#Authors At The Pub

[emeryleewho]

Saw a fun little conversation on Threads but I don't have a Threads account, so I couldn't reply directly, but I sure can talk about it here!

I've been wanting to get into this for awhile, so here we go! First and foremost, I wanna say that "Emmaskies" here is really hitting the nail on the head despite having "no insider info". I don't want this post to be read as me shitting on trad pub editors or authors because that is fundamentally not what's happening.

Second, I want to say that this reply from Aaron Aceves is also spot on:

There are a lot of reviewers who think "I didn't enjoy this" means "no one edited this because if someone edited it, they would have made it something I like". As I talk about nonstop on this account, that is not a legitimate critique. However, as Aaron also mentions, rushed books are a thing that also happens.

As an author with 2 trad pub novels and 2 trad pub anthologies (all with HarperCollins, the 2nd largest trad publisher in the country), let me tell you that if you think books seem less edited lately, you are not making that up! It's true! Obviously, there are still a sizeable number of books that are being edited well, but something I was talking about before is that you can't really know that from picking it up. Unlike where you can generally tell an indie book will be poorly edited if the cover art is unprofessional or there are typoes all over the cover copy, trad is broken up into different departments, so even if editorial was too overworked to get a decent edit letter churned out, that doesn't mean marketing will be weak.

One person said that some publishers put more money into marketing than editorial and that's why this is happening, but I fundamentally disagree because many of these books that are getting rushed out are not getting a whole lot by way of marketing either! And I will say that I think most authors are afraid to admit if their book was rushed out or poorly edited because they don't want to sabotage their books, but guess what? I'm fucking shameless. Café Con Lychee was a rush job! That book was poorly edited! And it shows! Where Meet Cute Diary got 3 drafts from me and my beta readers, another 2 drafts with me and my agent, and then another 2 drafts with me and my editor, Café Con Lychee got a *single* concrete edit round with my editor after I turned in what was essentially a first draft. I had *three weeks* to rewrite the book before we went to copy edits. And the thing is, this wasn't my fault. I knew the book needed more work, but I wasn't allowed more time with it. My editor was so overworked, she was emailing me my edit letter at 1am. The publisher didn't care if the book was good, and then they were upset that its sales weren't as high at MCD's, but bffr. A book that doesn't live up to its potential is not going to sell at the same rate as one that does!

And this may sound like a fluke, but it's not. I'm not naming names because this is a deeply personal thing to share, but I have heard from *many* authors who were not happy with their second books. Not because they didn't love the story but because they felt so rushed either with their initial drafts or their edits that they didn't feel like it lived up to their potential. I also know of authors who demanded extra time because they knew their books weren't there yet only to face big backlash from their publisher or agent.

I literally cannot stress to you enough that publisher's *do not give a fuck* about how good their products are. If they can trick you into buying a poorly edited book with an AI cover that they undercut the author for, that is *better* than wasting time and money paying authors and editors to put together a quality product. And that's before we get into the blatant abuse that happens at these publishers and why there have been mass exoduses from Big 5 publishers lately.

There's also a problem where publishers do not value their experienced staff. They're laying off so many skilled, dedicated, long-term committed editors like their work never meant anything. And as someone who did freelance sensitivity reading for the Big 5, I can tell you that the way they treat freelancers is *also* abysmal. I was almost always given half the time I asked for and paid at less than *half* of my general going rate. Authors publishing out of their own pockets could afford my rate, but apparently multi-billion dollar corporations couldn't. Copy edits and proofreads are often handled by freelancers, meaning these are people who aren't familiar with the author's voice and often give feedback that doesn't account for that, plus they're not people who are gonna be as invested in the book, even before the bad payment and ridiculous timelines.

So, anyway, 1. go easy on authors and editors when you can. Most of us have 0 say in being in this position and authors who are in breech of their contract by refusing to turn in a book on time can face major legal and financial ramifications. 2. Know that this isn't in your head. If you disagree with the choices a book makes, that's probably just a disagreement, but if you feel like it had so much potential but just *didn't reach it*, that's likely because the author didn't have time to revise it or the editor didn't have time to give the sort of thorough edits it needed. 3. READ INDIE!!! Find the indie authors putting in the work the Big 5's won't do and support them! Stop counting on exploitative mega-corporations to do work they have no intention of doing.

