How do you know whether your book might benefit from a particular technique (i.e. a book tour, a blog tour, a social media campaign)?
Next post in my series inspired by the panel I spoke on at #AWP2026 is going to be based on this question from moderator @cristinadeptula.bsky.social
What do you think? If you want my answer, subscribe at wordpressblogsforwriters.com/subscribe
#BookMarketing #AuthorSky #BookPromotion
Hey what was the story on your site you said I should read? @thatgreenunionguy.bsky.social
And for those who can't attend tomorrow, here is the newsletter signup for the group
actionnetwork.org/forms/join-t...
Fellow Californians, did you know #PGE has a multi-million dollar contract with #Palentir? If you hate Palentir (I know you do 😎) TOMORROW is your chance to annoy them locally
#oakland #protest #politicalaction
actionnetwork.org/events/pge-c...
Great question at this event I'm at, how do activists prevent movements from becoming bureaucracized?
I then notice his tag is from someone i follow here, @thatgreenunionguy.bsky.social
#TIL The American Indian Movement was founded in Minnesota to combat police brutality. They were able to get indigenous arrests from 6/day to 0.
How?
foot patrols.
#directAction #politcalAction #resistance
Has anyone run lock screen ads this year? When I tried to set them up for a self-published author, the option was no longer available. I'm seeing conflicting claims about their availability.
#bookMarketing #publishing #KDP #indieauthors
"The logical outcome of fascism is an aestheticization of political life.”
- Walter Benjamin
This quote has been haunting me; this post being a perfect example. The " entertainment factor" IS their policy. Everything else is plunder, profiteering.
Big thanks to Amaris Castillo of @poynterinstitute.bsky.social for featuring Pitch Club. Mentions of Kim H. Cross, Justin Heckert, Tony Rehagen, and @petecroatto.bsky.social in this story.
www.poynter.org/business-wor...
Not sure why these are linked to my profile/starter kit. Oopsie! I thought I was reposting the link to his talk.
Such that victims do not only fear they won't be believed.
They fear also the consequences if they were believed.
That essay blew my mind. Made me see how justice for SA is seldom about the victims, is instead a form of projection, a declaration that "I would never..." Justice must be violent and total to emphasize the distance between the rapist and the decent man.
And so the victim must carry the burden because she knows that the truth set free isn't something she can control. That the community will not ask the victim what justice should look like.
These men with the power to abuse are often community leaders, so often the stability of that community means more to the victim than justice. This is a perfect example of that. What an enormous secret, but the movement was even bigger.
This reminds me so much of an incredible essay @harlinhayley.bsky.social has been keeping from the world, about how victims of SA don't come forward because they fear the retribution against their attackers. Fear the destruction of their communities.
Wow.
I saw Delores Huerta speak years ago. Her speech was moving yet the entire event--her fame, her reason for being there--was in the shadow of Cesar Chavez.
Sadness I didn't know was there, but must be there or there would be no reason to be cynical. So the tears feel like hope, but also the shocking realization of its absence.
If a story can break through my stoic facade I feel more than just the emotion in that story. My tears are for all the things that built my wall of cynicism, as if I'm allowed to feel the sadness behind my cynicism all at once.
Perhaps the man's decency made a crack in my cynicism. For a second I believe that people can be good, that every terrible thing the world has taught me is wrong. The tears feel like relief.
Do you know what I mean? 👀
I never used to cry reading books. Now I'm a mush.
What's striking to me is that if the grandfather had rejected the boy, i wouldn't have been moved. It would have felt trite, confirming my cynicism. Why did his love and compassion bring me to tears?
Sorry i can't type all this out but a photo of the page where the boy confesses to his grandpa that his grandmother was already pregnant the night they met, and this they are not actually related. The man says "maybe you shouldn't call me Grandpa anymore." And the boy disagrees "I don't got any other grandpa. So I wanna keep calling you that "
On this page from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, the boy and his unrelated grandfather are walking the dog. A neighbor presumes the boy is their hired dog walker. The man corrects her, "no," Paul says awkwardly, as if waving away cobwebs. "This is my grandson."
From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, #OceanVuong this set up and delivery a few pages later hit me so hard in the feels. 😭 (Minor spoilers)
#booksky #nowreading
Today's email was about how to identify your book's likely audience. Next week I'll share how to discern whether your book might benefit from a particular technique.
#AWP2026
I'm back from Baltimore; I was at #AWP to speak on Sifting through #BookPromtion strategies that actually work. I've asked moderator @cristinadeptula.bsky.social to share the panel questions so I can do a deep dive on each one. Want in?
#AWP26 wordpressblogsforwriters.com/subscribe/
I saw a lot of those too, the ads seeking writers to train AI. No thanks!
It's odd; they have the whole internet, what do they need content writers for? It hints at the ole' mechanical turk.
“Consumer software that generates text, images and videos are uniquely energy inefficient,” says Ketan Joshi, an Oslo-based climate analyst associated with the Australia Institute, due to the “vast datasets and computational strain of pattern-matching that happens underneath the hood”. Asking an AI chatbot a question consumes a great deal more energy than finding the answer via simple web search or calculator. It adds extra demand for no good reason, he says, a bit like driving to the shops in an SUV instead of riding your bike. “You might still get the shopping done, and that single trip alone may not even look all that bad in terms of cost or emissions, but what happens when that’s all of your trips, and when all of society starts doing this?”
Spoke to the Guardian about the idea of quitting LLMs for climate:
-“I see this all as very much part of the tactic of trying to embed these systems into society and instil dependency in a fashion similar to the growth of single-use plastics in the 1970s.”
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
I also have (well my mom @gypsy-karel.bsky.social has) a photo of me as a toddler with Cyndi Lauper, kissing me on the cheek. One of my earliest memories. We were nearly in a crowd crush before, so strange to little me as I was too young to understand celebrity.
Amazing how capitalism can gobble up anything community made, put a pen around it, and sell it. AI is the enclosing of the commons all over again. Except this time with the largest communal project humans ever built (the Internet).
My sweetie, a teacher, calls it a plagiarism machine. I think that's efficient and accurate. Mass unemployment scam is good too, I'll have to remember that.
A lot of writers club members are retirees, not tech savvy. Yet most people in the room had used AI in some way. Better for them to understand the dangers... as well as what they're up against.
