#Markeing Your Books

[jolenes-book-journey]

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Join a Podcast and Blog Tour to help you get more exposure for your books and you, as an author. There are some book tours that are paid, like advertising and there are even some podcasts that you have to pay for to become a guest. However, as with most of us authors we have to spend our advertising budget very carefully. Yes, as an indie author and even a traditional author you will ahve to…

[chalkrub]

reminiscing about childhood books after that ask - all due respect to cool sleek movie toothless....but to me, he will always be a mean little gremlin

[ricky-mortis]

Y’all should watch The Edge of Sleep…

[julijbee]

girlbossing too close to the sun.

[wolfhalledits]

Thomas Cromwell + Marlinspike Wolf Hall | Episode 2 'Entirely Beloved'

Look. "I am a giant... My name is Marlinspike. Grrrr!"

+bonus: Wolsey with Marlinspike

[hylianane]

And when OPLA calls back to Zeff telling the crew to read stories to Zoro so he can hear their voices and recover faster, by having Sanji sit by his bedside on Thriller Bark and read him a book about the All Blue. What will you do then?

[hedgehog-moss]

In other news, this week a French publisher on his way to the London Book Fair was arrested by British counter-terrorist police to be questioned about his participation in protests in France.

A French publisher has been arrested on terror charges in London after being questioned by UK police about participating in anti-government protests in France.

Moret arrived at St Pancras [...] with his colleague Stella Magliani-Belkacem, the editorial director at the Paris-based publishing house, to be confronted by the two officers. [...] He was questioned for six hours and then arrested for alleged obstruction in refusing to disclose the passcodes to his phone and computer. [...] He was transferred to a police station in Islington, north London, where he remained in custody on Tuesday. He was later released on bail.

Éditions la Fabrique is known for publishing radical left authors. Moret also represents the French science fiction novelist Alain Damasio and had arranged more than 40 appointments at the London book fair. [...]

[Quoting publishing house’s press release] “The police officers claimed that Ernest had participated in demonstrations in France as a justification for this act – a quite remarkably inappropriate statement for a British police officer to make, and which seems to clearly indicate complicity between French and British authorities on this matter.” [...] “There’s been an increasingly repressive approach by the French government to the demonstrations, both in terms of police violence, but also in terms of a security clampdown.”

(Guardian link - BBC link) (article in French)

The publishing house (here’s their latest statement in French) and the publisher’s lawyer mention that the British police asked him “Do you support Emmanuel Macron? Did you attend protests against the pension reform?” and he was also asked to name the authors with anti-government views that his employer has published. They add, “Asking the representative of a publishing house, in the framework of counter-terrorism, about the opinions of his authors, is pushing even further the logic of political censorship and repression of dissenting thought. In a context of social protests and authoritarian escalation on the part of the French government, this aspect [of the questioning] is chilling.”

Being an accomplice to thoughtcrime by publishing dissident authors gets you treated like an international terrorist now... The publisher’s lawyer suggests that French authorities asked the UK to help them get their hands on the publisher’s contacts in the radical left sphere. But on the face of it, we’ve got: Exercise your right to protest your government in France -> get arrested by counter-terrorist UK police in London. That’s literally the reason he was given for being greeted by police at the train station...

[dribs-and-drabbles]

You know, I really hope that, apart from the obvious positives that come out of this series, Only Friends will finally make people (the makers and the audience) realise that there are only benefits to having actors paired with different people in different series, rather than the same every time.

Like, yes, I also want to see some fantastic pairings again and again, but come on! If actors only ever work with the same person and never with someone else, we'll miss out on some incredible combinations and chemistry. Why would we deny ourselves that?

[chassisfucker]

rotating mark in my mind. said he prefers to be chasing instead of out in front, prefers to have his back against the wall, be put on the defensive instead of ever having the chance to go on the offensive…. he was the losing dog we were betting on all along. martyr complex goes crazy but i think he literally doesn’t know any other way to be

[kamiko1234]

IT WAS MOTHERFUCKING LUKE

OH MY FUCKING GOD IT WAS FUCKING LUKE. THE HELL !? HUH ´WHAT ? LIKE; FR !? HIM !? LUKE ? LUKE CASTELLAN !? HE'S THE FUCKING TRAITOR !?

HOW !? WHY !?

I- I feel like flipping a table what the fuck ????? Like wow I had a LOT of outlandish theories but NEVER in my LIFE would I have thought LUKE off all people to be the traitor like- HUH !?

