YABookgate

[Misogenes]

Now I want to touch all my antique books to see what the paper quality is like. I have a decent range of ages and from a few different countries. Maybe in the morning.

Any excuse to get a whiff of that old-book smell, really.

 

[Bill Evans 45]

I have some UK mid war (1942,44) first edition hard covers and the pages are almost translucent.

a book printed in either the late 1860s or early 1870s

Depending on where it was produced the paper may have some rag fibres in it which makes it incredibly durable to normal handling. As you probably know, books in that period were very much the property of the wealthy. Paperbacks weren't widely available until the mid to late 1930s.

I am now sitting on my hands to stop myself sperging about timber, paper, Commonwealth trade, and the rise of South American exports in the first half of C20th.

 

[Welf Welf]

Depending on where it was produced the paper may have some rag fibres in it which makes it incredibly durable to normal handling. As you probably know, books in that period were very much the property of the wealthy. Paperbacks weren't widely available until the mid to late 1930s.

It was printed in New York City in 1870 exactly. There's some beautiful color prints on pages separated by what looks like wax paper, so I wouldn't be surprised if they went all in on paper quality in general. I think this was a library book by how beat up the cover is, plus some other markings here and there, but the inside has aged remarkably well.

 

[Booger1488]

He was either going to get cancelled by his Noo Yawk overlords or bend the knee. Guess we know which choice was made. 'Course anyone who voluntarily spends time around Mary Robinette Kowal is immediately suspect in my book.

FWIW, I read two of the however many books were done through the kickstarter. I know it was at least four, but I somehow think there was other stuff. Tress of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. Not bad, very light fare and I would consider both YA. No degeneracy like the stuff above I can recall.

Started the Sunlit Man but for some reason wasn't feeling it, probably since that one seemed way more Cosmere inside baseball crap from page 1. Something about an escapee from Scadrial or Roshar or maybe the Warbreaker planet (I never figured that part out) being chased to another world, not one I think had been referenced before. I guess I'm getting too old for deep dives into lore like this any more, dunno. Seemed like it was written for people who are pretty hardcore into the Cosmere, at any rate.

I wasn't referring to the SJW shit so much as the amateurish quality of the writing. It reads like something a seventh-grader would shit out, and not in a good way. I've never read Stormlight Archive, but I presume it's set in some kind of medieval/Renaissance high-fantasy, not 21st century America, but you'd never be able to tell from the way the characters speak. "Filled out forms" immediately strikes me as out of place, something you'd expect to hear down at the post office, not in a fantasy novel. "he could not get that sound right" is also an oddly modern turn of phrase for high fantasy. It'd be like reading a novel set in Ancient Rome and the characters talk about how Nero is a big yikes, no cap, fr, fr.

I noticed the same problem when I read Mistborn and Warbreaker as well, so it's not a new issue for Sanderson. I guess being able to write a dozen books a year comes at some cost.

 

[Gnillik Yot]

So… from a practical viewpoint does it make sense to follow Booktok trends as an author? Does that translate into sales? Does it translate into sales if you’re indie or publishing?

Like there are so many problems with professional publishing and now with Kindle, Royal Road has a weirdly specific audience… how do authors even get their feet in the doors in 2025?

It’s hard to get into the mind of some of the younger online audience, it seems like they don’t understand nuance and want to be able to check what tropes and characters are in the book before they read it. I look at the Webtoons for boys as well as Royal Road and I see a bunch of stats and random screens popping up. Just pure autism. It’s just so alien and obscure to me.

Now, I was about to make a post about how you don't have to worry about BookTok anymore due to its banning, but Trump has swooped in to save it. All the leftist women needed a win, I guess, so it looks like BookTok will remain a thing, and publishing and Barnes & Nobles will continue to be dominated by trope marketing.

You don't have to follow all the trope marketing though, but it wouldn't hurt to choose a couple you can write well and focus on them in your marketing. You can't fake love for a trope, readers can sense it if you do.

More important than trope marketing, though, is to remember to not become a public conservative culture warrior. That'll kill your career so fast. You must avoid the temptation to be "based" with your author profile. Don't advertise the fact that you're not woke or voted for Trump or whatever. That type of stuff will get you a following in the right-wing sections of X, including the "dissident" art scene hosted by BAP, but it won't get you many normie readers and it certainly won't help you get an agent or get reviewed by an influencer. Don't use AI art. Woke people will cancel you for it, and even many conservatives and apolitical people hate it as well. Being anti-AI is a pretty bipartisan position among writers on X.

When I say this stuff, I often get a bunch of "thunk provoking" emojis, but just take a look at this sad, sad right-wing publisher house:



This BASED publisher has been publishing books for TEN YEARS! No one cares. The guy can't even collect a single like. And that is very typical for based publishers. Some go viral now and again, but very rarely does that translate into sales. Also, the authors which do publish at the based houses usually use a pen name. So they can't further a career that way even if they win the based lottery and manage to sell more than a dozen books.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

I have some UK mid war (1942,44) first edition hard covers and the pages are almost translucent.


