queerliblib

[queerliblib]

incredible news: this is actually one of the few books that we’re able to get an unlimited-user license on. so literally hundreds of you could read it at once, and there will never be a hold line*

psst. you. yeah. i mean you. you're gonna get a libby account. you're gonna make a library card at the @queerliblib. you're gonna go to search and look up "Manfred Macmillan" by Jirí Karásek ze Lvovic. you're gonna read it. do it.

[queerliblib]

q: is it possible to donate money so that it goes specifically to the library and not the merch shop? I love this library but I honestly don't care a lot about t shirts haha

yes! all of the money that is donated goes to the library 📚 specifically, it goes to:

operating costs

books!!! (the lions share of $$ goes here, both new titles & more copies of popular ones)

to support growth/new projects etc

The only way your money would go toward the shop is if you bought a t-shirt or mug or hat from it! Then, the cost of the materials/labor go to worx (our union print shop), and a small profit margin comes to us - which goes directly back into our above budget!

if you are donating from any of the links on our website or socials it always goes directly to the library.

tl:dr, as long as you don’t buy a shirt, 0% of donated money will go to shirts, 100% of money goes to library

[queerliblib]

Do you know of any books like "Gwen and Art are not in love"? I read it a few months ago and I'm dying for more like it

yes! we have two of Lex Croucher’s other books.

one YA: Not For the Faint of Heart (sapphic Robin Hood)

and one adult: Infamous (sapphic regency rom com; part of a series but can be read as a standalone)

other historical YA books with similar rom com vibes include:

I Shall Never Fall in Love by Hari Conner (graphic novel)

Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh by Rachael Lippincott

the remixed classics YA series might also be up your alley! here are two to start with: Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa (Pride and Prejudice retelling) Self-Made Boys by Anna-Marie McLemore (Great Gatsby retelling)

finally, here are two adult historical romance titles with cozy vibes. note, they are both in a series but can be read as standalones.

All the Painted Stars by @a-kind-of-merry-war (medieval setting)

A Shore Thing by Joanna Lowell (Victorian setting)

thanks for writing in!

[queerliblib]

^^^^^^^

(one note on our memberships: you don’t need to have another existing library card in libby! It works even if we’re your only one!)

Hnngh. The Audible "hack" is making the rounds again, with people claiming you can use your Audible credit to listen to a book and then return it "for free." While I am the first among many to say "fuck Amazon and we should gullotine Jeff Bezos," I need you all to know it's not Amazon refunding you.

It's the authors.

They take that out of our royalties. And that's after they take 80% of our royalties on sales we do make.

(Note: Also, do not assume that your credit is worth the price listing that Amazon shows. Amazon does not pay us the cost of the listing. ((WHICH THEY PICK, we cannot set our own prices on audiobooks and then that forces us to use the Amazon price for the rest of the market!!)) What we get is 20% of the credit's value, so my book might appear on Audible for $20-30. However, if you received an Amazon credit for one of those $4.99 deals, I'd get 20% of $4.99. Yes, it's fucked, it's all fucked. Yes, other audio retailers do the exact same thing. This is one of the reasons authors don't make half as much money as people think they do.)

This became such a big issue that they had to make it impossible to return books after a certain point without talking to a customer service representative, because people were using Kindle/Audible and Amazon's return policy "like a library," and some authors (myself included) were getting royalty checks that showed negative income.

At this point, I don't even know if the Audible "hack" still works (Amazon has made changes to protect authors from this kind of thing at a glacial pace), but I need you to know it's not Amazon that's refunding you. This isn't a fun little "fuck Amazon" thing. The way Amazon has it set up, it's directly fucking the authors over.

So, yeah. Obviously, if you download something and can't get into it, or if something pops up on the author's side that makes you not want to support them anymore, yeah, process that return. Yeet the bitch. But please don't use it "like a library."

It's really harrowing to see your predicted income based on sales and then find out you're getting one-tenth of that because of refunds. And it's not even because people didn't like your book. They're just using the wrong place like a library and fucking over your algorithm as well, because once you get too many returns, you stop getting promoted.

