writing I guess

My biggest priority WIPs are: A play adaptation of Frankenstein called Vicky Franco and a YA novel about emo kids called A Little Less Sixteen Candles, feel free to ask any questions about either

[goth-queen]

[sandersstudies]

My Shakespeare students (they are 12) wanted to summarize the lessons they learned this semester. If. Um. Anybody would like to see.

[sandersstudies]

I cannot emphasize enough that they made these with very little input from me.

Henry the Fifth

- ALWAYS encourage others to do their best.

- NEVER talk about people behind their back.

Antony and Cleopatra

- ALWAYS check your produce for pests. [They liked this one so much made a rap about it.]

- NEVER count your chickens before they hatch.

Hamlet

- ALWAYS act decisively

- NEVER tell your girlfriend to go to a convent and become a nun [Oh boy they REALLY liked this one]

Romeo and Juliet

- ALWAYS collect all the important information before making an important decision

- NEVER bite your thumb at us, sir. [They enacted this scene in the original language a lot, except they swapped every “sir” for “bro.”]

The Merchant of Venice

- ALWAYS pay your debts.

- NEVER judge based on appearances, because “all that glisters is not gold.”

The Tempest

- ALWAYS try to forgive others.

- NEVER be a colonizer. [Yes, a middle schooler said this]

Midsummer Night’s Dream

- ALWAYS stay on forest trails

- NEVER fall in love with an ass. [They were excited about this one for obvious reasons.]

Twelfth Night

- ALWAYS stay in touch with those important to us

- NEVER read other people’s mail

Macbeth

- ALWAYS wash your hands. [One of the girls performed Lady Macbeth’s entire Out Damn Spot monologue at the end of the semester]

- NEVER succumb to peer pressure.

[sandersstudies]

Yeah, I was re-reading the Tempest like “hmmm will they even understand the subtle themes here… this might be a cut-and-dry magic story to them.”

Kid 1 (known intellectual): Wait, Prospero is like… a colonizer to the magical creatures. He showed up on their island and enslaved them.

Kid 2: Enslaving people is bad! Is Prospero a bad guy?

Kid 3: But Caliban is bad! He wanted to kidnap Miranda.

Me: Yeah, it’s kind of hard, isn’t it? Just like how in real life most people are a mix of good and bad.

Kid 4: …is this why Shakespeare is supposed to be, like, really good?

[dykekingofhell]

frankenstein(s): weird science

[timetravelhouse]

I wanted to let you know that your vid will screen tonight at Vid Party, part of Wiscon (a feminist and diverse scifi/fantasy convention - currently online only). Thanks for making such an amazing vid, it is contributing to a beloved event!

[dykekingofhell]

sick!

[starlettisketches]

Animal Farm covers I designed!!

I wish these were real I don’t really like any of the existing animal farm covers that much 😭

[frankherbertsdune]

It's so funny to me that Mary Shelley, her husband, John Polidori, and Lord Byron had a competition to see who could write the best horror story and she wrote fucking Frankenstein. Imagine losing a competition that badly. Imagine just doing a silly little competition with your friend and she basically invents a new genre and creates one of the most famous characters in fiction. Imagine being proud of your little story and then she shares one that people will still read every day in 200 years. Imagine doing a writing competition with your wife and she becomes so recognizable that you'll always be known as Mary Shelley's husband

[frankherbertsdune]

Since my dad found this on Reddit and my brother found it on Instagram and it became my most well known post, this has become a little bit of a running joke in my household, especially the part where so many people made the exact same comment of trying to argue that Percy Shelley is just as important/influential as Mary, if not more

And so when I was babysitting my nephew, my brother saw my copy of Frankenstein and made a joke like "woah, was this written by Percy Shelley's wife???" and then today, I went to my dad's house and he gave me a really nice hardback copy of Frankenstein and made the same joke pretending to be shocked to learn that Percy Shelley's wife wrote a book. The three of us reading the exact same comment hundreds of times on every iteration of this post fried our brains so much that the three of us share one brain cell and it's only capable of the one joke about us being shocked that Percy Shelley's wife was a writer too

[frankherbertsdune]

Update: I'm watching the 1931 Frankenstein movie, and it actually says in the opening credits "From the novel by Mrs. Percy B. Shelley" lmao

