Today in Life on the Midlist: Endorsements/Blurbs are a terrible system. Here's what happened to me: mailchi.mp/d879f4118ebf...

MUTUAL MONDAY RETURNS!

We haven't hyped mutuals in a while and I've made lots of new friends lately, so I think we'll start again - right now!

Meet @cnkuster.bsky.social, former Fulbright scholar turned SFF author whose debut, The Bloodweaver, releases ON MY FREAKIN' BIRTHDAY, Y'ALL! (June 23)

#booksky

An exceptionally important cartoon from my wife this morning. Don't miss it!

No newsletter edition about this bc 😴💤, but, from a midlist perspective, setting up a book tour and doing my part to get my debut stocked regionally involves a crushing amount of admin.

The sales team will, presumably, cover some of these bases as well but I'd rather they were working warm leads.

Coming up in Life on the Midlist: endorsements, citizenship, motive, belief, persistence, and at least one direct appeal to buy my book because apparently dignity is not the point of any of this.

Subscribe so I'm not just talking to myself. My wife says I do that enough already.

I have relatives who said I would never amount to anything. I became a midlist nonfiction author, so we're calling it a draw. 😏

It's not my fault you didn't log out of your gmail...

Unusual use of shifting POV in this post of mine. I guess this was part silliness and part writing workshop. Very efficient!

Terrible day today. Don't worry, everybody's fine. I think we have to call a mulligan and just shoot again tomorrow.

Catapult Workers Form Union - Publishers Lunch Workers at Catapult, Counterpoint, Soft Skull, and Hawthorne Books have formed a union with UAW Local 2110, the same union that represents employees at Harper Collins and Abrams. The Catapult Workers…

More unions in publishing is good for everybody. To my knowledge, this is the third shop (or collective of imprints, in this case) in the industry to organize for fairer treatment.

lunch.publishersmarketplace.com/2026/04/cata...

Accidental 5am writers club. I liked it better in my 20s when anxiety meant hypersomnia. This is some 🐮💩.

The Passion of Creation by Leonid Pasternak, oil on canvas (1892)

Struggling to come up with reasonable goals for your writing career? Read about why I ditched my old goals and started from scratch in today's edition of Life on the Midlist.
www.ryantpozzi.com/midlist
#skywriters #writingcommunity

Sent my corrections to the final proof of my book back across the pond. So that's done.

*Inbox ticks to 1* The Mess That Made Them - Final proof. 😵‍💫

This is so true. I've long wished there was a way to ensure that the first qualification to be President was that you didn't really want to, but you'd begrudgingly do your civic duty.

Life is short, man. If it's not doing it for you, DNF that book and read something else.

lol I wrote a piece about this that SoFloPoJo published last summer. The title? In-Progress.

Algorithm down! There are basically no similarities. 🤔

If I still played tennis, I would buy these shoes immediately. 🤷‍♂️

Great refresh! Bright and clean, easy to navigate. Way to level it up.

Cover of Making Art and Making a Living by Mason Currey

Just finished Mason Currey's new book. It's ambitious, deeply researched, and genuinely engaging. It covers a lot of ground, but never at the expense of readability. If you were into his Daily Rituals books, you'll find this one just as satisfying, I think. #booksky

Life on the Midlist — Ryan T. Pozzi A weekly behind-the-scenes dispatch from Ryan T. Pozzi on trade publishing, creative work, career-building, and what it actually looks like to try to make a writing life work.

Life on the Midlist is where I talk about the gap between “author life” as people imagine it and author life as it's actually lived.

Which turns out to be a pretty wide and oddly well-populated gap. www.ryantpozzi.com/midlist

The problem with being less arrogant than I was in my 30s is that when someone asks, “Who are you again?” my instinct is to look at my 20 years in the trenches + my book and think, “You’re right. There’s probably someone better out there.”

No, dummy. You’re booking a tour. Tell them who you are.

It was a real good news, bad news evening.

Good news: I went to @julietizon.bsky.social's Omaha book event which was lovely.

Bad news: One of the best way to sell copies, after massive writing talent, is to be a friendly person who folks tend to like.

Okay, but is there a second option, 'cause...

I def think it's one of the jobs that should have stayed with the publishing houses instead of being shifted onto authors.

We need authors to read this and say things about it? Okay, well you guys work with authors all day every day, so...

Too many endorsements have come in for the book. Now I have to meet with my editor to hear her take on who's famous enough to stay and who goes in the websites and press releases pile. 🫤

Endorsements are so weird. I loved talking to colleagues about the book, but I hate everything else about it.

Okay, commercial, but how can that product be exclusively available everywhere? Is it exclusively available or is it everywhere?