Depending on where it was produced the paper may have some rag fibres in it which makes it incredibly durable to normal handling. As you probably know, books in that period were very much the property of the wealthy. Paperbacks weren't widely available until the mid to late 1930s.

I am now sitting on my hands to stop myself sperging about timber, paper, Commonwealth trade, and the rise of South American exports in the first half of C20th.

It was printed in New York City in 1870 exactly. There's some beautiful color prints on pages separated by what looks like wax paper, so I wouldn't be surprised if they went all in on paper quality in general. I think this was a library book by how beat up the cover is, plus some other markings here and there, but the inside has aged remarkably well.

Oh yeah some older books have amazing quality paper and sewn bindings. I've got a Fu-Manchu omnibus from 1929 that's printed on this super thin but pretty high quality paper.

Now, I was about to make a post about how you don't have to worry about BookTok anymore due to its banning, but Trump has swooped in to save it. All the leftist women needed a win, I guess, so it looks like BookTok will remain a thing, and publishing and Barnes & Nobles will continue to be dominated by trope marketing.

You don't have to follow all the trope marketing though, but it wouldn't hurt to choose a couple you can write well and focus on them in your marketing. You can't fake love for a trope, readers can sense it if you do.

More important than trope marketing, though, is to remember to not become a public conservative culture warrior. That'll kill your career so fast. You must avoid the temptation to be "based" with your author profile. Don't advertise the fact that you're not woke or voted for Trump or whatever. That type of stuff will get you a following in the right-wing sections of X, including the "dissident" art scene hosted by BAP, but it won't get you many normie readers and it certainly won't help you get an agent or get reviewed by an influencer. Don't use AI art. Woke people will cancel you for it, and even many conservatives and apolitical people hate it as well. Being anti-AI is a pretty bipartisan position among writers on X.

When I say this stuff, I often get a bunch of "thunk provoking" emojis, but just take a look at this sad, sad right-wing publisher house:



This BASED publisher has been publishing books for TEN YEARS! No one cares. The guy can't even collect a single like. And that is very typical for based publishers. Some go viral now and again, but very rarely does that translate into sales. Also, the authors which do publish at the based houses usually use a pen name. So they can't further a career that way even if they win the based lottery and manage to sell more than a dozen books.

Yeah I've noticed that once you're down that rabbit hole of being a publicly conservative culture warrior, intentionally or not, you're pretty much pigeon=holed into it.

Kinda like Jon del Arroz.

 

[Mexican_Wizard_711]

Don't use AI art. Woke people will cancel you for it, and even many conservatives and apolitical people hate it as well. Being anti-AI is a pretty bipartisan position among writers on X.

Dumb, more useless hating on AI Ar

 

[Raconteur Press]

I am not Raconteur Press, but I have inside info on them and thought this would be the perfect thread to post it.

Raconteur Press is a new publisher of anthologies with the target demographic of young men. All well and good. Men aren't the main demographic for YA, so it makes perfect sense something like Raconteur would eventually pop up. Unfortunately, there is a problem with how they are running their business, and it's something I see a lot of in anti-woke houses.

1. They just publish the same dozen authors again and again in all of their anthologies, despite supposedly having open calls. I exaggerate a little, but really, take a look at their archive and you'll see it's the same names again and again.

2. That wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for the fact that the one thing these authors all have in common is that they are just reply guys and orbiters to the editor of Raconteur. It's not like they are published due to submitting for sure the best stories. No, they're just suck-ups who the editor recognizes. They are all very active in the Discord server, always telling the editors how amazing and based they are.



(One of those authors is in the hospital right now and I pray for her recovery. She's a good person, this post isn't meant as a dunk on any of the authors, my criticism is for the publishers lazy methods.)

3. Most of those people have next to zero social media networks. The average Raconteur author maybe has four followers on X and is unknown outside of Raconteur. So, when an anthology gets published, it's not like they can use their platform to help sell more books. How can your promising little publishing house get big in the writing world if you never publish anyone outside your tiny bubble?

4. Worse, they don't pay their authors when they "purchase" the right to their stories. Instead, Raconteur tells the authors that IF the anthology gets royalties, they'll split it like twenty ways among the authors after getting their own cut. But since these anthologies aren't really selling, you can bet the authors aren't seeing much money.

5. Even worse, Raconteur doesn't even do the bare minimum that woke anthologies do, meaning they don't give a free author copy to their authors. You read that right. They don't pay their authors, and then tell their authors they have to pay full-price if they want a copy of their own book. Gee, I guess we know where the royalties are coming from!

Well, that's it. I bother posting this here partially because I know Raconteur Press has a presence on this website. No, I won't dox or out anyone, that isn't my goal here. I am offering this constructive criticism not to sneer at a publisher that is at least trying to do something cool for boys, I offer this criticism so you can take it to heart and improve. Here is my advice going forward:

1. I know you now get hundreds of submissions every time you are featured on Horror Tree. That's a start! You need to capitalize on this by publishing a few of those bigger names that submit to you. I'm not saying stop publishing your friends. Just throw in a couple established authors per anthology to lift up your boat and the boats of your friends.

