🥃MERCH REVEAL🍷

Like a distorted reflection in a broken mirror— where clarity becomes obscurity, and love becomes loss— this enamel pin set, designed by @1hys12, shows Soukoku as opposites: as a united pair, and as shattered remnants of what could have been.

Only one week remains until pre-orders open for Kogarashi: a Soukoku zine!

More merch item reveals are yet to come within the next week before pre-orders open! 👀 Keep an eye on our social media to keep up-to-date on all our reveals!

soon 🫶🏻

my yaoizine2 entry preview is out 🙈 link

just over 24 hours til i never have to think about my dissertation ever again

at this point im so mentally worn out that it genuinely feels like im about to have a minor breakdown in face of the smallest possible inconvenience

i've been so consistently feeling so miserable that i feel like my hair being pink is the only thing keeping me within any semblance of sanity

⚔ 2 WEEKS LEFT until preorders for Marimo open! 

⚔ Check out a preview of this cute sticker made by @/arsandersar6 (on twitter)!

Weuaosys im exhausted

✨PREORDERS CLOSE IN 1 WEEK✨

This is your last chance to get your hands on✨Beyond a Bond✨

⬇Our shop is open for another week! ⬇

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✨✨ Reblogs are highly appreciated!

@atozines​​ @fandomzines​ @zineapps​ @zinefeed​ @zinefans​ @zineforall​ @zine-scene​ @faneventshub​ @all-zine-apps​​ @zinefans @welovezines​ @eufanzines

So my boss is totally breaking several health and labour laws but no one is saying anything because this is the only place in like, ten miles, that is hiring.

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🖤October Preorders LIVE Now🖤

★Minis, Skaters, Midis, Maxis, Joggers, & Petticoats

★Skirts in XXS-6X, Joggers in SM-5X

★Guest artist Skaters and Joggers by @vetiverfox

★Open for one week only, 10/24-10/31

🖤witchvamp.com🖤

hello! I would love to pre-order your book, but which of the pre-order options is the best for you, and gets you the highest cut of the book price? I want to choose the one that will most help you continue to spread love and joy and chaos in this world

here is a little INSIDE BASEBALL. bestseller lists are very important in way of marketing and way of how much bookstores order of your book. when camp damascus came out it was very close in NUMBERS to certain highly talked about best seller list but that list is not just numbers it is also WHERE and WHEN and HOW things are bought and it is also partially editorial (and very complicated). however this time BURY YOUR GAYS could possibly get higher than camp damascus and land on this list who knows but it is within realm of possibility on this timeline. WHOA COOL. i understand this is shrouded in mystery but i think buckaroos can read between lines.

anyway first step in making this happen is PREORDERS. i know buckaroos are used to video game preorders which is a very bad situation, but in world of BOOKS preorders are everything. it is honestly number one way to support a writer for many reasons but top reason is every preorder over year counts towards first week sales which means BESTSELLER LIST PLACEMENT and THAT sets of whole chain reaction into 'mainstream trot' (i like to picture this as queer dinosaurs and bigfeet and living concepts kicking open the doors to a board room in a high rise but you can imagine whatever you would like)

so NUMBER ONE thing you can do is take the time to actually preorder and not just wait even if you want to get it later.

however to answer your question direct: that certain bestseller list mentioned above only counts HARDCOVER SALES not ebook and not audiobook. this is tough for chuck because audiobook is my personal trot however you asked so i will answer directly: this most important thing is FORMAT

so i would say if you want to have the biggest splash as we kick open the door of this boardroom as shirtless dinosaurs bigfeet unicorns and living objects, it would be:

a HARDCOVER that is PREORDERED. and if you can, from an INDIE BOOKSTORE

preorder here

🤞 Cover reveal! ✌️

With just one week left until Love & Peace, a Trigun found family zine, opens for preorders, it's time to show off our cover by the amazing @cranity!

got 30 new mini charm designs up in the shop! 24 different clones (my new record!) so im sure you’ll find at least one little guy to love. preorders are only open for 2 weeks, so plan accordingly :]

