get to know me meme ♡ favorite tv shows → derry girls
being a Derry Girl, well, it's a fucking state of mind!
#i’ll take “completely normal platonic coworker things” for $500, alex
@it-is-bugs I have brought honor to your ancestors. Idk if you remember a few years ago you posting something about bear proof garbage cans, and I had to admit I had seen one for the first time recently and didn’t know how to use them. Well I am in the Canadian Rockies right now and all the garbage cans and recycling bins are bear proof. But this time I was prepared and knew how to use them. Today we are walking around town and I see someone who clearly is also from the lower 48 flailing helplessly as she tries to throw out some garbage. So I came over and showed her how to use it and she was embarassed that she was stumped but I told her,
“Don’t worry, I only know because someone from Alaska showed me.”
Sniffle. My work here is done. In honor, a picture of the door to my garage where the garbage cans hide until pickup day. Those are the sad little paw prints of a teenage bear who’s not learned to viciously tear the door open.
Phryne: “Come after me.”
Jack: “What did you say?”
Phryne: “It was a romantic overture.”
Jack: “Say it again.”
Phryne: “Come after me, Jack Robinson.”
ship dynamic that im weak for: middle-aged people who are Weird About Each Other
The X-Files, “The Red and the Black” behind the scenes featuring:
- Gillian Anderson taking a phone break
- Tom Braidwood in his job as assistant director, not in his role as Frohike
- Jaap Broeker in his job as David Duchovny’s stand-in, not in his role as the Stupendous Yappi
THE X FILES (4.18) : “I just thought it was a pretty cool keychain.”
Some publishing math: The publisher paid me $25,000 for this book back in 2018, which is better than a lot of authors are paid. Still, the book did not come out until 2021, which means that the $25,000 had to stretch over four years: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021. Suddenly, it’s not looking like a lot of money!
The 25K was also kind of like a loan. The publisher “advanced” me the money and then I had to earn it back through book sales before I could make another dime. I make about $2 per sale, so it takes many thousands of book sales before I make any additional money.
This book has now earned me $600 since its publication two years ago.
Dummyhead me forgot to mention: the Kindle version of this book is currently on sale for $2.99…its lowest price ever! If you’ve ever wanted to grab it, now’s a great time to score a deal.
Link: https://bit.ly/3qpB8HG
The whole kiss and nothing but the kiss.
I will never not reblog this.
I can not get over that I have a doctor blake post with over 400 notes.
Some Truest Truths about Publishing
Being a published author is a lifelong dream of mine, and many aspects of it are indeed awesome. I love telling stories and sharing them with the world. Seeing my books in a bookstore or a library will always be thrilling! Meeting new readers from all over the globe is huge fun. But there have been a bunch of “being a published author is bad for your mental health” threads lately, and I think part of why this is true is that people don’t understand how the industry works before they get into it. So, here are some things about how publishing functions that I did not know before I became part of the machine:
1. You can know your book’s likely trajectory at the time you sign the contract. The publisher decides how well your book will sell. Large publishers sell more books than mid-sized publishers, which sell more books than small- or micro-publishers. A large publisher doing minimal publicity for your book will probably still sell more copies of it than a small publisher, simply because they already have the machinery in place. But, if your large publisher does not offer you a large advance at the time of signing, they are not going to do much more than their basic-level publicity for your book. They are going to focus their efforts on books they paid a lot of money to acquire because they want to get that money back. So, if your large publisher is not offering you at least a quarter of a million dollars to acquire your book, they aren’t going to be gunning to make it a NY Times Bestseller.
2. Books are a hit-driven industry. Most books lose money so everyone is counting on the few bestsellers to finance the whole industry. This is why big names like Stephen King or Danielle Steele suck up huge amounts of the publicity budget. Publishers need their books to sell sell sell, which means reaching fans who only buy Stephen King and Danielle Steele books. These fans aren’t paying a lot of attention, so publishers need to get that “GO BUY NOW” bat signal into the sky to wake up these fans. They pull out all the advertising stops. This is why big-name authors eat up so much of the publicity budget despite being household names. Publishers need to reach those fans for each new book to ensure the book makes the $$$$ that the publishers are counting on.
3. Everyone who is in the industry is riding the same train. So when the large publishers decide which books to push (because they have paid a lot to acquire them and/or the author is already a household name), booksellers and librarians have to get on board too. Yes, librarians and independent booksellers can also promote smaller titles that they really love, and that’s GREAT, but they mostly have to march to the tune set by the large publishers. Bookstores are usually operating at razor-thin margins. They need to sell the books that people want to read. Which books do people want to read? The ones they have heard of! How did they hear about them? The big publishers spent the $ to advertise! See how it’s all connected? Libraries, too. They need to stock the titles that will rotate well; books people want to check out and read. Which ones will they stock? The ones that the large publishers are pushing, because these are the titles that people will ask for.
4. Almost nothing good happens to your book without your publisher paying for it. Often, even things that look like awards or editorial decisions involve money changing hands.
5. Because of points 1-4, the author can do very little to influence the sale of their book. Giants like Amazon or Barnes and Noble already know which books are going to be the lead titles because the publishers told them so. Outlets like the NYT know too. Libraries, indie bookstores…they all know the signs of big publisher investment. For example, if the publisher says they are going to print 250,000 copies of your book, then everyone knows the title is going to be pushed HARD. If they say they are publishing 10,000 copies, then the author has no hope of competing with the lead title. So, the author can’t, on their own, do anything to change the fate of their book. However, the author is held accountable when their book doesn’t sell, despite the fact that everyone in the industry does understand that publishers sell books, not authors.
6. Because of points 1-4, how well a book is written or how talented the author is has not much to do with how many copies the book sells. Often bestsellers are really great and the authors are extremely hardworking…but not always. And there are zillions of hugely talented, diligent authors whose books don’t sell well at all because a large publisher has never shone that kind of spotlight on them. To exist in an industry where talent and hard work don’t influence the results is maddening, and a big part of why authors go a little insane.
