Potty's Amusing Musings

Olivia, 32. Cosplayer. Writer. Amateur Voice Actor. Occasional singer. All-around somewhat-sane fangirl. She/her pronouns but I'm cool with whatever. Lover of all things musical, magical, and monstrous.

[sea-beam]

who is Electric Bill and why do we all have to keep paying him

[platonicsource]

LEGALLY BLONDE (2001) dir. Robert Luketic

[hometoursandotherstuff]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwydx34kzlvo

[runcibility]

"Vanderhorst had been under the influence of MDMA and three litres of vodka she had consumed on the night of the offence last September, her lawyer Michael Hill told the court."

three. liters.

[anais-ninja-bitch]

i support women's wrongs

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

[romanceyourdemons]

lmao i’m reading this essay from the 1580s that mentions how if you were wearing a big elizabethan ruff and you got caught in the rain it would flip up in the wind and hit you in the face, and then you’d have to spend the rest of the day with your stupid soggy ruff all flaccid on your shoulders. can you imagine. whole new potentials for pathetic unlocked

[lamiafemme]

People constantlyyyy using new words to water down misogyny when a woman does it. No she is not “male centered” or “not a girls girl” she’s a misogynist just like her boyfriend!!!!

[crimsonservbot]

You ever hear that old chestnut about how most people neglect the part of the story of Icarus where he also had to avoid flying too low, lest the spray of the sea soak his feathers and cause him to fall and drown? You ever think about how different the world would be if Icarus died that way instead? If the idiom was to Fly To Close To The Sea? A warning against playing it far too safe, about not stretching your wings and soaring properly? You ever think about how Icarus died because he was happy?

[stoopkidlisteningtocsh]

Was feeling Emotions than was quickly hit by very different ones upon opening the comments

[clannfearrunt]

It is simply too many degrees Celsiheit outside.

[hawlucha]

hey gamers post your rigs

[eva-420]

[sharkosupreme-deactivated201911]

[captainsnoop-deactivated2020041]

[feldip-hills-deactivated2019022]

[justadeletedblog-deactivated202]

[starcunning]

[vaknosh]

https://www.reddit.com/r/shittybattlestations/

[enki2]

[dogpuppy]

[nineteenyearoldmeblog]

im fucking crying

[shirecorn]

Fascinating categorization is happening here

[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.

[bunnygirljesus]

Black ppl deserve to feel safe and welcomed on the internet, on fandoms on whatever community or hobbies they want without having to deal with antiblack racist attacks, microaggressions or enablers of antiblackness . And if u genuinely consider urself to be left leaning or an ally or woke you should do and try to unlearn the colorism, texturism , eurocentrism and antiblackness

[mens-rights-activia]

[eldritchbauble]

My old person take today is that I feel like people have normalized being on your phone every single moment including when you're spending "quality" time with others so much that they're defensive if someone isn't ok with it. Yes, you have a problematic relationship with your phone and social media if you physically cannot put it down for a couple of hours to like, have dinner with your friends. It's a show of respect for other people's time and energy as well as important to be present and connect with people around you. Your parents who told you no phone at the table were right for that one.

[dragongirlbunny]

there is nothing a corporation hates more than having employees, but a close second is having to provide a good or service in order to make money. these two reasons concisely explain is why the ai bubble formed in the first place.

[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

[phantomrose96]

Yet another scam

This one is targeting posts with ao3 links, and it’s creating AI-generated comments to pose as someone whos read your fic and totally wants to draw something for it

I went to this blog, and their actual blog is empty but their likes are public, and they’re leaving near-identical comments at break-neck speeds on any other posts with ao3 links where

~2 minutes between each of the comments above, and an endless slew of them, all extremely ChatGPT-intoned.

If you see this or any other puppet account show up doing this, block and report.