Finally, to all my readers who read Café Con Lychee and loved it, thank you. I love y'all, and I appreciate y'all, and I really wish I'd been given the chance to give y'all the book you deserved. I hope I can make it up to you in 2025.

[kevinklehr]

Organising an author reading event

Eight months ago I began this process. Sydney WorldPride was asking for submissions for what seemed like their fringe festival component known as Pride Amplified. To be featured in the print edition of their festival guide, I had to submit the many things they asked for by mid year. So, recovering from Covid, I began the exhausting process. Originally we were going to use a different venue. Only…

[dogboystmichael]

i don’t wanna seem like a crazy fanatic for the altar boy shorts by @nicosraf but…I saw some of those vintage romance novel covers and I felt it would be perfect for them 🫶

[wiltkingart]

I just wanted to thank you for your book arts and rec list that made me find so many incredible m/m books! (İ have a huge folder of them now, hyped to read) honestly i mistakenly thought almost all m/m books were teen lit or y.a slice of life/light scifi so im glad to find some adult recs !!(also ur art is amazing)

so happy that you like my book arts!! but so so sad to hear about the second part :( the current book market is absolutely saturated with YA but i promise there are still queer adult books (not even in a smutty way) that are out there waiting for you all to read! i recently made this new list for my favorite queer books published pre-2010 if you want to take a look at that too. though i will say i tend to be drawn toward stories with difficult themes, so look up cws if you need them and make your own choices.

older (and obscure) books can also be much harder to find, but i'm always happy to answer questions to help narrow down anyone's options/search efforts. happy reading!!

[bs2sjh]

Edinburgh's Sherlock looking glorious in the sunshine yesterday. Had a nice pint of Elementary at the Conan Doyle as well. All these are found near Picardy Place where Conan Doyle was born.

[topazadine]

Mistakes I Made When Self-Pubbing My First Book (Part 1: Mindset Edition)

Hello. Today, we are all going to dunk on me for my meteoric mistakes when self-publishing 9 Years Yearning so that you can do the opposite of these things.

This is going to be cut up into multiple posts because I just made so. many. mistakes. that I'm rectifying with my second book. Even Part 1 is extraordinarily long because damn am I a yapper, so keep an eye out for the equally long next parts.

And maybe console me by buying my book. (I promise it's not bad! My marketing strategy is!)

It's important to be transparent about this process. So many indie authors don't want to talk about their failures because it's uncomfy, and I get it. Yeah, it does suck to admit that you have failed and then expose your failures to other people. No one wants to feel bad about their efforts, especially something so personal like writing. Still, I think it can help anyway.

Can I give you actionable advice? No. I can't. I cannot give you a secret code to marketing success because I don't even know it.

BUT. I can tell you what I did wrong so you can figure out what to do right. (Then maybe tell me about it pls.)

Thinking being a good writer = book success

I am a good writer. Not the best writer on the entire planet, but more competent than your average squadron of monkeys armed with obsolete machinery. I could take at least 1,000 non-human primates in a writing fight - I'm sure of it.

However, this does not translate to immediate, life-changing results when self-publishing and marketing.

See, the unfortunate thing is that people actually have to know that your book exists, and they have to be tempted into purchasing it before they can see your remarkable writing skills.

This means that you need to have a good cover, an intriguing blurb and ... worst of all ... a marketing strategy.

Awful. But true.

Book writing and book marketing are two completely different skills. One of them is fun! And one of them makes me want to throw myself into a lake! But alas, if I want to enjoy some sort of compensation for the Fun Part, I have to do the Bad Part.

Being mad that I didn't get insta-results

I assumed that I would get my money back from my initial investment pretty quickly. After all, I wrote a very nice book. But I still have not broken even on 9 Years Yearning, and I will likely not do so until the third part of the Eirenic Verses series hits.

Actually, I may never break even at all. And I'm not even performing that poorly for a self-published author as of now.

