#the publish

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

it's healthy for academics to have professional feuds. enrichment activity

[charbroiledchicken]

if it's good enough for you, then it deserves to be made. don't let anyone else decide if your story is worth it or not.

[syn4k]

would he fucking say that? let's investigate.

[roseworth]

i think theres this idea in the general public that the "best" fanfic gets turned into real books like 50 shades of grey. but the truth is that the best fanfic can never be published as an actual book because its intricately woven into the canon material so its inseparable even if you change the names

[st-just]

I admit I always find it funny when people whose entire business is media give on-the-record quotes that sound this much like the villain of a movie about hosting a charity talent show to save the beloved local library.

[rubyjones]

Too many writers are using generative 'AI' to make their book covers, so I've written a guide on how to make your own cover for free or cheap without turning to a machine.

If you can't afford to pay an artist, you CAN make your own!

I hope this is a helpful overview that covers the basics and points to some free resources.

[Edit:] this is getting well outside this account's usual reach and a few people in the notes are making not so great comments about the fact I write weird erotica. So, for full disclosure: yes, I am an erotica writer. And the book covers include those for tentacle erotica and robot erotic romance. But you cannot see anything NSFW. All of these covers were approved by Amazon. Frankly, the cover of the most NSFW story, Oviposition, is downright tame! And to those complaining about the word 'Oviposition', that is a scientific word for a naturally occurring phenomenon - it's only naughty if you know the content of the story, which is only alluded to as 'sexy'.

I also do not believe that shirtless men require a warning, but yeah, two of the covers have shirtless men. The cover with a tasteful nude drawing (showing a bum, but not a weenor) has already been censored.

I can't do anything about the version of this post that got rb'd by a popular person, but for those who are concerned, consider this your content warning.

[that-butch-archivist]

"Lesbian Weddings" by Wendy Jill York

source: The Femme Mystique, edited by Lesléa Newman

[intermundia]

this is the single worst way i've ever read to describe an erection, frank herbert

[fytpop]

Watch ""ความสวยงาม", by rock band The Publish

[foxglovedforest]

AND THEY’RE FUCKING CORRECT

[thewhumpyprintingpress]

This is a friendly reminder to never, ever publish your book with a publishing company that charges you to publish with them. That is a vanity press, which makes money by preying on authors. They charge you for editing, formatting, cover art, and more. With most of these companies, you will never seen a cent of any royalties made from sale of your book. A legitimate publishing company only makes money when you make money, they will never charge you to publish with them. If a company approaches you and says "Hey, we'll publish your book, just pay us X amount of money," tell them to go fuck themself and block them.

[bebewrites]

woop there it is

[faffreux]

it's weird to be attracted to an ugly frog like wtf is even your taste in men

i won't argue with you about whether or not fawful is ugly but it is weird yes, i agree

i have long accepted that i am weird

[catacini]

it's so beethover / we're so bach

[elizabethminkel]

In a normal year, @flourish & I would have made a list of five big fandom trends for our annual "Year in Fandom" round-up. But the podcast is on hiatus, and I was left with MANY THOUGHTS about fanfiction seeming to break containment this year and nowhere to put them. So this is a "Year in Fandom" segment of sorts, about a set of related fanfiction trends that I'm pretty unhappy about!

I get that sense that a lot of fandom folks are, like me, worried about the way the ground seems to be shifting beneath us: in meta after meta, I’ve seen frustration over a larger but increasingly passive fic readership; dismay that traditional publishing has a growing influence over a practice that partly exists in opposition to it; and anger that some guy can just copy-paste your work and charge money for it, and no one outside of fandom seems to care.

What happens when fanfiction scales—but participatory fan communities do not? Read or listen to an audio version via the link above!