To say this came out of left field for me is to THE UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE CENTURY. Like, genuinly !? He was so nice ! So welcoming ! Anytime he showed up he gave off good vibes, AND THEN HE'S THE ONE THAT GOES FUCKING TRAITOR !? Like , okay. Don't get me wrong. I get it, I fucking get it. Luke has a point. The gods are a bunch of dicks. I already did a post on here wondering how none of those demigods have snapped yet ! Hell, part of me was EXPECTING someone to snap at some point.

BUT IT BEING GODFORSAKEN LUKE OF ALL PEOPLE !?

I- I- There's gotta be something more. THERE'S GOTTA BE SOMETHING MORE BEHIND IT, LIKE- The whole reason for why I liked Luke so much was him being so nice and (atleast for me) the least likely to turn traitor ! Chronos is powerful, right !? Luke said he visited him in his dreams, even punishing him in some instances. Maybe Luke's simply been brainwashed ! Even Percy says something like that ! Luke was probably brainwashed, or hypnotized or something. An evil clone maybe ! Or a long lost secretly evil twin brother ! THERE'S GOTTA BE SOMETHING THERE; RIGHT ? RIGHT !?!?!??!

BUT ALSO HOLY FUCK HOW THE FUCK IS NO ONE EVEN SEEMINGLY REMOTELY SAD !? LIKE ANNABETH'S SUPPOSED TO BE HIS LITTLE SISTER FIGURE AND ALL WE GOT FROM HER BOILS DOWN TO ; "oh well ig it's would be like him to do that, MOVING ON-"

LIKE I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE THINKING THAT'S A SORT OF FUCKED REACTION; RIGHT !? LIKE, I CAN GET BEHINF PERCY BEING LESS SAD. HE KNEW LUKE LESS BUT ANNABETH !? LIKE- IG SHE ALSO SAID THEY'D HUNT HIM DOWN LATER ON BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD !

A LITTLE MORE EMOTION LADY ; YOUR SURROGATE BIG BRO JUST RAN OFF WITH MOTHERFUCKING CHRONOS.

LIKE; OMFG I'M PRAYING THIS IS SOME MIND CONTROL OR HYPNOTISM OR MENTAL CONDITIONING TYPE OF SHIT. HOW ELSE CAN WE EXPLAIN LUKE'S CHARACTER DOING A COMPLETE 180 !

Y'ALL WEREN'T FUCKING JOKING WHEN TELLING ME TO BRACE MYSELF OMFG. ATLEAST NOW I KNOW WHY ALL THE WEIRD ANSWERS CAME WHEN I TALKED ABOUT HOW LUKE'S MY FAV AND HE AIN'T GONNA BE THE TRAITOR. One hell of a last chapter that was 💀😭

[punchable-panda]

It’s cuz they are ✨

[emilynightshade89]

[fallen-angel-adam-frankenstein]

Thinking about how the Big Four of dark academia really feels like the Big Three of dark academia that a last-minute addition was added onto, not because it’s any less a part of and representative of the aesthetic but because its mood and message differs so greatly from the other three - that last-minute addition being Dead Poets Society. Hear me out as I rant about character types, classism, doing it for the aesthetic, themes, tones, and substance abuse (and, obviously, spoiler warnings for Dead Poets Society, The Secret History, If We Were Villains, and Kill Your Darlings):

Firstly, I want to draw comparisons between who I consider to be the protagonists of each story, focusing a lot on how I feel that each of them has a barrier between himself and another group of people within the story. Starting with the one that I relate to the most and progressing in no organisational order after that, we have from The Secret History Richard Papen, an English major who came from an impoverished old town in California to the lovely little college in Hampden, Vermont on account of loads and loads of scholarships. Fascinated and a bit infatuated with the Greek class, he is able through partly his own talent but mostly dumb luck to join their ranks, only to find out that the people he admired and romanticised are all a bunch of classist, selfish, rich addicts. Desperately wanting to be a part of this group, Richard has to break the financial barrier (as well as the seclusion engineered by Julian) between him and them in order to get in with the “cool kids.” However, this doesn’t work out for him at the end, as he doesn’t even get invited to their bacchanal or Bunny’s murder and yet has to suffer for the fallout of both events. It’s made clear that this is not the kind of life you want to live, and Richard even returns to California after the main body of the book concludes. Allen Ginsberg of Kill Your Darlings is confronted with a similar barrier, although his is less financial (he’s well-off enough to make it to college without scholarships) and more the sort of subcultural difference between the life he left at home and how Lu and his friends live. Just like Richard, he risks and loses it all to gain the affection of this new group, who, just like in TSH, leave him high and dry in the end. Oliver Marks also risks it all for his group in If We Were Villains, although they don’t necessarily abandon him in the same sense and really he alienates himself by taking the fall for Richard (Stirling)’s death. His barrier is also mainly financial, as he ends up having to pay for Dellecher through scholarships and a work-study deal, something which you can tell he is ashamed about (hmm classicism -_-) as he tries to hide it from the rest of the group, who can all afford the school on their own (or their families can). Since this story differs from the rest because it starts off with Oliver already a part of the tightly-knit group, you can’t really talk about him vying for approval as in TSH or Kill Your Darlings, but the sense of him being a part of a slightly different world is still there. Meanwhile, you don’t get this same sense in DPS. I maintain that Neil is the central figure in DPS, but for the sake of this let’s look at Todd, who does have to make his way into the group after it was already formed. Todd’s barrier is not financial but all in his own head: his social anxiety and awkwardness prevents him from initiating a relationship with any of the other Dead Poets. Because he has this different kind of barrier, it’s easier for him to overcome it, and it turns out well for him in the end, while it doesn’t for the protagonists of the other three stories.