The average self-published, digital-only book (like mine) sells only 250 copies during its entire lifetime, which can be literal decades. 250!! That's abysmal. Many self-published books sell ZERO copies. Ever.

That makes me feel a little better about saying that from June to October 2024, my first book has sold only 32 copies. That's about 12% of the expected lifetime sales in four months.

But 32 books is not, by any means, a best seller.

Though I will tell you a secret: some authors who make best seller lists actually buy their own books to artificially boost the numbers. Donald Trump did that actually! There are entire book laundering firms, like ResultSource, that are pay to play. And the NYT best seller list is heavily biased toward people with internal connections. So you can't even trust those best seller lists very much, and you shouldn't feel bad if you're only getting a handful of sales.

Regardless of whether other people lie their way to the top, the cold hard truth is that if I want to repay myself for my efforts on 9 Years Yearning, I need to sell about 1,500 copies (plus, oh, 20 extra for taxation).

That's a pretty scary number. 1,500 people have to like my book?! I don't even know that many people!

It's okay, though. My next book, Pride Before a Fall, will have a faster return on investment because it's priced a little higher at $2.99. So, for the second book, I only need to sell about 180 copies to break even. That is also because I didn't make as many dumb money mistakes, which I'll discuss in a later installment.

Very few self-published books gain instant attention and fame; many self-pubbed authors give up on advertising themselves at all because they didn't get a lot of success at first. But I'm not going to be deterred now that I realize I have to put the marketing work in.

It's up to you whether you're willing to keep grinding if you don't get immediate results.

Being lazy about learning marketing

I am still struggling with this, to be honest.

Look, I don't like marketing. The time I spend learning about marketing could be spent on something that does not make me want to tear my eyes out of their sockets. I could go rock climbing! I could watch a video on caving deaths! I could pet my dog!

So I've set a goal for myself that I just have to do one thing related to marketing a week. That could be creating visuals, reading other peoples' experiences, watching videos on it, taking courses, and so on.

It is not a lot of time spent per week, yes; perhaps about two hours. But it's about all I can stomach because it's just so boring and confusing to me.

After my first bitter disappointment, I have learned that it's okay to take a longer, more methodical approach, especially because The Eirenic Verses is a ten-part series. If I stay consistent, it will inevitably start to gain traction over time.

Ignoring the marketing potential in my friend group

I didn't really talk about my book with anyone but my family before publishing it. Didn't tell my friends, didn't post much about it on social media.

Instead, I dropped it like a dead squirrel on Facebook's feet a few days after it actually released. Thank god I didn't do the horrible Millennial "so ... I did a thing" bullshit, but I was almost too blithe about it.

I just don't want to feel like I'm bragging or making people feel obligated to purchase a copy. Which is kind of dumb of me, because people I know IRL have been super enthusiastic! I'm not even joking.

One of my newest friends purchased a copy directly in front of me and told their friends about it, so I got multiple sales just by mentioning it once. Old friends I've barely talked to in years reached out to tell me how much they loved my book and that they're so excited for me.

I learned that as long as I am not insufferable about it, most people are excited to hear that they are friends with a ~published author~. I've spent so long being immersed in Writing World that I kind of forget that to non-writers, publishing (even self-pub) is a big deal.

So I am learning to be more comfortable with talking about being an author as long as I don't act like I'm super special for clicking some keys.

Not celebrating my successes

This seems like a strange problem to have, but I can't be the only one who just kinda goes "meh" about their own achievements. Whether that's from poor self-esteem or Daddy Issues, idk, but I didn't really do anything when I released 9 Years Yearning. Didn't even get myself a cake.

I think this rubbed off on the people around me; after all, humans tend to follow one another's lead. Since I didn't treat it like a big deal at first, no one else did either. And this, of course, led to zero marketing juice because if even the author herself isn't pumped about the book, it must suck, right?

It doesn't suck. Again, I just suck at marketing myself.

So I'm forcing myself to be more enthusiastic about my next book, and to tell more people about it. I'm even getting a Bannain tattoo to celebrate the release.

