#then publishing books

[seascapesandsalt]

honestly with the amount of fear I used to feel on a daily basis, it's amazing I ever got anything done, let alone open water swims, publishing books, and throwing big parties

[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

[that-butch-archivist]

"Lesbian Weddings" by Wendy Jill York

source: The Femme Mystique, edited by Lesléa Newman

[foxglovedforest]

AND THEY’RE FUCKING CORRECT

[pangur-and-grim]

alright, this one's a little more silly

[welldrawnfish]

Twig: Fog Flowers Many of you want to read Twig. Twigs official story isnt online, these are exploration comics. I am however working to put together a pitch for the publisher Glénat! they have put out some of my favourite works and it would be a dream to work with them. If you have any experience pitching comics Id love to hear from you, Im admittedly struggling with what to include

[southfarthing]

I'm imagining if tolkien lived now and publishers were asking him if he had enough followers on twitter and if he could film videos to market his found family elfcore magic cottagevibes worldbuilding fantasy book on tiktok. i think he would run them over with his car actually

[annabelle--cane]

I'm in the literary studies section of my university library, reading vampire books you've never heard of

[torpublishinggroup]

Celebrate Pride with Tor Publishing Group!

Rakesfall by @adamantine

They met as children in the middle of the Sri Lankan civil war. Later, in a demon-haunted wood, an act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey through the ages. As they reincarnate ever deeper into the future, a truth emerges: Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell.

Running Close to the Wind by @ariaste

In this queer pirate fantasy, Avra Helvaçi has accidentally stolen the single most expensive secret in the world. To avoid capture, he flees to the open sea, where only his on-again, off-again ex aka pirate Captain Teveri az-Ḥaffār can help him survive, profit, and become a legend.

Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Something evil is buried deep in the desert. It wants your body and wears your skin. Welcome to Camp Resolution, a queer conversion center where everyone leaves a different person. In 1995, seven queer teens were abandoned here by their parents, but survived. Sixteen years later, they’re scarred and broken, but back to face an evil that threatens the world. 

Kinning by Nisi Shawl

In this alternate history where barkcloth airships soar and former colonies claim freedom from imperialist tyrants, the identity of the island of Everfair still wavers. Victorious in the wake of the Great War, a new threat looms. Can Everfair continue to serve as a symbol of hope for anticolonial movements around the world, or will it fall to forces within and without? 

Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by @rebeccathornewrites

Can one of the Queen’s private guard and the most powerful mage in existence leave their lives behind to settle down in their new bookshop that serves tea? This cozy fantasy is steeped in sapphic romance and nestled on the edge of dragon country. 

The Fragile Threads of Power by V. E. Schwab

Once there were four worlds, nestled like pages in a book, each pulsing with fantastical power and connected by a single city: London. After a desperate attempt to prevent corruption and ruin in the four Londons, there are only three. Now the worlds are going to collide anew—brought to a dangerous precipice by the discoveries of three remarkable magicians.

Now available in paperback!

The Archive Undying by @emcandon

This is a story about misplaced faith, complicated love, so much self-loathing, and yeah—giant robots. Plugged into his AI god when its apocalyptic corruption renders him unfortunately immortal, sad gay disaster Sunai takes a die-again-or-die-trying approach to things. Unending life’s tough when intimacy is somehow scarier even than either of the warring police states set on turning you into a weapon or the rogue undead mecha-fragment of your old god that wants to eat you. 

Now available in paperback!

The Bell in the Fog by Lev AC Rosen

A dazzling historical mystery that dives into the shadowy, closeted world of the Navy, emerging in the gay bars of the city. It’s a whirlpool of missing people, violent strangers, and scandalous photos in 1952 San Francisco. 

Now available in paperback!

Celebrate Pride with more titles from Tor Publishing Group here!

[darcyolsson]

look i dislike the corporate artstyle book cover trend as much as the next person but we cant pretend every book looking the same is something new. if you stepped into a bookstore in 2013 there would be approximately 57 books whose cover art consisted of a girl in a ballgown with her back half-turned to the camera photoshopped into a vaguely fantasy-like landscape. i was 11 years old fighting for my life to find the right maximalistic girl and her single-adjective book title we cannot forget the horrors i went through please be respectful of my experiences

[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.

[triona-tribblescore]

I WANNA DRAAWW!! RAHHHGG!! Absolutely swamped with college work, im so tired TT (hence whatever tf this is lmao)

[nicosraf]

As per my last post, if yall arent aware — Cait Corrain, the author of the upcoming Crown of Starlight made a bunch of fake accounts on Goodreads to review-bomb other debut authors, almost entirely BIPOC, with 1 star while 5-starring her own book. She also added traditionally published debut authors to a list derogatorily labeling them as "self-published" hacks. She went after random books that are Greek mythology retellings, like her own is, and again targeted BIPOC authors. She even targeted my good friend RM Virtues, who is an indie author who writes queer Black Greek myth reimaginings.

Many of those she attacked were people who considered her a colleague and friend. She's tried to spin a lie about how she's being framed by someone from her Reylo fandom days, but Reylos have disproven that already.

Cait allegedly liked to brag about how her publisher treated her like royalty, and she had a massive Illumicrate deal. Her book was also getting favorable advanced reviews and had a beautiful cover, so she had nothing to be jealous of. She's potentially destroyed her career due to racism alone. Do not buy her book and do not support her.

Here is a thread if you want specifics and here is the 31-page doc of evidence.

[that-butch-archivist]

"Dyke March 1994" by Morgan Gwenwald

source: The Wild Good: Lesbian Photographs & Writings on Love, edited by Beatrix Gates

[mittland]

bruce springsteen by lynn goldsmith, 1977

[bunnybirds]

In Princess Aster's world, bunnybirds live in contented isolation, keeping themselves detached from the world in order to practice magic. Nothing is ever wrong, and no one is ever angry...even as Aster's people seem to be slowly disappearing. When her father is next to vanish, Aster resolves to find and rescue the missing bunnybirds—even if it means journeying over the rim of the world itself!

My middle grade graphic novel is officially available for preorder! Bunnybirds is a story about trauma, friendship, and my experience with autistic masking. It was drawn entirely with Prismacolor colored pencils and Pandafly markers, with Photoshop applied for color enhancement and text.

Check it out maybe! :D

That last panel with Carlin (the brown bunnybird) facing the corner was directly inspired by this wonderful TMA comic by @nubs-mbee!