[frankherbertsdune]

I made a community specifically for people writing scripts if anyone is interested. Plays, movies, TV, shorts, skits, radio plays, whatever it may be. Meant to be a place for providing feedback, advice, beta reading, but also with the explicit goal of being a place where you can seek out a cast to do a reading (so, technically, for both writers and actors)

Here's the invite link - go crazy! Even if you just have the tiniest bit of an idea and no idea where to start, or if you've written a 7 Act epic or a film trilogy, you're welcome

[frankherbertsdune]

Does anyone wanna check out a 9 page comedy stage play I wrote for a competition? My friend editor is asleep rn and also I feel like maybe more eyes than a singular theater kid and a singular person who doesn't know shit about theater might not be the perfect range

[ashenmind]

“monsters in the backrooms” is still such a funny concept to me

“here’s a space that’s odd and makes you feel uniquely alone, like no one has ever been here before, but don’t worry, we put a critter in here because we thought that was boring”

[fishmech]

So you only like the first 62 words of the 80 word post that established the concept? Fascinating.

[ashenmind]

yes

[ashenmind]

like that last paragraph is exactly what I described; an author overplaying their hand because they don’t grasp that the space being empty is far more interesting than anything you could possibly put into it

[ashenmind]

there are 1001 one things you can put into the backrooms that are more interesting than monsters

once you have done that, find something else to do with your creative efforts. not everything needs to be suitable for a video game.

no. wander my halls for 10,000 years.

[isabellebissonrouthier]

*hypnotizes you* write your book write your book write your book

[cpericardium]

hey everyone "I" have something to show "you"

[cpericardium]

[cpericardium]

[jewfrogs]

this is so mean but sometimes i see published writing and suddenly no longer feel insecure about my own writing ability. like well okay that got published so im guessing i dont have much to worry about

[itsprettygrimm]

I have a very specific image in my head of what Simon and Baz’s dorm looks like and it’s not logical but it’s also not changing

[rainbowrowell]

Same.

[krisrix]

The potentials for the layout of their room haunt me - I yearn to have an official-ish design for it so badly.

@carryonsimoncarryonbaz and I have spent literal days of our lives researching towers and turrets and making mockups 😂

[rainbowrowell]

I am going to try to draw it, and it’s going to show you how terrible I am at both drawing and spatial relationships.

[rainbowrowell]

[itsprettygrimm]

WE DID IT BOYS

(thank you, rainbow, for indulging me. so so so excited for cherry baby!)

[doomsday-dj]

There was recently a copyright infringement case in YA and I need everyone to know that the following sentence was in the legal decision:

“Hot, sexy, dangerous boys, central to virtually all young adult romance novels, cannot be copyrighted.”

[kuttithevangu]

“Regarding setting, the court held that both works taking place in Alaska high schools was not protectable because Alaska is a public place and setting a teen novel in a high school is a common genre convention.”

Freeman v. Deebs-Elkenaney | Loeb & Loeb LLP

Freeman v. Deebs-Elkenaney | Loeb & Loeb LLP

[bitt-better]

Oh my god

[frankherbertsdune]

Behold the drawing I did instead of studying! I'm probably gonna hate it in 20 minutes which is why I'm posting it now lol. In fact I just noticed that the angle of her ear is off but I really need to do this study guide lmao

I'm open to comments on her design, just pls refrain from pointing out the technical errors I know they're there 💀

[beaft]

bitch moment: obviously this is subjective but a lot of modern queer lit (especially YA) has this specific tone that i find really grating. i want to call it "smug" but that's not exactly it. it's more like, that sense that the author is utterly convinced of the correctness of their own worldview and expects everyone else to agree with them on principle

[beaft]

two poles on this one btw

author is scared of me = terrified of ambiguity, uses excruciatingly precise language to avoid being misinterpreted, treats diversity as a box-ticking exercise, bends over backwards to explain itself when Literally No One Asked, all morally grey actions have to be immediately justified and resolved

author wants me dead = protagonist is unfailingly righteous and good, antagonist is irredeemably evil strawman, narrative refuses to make space for opinions/experiences that don't perfectly match up with the author's perspective, lots of Teachable Moments where an ignorant character is kindly shown the error of their ways by a wiser, more enlightened character

[mikkeneko]

#these things are not opposites on a spectrum#I see these mindsets packaged together more often than not#the author wants you dead because they are scared of you

[systlin]

In life news, I am VERY close to actually finishing the rough draft of my original novel, and looking towards editing and publishing.