Look at this stupid little idiot! I'm going to have him inked on me forever and ever <3

Given that I've gotten some decent pre-orders already (again, because I actually tried to fucking market this time), I think this more enthusiastic approach is going to serve me well.

The Thing I Did Right: Viewing my fiction writing as a money sink

Alright, so the one thing I have done correctly, which is that I did not make the fatal error of quitting my day job. I knew that my fiction writing was not going to be paying the bills any time soon. Instead, I view my job as a way to fund my Blorbo Factory.

It's not fatalistic to recognize that the odds are stacked against you as a self-pubbed author. It's realistic. You can either be delusionally confident that you will succeed, or you can be desperately demotivated and never bother.

Or you can be in the middle, see the risks, and decide that there is a deeper motivation than just making money that powers you.

Releasing the pressure of success actually makes it easier to succeed. If you are not hinging all your financial hopes and dreams on your books, then you don't see it as a loss to buy a nice book cover, pay for a good beta reader, and so on. You see it as an investment in your happiness and self-fulfillment, just like you spend money to go to the gym or buy a yourself an ice cream.

And, most importantly, you won't spend more money than you can afford to lose.

So many authors go into massive amounts of debt to fund their books and then are horrified to find that they make nothing back. A lot fall for vanity press scams and spend thousands only to have to do the same damn things I have to do as a self-pubbed author. And sometimes they never even see their book in print at all.

This could have been avoided if they had recognized that, just like when going to the casino, you shouldn't put yourself into debt in hopes of a big payday.

Anyway, now that I've told you about my marketing failures so you can avoid them, maybe you'll consider buying my book, 9 Years Yearning, which is very good despite my terrible marketing skills. It's got horses and cute boys!

And when you're done with that (it only takes about 2 hours to read, btw), be sure to pre-order the next book, Pride Before a Fall, which is arriving January 1, 2025!

Oh, and please don't forget to leave a review. Very important stuff.

I've been dodging calls from Amazon HQ who warn me that if I don't get more reviews, they'll place my children in a mushroomifier, whatever that means.

Oh ... oh no ....

[adventurebeneaththewords]

So, I self-published my first book in 2019, and I was really proud of the amount of work I put into it, but I also knew with my limited resources at the time that it wasn't as polished as it could have been.

I published book 2 in 2020 and book 3 in 2021.

As more time passes, I've begun to wonder if it would be a good idea to go back and edit these books! But I don't want to just do a proofread, I want to go in with fresh eyes and polish scenes, really give the original story the justice it deserves. I feel like if I were to go back, I'd like to give some scenes more details, maybe rewrite some things to better communicate my ideas, etc.

But I've also been wondering: is this a fair thing to do to the people who bought the original books? I'm not expecting anyone who bought the first ones to pay for another copy, but part of me feels weird releasing a "better version" or an "update".

Another question I have is do I pull the current version from Amazon/make it unavailable while I work on updating the books?

I could really use another opinion. What do you guys think as both writers and readers?

Thanks!

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia

Feel free to ignore if this is unwelcome, but have you ever thought about publishing traditionally to sublimate your income and draw in new readers? I know you've self published two books already and that you didn't feel like they did very well, but maybe the experience would be different if someone else was in charge of marketing and all the other business stuff?

Obviously everyone's experience is different but as an author myself who's published both trad and self, traditional publishing has been a completely different experience and has allowed me to focus more on writing because I'm not the one responsible for advertising/marketing/financing anymore.

There are a ton of literary agents nowadays that want to represent diverse and lgbtqia+ fiction, some of them even in Australia.

Websites like Reedsy, AgentQuery and Jerichowriters have extensive directories to find literary agents.

