🦈

SJ, she/they. Fish person. This is now just 100% shitposting.

[tiktaalic]

I was born in the exact right generation I love being an unmarried woman in my twenties with my own bank account and no children

[tiktaalic]

This getting reblogged with “and my thirties” “and my forties” “and my fifties” “and my sixties”

[ekbelsher]

Tiffany Aching and You, the white kitten she gives Granny Weatherwax in Wintersmith. I loved this series so much 🖤 GNU Terry Pratchett

[divorcedwife]

look at the republican calendar and see which animal/plant/item is associated with your birthday ok. if you're born january 14 you get the day of the cat

[divorcedwife]

solidarity for everyone who was born on the day of the cistern or the watering can or something like that

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

i really appreciate seeing all the posts on my dash recently to the effect of "shutting down conversations about race/gender/minorities in fandom spaces because 'fandom is meant to be fun' is just an excuse to not think critically about the bigoted behaviors you are exhibiting". i hope that this energy carries over into the gaming sphere next pleaaseee

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

pokemon is a series about building Your own team and going on Your own adventure with creatures that You collect and befriend, and is designed from the ground up to be personal and immersive. i have never been able to look like myself in a pokemon game. if i bought pokemon z a today and booted it up and tried to customize myself, i would not be able to look like myself. just fuck me i guess.

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

ok yay

[humiliationvictim]

[mollyjames]

[pangur-and-grim]

I won't publish the ask (they asked me not to), but I thought I'd still answer it publicly!

no, royalties are not a significant source of income for most authors. if you wrote something like Project Hail Mary, then absolutely, the royalties would be substantial! but that's like winning the lottery. Ryan Gosling is not starring in the movie adaption of most books.

when you sell a book to a publisher, you get what's called 'an advance against royalties'. it's usually split into multiple parts, so you might get one third for the initial sale, one third for the final revised manuscript, and one third on the publishing date.

an advance against royalties is the publisher saying "we believe you will eventually make X amount in royalties, so here it is ahead of time." and then you don't actually see any money from royalties until the advance is paid off. most books do not make enough in royalties to pay off the advance (I have two children's books and one fiction book, and have yet to see royalties for any of them).

advances are still great, but you need to make them stretch! for instance, last year my net income was about 30k Canadian (21k USD), which is fantastic when you consider that I mostly made it through writing. but I'm definitely not a millionaire. I can live off my writing (not trying to undersell that!) but I'll probably remain in a low income bracket for the foreseeable future.

this isn't meant to discourage anyone from seeking out writing as a career! however, there is a reason that many authors have alternate jobs with writing on the side. or, you know, rich spouses.

[pangur-and-grim]

this isn't me making a fuss about pirating (I've pirated way too many shows to run my mouth on that lmao), but there IS actually a financial incentive to having people buy your books!

buying books shows the publisher that they can make money off you, which means they're more likely to give you advances for future books. and advances are what authors live off (if they don't have a side job). that's why I always push pre-orders so hard! you have to be a racehorse worth betting on, or else they send you to the glue factory....

if I can offer one alternative to pirating: asking your library to stock the book also helps authors, and doesn't cost anything. the only downside is the patience required.

[pangur-and-grim]

OOPS yes, @stjohnstarling makes a good point! everything I'm saying is from the perspective of traditional publishing, but it's a very different game if you're a self-published author

[gollancz]

I will also add that this is why pre-orders can make a HUGE difference to authors - because if there's enough hype, publishers can pull more levers to build that momentum and reach more readers to help authors earn out their advance faster.

[gudgercollege]

Trad publishing contracts person here to co-sign everything in this post. If you want to support an author you really like but are broke as hell, then you can buy their book when it's discounted, buy it used, borrow it from a friend, or use the library. The first step as an author is to get your book read, not to get it bought. The important thing for you as a reader is to spread the word about how good the book is so the publisher knows the audience is there even if sales aren't spectacular. Piracy of books, especially books from small/indie publishers, means the publisher will print fewer copies of their next book, and sometimes if it's an ongoing series the next books in the series will be canceled, either to be replaced by a book with a different premise or they'll cancel the contract for the next books entirely. The "hack" where you buy the ebook or audiobook and then return it for a credit also takes money directly out of the author's pocket since those payment/royalty systems are set up differently than if you were to buy a book from a bookstore and return it. In that situation the bookstore absorbs that loss, but returning the ebook means the money gets clawed back from the author's advance or royalties and they'll have to earn that back.

Pre-orders and Amazon/Goodreads reviews are used as a gauge by publishers to predict how many copies they are likely to sell and therefore how many copies they want to print. They want to sell most of what they print rather than print too many and end up with a bunch of copies no one wants that they'll have to pay to store or sell at a huge discount or recycle, which is what happens to unsold books. Most publishers have a limited amount of money and manpower to dedicate to any particular book, so if there's a book building up a lot of buzz, that'll give them reason to put their resources towards promoting that book to get a better return on their investment. If the publisher can't make money off a book or author they'll dump them.

Generally, every aspect of the publishing and book industries, including writers, agents, publishing employees, librarians, and booksellers are overworked and underpaid. Unless you're Stephen King or already famous, you don't make money off of books. We do it for sheer love of the game.