And I have a TERRIBLE feeling that since it includes queer stuff and a poly romance, it won't be palatable to mainstream publishers, though I am poking around for indie houses that might be open to that. I am absolutely unwilling to cut either the queer or poly stuff, I'm not doing a love triangle.

Which means I've been poking my nose around investigating various self publishing stuff... @thebibliosphere you've been a huge help here, inadvertently...and am biting glass at the fact that the royalties at Amazon are simply so, SO much better than anywhere else.

[systlin]

Amazon

Draft2Digital

the difference is fucking STARK

[bisquid]

That's fucking insane

[systlin]

Like as much as I dislike Amazon, the numbers are absolutely implacable here. It sucks but like. Eight and a half dollars, PER SALE, of royalty difference is absolutely inarguable here.

[shrewreadings]

have you looked at @copperbadge’s model / advice on self publishing? I know he’s had to push this rock up this particular hill, and came to a different conclusion than Amazon self-publishing.

[copperbadge]

ETA: Systlin just posted to say that @thebibliosphere has hooked her up with a beta and a potential publisher. I'm going to leave the post up so others can possibly use this knowledge but please refrain from further publisher suggestions and selfpub advice!

Unfortunately, if what you want is to maximize both sale volume and revenue -- which is a very normal goal, I'm not taking a swipe at that or anything -- Amazon is probably the way to go. I write for fun and have a large readership already so I didn't necessarily need Amazon, and when I was on Amazon it forced me to price my books higher than I was comfortable with, which is why I backed out.

As an alternative to Draft2Digital, I use Lulu.com. The mechanism -- how you upload your book and what information you include -- is functionally the same, but Lulu doesn't charge a setup fee, allows you to edit your text multiple times without fees, and is slightly less expensive per-page. So if you don't want to deal directly with Amazon, Lulu is superior to Draft2Digital in my opinion.

Lulu will allow you to sell through other platforms such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc, but it's opt-in, it won't do it automatically, and if you do that it makes you price the books so that those platforms aren't taking a "loss" by their standards. So a book I publish on Lulu might cost $10 to print (that's Lulu's cut) and I can sell it for whatever I like above that on Lulu -- say I sell it for $20, I get $10 per book. But the same book would "cost" Amazon $21 since Amazon takes a much larger cut, and Lulu's retail price dictates Amazon's. So in order for Amazon to sell my book, I have to price the book above $21. If I price it at $22 and someone buys it from Lulu, I get $12, whereas if someone buys it on Amazon, I get $1. Lulu will never be more expensive than Amazon but Lulu will always take Amazon's cost into account if you hook them up together. (I just pulled numbers out of the air for that example, but for a real-life one, when I took one of my recent 6x9, 90K-word paperbacks off Amazon, I was able to drop the price from something like $18 to $12.)

Selling directly through Lulu without involving Amazon is thus absolutely the most profitable way to go except that you don't get Amazon's reach or universality. Buying from Lulu, people have to know it exists, navigate the site, and trust that it's legitimate. Buying from Amazon, someone might just...find your book, and people will go to Amazon just to browse, which they will not do on Lulu, especially since as a self-publishing site, Lulu is full of garbage bad books. So if you're publishing outside of Amazon you will have to do a lot more publicity and you will never have the same sales volume.

I will also say that when Lulu published my work to Amazon, something got truly fucked up -- I'm not sure who did it, but either Lulu or Amazon assigned someone else's book to my author name and fixing it was really hard because I wasn't the one who set it up, Lulu was. I couldn't just go in and remove the book, I had to talk to Amazon and then Lulu and then have Amazon and Lulu talk to each other. I think my author page on Amazon might still list a book by Kathleen Starbuck as one of mine. There's also some weird shit around adult content -- I believe to sell on Amazon through Lulu, you have to jump through some hoops if there's adult content by Amazon's standards, which I know includes erotica but may also extend to queer/poly non-erotic content.