(This is lengthy folks so I'm putting the other two parts (and my response) under a read more! Also putting it under a read more so the anon can skip my response since it's very 'here's all the reasons I can't do this' and they just might not want to read that, lmao)

(continued -> )

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

Obviously most authors, unless they're really prolific, don't get a huge advance (the average is between $1000 - $5000) but getting your foot in the door or on the traditional publishing "ladder' so to speak can have a huge benefit for your serials. Because it gives you more exposure. Plus it's in the agent's best interest to find a publishing house that accepts stories that contain darker themes and negotiate the best deal for you.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses? I have no idea. But you could use this to your advantage. I think I remember you mentioning that writing novels felt quite isolating to you? But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

You already have a loyal readership and that's very attractive to trad pub houses and agents.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance. It could be just a landing page that says something about you and then has links to your tumblr and patreon where you're more active. That way you increase the chances of getting your serials found by additional readers and also come across looking more "professional". Not that you're not professional now. You are and I admire you greatly, but the unfortunate reality is a lot of people still judge by appearances and some will be more drawn to an author's website than a tumblr page, at least at first. So I think having a simple landing page would open up another door for you to benefit from.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

These are just suggestions and thoughts and like I said before, feel free to ignore. But I know you've mentioned wanting to grow your career in the past and I genuinely believe you can do so with some of these pathways.

~

Okay, my response. Posting this because firstly I think the suggestions could work very well for other authors reading this! And I hope they take the advice to note, and secondly because I haven't talked about this for a hot minute so let's talk about it again.

So the TL;DR is yes I have considered traditional publishing. I have actually been traditionally published in short stories, poetry, and also had my art published on covers and re: interior illustrations. But my Fae Tales works got soundly rejected when I sent them to publishing houses that were doing open calls for that sort of material. I've never heard back from an agent and I never expect to, heh.

~

Now for a bit more detail

I have been traditionally published before (it's how I got my writing out there long before I ever wrote serials), and yes, I have approached publishers with my writing since then. In fact Tradewinds was written for the traditional publishing market, and it got soundly rejected, and then shelved. The reasons it was rejected ran the gamut from 'I don't like that these fae eat humans no one is going to relate to these people' (while the editor then went on to publish vampire books idk) to 'There's too much worldbuilding you can't expect readers to keep up with this' to 'Your stories are too long, no one wants to read characters talking all the time.'

Meanwhile in my online serials I was getting feedback like 'my favourite chapters are the ones where the characters just sit in a room and talk' lol.

The traditional publishing world is also not quite as utopian for most authors as you make it seem. I'm friends with a lot of authors who are traditionally published because that's the world I came from, and unless they're solely in KU and doing generic rapid release formula romances, none of them are making that much money. Certainly not enough to live off. It may have been that you were very fortunate, anon, but I know hundreds more traditionally published authors that left trad pub to make money, and I know about 5 in trad pub personally who are making enough to live off of.

Only one of those is really writing what she truly loves to write, and even then, publishing houses have refused to commit to her entire fantasy series (and she's regularly in 'Top 10/20 Women Fantasy Authors in the World' lists) and forced her to finish the series prematurely. Something I never ever have to worry about in self pub.

The reality is that in trad pub these days, you're still in charge of most of your marketing unless you're one of the big earners for the publishing house. In fact I'd be expected to keep even more of a social media and marketing presence than I do now. I don't do almost any of the things you're supposed to do as an author in marketing to be appealing. I don't have a Facebook author account. I don't have an Instagram author account. I don't maintain or regularly send out newsletters (which automatically puts me in the like 0.05% of authors who make money doing this lmao).

I don't know if you ever have looked that closely into what m/m publishing houses expect from most of their authors, but the newsletter swaps, cover releases, review circuits, interview circuits and more are fucking grueling. We're expected to be responsible for our advertising and our marketing to a fairly massive degree. Some traditionally published in m/m still have to pay for their release blitzes out of pocket. These publishing houses, by and large, do not offer advances. You say most authors don't get large advances. I don't think most authors in this arena get offered advances at all unless they're somehow miraculously acquired by a Big 4.

We're expected to have an already established social media presence because of that (that's why it's so appealing to publishers that we have social media presences already, anon, so we can market, they can save money, and we still see only a minimal cut from the royalties).

And you still have to focus on your finances, because publishing houses like Dreamspinner straight up didn't pay a whole bunch of authors for so long they destroyed careers. They still haven't paid some of their authors. And they're still running a business and people still buy their books.

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

This is true if a) they're a big publishing house and not an indie publisher of which most LGBTQIA+ publishing houses are and b) they're willing to use them on you.

