Blue's Crews
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Mageheart That's so exciting!!! I'm also glad you mentioned your newsletter, because I've been meaning to subscribe to that and kept forgetting >>
Sep 21, 2022
BluesClues the more I mention it, the more people subscribe~ at least in theory hehe
Sep 21, 2022
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Scheduling a call with my publisher for next week so we can talk about preorder goodies and book merch and such things :eyes:
Mageheart !!!
Sep 14, 2022
BluesClues !!!
Sep 15, 2022
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Doing an #ama about Remarkable Retirement over on Twitter for today's SelfPitch event! This one is a mini-event where everyone shares moodboards or aesthetics for in-progress or upcoming work, so it's quieter than the last event. But I'm having fun answering questions as they roll in!
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Hoping to get edits for Edna's story soon! My editor is leaving comments in a Google doc, so every so often if I see there are new comments, I go in and take a peak. She asked me if there was anything I wanted to focus on before she got too far in, so many of her comments are about the omniscient viewpoint! That's something that's tricky to do well, and modern readers are largely unfamiliar with it because publishing doesn't publish much of it anymore. But I know I can do a much better job now than I did when I originally wrote this novel, so I'm excited to dig in and make it better.
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Someone in the Spring 2023 Debuts channel in Slack asked what we're all doing with our books right now, because she's basically done with everything and is sort of twiddling her thumbs waiting for more stuff to happen...and I don't have my edits yet XD
It always feels weird to admit that to author debut authors, because with how slowly publishing typically moves, other Spring 2023s are long done with big-picture edits and at best are typically working on smaller-level issues. But because I'm with a small press that moves a lot faster, my timeline is shortened, so I should have edits some time this month.
(Fingers crossed!)
Technically that's fine, I just feel weird admitting I'm so far "behind" when everyone starts talking about where they are in the process!
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So, last week a blog-tour organization reached out to me about potentially doing some marketing for Remarkable Retirement. For those of you who don't know, a "blog tour" basically means that they get a bunch of different book bloggers together, give them ARCs (advanced reader copies), and have them post reviews on their blogs within a couple days or weeks of each other. A blog tour may also involve author interviews posted to different blogs.
What's really cool about this particular blog-tour organization is that they've done blog tours for some MAJOR books: Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert; The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna; Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas; and many more.
Like, some BIG-NAME BOOKS and books I've read and loved! So I'm kind of sitting here like "how on earth did this company that's done work on these books find ME," but also hello yes please. My publisher is in contact with them now, so hopefully this means some exciting marketing things coming down the shoot!
Finally getting a bit ahead on lesson-planning, so here's hoping I can get back to more regular posts soon. <3
Mageheart oh my gosh that's so cool !!!! congrats on getting such an amazing offer <333
Aug 29, 2022
BluesClues @Mageheart thank you so much!!! there was another exciting thing today, so we'll see if that thing goes through as well @_@
Aug 30, 2022
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Mageheart Those look so good oh my god !!!!
Aug 25, 2022
BluesClues I KNOW RIGHT LIKE W H A T :cries: like seeing the paperback is good enough but the HARDCOVER--
So clearly I will have to add this to my "how to" post, but tbh it wasn't much different!!
Aug 25, 2022
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Still v tired and busy, but I wanted to let you all know that my sister
- read Buried Things in one sitting
- texted me her live reactions
- called me the second she was done to yell at me
Mageheart !!!!
is that a good yell or a bad yell-
Aug 24, 2022
BluesClues @Mageheart it was a good yell for me XD like the best way I can explain it is that her last text message before she called me was "WAIT I'M CRYING BECAUSE I'M HAPPY, IS THIS A PRANK" which I'm still laughing about
Aug 24, 2022
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The club might be a lil quiet for a bit, just so you all know! Between the schoolyear starting and all the things happening in publishing that make me feel like "great, I became a debut author just in time for the industry to collapse :,)" I'm just constantly worried and tired and need to take a step back.
I'll share any updates if I have them, and I'll eventually post about doing personal print copies of books! Hopefully it won't be for more than a week or two <3 In the meantime, feel free to yeet any questions about publishing or my projects, and I'll answer them as I have time and energy. Take care of yourselves, kids <3
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...rethinking my helpful personal-print post because of things happening with Barnes & Noble right now.
(I'd still like to do such a post, I just have to...decide how I want to do it given the below.)
Basically, Barnes & Noble is stocking only 1-2 copies of books by many authors and refusing to stock hardcovers of debut or midlist authors at all. Which, you know. Is something you want to hear as an upcoming debut author. >.<
This means that if you go to your local Barnes & Noble for a newly released book, you may not find it until the paperback releases several months to a year later. If you're browsing and aren't looking for anything in particular, there are tons of new books you may simply never be exposed to.
