#i can't think of other author/illustrators that do their own cover art for books

[judgeitbyitscover]

Child Thief (2009)

Krampus: The Yule Lord (2012)

Lost Gods (2016)

Slewfoot (2021)

Evil in Me (2024)

Authored and Illustrated by Brom

[literaticat]

Hi, I was reading your answer titled "Why do so many agents want author-illustrators specifically?". As an illustrator, I'm often told I need a brand/style. But your descriptions of the submission strategies (submitting one at a time, editors wanting an option on all of your similar stories) makes me wonder. How much variety do agents look for when an author-illustrator is querying or they ask for additional ms? I'm hearing the visual style needs to be cohesive, but this answer makes me wonder if it's important on the author side of things to have a variety of stories? (SEL, Fantasy, humor, etc. vs all fantasy stories for example)

Thanks for all that you do here and on the podcast!

I personally think it's super important for picture book authors specifically to diversify. (Like, it's great if any author diversifies -- but IMO it's VITAL for PB authors to diversify!)

What do I mean? I mean for the love of Pete, don't have 35 of the exact same kind of stories and you are cranking out more. Like, OK, if you have a few goofy-funny young friendship stories, great -- now try writing something different. Something lyrical/heartfelt. Something nonfiction. Something weird. Something for older readers. SOMETHING ELSE. Because there's simply zero way that I, your new agent, can sell 35 of the same type of book.

PBs take a long time, Publisher A will only want to publish one a year at best, and while they might well want books for the same audience (ie, goofy funny in this example) but they aren't going to buy more than one or two of them at a time, and you can't then go to Publisher B and sell a book that will compete directly with the book that Publisher A just bought! So just, from a logistical standpoint, you have to have something DIFFERENT for Publisher B if you want to keep having books come out. Does that make sense?

Why is this more important for PB authors specifically than for author-illustrators or other types of authors? Because, frankly, if you are an illustrator or writing a novel, it might actually keep your hands busy for 6 months or more -- when all is said and done, most author-illustrators and novelists are only able to complete one or two books a year (I'm talking about all stages from idea to draft to final to editing, etc) -- whereas PB authors can crank out a lot more.

So if they are trying new things and keeping those hands busy, they are both a) opening up potential new avenues for sales, and b) out of my hair.

On the ILLUSTRATOR side -- I do think the portfolio look should be cohesive, BUT, it's also great to have a couple of different styles to showcase; for example, in your portfolio, have full-color picture book examples AND cover examples AND black and white / interior line art examples. That way you can do your own author-ills picture books, but also you might be able to get different kinds of illustration jobs (other people's PBs, or chapter books, or book jackets) in addition to / in between your own books.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Do you have favorite romance covers?

What do you think of the covers nowadays? I see the one from the historical romance were painted and beautiful and look at the ones we have now...they are not even well done pictures

Edit: omg I got so aggressively bitchy I forgot to mention my favorites lmaoooo TYPICAL

I love a Lindsey cover. Silver Angel, Defy Not the Heart, Tender is the Storm all come to mind. Any naked man cover.

I love the original cover for Indigo by Beverly Jenkins.

I LOVE the original cover for A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux, that shit fucks so hard.

I love the original covers for A Hunger Like No Other and Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night by Kresley Cole. Those are both werewolf books, and damn if it doesn't look like those guys are about to literally eat their heroines alive.

I have a lot of issues with covers, both as someone who enjoys art and as a creative who works with creatives.

So first off--outright, I hate AI covers. I do not automatically jump to blaming authors, especially trad authors. Trad published authors usually don't have the final say on their covers. And even when they do have influence (which is typically restricted, beyond a bare "what do you like?" to big names) they aren't usually instructing "and use this graphic designer" this artist, etc. They don't have that kind of power. I don't think that most of them know AI is being used for their covers until they know.

And even indie authors, I don't want to automatically assume are using AI. There have been vocal AI defenders out there (Kerrigan Byrne, Elsie Silver, though I don't know if either has used AI covers yet). But I'll be real, I know that the vast majority of indie authors outsource, and there have absolutely been cases in the past in which authors have been tricked by designers or cover manufacturers. I can think of one such case in which Laura Thalassa, a fairly known indie author at the time, found out after the fact that her cover designer had reused or stolen a cover that was already sold to a different author. She had to replace the cover. That wasn't her fault. I don't expect authors to know AI off the bat, either. I am fairly certain that there are designers and manufacturers passing off AI covers to authors who don't know any better.

