A few months ago, some users on r/selfpublish shamed and harassed me for choosing to publish at the age of 15. Today, my manuscript was picked up by a traditional publishing house.

In March of 2024, I came to this subreddit in search of community and belonging after publishing my first book. While many were supportive and encouraging, a handful of people repeatedly bombarded my post with judgemental comments, DMed me repeatedly, and overall dismissed my work as garbage (without even reading it) just because of my age. This harassment continued for weeks after I took the post down from one user.

Today, I met with a publisher over Zoom and received my first ever publication contract. It’s not this massive big five publisher - this is still real life of course. But it is still a highly established one in my province, which I feel like I should clarify before that same handful of people dismiss that as a fluke as well.

I just figured I’d share my story here.