Why is this a problem?
This hurts readers, particularly in places where Barnes & Noble is the only bookstore, and particularly younger readers who can't just go online and order books with a credit card. (And so far it seems like the policy is predominantly targeting kidlit.) It hurts authors, particularly marginalized authors (even bestsellers! we're already seeing it!), because fewer readers are buying their books, and casual readers who find books by browsing the shelves aren't buying at all.
And ultimately, it hurts Barnes & Noble. Because (a) many readers go to bookstores to browse. If those books aren't available for them to see while browsing, that's a sale you could've had that's now gone. Yes, readers can go to B&N's website and buy those books. But (b) B&N's whole thing is being THE remaining national brick-and-mortar chain bookstore. That's their market niche. That's what they give consumers. A large, national brick-and-mortar store where you know each one will be similar and you expect to be able to find new releases and new copies of older books that you might only find secondhand (or not at all) at small indie bookstores.
Channeling shoppers online because it's cheaper will not work. Amazon has the online book market cornered, not only because of how massive it is now, but because Amazon started out as an online bookseller. If customers can't find the book in stores, they're not going to go home and order from B&N's website. They're going to go home and order from Amazon, because Amazon offers better/cheaper shipping options and often cheaper prices. Trying to channel consumers to their website to save money on stocking physical stores is a BONKERS strategy that is absolutely going to fail.
The writing on the wall.
Someone whose wife was a general manager at Borders Books for more than a decade tweeted that his wife says this decision likely means Barnes & Noble is in trouble: they're low on cash and making bizarre decisions - the same kinds of decisions Borders Books made in their last 3 years - in a desperate attempt to save themselves.
Well, that didn't work for Borders, did it. Borders is gone.
Unfortunately, this take makes a lot of sense to me. The first thing I thought of when I saw that this was happening was to remember another bizarre and horrible decision B&N made several years ago: to quickly save money on payroll and benefits, they fired full-time store workers across the country and invited them to reapply as new, part-time employees.
(That means: everyone who is fired is now not getting paid. If they're rehired, they'll be paid less and won't have benefits right away because they'll be "new," no matter how long they worked there previously. And as part-time employees, they likely aren't eligible for benefits at all.)
That decision may have saved B&N some money at the time. I don't know. What I do know is that it showed an utter lack of care for employees, especially long-time employees, it pissed a lot of people off, and it probably lost B&N a lot of customers who no longer wanted to shop at a store that treated its employees that way.
And based on the decisions they're making now, it didn't work long-term.
Love them or hate them, I think Barnes & Noble may not be long for this world. I obviously don't have insight into their inner workings or what's going on behind the scenes, but we may see the end of them in the next 5 years.
Between that and the ongoing Department of Justice case about the Penguin Random House/Simon & Schuster merger (which admittedly I stopped keeping up on this week because I've been too busy and tired to deal with it), it's really a ~ sparkling time ~ to be a new author.
tatteredbones Oh no because that is where I have to order my books from eep
Aug 18, 2022
BluesClues @shatteredstones hopefully you can order from an indie in the future if necessary! Many of them do ship, even if you live quite far away. Also, BookDepository ships free anywhere in the world to my knowledge, so that's a good alternative to Amazon!
(Obviously that doesn't help much if you usually order books for in-store pickup, but.)
Aug 18, 2022
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BluesClues can you imagine if I'd actually announced my book deal this way
Aug 18, 2022
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Hey everyone! I swear I'm still working on the post about ordering personal copies, but today at work I did 8 hours of meeting, including A.L.I.C.E. training (that's active shooter training, for those of you not in the U.S.), so I am utterly wiped. But I hope to have info for you some time this week <3
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Mageheart !!!!!!!
Aug 15, 2022
Snoink UM. UM. UM. UM. UM.
Aug 15, 2022
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It'll be at least a few days before I have the personal prints post written up because it's long and involved and I'm out of town this weekend, BUT when I do get it ready to go it'll also have info about how to get a personal print in hardcover with a dust jacket @.@
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It's going to take me a minute because I want to include screenshots as much as possible and also make it as simple as possible, but I'm working on a "how to print personal copies of your book" post!
Mageheart !!!
Aug 11, 2022
Sep 21, 2022
Exciting things are afoot! Edna's cover reveal will be through Hear Our Voices on October 31. Interested book bloggers and reviewers can sign up to participate on social media. And I'll be doing an exclusive reveal for subscribers to my newsletter a few days early!
Today's call with my publisher went very well, so hopefully details about that tomorrow
as long as I don't forget