I absolutely know there are authors intentionally using AI for covers, and not only does it create a poorer quality product--it deprives creatives of jobs and also often steals from existing imagery without compensating the original artists.

ANYWAY. That aside, I generally am disappointed with a lot of book covers today, and not just with historicals. Obviously, I prefer the old school stepbacks with painted covers and the gorgeous work of artists like Robert McGinnis and Pino. I majored in art history; I love art; I think romance novel covers are so unique and have their own special space, and I think that we are absolutely losing that art form, and it makes me sad. I love stepbacks, I miss stepbacks. I collect old school covers. I don't think we will ever get those back, because publishing is so dominated by capitalism and it is obviously more expensive to make those covers.

(I'll also add--paranormal romances used to have some killer illustrated covers too, which have been replaced by more digital, photoshop heavy covers. Take a look at the original A Hunger Like No Other cover. SO GOOD.)

But even the digital photographic stepback and covers are fading out, and I'm sad about that too. I really dislike these cartoonified covers from authors like Evie Dunmore (Tessa Dare and Suzanne Enoch have also been getting cartoonified covers or re-covers). I hate them for contemporaries, too. Like, I would take a million covers with shirtless guys on them versus the cartoony covers. I think the cartoony covers are confusing, they make it difficult to know a book's heat level, and they express a level of shame about the genre that I can't get behind.

Like, honestly? If you're that embarrassed to be reading romance a) do you really love romance or b) use your e-reader or audiobooks. I don't get this concept of like... hiding what you're reading from the world.

So yeah, I have an issue with current cover trends visually, ethically, morally, and like... societally lmao

[grenade-maid]

☕️ poetry as like, a medium

I want to preface this with the fact that I really love poetry and I think it's genuinely one of the most incredibly potent mediums out there. There's this common refrain that "poetry gets such a bad rap, people don't give it enough of a chance!!!" but like, quite honestly I kinda understand where that bad rap comes from. Like, I go to the poetry section at most libraries, check out a handful of books, and almost without fail a lot of them seem to have been written by a bunch of people huffing their own farts out of a paper bag. A lot of the people I've met who make a big deal about liking poetry, the ones who tell everyone to give it a chance? Same farts, same bag. It's exhausting. I don't think this is a failure of the artform, though, or even the people who love it.

Rather, I think that poetry operates in its own distinct different way, just like any other medium. Because much of our cultural idea of poetry is centered on stuff written by bourgeois fucks two hundred years ago, it's easy to feel like there's nothing in it for you. For it to be powerful and engaging, you have to have a sense for how to engage with it, and, like any other medium, find the pieces within it that speak to something within you.

See, I think poetry is fundamentally really similar to short stories, short films, comics, of course, but also individual illustrations, because their limitations really magnify whatever the artist is doing. So if they're trying really hard to show off some virtuoso technical shit and don't actually know how to use it effectively to evoke something meaningful, it's going to look even sloppier than if they had more space to work with, just because it can't be hidden behind anything else. If they're trying to build a mood or evoke a feeling or just SAY something and can't figure out a way to deliver it to you in the space given, they probably haven't actually got it figured out very well.

See, like, when people look at art, they often mistake having a lot of details for having meaning. I mean how many times have you been looking at concept art or reading a comic and seeing like, for example, a fuckin' enormous sci-fi cityscape--every window is individually hand drawn, light reflects perfectly off the puddles on the ground, there's flying cars, there's ominous corporate infrastructure, there's a guy on a bike with a visor and a robot arm with every bolt and wire meticulously detailed and a leather jacket covered in patches and pins that you can even read the text of if you zoom in far enough--and you turn the page and have already forgotten about it because despite all that effort, nothing about that drawing really communicated anything. It doesn't tell you anything about this world, or this city, or the people in it, or the author, or what kind of stories this is meant to go with.