—> cyareclones.com

I saw your post about ingram, and out of curiosity, is there some advantage to going through the whole self-publishing thing with retailers when you're just starting out? like I mean the way that fandom zines work is that they don't even bother going through ingram or amazon or whatever. they just set up a social media site (usually twitter) to gain followers, open preorders (usually 1-2 months in length) to generate the costs of printing upfront, and then sell anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred copies of their books (usually artbooks, but anthologies exist too). I've seen some zines generate over a thousand orders. they're kind of like pop-up shops, except for books. maybe the sales numbers aren't so impressive to a real author, but the profit generated is typically waaaay more than the $75+ apparently needed for Ingram Spark, so I still feel like new authors could benefit from this method too, especially if they just need some start-up cash to eventually move to ingram if they want to for subsequent runs of their book. I think authors would also have to set aside some of the pre-order money to buy an ISBN number to have printed on their book, and I'm not really sure what other differences there are, but I just wanted to ask about it in case there's some huge disadvantage I'm missing!

So, popup zines work well for some people, and I know some authors who kickstart their work successfully. But for a lot, it's just not feasible as a long-term stratedy. Or even as a means to get off the ground.

Fanzines succeed primarily because an existing fanbase is willing and ready to throw money at something they love. They’ve got a favorite writer or artist they want to support. Supporting all the others is just a happy by-product. They also take a HUGE amount of short-term but intense planning that just doesn’t always jive with how some of us work.

I, for one, would never offer to organize a fanzine. I’ll take part in them as a creator, but I’d rather throw myself off a cliff than subject myself to wrangling that many people and dealing with the legal logistics.

When it comes to authors doing anthologies, it'svery much the same. The success of the funding often hinges on having other big-name authors involved whose existing fans will prop up the project. Or having a huge marketing budget.

Most self-pub authors have zero marketing budget. I’m one of them, and I’m under no illusions that my work would not be as popular and self-sustaining as it is if I didn’t have a large Tumblr blog.

When I thank Tumblr in my forewards, I am utterly sincere. Tumblr brought fandom levels of enthusiasm to an unknown work and broke the Amazon algorithm so hard, that Amazon thought I was bot sniping my way to multiple #1 spots and froze my sales rankings.

That’s not the norm. And while I could probably kickstart my own work as an indie creator, that’s because I’ve put literal decades into building up a readership. I’ve been doing this since I was 16 and realized people thought I was funny. I didn’t know what to do with it or if I’d ever actually write anything, but it meant the groundwork was already there (thank you, past-me). I basically fell upward into my success by virtue of never being able to shut the fuck up and wanting to make people laugh. Clown instincts too strong.

New or first-time authors trying to sell their work without that will find it infinitely harder.

All of that aside, even if an unknown author somehow gets lucky and manages to fund their work, there’s still the question of shipping and distribution logistics. Are you shipping everything yourself? Better hope you’re able-bodied and have the time for it. (for reference, it took me months to ship out 300 patreon hardbacks because of my disabilites. It damaged my back and hands. I couldn’t type for several weeks after I was done.)

Are you going to sell primarily at conventions? Better hope you’re able-bodied, have the time and don’t have cripling anxiety about being in large groups...

Also, will selling a dozen to a few thousand copies in one burst be sustainable in the long run as a career? Not for me. Doing things via Ingram and Amazon means I earn a steady trickle of sales for the rest of my life provided the platforms remain and so long as I keep working and can generate interest in the series, not just when I have funds to pay for physical copies to sell. The one-time (in theory) cost of $75 to distribute through Ingram gets paid off pretty quick that way. And it doesn't require the same logistics as doing the popup/crowdfund.

Ultimately, it comes down to what you are capable of but also the type of work you’re doing. If you’ve got an extended network of fellow creatives who will back you or you’ve got a large following elsewhere, doing it like a popup might work for you.

If you’re an exhausted burnout who can’t fathom the short but intense amount of organization that sort of thing requires, not to mention doing it over and over and over... Ehhhhh. No thank you.

⚔ 1 WEEK LEFT until preorders for Marimo open! 

⚔ Take a look at this preview of the zine cover made by @/ljubicov (on twitter)!