Arts & Entertainment
How a Gen Z Publishing Company Is Creating Space for Diverse Voices
The teenage years are full of firsts.
Perhaps driving for the first time, getting your first paycheck or your first kiss. But publishing your first book isn’t on the list of accomplishments for a lot of teenagers.
At 16 years old, Aiden Branss wrote his first book exploring the year 2020 from a teenager’s point of view. And Branss didn’t stop there — he wrote his friends into the plot by starting his own publishing company.
The leap wasn’t exactly an overnight success.
“In the early beginning, I didn’t have a company or anything, so what I was doing was printing up physical copies of the book myself, just at home, and I was gluing them and stapling them, and I was selling them on Amazon, to people in person, and when I went back to school after the pandemic, 2021, I was a senior, I started selling it to people in school,” said Branss, author and owner of Aiden Branss Books. “To be honest, some people found it divisive and they didn’t really agree with everything I said. There were a lot of positive reactions but a lot of negative reactions.”
“2020! From a Teenager’s POV” was born from a night of racing thoughts and excessive amounts of coffee. Branss’ insomniac state was forged into inspiring literature, so inspiring that his friends felt compelled to tell their own stories.
Ureed Zaidi immigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan when he was just 9 years old, and the experience being equally relatable and unique was enough to compel Branss to include a character dedicated to Zaidi in his book. From there, Zaidi felt motivated to tell his own story, “The Short Kid From Pakistan.”
“Showing Americans from my perspective, how it is for an immigrant to move across the globe and have to learn a brand new language and learn everything new, new mannerism, how you carry yourself, everything,” Zaidi said.
He recalled the process as therapeutic, putting him in a state of peace while simultaneously reminding himself that “everything will be okay.” But that’s not to say the process of creating his first book came without challenges.
“I was definitely scared of writing some stuff down, and then I didn’t add to the book because I was scared,” Zaidi said. “A lot of stuff with my religion I left out because I don’t know how people are gonna react, especially during this time, everyone is so divisive.”
While the two books are not necessarily autobiographical or completely non-fiction, they do draw some deep parallels to the authors’ real life experiences. Along with Zaidi, Branss has a total of six authors in his publishing house and has published 10 books with more to come.
Breaking into the publishing world is no small feat. The industry is known to be competitive, but Branss and his team stay adamant that they have something to offer other companies don’t.
“I think our company really strives off diversity, and that’s super important to give a bunch of marginalized groups a chance to speak up, and you don’t really see that in other young adult books,” Branss said.
Zaidi views Branss’ company as an opportunity to add a new narrative.
“I don’t see that many Pakistani authors, at least from my generation, being published or talked about at all,” Zaidi said. “It’s definitely something I would like to change, and being with Aiden and this company has definitely helped me with that.”
While attending community college, the two continue their passions as writers, with two books coming out later in the year and hopes of taking the company further.
“I just want to keep putting out amazing stories,” Branss said. “I want to keep inspiring people, and I want to keep making an impact, which we’ve already done.”