Like, let's make a comparison. Here's like a glossy jpeg of your standard cyberpunk city. If you've been on any art site you've seen a billion of these. Do you get anything out of this? Like it looks fine, but does it make you feel anything? Does it tell you anything? I don't wanna put words in your mouth but I'm guessing no.

And then let's compare it to resident favorite Tsukumizu, this page from Shimeji Simulation:

Despite being much much simpler, it's PACKED with compelling information. If you showed this single page to someone, they might not be able to guess what Shimeji Simulation is about necessarily, but they'd already have a pretty good idea of what kind of a story it is, what feelings it invokes, what ideas or concepts it's drawing from.

A lot of poetry is like the first image, where no matter how pretty it looks and how much effort went in, it's hard for a lot of people to find something in it to be gripped by. But the best stuff is like the second. And I think what poetry does best is capture intensely concentrated feelings and thoughts and experiences and inject it straight into your heart and skull cause it bypasses any kind of sensory judgement about how it looks.

Like, we've all seen this little gem:

And as funny as it is, I think it's a great example of what poetry can do as a medium!

The tiger - Full stop, line break, we don't need to spend time faffing around telling you what kind or what it looks like, this is just the platonic ideal of TIGER with all the feelings and associations you have with it.

He destroyed his cage - Full stop, line break, the action has begun, we don't need to tell you how he did it, that's up to your imagination, but already you can picture it, right? We've set the scene with everything you need to know. He was in a cage. Doesn't matter what kind, doesn't matter what context. He was in a cage. And he didn't just escape, he didn't wriggle through the bars, he destroyed his cage. How does a tiger do that? Doesn't matter. That statement fills the mind with ideas already.

Yes

YES - Triumph, exaltation, ecstasy, again, what more needs to be said? We aren't just happy, this isn't a sigh of relief, this is unrestrained excitement. That communicates a lot! A tiger breaking out of its cage can mean many things, after all. It might be exotic danger to be faced down if we're in a Rudyard Kipling poem, it might be terror if this were Edgar Allen Poe, and so on. But in two words we have established that no, in this case, the tiger getting out fucking owns.

The tiger is out - Full stop, conclusion. It's a sentence brimming with energy about what could possibly come next, and ending there leaves that mark on our brain. Because that's the thing--this poem is telling a story, definitely, but more than that it is evoking the feeling of this specific moment. If this moment took place in a full length book and a whole chapter were dedicated to it, we'd have a lot more detail, totally, we might get all kinds of themes and symbols and a rich characterization of the situation and the tiger and so on and so forth, but the raw impact of this moment would be lost in all of that. Here, in twelve bare words, we can encapsulate that feeling of that moment in a way that is more potent and memorable than if it were told any other way.

Another of my favorite poems, Little Viennese Waltz by Federico Garcia Lorca, translated and put to music by Leonard Cohen, opens like this:

Now in Vienna there’s ten pretty women

There’s a shoulder where death comes to cry

There’s a lobby with nine hundred windows

There’s a tree

where the doves go to die

There’s a piece that was torn from the morning

And it hangs in the gallery of frost

Ay, ay, ay, ay

Take this waltz, take this waltz

Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws

I've been going really long so I'll keep this brief, but this is another great example of just pulling these incredible images to mind, that fill the mind with really potent emotional meaning that wouldn't translate to an image or a longer piece of text without having their effect drastically reduced. It creates this image of a dreamy, almost fantastical place, marked by incredible heartache and beauty. It's difficult to imagine in practical terms what it would mean to tear a piece from the morning, or what it would mean for a waltz to have a clamp on its jaws, but reading them, hearing them, you can feel what it means very clearly.

A lot of this comes through especially well when we start talking about translating poetry--because you are forced to contend with, well, what was the author DOING here? 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei is a great starting point on this, and it's pretty short, pdf can be found here and there's also a personal favorite of mine, which is In Praise of the Music of Language, which contains 88 translations of the same french poem done by everyone ranging from professionals to just regular people. Each of them end up evoking very different pictures and feelings despite all working from the exact same template. Really incredible stuff that speaks to what can be done with so few words!

