This papers traces the emergence of the modern Ottoman litterateur during the last decade of the nineteenth century through Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil's 1896 novel Mai ve Siyah (Blue and Black), the story of a young poet whose presence in the field of literature was haunted by a dramatic realization of a double-bind that started to affect those who participated in the world of literary publishing: a promise of extraordinary success and fame, paired with the danger of a great failure. Realization and acceptance of this double-bind constituted a definitive turning point in the emergence of the modern author in Ottoman literature, one that impacted Halit Ziya's late-imperial and early-republican successors. With the increased presence of the publishing house as a venue for the publication of literary texts, an unprecedented realm of possibilities for individual style and artistic self-expression became conceivable, particularly since the figure of the sultan had lost a considerable part of his power as the patron of arts and receiver of poetic praise. This enabled authors to re-conceptualize the working principles of Ottoman Turkish literature in accordance with their current aesthetic sensibilities and the demands of a new body of readership, a product of standardized education policies. The newly emerged freedom had, however, a flip side: Without a hierarchical structure centered around a powerful figure, inter-authorial competition for recognition, prestige and monetary gain became more fierce, bringing along a higher potential for frequent personal attacks and ridicule while, on the other hand, the promise of social mobility through individual hard-work and persistence often paled in the face of financial incapacitation of publishing houses, requiring authors to resort to family funds, or in its absence, to write texts that would sell more but that remained outside the realm of their literary tastes. Mai ve Siyah, as the first wide-reaching fictional account of the modern literary field of Istanbul, is the story of this co-existence of promises and dangers, one that unsurprisingly struck a chord among the fellow authors following its publication.