Self-published authors, I wouldn't take the chance on I've seen some tradpub authors get caught out by unlabeled AI images in stock photo galleries or similar, but what I actually saw was the apology and the promise to change it and put no AI clauses in contracts

I have used NetGalley once in my entire life—because I was so overjoyed that a tradpub PR person finally contacted me about an actual romance novel—and I think I'm good, lol

Like honestly between the state of tradpub SFF and especially YA, which is the market I was trying to break into at the time, and the bizarre social media culture of booktok and goodreads etc, like I’m a little offended no one picked me up but boy do I feel like a dodged a bullet or several

4/x …are used to getting a 55% discount off the cover price to carry your book & put it on the shelf. So if I distribute 2,000 $20 books to Barnes & Noble, and they ALL sell, I make *crunches the numbers* no, I LOSE $2,000. Meanwhile, a tradpub bestseller who prints 10 million books does it so…

the THING about self publishing is, if you're not a runaway solo success, it would seem that it's to your detriment to tradpub to have broken that seal like having an audience who buys your books evidently doesn't matter if it isn't in the thousands (or at least, it doesn't seem to in my case)

Meanwhile tradpub is out here like “if you don’t go mega viral on TikTok don’t talk to me” as if 1) writing skills were transferable to video and vice versa 2) people watching your tiktok are remotely interested in reading your book. Tiny overlap on that Venn diagram

I know the exact groups you’re talking about and it soured me so fucking hard against self-pub. That space is *more* soulless money grab in vibes than tradpub. Its 100% “follow the right cover conventions, write the right blurb, pay thousands in ads = profit. Nobody reads it anyway!”

We're in a weird spot in tradpub—fewer long series (even trilogies) *and* no real sense of how to pitch/promote standalones. Less a question of audience appetite (always shaped by availability) & more a question of tradpub not having cracked How to Do Things Now IMO

One of the reasons I get so demoralized as a trans woman writer is that my novels don't involve enough transfeminine suffering to appeal to tradpub, but isn't light and fluffy enough to be successful amongst other trans women if I self-publish.

In fact that's true of all or almost all her tradpub horror, the only one I'm not sure about is A HOUSE WITH GOOD BONES because I don't remember the framing of the first chapter, but i think it too.