[fycarmensandiego]

A chat with author Melissa Wiley

In 1996, HarperCollins published six Carmen Sandiego chapter books, featuring VILE villains from the then-current "Deluxe"/"CD-ROM"/"Classic" generation of computer games and a new lineup of Acme agents, headed by a Black female Chief (Lynne Thigpen ha impact), and focusing on kid detectives Maya and Ben.

The series included two books each by two writing teams and one solo act, Melissa Peterson. I got in touch with Melissa, who now uses the pen name Melissa Wiley, and she graciously answered some questions about writing the Carmen books and beyond.

To get you caught up to my knowledge before the interview, here's Melissa's website, and here's her bio as printed in the two Carmen books (accompanied by the caricature above):

Melissa Peterson is the author of several books for young readers. Born in Alamogordo, New Mexico, she has lived in eight different states and visited Germany and France. She has never ridden a dolphin, but she did eat a great deal of sour cherry ice cream outside the cathedral in Cologne. [Note: These are both references to plot points in Hasta la Vista, Blarney.] Her research for Hasta la Vista, Blarney included many hours playing Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? An official ACME Master Detective, she lives in New York City with her husband and young daughter.

FYCS: Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview.

Melissa Wiley: What a fun blast from the past! The Carmen books were my first professional writing gig and I had so much fun working on them.

That's so exciting to hear! With that being the case, how did you get involved with the books?

I was an assistant editor at HarperCollins, working for the wonderful Stephanie Spinner. I started out as her editorial assistant at Random House right after grad school and moved to Harper with her a year later, shortly after [my husband] Scott and I got married. Stephanie knew that I wanted to be a writer, and she often sent in-house writing assignments my way (lots of cover copy). When I left Harper in 1995 to have a baby, Stephanie recommended me for several book assignments, including the two Carmen Sandiego novels. That project had been underway for several months—Harper was doing a tie-in with the game and TV show. There were six books in total; two were assigned to me and four went to other writing teams [Ellen Weiss and Mel Friedman, and Bonnie Bader and Tracey West]. I often joke that I got my first modem, my first baby, and my first book deal in the same month!

I loved working with my Carmen Sandiego editor, Kris Gilson. The two books were a blast to write and a great learning opportunity for me. Ellen Weiss remains a good friend of mine. She's a true gem of a person!

Have your experiences writing the Carmen books influenced your work since then?

With Carmen, I discovered how much I love writing humor. Before that (in grad school), my poems and stories were on the serious side. I had so much fun with the playful, sometimes goofy tone of the Carmen Sandiego books that I definitely shifted afterward to more of a focus on humor in my books. I still find writing from a place of playfulness to be my most satisfying kind of work.

Were you familiar with Carmen Sandiego before writing the books?

I loved the computer game! I'd seen several episodes of the show—it's all a bit blurry now and hard to say which I encountered first—and really enjoyed it, but I especially loved the game. Instant classic!

How much guidance did you receive from HarperCollins / Brøderbund? Were the plots your own, or were you given plot outlines?

We were given the basic descriptions for the two kid detectives, and I had a couple of meetings with the editors and the other writers to flesh out the characters a bit more—give them personalities. I don't think Mel was in the meetings, but Ellen was there, and Tracey and Bonnie.

Then I wrote outlines for my two books and the other writers outlined theirs. I was assigned one "Where in the World" mystery and one "Where in Time" mystery. I think I submitted several plot ideas for each—the big challenge was thinking up interesting objects for Carmen and her henchmen to steal. The Blarney Stone and cocoa beans were my favorite ideas and I was thrilled that they got picked!

How did you research the books?

Those were AOL days, and the web wasn't yet a place for intensive research, so I spent a lot of time in the library. For The Cocoa Commotion, I conducted phone interviews with staff members at the Hershey chocolate factory—lots of fun. But I never did get to visit the Blarney Stone!

What was your favorite part of working on the books?

Researching the history of chocolate! Naturally I had to do a lot of sampling in order to describe it properly. ;)

Your author bio in the books mentions that the scene in which Maya and Ben eat sour cherry ice cream in Cologne, Germany was inspired by an actual experience of yours. Did any other experiences of yours make it into the books? Have you had any other travel experiences that notable? (Note: I'm originally from Northern Michigan, so travel experiences involving tart cherries are a high bar to clear for me.)