Use your library! Publishers have a whole department dedicated to selling their books to libraries and the author gets part of those sales. Increasing circulation of library resources means the libraries can make a better case to get more money from the government to buy more books that you want to read and they're a place to hang out for free. Libraries are the best gift humanity gave itself, use yours as often as possible.

[eccebitch]

[fabricandcircuits]

Peer reviewed tags wonderfully said

[thecryptkeeper]

i know the way people talk about their pets now is probably how we’ve been doing it for all of history. a cat owner in ancient rome saw their cat lounging on the dining pillows and commented “he thinks himself to be the senator claudius 🤣”

[sentimentalslut]

trying to explain to tumblr that the Middle Class in not their enemy

[sentimentalslut]

saw someone say that someone complaining about only having 7k in savings makes them contemplate “doing something bad”

you know that 7k covers like. one hospital visit WITH insurance, right?

[sentimentalslut]

“people who make six figures shouldn’t be allowed to complain —“ most people who make six figures are, these days, solidly middle class. where i live, a combined household income of $110k is *lower middle class*.

“people who can afford homes —“ are typically 400-600k in debt for them. also if “can own your own home” is your threshold for the rich you are contemplating eating, i think you are genuinely stupid

“boohoo your investments dropped, stop complaining rich boy” idk how to tell you this but. most of us have a retirement account. you should probably open one

[dirt-mann]

[moonshynecybin]

have you guys ever seen a crocodile with its fingies out

[moonshynecybin]

[devilishdescent]

[aromanticduck]

Free service with ads: Well, if I'm not paying for it they have to foot the bill somehow.

Paid service with no ads: Well, if they're not funding it with ad revenue, they need to charge us something.

Paid service with ads: Well that's bullshit.

"We used to be a paid service without ads, but now we're putting ads in it! If you want the ad-free version you have to pay more for preeeeemium": Fuck you fuck you fuck you

[juststarsandthemoon]

Free service with no ads: Okay so these guys are stealing my data

[is-this-fascism]

i don't care if it's nazis, mormons, or a bunch of misguided autistic people. if anyone ever tries to tell you your soul is from another planet and you're actually part of the class of impressive people that secretly did everything cool in the world but is now extinct and lives on through your broken genome, you RUN. YOU WILL RUN AWAY. YOU WILL SPRINT FULL SPEED AWAY FROM THAT.

[is-this-fascism]

grabs you by the shoulders listen. listen to my words. i understand the urge to make fanfiction about yourself and to find a reality in which you're super awesome and great and everyone who hates you is wrong and dumb. i get it. you're better than that. you can love yourself without putting other people down, dehumanizing and generalizing, and retaliating against your oppressors.

there's no NPCs. there's no aliens coming to save us. we're not the next step in human evolution. our hyperconnected nervous systems give us terrible sensory overwhelm more often than they make us geniuses. neurotypical people are sentient, conscious, aware people who are capable of understanding you. we're more the same than we are different. we're more the same than we are different. we're more the same than we are different.

[plaidos]

it’s actually not misogynistic to say astrology is bogus, and it is indeed way way more misogynistic to believe that things that can’t be proven rationally through science are More Female.

[mellosdrawings]

Maybe -- just MAYBE -- don't spit on other characters and ships and works when the artist you congratulate and reblog from also draws those?

[comedydoctor18]

FANDOM ETIQUETTE NEEDS A RETURN SOOOO STRONGLY

[rockergiirl]

i hate how pervasive the r-word has become again

its like the 2000s to early 2010s again where talking to anyone theres a good chance they'll casually say a slur without any thought

[rockergiirl]

and whats even more annoying now is people who'll try to weasel out of being called out on it

'oh its fine because i'm legally mentally disabled so i can say it' NOT HOW RECLAMATION WORKS

[rockergiirl]

AND SAME WITH DEGENERATE

STOP TALKING LIKE A FUCKING NAZI

[glorious-spoon]

spent forty-five minutes today helping an 87yo woman who does not own a computer or a cell phone try to set up an email account so that she could then set up a second account in order to access benefits. went with protonmail, because they don't require 2fa, but it turns out that while you can still make a protonmail account without authentication you can no longer use it to create OTHER accounts without it, and the benefits page she needed to get to required both an email and a cell phone to create an account anyway. asked if she wanted to try going in person to see if someone there could help her, and she said that she had, and they'd directed her to the website. she tried signing up with her landline, but of course that didn't work because you can't do SMS authentication that way. finally ended up writing up detailed instructions for how to log in and authenticate her account so she can drive to her severely disabled daughter's house forty minutes away because that's the only person she knows and trusts who has both a cell phone and a computer.

anyway i fucking hate mandatory 2fa and i think the people responsible for it should have to spend a year navigating their lives with no cell phone and no internet access beyond the public library pcs. fuck.

[neonshroudedgraves]

Bluesky asks Texas users to verify their ages, citing new app store law

"Why do you need age verification on a site where everyone is 38?"

[stevishabitat]

idk who on earth could possibly need to hear this, but do NOT, under ANY circumstances, give out your SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER to ANY SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

☝️☝️☝️