcements in Publishers Weekly and an increase in coded language when it comes to descriptions of Young Adult novels in particular.I think that language is kind of being more intentionally left out to keep it from being a target, she said. I feel like thats kind of my biggest takeaway of this round of the current administration, she continued. [Publishers] are not necessarily not buying [LGBTQ+ books], but theyre not necessarily being loud about the fact that they did buy them, and theyre letting people find out theyre queer in other ways.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.