The Talent Is There. The Audience Is Waiting. The Money Is Idle.

Every few months, a prominent Conservative influencer laments the absence of artists on the Right. The refrain is familiar: Where are the novelists, the filmmakers, the game designers?

There’s no question the capital exists. Yet somehow, it never seems to find the creative class.

Chris Rufo recently floated a version of that argument, suggesting the bottleneck lies not with capital, but with supply and demand. In his telling, even if benefactors opened their wallets, there may not be enough capable creators or committed consumers to justify serious patronage.

That diagnosis sounds plausible from thirty thousand feet. On the ground it folds like, well, Conservative leaders.

Let’s start with publishing. Newpub authors now command a larger share of eBook revenue than their counterparts in legacy houses. Multiple industry reports over the past decade have shown self-published writers collectively earning hundreds of millions annually, in some segments surpassing the Big Five. Many of those authors operate outside institutional pipelines that lean heavily Left.

Nielsen BookScan was wrong after all. Readers did not disappear; they went where they’re valued.

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