Ohhh, that sour cherry ice cream! I hope I get to taste it again someday. Apart from eating a lot of chocolate, I can't remember any other personal experiences that informed the books. If I were to write one today, I'd make sure to set a scene in Barcelona. My husband and I spent a week there in 2008 and it was an incredible trip. The paella! The Gaudí buildings! Art on every corner! I'd love to go back someday.

The bio also features a caricature of you with your baby daughter...

That drawing was made by the brilliant comic book artist Rick Burchett, who was working with Scott on Batman comics at the time. Scott was an editor at DC Comics and Rick was one of his favorite artists to work with. When I needed a bio illustration for the Carmen Sandiego books, we commissioned Rick to draw it. I love that piece so much! The baby is my oldest, Kate, who was born right around the time I started working on the books. We still have the original art!

You've written over 20 children's books for a variety of ages, in a variety of genres. Do you have any favorites among them?

That's so hard to say—I'm fond of all of them and I dearly loved creating worlds and adventures for Charlotte and Martha in my Little House prequels—but The Prairie Thief and The Nerviest Girl in the World are extra-special to me. I grew up in Aurora, Colorado and had a summer job at a wildlife refuge on the prairie, a landscape that served as the setting for Prairie Thief. I loved getting to weave secrets into the prairie setting that means so much to me.

Your most recent book, The Nerviest Girl in the World, was published last August. Can you tell us a bit about why you wrote it?

I lived for 11 years in La Mesa, California, a small town just outside San Diego. While I was there, I learned that in the very early days of silent film, there had been a film studio in town. Eventually the studio moved to Santa Barbara, but it was exciting to discover that before Hollywood was the center of the American film industry, little old La Mesa was a moviemaking place. I began reading everything I could find about the studio, and when I learned that many of the cowboys in those early Westerns were real cowboys and ranchers, an idea for a book began to take shape—the story of an adventurous girl who stumbled into work as a daredevil film actress along with her cowboy brothers.

Of course, I'm legally compelled to ask the question that literally every interview currently includes: how has the pandemic changed your job?

LOL! Yes, it's the question right now, isn't it! Well, I've worked at home since the Carmen Sandiego days, and I homeschool my kids, so in the biggest ways our lives weren't hugely affected by the shutdown. But I used to do a lot of my writing in cafés, and I miss that like crazy! I had to think up all sorts of new strategies for staying focused at home this past year. I'm hoping to get back to the coffee shops this summer!

Something I found really interesting is that you have a Patreon, which you explain you started to help pay for medical bills. How has that experience affected your work as an author?

I've played with lots of kinds of content on Patreon and really enjoy having a space to share behind-the-scenes stories. It's a more intimate and personal space than social media, so I feel free to let my hair down and be really frank.

Thanks so much for these fantastic questions! I had so much fun reminiscing about the Carmen Sandiego adventure!

[couldnt-think-of-a-better-name]

The Promised Neverland Art Foreshadowing?!

Ok, so I normally don't post myself just lurk, so excuse me if I screw this up, buuuut... I had to share this. If you are anime-only there will be some manga SPOILERS ahead, so read at your own risk!

I recently got hooked to The Promised Neverland, and even got hard copies of the manga, which is very rare for me.

So as I was appreciating my shiny, newly arrived volume one, and promptly started re-reading, this comment by the author stuck out to me:

What did he mean? I thought it was something that must have been revealed by now, so I was thinking I must be able to figure it out, and I wracked my brain. But my only suspects were the sketch on the next page where Emma stands on the wall, or the fact that there is a glimpse of the demons wearing a mask over their mouths (it wasn’t obvious to me they wore masks until it was revealed later).

Neither of those seemed like that great of a foreshadowing, so I felt disappointed... until I started examining the cover art for hints, and suddenly it clicked and HOT DAMN, I think I am on to something!

So the cover art of volume 1 is a nice artistic composition with the kids standing on some funky boxes with books in the front in neat bookshelves and Grace Field in the back. Very nice and spazzy, nothing strange, right? So am I talking about the titles on those books you can sometimes barely read? Saying stuff, like NUMBER, RUN, HURRY UP! ?