So yeah, I think depending on your goals, Lulu is worth exploring, but if you want to make life easy on yourself probably the best thing to do is just hold your nose and go with Amazon. However, if you're interested in Lulu I'm happy to answer questions.

Also, if you're interested in publishing in such a way that you can have your book sold in stores and held in libraries it will need an ISBN for the print version and a separate ISBN for the ebook. If you're in the US those cost $125 each unless you buy in bulk, which I happen to have done, so I have like 80 of them. If you want a few I'm happy to give you some for the at-cost of $5 per, but there's no way to transfer ownership of the number itself, so you'd officially be published by Sam Starbuck / Extribulum Press (you'd retain rights/profits, I'd just be your publisher on paper). I know Lulu will also give you one free and I imagine Amazon would, but often that means they retain certain rights to the text that I've never been comfortable letting a corporation have.

[thebibliosphere]

Slight addendum to what Sam posted above: there is no set up fee or fee to change files with Draft2Digital. I *think* they might limit how many times you can change a file within x amount of time, but once the timer resets your fine again. It makes them a good option for mass distribution and library access.

Ingram Spark, however, may they rest in filth, did used to charge $75 to set up your book and then $25 there after to make alterations to files. I think the setup fee was reduced, but they’ve found new awful ways to get money out of us (like $25 per 30 minutes to speak to a customer service rep on the phone if you need help and your issue can’t wait the glacial age it takes for them to respond to their free email) and they also made it so you need to contact a customer service rep to pull your work from their network. The quality of their books has also taken a steep nose dive since 2020. I had four books arrive without covers a while back. Just straight up naked in the box. And I had to fight them to get a refund. Madness.

At this point I’d pick Lulu over Ingram if I didn’t have draft2digital. Fortunately for my ADHD, I do have D2D and only have to remember one login account 😂

[copperbadge]

Ah, my mistake! I thought D2D had introduced a setup fee when they had some merger a while back but I may have mixed them up with Ingram Spark (which, damn, I'd forgotten that one existed). Reblogging for more accurate info.

[pretensesoup]

Two additions:

1/ Ingram no longer charges to revise books either.

2/ If you want your book in bookshops, as far as I know you need to have it in Ingram's system. This is in no way economical, I probably earn $2 per book, but it does open you up to another market, AND people can order through their local bookstores, which is neat. The exception to this is sometimes bookstores in my area will ask if they can buy copies directly from me, but they have already been carrying my books and know they will sell. And occasionally some bookstores will take indie books on consignment, but that is really annoying and not everyone does it.

Also, on the negative side of the chart, I have had bookstores refuse to carry my book because the wholesale price didn't allow them to mark it up enough (I guess that specific store wanted to sell it for the same as Amazon would? Like some bookstores sell my book for $5-6 over what you'd pay on Amazon and they sell plenty of copies, I am told. So...whatever. Sorry I keep my prices low.) Also, if someone returns books, it can easily wipe out your profits for a month because you don't get charged for the cost of the books + shipping like you would if you had bought them, but the wholesale price they charged to the bookstore. I am honestly kind of surprised that is legal.

[thebibliosphere]

Draft2Digital has access to Ingram's market. So book buyers can buy from them as well. I don't think they have the full international reach of Ingram (yet), but you can still get your print book distributed to brick-and-mortar stores.

From their FAQ:

Print books published through D2D Print are made available to Amazon and to all distribution channels served by Ingram, including Barnes and Noble and most independent bookstores in the US. It will also be available for physical (“brick-and-mortar”) stores to order. https://draft2digital.com/faq/

And yeah... the whole retailer side of things is... honestly, it feels like a racket at this point. There's a reason I don't allow returns on paperbacks, even though it makes brick-and-mortar stores less likely to stock me, and that's why.

I've also been told by people who do the buying for certain big-box retailers that Ingram isn't showing them the retailer discount, even though Ingram requires me to put my books at a 50-60% discount to remain available for retailers to buy. I've seen screenshots; they're being shown something like 10% on their end while I'm showing a 60% discount.

So wherever the fuck that money is going, it's not going to the retailer or me. (This may have been fixed since then, but the last instance I know of this happening was in 2024)

[mariacallous]