The authors that make the most money get the most resources. If they believe you're going to earn back your advance and move thousands or tens of thousands of units per book, then yes, you will get those resources.

I have been told so many times now - even from friends who run publishing houses, including one who works at HarperCollins - that my work will never be mainstream enough to have broad appeal. They literally told me not to keep trying re: trad pub, because that was my dream for a long time. These folks have given me rock solid advice in the past, it's one of the reasons I'm doing so well now via Patreon + Ream. But they were like (paraphrasing) 'you don't write 60-80k romances and you don't want to and that's not your strength anyway, you're multi-genre which makes you hard to market, you write psychological and literary trauma recovery which is hard to market, you write character studies which are hard to market, publishing houses often don't commit to series anymore if the first two don't move units and if they pulled the plug you'd be contractually obliged to never finish that series until your contract was up.' I could go on, but it was like yeah...actually. Fair.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses?

They do, but most publishing houses want very formulaic dark romance which is not what I write.

I have a 300k omegaverse slowburn that still hasn't had any penetrative sex in it, anon. Publishing houses don't want that. They don't expect anyone will wait 4 full length novels to get to literally a single penetrative sex scene.

But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

If I rewrote them to my liking, trad pub wouldn't want them. They'd be too long! I think agents etc. take one look at me and go 'oh god, no thank you!' I'm not an easy sell, by any means.

Plus I'm very e.e about all of that with the knowledge that they then give me only about 10-15% of the royalties on the sales, vs. self-pub where I get around 70%, or subscription where I around 80% of it. When someone subscribes to me, they don't have to worry about 85-90% of their subscription fee going to a publishing house. I don't have to think about how many thousands and thousands of books I'd have to sell to make the same amount that I do now via subscription.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance.

If it was that simple, I'd be doing it. I don't mean this in a facetious way, I mean it in a: I've made a lot of websites, in fact I run one at the moment not connected to my writing (I've been running it for so long it's now in its 20s and can probably has a driver's license). I find it so tedious that I barely remember to check in on it. But forgetting about it means there's always maintenance to keep up with when I get back to it.

Running websites is simpler than it used to be, but it's still not simple. There's hosting and hosting costs, there's server changes, there's back-end maintenance etc. I'm considering it for down the track, but there's a reason I decided to go the route of Patreon over my own site. There are authors (like Christopher Hopper) who actually do subscription through their own domain, but it's a lot of work.

Even placeholder sites are still work. They need updating, details change, story titles changing etc. Maintaining my Patreon + Ream About pages is enough, they're always both a little out of date, lol.

Not that you're not professional now.

Oh no, I mean from a 'traditional publisher looking at me to see what kind of candidate I am' I'm really not though. Like I said, I don't have the newsletter (100 subscribers who get one newsletter a year is not really a newsletter), I don't have the Facebook/Tiktok/Insta/Twitter/Bluesky/Threads accounts, etc. I write multi-genre across multiple steam levels, and I'm allergic to writing serials shorter than 150k. One of my best performing original serials was an 800k contemporary story with no sex in it but a lot of BDSM. It can't be marketed as clean or sweet, it's not high steam, an entire chapter is 'boy saves snail from rain.' Also he was cruel to animals, so not exactly what I'd call a sympathetic main.

And yet that story did so well for me via Patreon + Ream, because people want the kinds of stories that publishing houses generally don't want and I happen to be writing them.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

Anon I just literally do not believe an agent would want to represent me. I have 0% belief in that. Not from a self-deprecating angle but from a 'I am not a good bet for the trad market' perspective. From a 'I have so many friends who are trad pubbed authors who stare at me like I'm insane for writing serials as long as I do' perspective. From a 'professionals in the industry have told me it's amazing I'm doing so well in serials because there's no way they'd take a risk on what I'm doing' perspective. From a 'just because it's queer and diverse doesn't mean it hits literally any other thing a trad pub is looking for' perspective. I've been doing this for 10 years. There are agents who represent work similar to mine who know what I'm doing and wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole. They're not missing out on a trick, they know I'm not broad appeal, and they're right.