WRONG

Oh boy, no it's not the small details, LOOK AGAIN, at the BIG PICTURE. What can you see? Ok, I will help by pointing out a couple of things in red:

Do you see these children standing on a set of STAIRS leading down into a HOLE UNDERNEATH Gracefield House?!?!??!

It's a bit difficult to see in the colour edition, but the inside of the volume cover also includes a sketch version where you can see that the hole isn't just lined by books, but there are also cogs, and what looks like some old, broken columns... which could be ancient artefacts?

Here, I took a picture of my copy since I couldn't find this art online with a quick search:

So I thought, could it be that ever since volume FRIGGIN one we had been staring at the tunnel that leads to the human world at Gracefield that we now know about? Also, if that's the case, it's implied the kids will go through it...

Well, knowing these mangakas, I wouldn't put such a ballsy and far reaching foreshadowing move past them, after all, they have showcased some God-tier foreshadowing game throughout the manga in my opinion.

But what REALLY got me thinking that I might be onto something was a quick google search when I was looking for a decent quality pic of this volume art, and then I found these...

Those are the chapter covers of chapter 10 and 32. Any of you seeing a pattern yet? Regarding a hole in the ground at Gracefield with stairs that the kids all ho through?!?!? Yeah, at this point I don't think it's a coincidence... it would be hard to swallow if it was.

Mind you, if others have already noticed, then please forgive me for this ignorance, but I haven't seen any post on this yet.

A couple other things I circled or pointed at in those chapter arts: Chapter 10's spiral staircase has books again (I wonder if this foreshadows that the secret passage starts in the library? though I guess Plant 3's library would have burned down), and Gracefield is at the bottom, rather than the top. But notice that Gilda is upside down, so I wonder if the world gets switched upside down when you go over to the human world?

I think chapter 32's art supports this, since this one right behind Emma has a gate at the bottom of the whole, which seems to be upside down.

Sooo what do you all think? Has anyone else noticed these details before?

(Also, I can't believe again how great and brave the mangakas are at foreshadowing, true respect to them! They really have their stuff together!)

EDIT: Actuaaaaally, an even wilder thought has occurred to me: could we have been staring at the ENDGAME of the series since VOLUME ONE?!?!

We know we are in the final arc, but so far we have been led to believe that the children has no intention of going to the human world, and right now the only options SEEM to be REFORGING the PROMISE or DESTROYING all the FARMS.

But Author-san has said before that he likes to fool readers. So what if he has planned all along that they would go to the human world in the end, all together (notice how Norman is there with them in all the images), and they had the balls to foreshadow right from the start!

As far as I know Author-san has already written 300 pages script before the illustrations began, so yeah, I think they could have pulled this off!

Or maybe this is too wild a theory? They could just go to the human world temporarily or just for help... but maaan, would it be cool if they had us staring at the ending since right from the beginning!

[ginnyzero]

If you want to see what the algorithmification of writing looks like, go look at indie publishing on Amazon, or just go to wattpad. This is what turning books which can take at least 6 months to a year to write into "content" for "popularity points" ends up being. Under a read more because this gets long.

On Amazon, if you want any "success" you have to publish every 3 to 4 months to keep your name on top of the algorithm pile. I think you're name, because it's a seller system, not a 'we care about your book series system.' Though a series might help with consistency for your readers. (Then your books may or may not need upwards of 50 reviews and long term sales. It depends on what the algorithm is doing this week.) Amazon is also flooded with no content/low content books which are published upwards of 1000 to 1500 books a year and use the same tagging/meta system as the rest of the books.

The tagging/meta system on Amazon is awful. People put full on sentences in the tagging/meta system to try and get the most 'keywords' they can. (Also throwing keywords into title spaces and littering up the summary. X meets Y has been a thing on Amazon for at least 5 years if not longer.) No one is checking the categories to make sure authors are putting their books in the correct ones. (Hint, they aren't b/c they're trying to get that coveted bestseller gold ribbon so they'll deliberately miscategorize.)

So, what's happened leans towards one of 4 things. There are authors like me who sit on books. I'm sitting on 5 right now. I need at least 6 to feel comfortable publishing ANYTHING on Amazon to give myself a year or two cushion to write more. And I'd prefer those to be in a series, which means I'm 3 short of catgirl mysteries.