Besides that, the other characters also play a role in how DPS feels separate from the other three. All four dark academia stories are about rich kids at their core, but DPS is the only one that doesn’t feel like it’s about rich kids. Why is that? I think it’s because of how they chose to present the characters. In TSH, the whole main cast, essentially, sucks - Henry is full of it, Bunny has all sorts of problems, Charles is an abusive drunkard, not to mention his incestuous relationship with Camilla, and Francis knows about this relationship and is fine with it, even being fine to casually fuck Charles on top of it (and he’s classist as fuck, but that’s a discussion for a later date). You might think, “oh, but Richard isn’t too bad” - yeah, but he did let them all get away with not one but two murders and was only worried about Charles abusing and fucking Camilla because he felt attraction to Camilla himself, so. Anyway, my point is that everyone in the Greek class is either a rich asshole or wants to be like the rich assholes, so that’s not good. There’s a similar thing in Kill Your Darlings where they’re all addicts and alcoholics and people who generally don’t give a fuck about how other people react to their drama and fun times, and you can see how Lu even uses David and later Allen and then throws them both away casually. Yeah, they have a cool vision of revolutionising poetry, but they’re not really characters that one can necessarily relate to, because they’re all just too caught up in themselves. IWWV, too - you don’t see this as much, but it comes out a bit when Oliver hides in shame the fact that he has to work to pay for school. While IWWV has a cast of characters that I can relate to and like the most out of the three I’ve talked about so far, there’s still a little bit of disconnect, an unattainability about them, and it’s clear that they’re all deeply fucked: Richard, before he died, was an abusive asshole, James killed Richard and then not only started mirroring him a bit when he hurt Oliver but then let Oliver while away ten years of his life in prison for Richard’s death (and either killed himself or faked his death), Alexander got even worse into drugs and then presumably got clean but man did he have PTSD from that school year, Meredith is surrounded by men lusting after her and feels lonely, Wren also has PTSD from that school year, and Filippa . . . got into a relationship with her teacher and we don’t talk about this? So while they’re three-dimensional, engaging, and entertaining, they’re all still just plain messed up. However, the Dead Poets aren’t like this. Obviously, there’s Neil’s suicide, but that’s different - it’s not messed up because he was already messed up, it’s messed up because the authority figures in his life (excluding Keating) messed him up themselves, breaking his spirit with the pressure they put on him and with the criticism of his passion. But to the point, in the sense of the characterisation of the main cast, DPS feels different from the other three because the Dead Poets are three-dimensional, engaging, entertaining, and even likeable in a way that the characters from the other three are not. And they’re all rich enough to attend a very well-to-do private boarding school, but they’re not stuck-up and classist, in fact hardly ever bringing up matters of money and even making fun of the Danburrys a bit. They feel more accessible than any other group does, which is what I respect about them.