Also the only way I'd have the energy to manage trad pub is by quitting serials. And honestly, I never found trad pub all that much fun while I was doing it for non-novel stuff. It was fine, and it is nice to have my stuff out there, but it was a ton of admin and a lot of going back and forth between people who really only care about marketing a product, and that's great and what they excel at! But I'm too disabled to turn this job into something crushing just to potentially make more money, I'd rather just quit and go back onto a full Disability Pension. I can't see any way I still get to write the stories I want to write, in the way that I write them, and be remotely appealing to a single reputable trad pub or agent.

Also *gestures to everything in this article*

[thatdisasterauthor]

The main goal has been REACHED!

Now it's time to start unlocking extra goodies. First up: stenciled edges for the hardback and a recipe card of a recipe from the book.

Back the Project Now!

Back the Project Now!

[roselinbooks-archive]

"Is Shifting Roots Done Yet?"

May 19, 14:02 - 4/23 chapters revised and ready!

[emeryleewho]

Maybe it's just me, but as a writer, I try really hard not to moralize to my audience. I have strong opinions on what characters are doing bad things and who I hate and who is redeemable or irredeemable to me personally, but I'm not gonna tell you that in the prose. I wrote them that way so you can weigh all the info and draw a conclusion informed by your worldview. If I'm just gonna tell you what to think, you don't even need to read the book. I can just shout at you on Tumblr like a normal person.

[duckprintspress]

I feel like I need to start talking more about how one of the big things that Duck Prints Press does is open the door to people who could never even get a foot in with traditional publishing or even most medium/"small" presses (we're a small press, but we're really more of a micro-press, I see places calling themselves small presses that are fucktons bigger than we are).

I've got some anecdotal evidence that people avoid the publications of Presses like this one because they think our writing and editing standards are lower - that we're the people who failed to make it in bigger presses because we weren't good enough - and that, consciously and unconsciously, gatekeeping biases on who is and isn't qualified to write lead people to support small presses less than they might support a more established organization.

So...y'all realize that there are a lot of reasons people wouldn't pursue working with trad pub, right? and I don't even mean ethical doubts, and I don't even mean "trad pub doesn't want to publish certain kinds of stories," though those are definitely factors - we're able to give more space to play with themes and genres because we don't focus solely on "is this marketable" as a sales rubric.

But that's not what I consider the biggest difference.

Hi, I'm Claire, and I own Duck Prints Press, and I have a massive history of clinical depression, including being suicidal in the past. I'm a great writer, and I'm not just tooting my own horn, I've got almost 150,000 kudos on AO3 that suggest that just maybe, I know wtf I'm doing stringing words into sentences. I don't need a big press to tell me I'm competent, I already know that. What I do need is to not end up suicidal again. If I face the gauntlet of rejections that's supposedly "required" as part of gatekeeping trad pub, it will do severe damage to my mental health, and probably destroy my ability to write as depression-induced self-deception eats through what I know to be true.

THAT'S what's different about a micropress like ours. Yes, our founding vision was to work with fans, but the vast majority of the people who work with us have mental illnesses, physical disabilities, neurodivergence issues, and/or other "meatsuits are terrible actually" issues that strict publishing environments can't or, really, won't accommodate. We say "fuck that noise" and go out of our way to accommodate people, granting extensions and ensuring everyone can work on their own schedule. We're able to be very flexible, which means we bring in a lot of people whose incredible skills are overlooked, ignored, looked down on, kept out of, more mainstream publishing options.

If someone has trouble with deadlines? We still work with them.

If someone has an illness that flares irregularly and unpredictably? We still work with them.

If someone needs frequent reminders? We still work with them.

If someone works slowly because they can only do a little at a time? We still work with them.

If someone needs extra time, additional support, special software...we have thus far been able to accommodate literally everyone who has come to us.

As long as the creators who work with us keep communicating and keep showing at least a little progress, we will find a way to make things work, because we want to be as inclusive as possible, and because we know that most people with these challenges, no matter how good they are at writing or art or whatever it is they do with us, would face many more hardships to have these opportunities with a larger, more strict organization.