Try using a library. You can access places like @queerliblib for FREE provided you have a US library account that you've hooked up to Libby. It's a little bit of work, but once you've got a card number, you're golden.

Just, y'know, throwing it out there because I don't think people realize this is how it works. You're not taking something back to Walmart, and Walmart is eating the refund before dumping the item in the garbage. Amazon takes the refund, turns to the author, and takes it off our plates.

Note: this does not affect Kindle Unlimited. Flip through the end pages to give the author maximum pages read, and then return that bad boy so the author can get paid. But also, please, maybe think about switching to a Kobo+ account instead. It offers the same subscription-based membership without demanding exclusivity, so authors aren't locked into just Amazon the way they are with KU. (Royalty rates are roughly the same, but it's a better deal in terms of allowing broader market access.)

This has been a rambling and exhausted PSA from your local peddler of weres.

[queerliblib]

i would like a shirt in white. i have dandruff :(

we’ll keep that in mind next time we update the shop!

we love our shop (worker-owned! union!) but we do have to sell a certain # of each item before we add more, so it’s not something we can do too frequently. sadly a new color, even with the same design, still counts as a new item

[queerliblib]

Hey QLL! 💜✨

We've got an exciting update: We've put together our Fundraiser Team Picks booklist! For every $300 that these teams raised for QLL, they got to select a book to add to the collection, and now they're available for everyone! 

We had a total of 50 teams formed during our Annual Pride Fundraiser this past June, and of those, 34 raised over $300 to meet the book selection threshold. The top five teams were Breq and the Imperial Radish (5 books), Spite a republican fund (4 books), Desert Dragon Hearts (4 books), Cats 4 Queers (3 books), and Rainbow Readers (3 books).  We added a total of 47 brand new titles to the collection, along with some additional copies of popular favorites. Check out the list in Libby to see what QLL patrons added!

Thank you so much to everyone who donated to our fundraiser, especially our teams and team leaders. We're so happy and excited to continue this project. We couldn't do it without you!

Gay books 4 ever,

<3 the team at QLL

[queerliblib]

would it be frowned upon to get a bunch of my gay friends to sign up for qll cards so we can all request a book together 🤔 i think all of them should have a qll card regardless, but i don't want to be gaming the system or seen as spammy! it's a book that's a few years old now so i worry that my requests are just lost in the sea at all the local libraries i have cards at 😭 but it's by a queer author so you might be interested! i put in a request form a while ago but no luck yet

hi! we love the idea of you having basically a sign-my-friends-up-for-qll-party no matter the reason!

we can see overall # of notify me tags, and knowing how many people are interested in reading something does inform purchasing decisions. However, while we can add lots of requests to our wishlists it still may take quite a while to actually purchase something, even when it’s on our radar, because there are so many (!!!) titles we want to buy and only so much money each month to buy them with

[queerliblib]

we looooove some queer poetry, you can browse our collection here!

someone please recommend me some good poetry books

[queerliblib]

😂 pure wonderful coincidence

is the @queerliblib team just going through my specific 'notify me' tag in libby and adding every title, what kind of amazing gay literary christmas is this

[queerliblib]

we rotate lists in & out every month - so, while all of these books are still in our collection, we’re highlighting different areas in August like our list on Immigrant, Refugee, & First Gen experiences as well as Sports Gays!

we can only have a limited number of lists up at a time, so you will see changes regularly

Hi! First of all, thanks so much for reigniting my love of reading. Secondly, do you have any recs for disability pride month?

hello! that’s the best kind of feedback <3

you know we do!! we’ve just posted three lists to the home page of our libby which will be up all month highlighting:

Nonfiction for Disability Pride

Kids & YA Fiction for Disability Pride &

Adult Fiction for Disability Pride

a few of our favorites from those lists include, How to Know When We Will Die by Johanna Hedva (nonfic), Hunger Pangs by @thebibliosphere (adult fic), So Lucky by Nicola Griffith (adult fic), Neuroqueer Heresies by Nick Walker (nonfic), & Time and Time Again by Chatham Greenfield (YA)

[queerliblib]

book recs with closeted gay lovers in a homophobic or abusive family?

here are two adult recs:

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

A Forbidden Rumspringa by Keira Andrews

one YA rec we currently have in the collection: Northranger by Rey Terciero (graphic novel) and one YA rec we don't currently have in the collection: Milo and Marcos at the End of the World by Kevin Christopher Snipes

thanks for writing in!