And last but not least, the message. As far as the moods/tones and themes of the Big Four go, DPS is the only one with any sort of hope at the ending, and the only one with a “true” aesthetic for the characters to chase. The three of the dark academia Big Four all focus on taking something too far and it going horribly wrong - the Greek class gets so into studying the Classics that they have a bacchanal and kill a man and then kill a man to prevent him from telling someone that they killed a man, which leads to yet another man dead and the rest of them unhappy; the Dellecher fourth-years get so into Shakespeare and the roles they play/their typecasts that Richard ends up dead, Oliver ends up in prison, James ends up either dead or faking his death, and everyone else suffers like I mentioned earlier; and in Kill Your Darlings, David ends up dead, Lu ends up in prison, and Allen ends up expelled. TSH has a very bleak epilogue - Richard is confused and yearning, Charles is still drunk and who-knows-where cut off from the rest of them, Camilla has her dying grandmother to worry about, Henry and Bunny are dead, and Francis is forcing himself to marry a woman he doesn’t even like as a person, let alone not being physically attracted to her whole-ass gender, because he would rather make himself miserable than be cut off from the financial support of his family. Donna Tartt leaves us with a depressing, unsatisfying ending - which is all part of the theme, but I’ll get to its relation to DPS later. All in all, TSH’s tone is a very dark one, and its message to not let yourself get so caught up in the aesthetic that you let yourself fall/sacrifice your morals (and also not to idolise rich assholes because they can and will use you and ruin your life), while relevant and important, is far from inspiring or uplifting. Similarly, they go too far in IWWV, pursuing Shakespeare until it fucks them all up, and it has a similar theme to TSH. Its ending, while I like it better than TSH’s, is still quite pessimistic; there’s a little glimmer of possibility there, but not really all that much, and you get the sense that things are never going to fix themselves. In Kill Your Darlings, too, Lu and Allen get so caught up in the New Vision that they let the rest of their lives fall apart around them, and the ending is a bit confused and “meh.” DPS, however, has a lot of hope in its ending. Yes, Neil’s death was sad, and so was Keating taking the fall for it, but despite that, Keating is able to walk out of that classroom with a smile on his face; the ending isn’t entirely sad, it’s bittersweet. DPS’s message is all about carpe diem, seize the day, make your lives extraordinary, and they all presumably go on to do that (except Neil, who died because he was unable to do that). While the aesthetic the characters chase in TSH sort of hinges on their rich assholery, the aesthetic the characters chase in IWWV more or less depends on their isolation and general fucked-up-ness, and the aesthetic the characters chase in Kill Your Darlings is pretty much based on substance abuse and not giving a fuck, all of which lead to their lives being ruined on varying levels, the aesthetic the characters chase in DPS not only doesn’t really ruin their lives and also seems to be much more attainable in a tangible way. While Keating loses his job, he’s able to walk out of the classroom with a smile on his face because he knows that he did what he came there to do - he inspired his students to live life to the fullest and think for/be true to themselves, which is actually a quite healthy aesthetic to strive for, especially compared to the other ones I’ve talked about. The ending of DPS isn’t entirely happy, but there’s so much hope in it, something which the other three lack, and because of that, it feels separate from them.

Anyway yeah. I’m not going to write a big ol’ conclusion because I’ve already taken up so much space, but yeah. Thanks for coming to my TEDTalk lol.

[androgynouspenguinexpert]

"The knowledge rushes up in him, choking off breath. A scream comes, tearing its way out. And then another, and another."

so i'm never going to be normal again i think

[moonlitlex]

i'm not like. an annotation style elitist. but genuinely the way some of these booktokers annotate their videos confounds me.

you'll see someone with extremely detailed annotations with like 500 sticky tabs in the whole book and it makes you think wow there's so much going on here. and then the annotations are just OMG! and they've highlighted 90% of the book and they've underlined everything. everything they write are just various reactions like omg! cute! wow! i gasped! hot! etc.

it just screams "i want my book to look like a serious reader owns it" but they straight up just don't understand the purpose of annotating. i don't even understand the use case for this type of annotation because like... are you really not going to know it was a cute scene on a reread unless you highlight the entire 5 pages? is this something you need to draw attention to?

it's just like. wild. to see these books with every single free space covered in annotations. the way someone writing a thesis about that book would do. but then you look at the content of the annotations and it is confusingly just someone's immediate reactions to what they've read.

which is like. it's good. that's definitely a part of annotating. but annotation is a tool to understand and analyze a text. and this is not what is going on.

and what is MORE confounding is when people who annotate like this SELL THEIR ANNOTATED BOOKS???? FOR MONEY??? THAT PEOPLE BUY ON PURPOSE????

GIRL LISTEN TO ME YOU DO NOT NEED SOME OTHER RANDOM BITCH SCRIBBLING HER FIRST REACTION ALL OVER A BOOK WHY DO PEOPLE BUY THESE WHAT THE FUCK

[hanzajesthanza]

when your friend is writing a fic or analysis it feels like this