Just, every time I see indications that people think we're "less" because we're not HarperCollins or Penguin or Tor or something, I get so angry, because it shows so little understanding of how gatekeepy and especially how ableist trad pub is, and I wish more of the people who are thinking things like that would recognize that their behavior is, essentially, snobbery.

And to be clear I'm not saying "people with these challenges never get trad pubbed," that's clearly ridiculous and untrue, but I am saying, people with these challenges shouldn't have to be The Most Exceptional just to have a chance, and we deserve to have a place that will accommodate us instead of having to perform health, perform neurotypicalness, etc. just to succeed. We deserve to not have one flare-up potentially ruin our careers, and we deserve the same opportunities and respect as people who choose other directions.

Between trad pub, small press, and self-publishing, no one route is inherently "superior." Backing one over another doesn't guarantee you're only going to get good stories, or good editing. Trad pub publishes utter schlock sometimes, and self-publishing is fantastic sometimes, and some small presses do have lax standards, and some small presses are exceptional, and I feel like maybe people just really don't understand why places like Duck Prints Press try to exist - it's because we're trying to create spaces that meet us where we are, instead of focusing on rigid conformity, marketability, hard rules, etc.

The only way we'll get a diversity of voices in publishing is by supporting a diversity of publishers. The only way we'll be able to make space for everyone is by supporting the places that carve out new spaces to fit those who didn't fit elsewhere.

I wish more people would understand what we do and why we're here, and that folks would at least try our publications before assuming that we're "like big press but worse at writing/arting/editing."

Idk. I'm just tired, and sick, and still working even tho I'm sick, and frustrated with how hard it is to get anywhere, so here, have a rant I probably shouldn't post.

(this post brought to you by me seeing Chuck Tingle - entirely reasonably, to be clear, Chuck Tingle is awesome and I support him entirely! - celebrating the Camp Damascus release to thousands of notes, and Tor posting a poll about some Locked Tomb short story and getting 1300+ votes, and how I have to claw our way out of the background tumblr noise to get 100+ notes even on our biggest releases)

[thehorrormaven]

Announcing Pride with a Bite - An Upcoming Indie Publisher of LGBTQIA+ Horror

Happy Saturday, Everyone! I am excited to officially announce a project that I have been developing – Pride with a Bite, an indie publisher of LGBTQIA+ based horror by LGBTQIA+ creators for the LGBTQIA+ community! My new indie publishing house will officially launch in June 2024. This indie pub will feature a quarterly eZine, anthology opportunities, and solo projects. I am still developing…

[seapiglet]

The only way I would've accepted seeing pre-fall Crowley and Aziraphale together is if they were like in the Heaven cafeteria, Crowley complaining to a celestial dinnerlady that the lunch options all look bad ("the food hadn't been that good lately"), while Aziraphale walks by in the other direction, needlessly worrying about something. Neither notices the other. They were this close and yet!

Perhaps Aziraphale and another angel are even discussing some rumour about angels starting to ask questions of The Almighty and expresses concern.

Keep in the "how much trouble can I get into for asking a few questions?" or whatever from Crowley but have it be with the disgruntled dinnerlady or one of Lucifer's crew he was presumably hanging out with. Show one of these soon-to-be-cast-out angels casually mentioning to him that they're thinking of bringing up a few of their concerns to "the boss" and would he be interested? It's worth a shot after all. What harm could it to?

Just anything to make it less fucking needlessly dramatic and serious.

[southsidestory]

Currently imagining a future in which I filed the serial numbers off The Valley of the End or In Times of Peace and got a book deal.

The world of publishing is so damn grim now. The industry seems to have forgotten that part of its job is marketing debut authors!

Sometimes it feels like, if you don't bring an established audience to them, they don't want you. Simple as that.

[steelycunt]

finished in memoriam. it was good! quite engaging i read like 220 pages of it yesterday. felt a bit underdeveloped in places and the ending was a bit rushed so it didnt shatter me like i know it did other people but it was a debut to be fair..and it was exactly the sort of thing i was after hence why i got through it so quickly...would recommend! yay!