There are authors who will underpay and exploit groups of ghost writers and may or may not inadvertently end up plagiarizing other authors. (Yes, this happened and the ghost writer was very upset. They were working with scenes the "author" gave them. They didn't know. The "author" was only upset they got caught. Don't plagiarize Nora Roberts. Yeesh.)

There are authors turning to "AI" Language Learning Models and Generative Art Models to help write/illustrate their books. Yikes. (now against Amazon TOS or at least you can't make money off it and if you don't declare you use these things, they'll delete your author account. And using these in nonfiction spaces could get people seriously hurt.)

OR my least fave, authors will write a bunch of books, put them up on Amazon, when the sales fall, they take them down, SELL them to another author who repackages them with new covers and maybe titles, and SELLS them again. Thus hurting customers who end up buying the same books 2 or 3 times.

This doesn't include authors who drastically change their novels due to reviews. Authors who buy reviews. Authors who split a book into two to offer one free and the next paid as an enticement for you to find out how the 'cliffhanger' ending resolves. I don't know if "changing the item but keeping the old listing" scam has hit books yet, but I wouldn't be surprised. Scam artists who are pumping and dumping essentially with books of gibberish. Robo stuff for Kindle Unlimited. Authors who have faked their own deaths. (That was a doozy.) And the whole "Sponsored Ads" plastered all over the listings being the real service as authors have to BUY those.

Sometimes, and I do mean UNICORN level style of sometimes, an indie author will get a bunch of sales because of a booktokker finding their book and promoting it. This is as rare as an author getting a bunch of sales b/c someone random on twitter (X) promoted it.

This isn't me getting into the content/writing level/editing level of these books. This is JUST the mechanical end of it.

And if you think that's BAD. Wattpad/Royal Road/Reddit are WORSE. There you have to update from twice a week, to every day at different HOURS just to try and get attention. All of this is a recipe for cookie cutter books and burn out. Oh yeah, and Amazon has VELLA now. A Wattpad/AO3 like service. (Are you scared yet?)

Also, the wrong lesson learned from Iron Widow. Or any youtuber who gets a publishing deal (cough Lindsey Ellis.) Also, the story behind the publication of Lightlark. Also Amazon owns goodreads making goodreads useless. Also, many authors now 3 or 4 pen names because they want to write 3 or 4 genres and author names = brands. (Ugh.)

Look, there's a reason why an archive format like AO3 is a holy grail if you're indie or you're looking for books even if they're trad published. The closest you can get is a library. And even then, like I have a 30 library system, but my librarian isn't packing my already published books up and shipping them to another library to put on display for a month. They don't talk to each other unless the computer system is going down it feels like. So, I would have to take the books and go to the other library myself which is a hassle for me b/c the libraries might be 2 to 3 hours away. (And the library has a van that goes around and delivers books between libraries, so, I dunno. I really don't.)

Hey, if you can write that fast, and you like pulp tropey novels, then, good for you. I mean that. But it leaves a LOT of us buried (literally) in what feels like a HUGE pile of SLUSH. And with tiktok becoming even more popular, it means unless you have a schtick (and I don't really) you are stuck in this pile of slush without a shovel. I treat my youtube like a fireside chat because I have 2 choices, I can be an influencer or I can write and I prefer writing!

So, I've got a vampire romcom trilogy to finish, and then 3 more books to write in catgirl mysteries. Then MAYBE I can get back to writing urban fantasy biker werewolves. This is why I don't talk about my books b/c I have no idea when I'll be able to publish them because of the algorithms and I hate getting people's hopes up. (I'm Ginny O. on amazon and youtube in case any of that sounded interesting.)

me making sure i shake my head in disgust as i walk past booktok tables in bookshops

[notexactlyrocketscience]

Why You Should Read Books by Jackqueline Wilson (Illustrated by Nick Sharrat)

I've been thinking about doing this for a while now, especially since it feels like Wilson's books seem to be so little-known in Bangladesh—and they deserve better. I grew up with these books, and for more reasons than one, they helped me become who I am, and were there for me when very few people were.

