The nonprofit behind National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, has announced that it is shuttering. The closure follows a period of turbulence which included disputes over the organization’s stance on AI and its content moderation, as well as what NaNoWriMo described in an announcement as financial challenges.
NaNoWriMo was launched by Chris Baty in 1999 as an online community centered around its flagship annual monthlong novel-writing challenge, in which participants attempted to write 50,000 in 30 days. It continued to grow year over year—at its height, hundreds of thousands of writers around the globe participated in the challenge, facilitated by scores of volunteers who oversaw online forums and local gatherings—and became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2005.
By the mid 2010s, NaNoWriMo had grown into a thriving writing community—and something of a publishing pipeline for aspiring authors. In 2017, then St. Martin’s Press editor Laura Appreson, told PW that the challenge had “been wonderful for the publishing industry,” citing three St. Martin’s novels that had begun as NaNoWriMo projects. Since its founding, many hundreds of traditionally published novels originated with the challenge.
In more recent years, however, the organization courted controversy. It made headlines last fall after releasing a statement that appeared to endorse the use of generative AI to write novels. Following outcry—which included the resignations of authors Maureen Johnson and Daniel José Older from its board, as well as such authors as Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Erin Morgenstern publicly distancing themselves from the organization—NaNoWriMo amended the statement several times, finally announcing that it was “taking a position of neutrality” toward AI and believed “that its ethical use must be advocated for.”
In a YouTube video announcing the closure, NaNoWriMo interim executive director Kilby Blade cited “a six-year downward trend in participation" as a contributing factor, adding that the move "is a logical outcome of longstanding circumstances, not a salacious tale of scandal.”
