I love all of this. Reviews are so important for writers for so many different reasons especially.
1. Buy my books. 2. Ask your library to buy my books. 3. Write reviews. 4. Send me fan mail. 5. In my dreams, send me fan art of my characters (not fan fic, though, I don't want to be influenced by it, and not fan art made with AI). 6. Tell all your friends about my books.
Sending energy over to you now!
End of 🧵 Here are my resources to help more queer authors get traditionally published: Query letter samples for queer fiction: hnossproofreads.co.uk/query-letter...hnossproofreads.co.uk/how-to-find-...#AmQuerying#WritingCommunity
All of this is to say: Support queer writers. Support queer authors. Support queer creators. Help each other, lift each other up. #PrideMonth is an amazing opportunity to make a commitment right now to do just this.
This is the same for all authors who want to be traditionally published, but the barriers for queer authors make it even more difficult. It's even worse for any queer authors who are marginalised in other ways: ethnicity, nationality, disability, age, and more.
The sieve breaks up the books that need improvement, such as books too long for a debut novel... but it also clogs up with all of the people querying the same small population of agents and publishers. People get stuck. People struggle.
The sieve represents all of the authors who query literary agents and publishers open to submissions. It's a random chance of when you'll pass through the sieve, and even the people who query a "perfect" book aren't guaranteed to pass through into publication.
A crack in the funnel pulls away all of the people who have a complete book but don't or can't edit it. The people who make it through the funnel are ready to query literary agents and publishers. ... Only to find out that there's a sieve.
Think about a funnel: At the top are all of the millions of people who want to write a book. Only some of them start writing, so they enter the top of the funnel. Maybe half of those people complete a book, making their way down the funnel.