A lot of people are quick to assume her books are only for tween girls, but I'd recommend them to all children—heck, even all grown-ups. Because each of them address subtle traumas every one of us have undeniable faced, including but not limited to family problems, friendship issues, financial uncertainty, long-distance platonic relationships, mental health hurdles, and just plain old loneliness and awkwardness.

As a child, did you ever feel alone, or simply not understood or heard by anyone? Do you remember those times? Do you ... just not have enough time to dwell on them anymore? I don't. But I also actively avoid those memories because when I do go back to them, I feel nothing but empty sadness for the younger me.

Books like these are a doorway into unraveling, understanding, and resolving not only your own experiences, but also those of the young kids and teens in your life.

(It helps that I spent a year in Britain when I was a toddler: my bedtime stories, earliest memories, and even some long-forgotten orientations of thinking—that sometimes need the cobwebs brushed off by books like these—are centered around the city of Bath.)

And remember how Roald Dahl found an illustrator soulmate in Quentin Blake? Jackqueline Wilson and Nick Sharrat are that kind of magical pair. Each book is organized in an absolutely genius way, with gorgeous writing wrapped around with neat art that warms your soul.

Now, onto the (shamefully small number of) books I've read:

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The Suitcase Kid

I had to begin with this one. It was my first book by her, and it changed my world. A nine-year-old girl is caught between two parents that love her but no longer love each other. The story takes us through the divorce and the denial, frustration and grief of a home and an entire idea of love lost. We are gently walked through Andy's search for a restored sense of belonging—through dodging step-family members, accidentally bumping into unlikely friends, friction with her parents, and eventual realization and acceptance.

My own parents were navigating through their divorce when I read this, and while I mostly distanced myself from the very feelings that Andy couldn't seemed to escape with relative ease (which isn't necessarilly a strength), I found comfort in her struggle, and in the final note that helped me understand, at that age, that my parents' romantic relationships were their own. Not mine, not anyone else's. And that, well—love isn't a finite resource.

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Double Act

Another piece of fiction about twins! After the magic of The Parent Trap and the Olsen Twins, why not? Ruby and Garnet are inseparable, and although they miss their mom immensely, they don't have many memories of her and they absolutely love the life they do have with their grandmother and dad—until a woman called Rose walks in.

As their little suburban life is turned upside down with a big move, the two girls have vastly different emotional responses—and what turns out to be very different outlooks in life. This book explores sisterhood and its delicacy, but also its strength and resilience against the worst kinds of hurdles.

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Bad Girls

Bullies that your parents are unable to figure out and friendships that your parents are unable to accept. Issues so painfully ordinary, and yet there are so few authors who sufficiently deal with them.

I grew up with social anxiety. I am never in the spotlight, and in a group of friends, I am never the glue that sticks the rest together, loved by all. I understand myself and my own places of emotional comfort better now, but as a young girl I would be the one tagging after girls that looked and behaved older, that always seemed to know about grown-up things better than I did, that were just cooler in every way. This book explores that very real fear of rejection which gnawed at my being for my entire pre-teen and early teen years.

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Candyfloss

I learned about chip butties from this. Just for that, it's a five-star read.

No, but really. I'm realizing as I write this that I relate to this book more now than ever. What's worse than a split-up family? A split-up family living on opposite sides of the planet. Difficult decisions, sacrifices, and trouble that you can't see coming until they hit you in the face.

This also deals with homelessness and unconventional ways of living, along with the nearly-unavoidable dissaproval earned from friends and acquaintances in the middle-class society that you previously belonged to.

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Cookie

More unconventional ways of living, brought about by escape from an abusive father/husband. Abuse is difficult enough to read about without it belonging in a kid's book. But it's an important topic to cover, and seeing it through a child's eyes is as important as anything else to actively prevent the cycle being continued in the future. Children are smart. They never miss a thing. And the lengths they go through to cover up difficulties at home just to seem socially acceptable in school is heartbreaking.

Equally liberating is reading about the freedom that comes with finally packing up a few things to leave forever—and never look back.

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I'm afraid my miniature reviews fail to do these books justice, and honestly fail to cover just how much depth and dimension is packed into each, but I hope this encourages you to look for some next time you're picking out a birthday gift for a child in your life. Thanks for reading!