[queerliblib]

Do you have any recs for lesbian space pirates ? The more genderqueer the better !!! (Thank you for all you do <3)

yes! here are two currently in our collection:

The Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard

Redsight by Meredith Mooring

and here are two we don’t currently have:

Barbary Station by R.E. Stearns

Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear

thanks for writing in!

[queerliblib]

in case you hadn’t seen yet…

did you know we added hundreds of books IN SPANISH to our collection?!?!

check ‘em out now!!

[queerliblib]

are you guys ever looking for volunteers? and if so, what would be the scope of that? i live in australia so possibly not as feasible as if i were in the US, but i've got 3.5 years experience working in public libraries (and another 1.5 years experience in a retail bookstore if that's relevant, as well as other jobs). i haven't had a lot to do with managing or maintaining our digital collections but my workplace would be cooperative if i asked to upskill in that area.

Hi! Thanks so much for your interest! We’re not actively bringing on more volunteers at the moment but when we do we'll be putting a call out which will go out in our newsletter. We will specify what kind of experience we’re looking for in those calls!

Unfortunately (but also incredibly?) our library is only available in the (whole, entire?!?!?!?) US right now, but if we do ever expand internationally we promise to let y’all know every step of the way.

[queerliblib]

Hi there! Thank you all so, SO much for the incredible work that you too! I've been subscribed for the better part of a year and am so happy this library exists.

A question, though - I'm not sure how it works with publishers since I think they're the ones who set the copy limits, but is the QLL able to acquire more digital copies of books for Libby? Since QLL has taken off so much, many of the books I've been interested in have several months' wait, sometimes with 50+ people in line for a hold on a single book with only 1-2 copies! I'm happy to receive them at all in due time, but was wondering if there's any way that we, the patrons/subscribers, can help gain access to more books?

Hi! thank you! okay so I’m going to get a little into the weeds on this one, but first & most importantly - we can & we are! We budget thousands toward more copies every month (alongside the rest of our spending for new books) to try to reduce those hold times

you are correct that the publishers set what digital licenses are available - there are a few different kinds. For example, for some books we’re able to buy one copy & keep it forever! Sometimes we buy one copy and it expires after 24months, or after a certain number of checkouts and we’d have to re-purchase it, and sometimes we can buy 100 copies that can be read all at once. Not all of these licenses are available for all books. We’re trying to make smart & sustainable choices, balancing what licenses give us better value long-term and what ways we can reduce hold times fastest.

because we don’t have a physical space, and we’re a volunteer-led team, the majority of our money is able to go directly into the collection, including toward buying more copies.

the absolute best way folks can help us grow our capacity to buy more copies of books, is to set up reoccurring donations. The amount of money we raise each month is the basis for our monthly budget and directly impacts how much we can put toward those extra copies. Even if you are stretched for cash (we get it, it is rough out there), tell your friends, your family, a great aunt who has money to burn, ex-lovers, and frenemies - reoccurring donations are a great way to make a big impact.

[queerliblib]

gotta add this one we just bought: Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan

Anyone know any good books centered on a trans woman who is either het or has interest in men that is acted on or otherwise relevant? Doesn't need to be a romance story.

It feels like every good transfem story I've encountered for awhile has been lesbian and tbh I kinda want a change of pace.

[queerliblib]

we were super excited to get it! (and add it to this curated list)

Hey, I've heard of this book! Thanks, @queerliblib!