2. Pay your authors a flat ten dollars or twenty dollars per story you buy. It's not fair to your fans that all your woke competitors PAY their authors while you offer royalties that never materialize. Do you want to prove your socialist enemies right about you?

3. Provide your authors a free physical copy of their books so long as it can be easily shipped. Every woke anthology does this. No reason you can't either.

4. Trick a woke author who submits a story to you... publish her or him. No one who sees you through Horror Tree knows that you're right-wing. I know for a fact several woke women & men with hundreds of social media followers each submitted stories to you, and you turned them all down. Let me tell you something about woke women who submit to anthologies. These bitches know how to GRIND those promo spots to promote their stories. They network effectively. If you can trick a couple woke women and you purchase their stories, sit back and let them promo your book for you. I guarantee you'll actually manage to give your authors royalties then, and after your unwittingly wokester put in all that grunt work, imagine her utter dismay when she realizes she's helped her enemies.

 

[Bill Evans 45]

They don't pay their authors, and then tell their authors they have to pay full-price if they want a copy of their own book.

That is abysmal. I know people who have donated stories to local charity anthologies and they usually get a few copies to keep/gift/sell on.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

4. Worse, they don't pay their authors when they "purchase" the right to their stories. Instead, Raconteur tells the authors that IF the anthology gets royalties, they'll split it like twenty ways among the authors after getting their own cut. But since these anthologies aren't really selling, you can bet the authors aren't seeing much money.

This is worse than self-publishing and is borderline to being a vanity house.

And LMAO, this is one of their book covers...what a mess.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

This is worse than self-publishing and is borderline to being a vanity house.

And LMAO, this is one of their book covers...what a mess.
View attachment 6907873

>edited by

Does that include doing the shitty book cover? That's disgusting.

 

[Hirbowedge]

Why is text contrast is so hard to understand for people.
Someone presumably got paid for that cover.
This is some extremely basic shit for people who work in design.
There are countless contrast checkers available online.

Honestly, the underlying image is cool, even if it is AI, but the whole thing looks very cheap and unprofessional.

 

[Commissar Fuklaw]

That cover is shit but I'd still take it over the modern minimalist abstract covers that have plagued us for years.

 

[Gnillik Yot]

Something unusual happening in BookTok right now. You probably have heard a little about Sam Kuffel. Pictured below, Sam Kuffel was a local weather reporter for CBS58.



You probably also know Sam was recently fired for criticizing Elon Musk's hand gesture at Trump's inauguration. She didn't mention it on air. She posted memes critical of Elon on her private Instagram account. Within a day or so, she was fired.



So, how does this relate to BookTok? It so happens that the person who fired her is a woman named Jesse Garcia. Besides being the head of the station where Sam worked, she also is a big author popular on BookTok, writing such thrillers as The Business Trip and more.



So basically, the woman who fired Sam Kuffel for her Instagram posts criticizing Elon is an author who capitalized on being popular on TikTok to sell thrillers. Naturally, people on BookTok are not happy, and are flooding her socials with insults and boycott threats:

 

[Mexican_Wizard_711]

Kek, let the Booktube civil war begin

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

I just wanna say that I really really like the cover for that troon Gretchen's book.

View attachment 6850134

That book makes me so fucking mad. Even if you're pro-troon, it's fucking repulsive and terribly written yet all these review places can't help but laud it because a tranny wrote it. It's on the level of that splatterpunk garbage that floats around the edgier parts of the internet.

 

[Shaneequa]

it's fucking repulsive and terribly written

I haven't read it because I knew of the controversy surrounding the author before the book. As a consumer, I know for a fact that there is a space (as in ca$$$h money nigga) for Gender Terror and Sexual Horror that's not splatterpunk gorefests. The only caveat to it is that it has to have multigenerational appeal and an author that is capable of not going on rants about [Current Thing] in the middle of it.

Anyway, the cover designer that Gretchen's publishing house has on retainer is worth their weight in gold.

 

[World Famous Quasi Payer]

from his official website.

That description sounds a thousand times better than reading the actual books was. Makes a man want to put pen to paper, (or finger to keyboard) and actually produce a series worth that description.

These girls and women can't be reading 100+ 800 pages long porn books per year, right?

They can, they are, and they will act snobbish about how their smut is totally different than the boys.

and it was probably the 70s of the feminism she wouldn't have fit in with, I always thought that she ided as a feminist mostly to upset the women who took feminism seriously.

Your description of her work makes her sound like she would have definitely fit in with the 70s feminist crowd.

And LMAO, this is one of their book covers...what a mess.

Does that include doing the shitty book cover? That's disgusting.

That cover is shit but I'd still take it over the modern minimalist abstract covers that have plagued us for years.

Like a breath of fresh air. Another who understands this is author Christopher Ruocchio has some bitchin cover art, and I'm willing to bet part of his success is do to the covers alone.


I mean, how can you not fucking find those covers cool as hell.

You probably also know Sam was recently fired for criticizing Elon Musk's hand gesture at Trump's inauguration. She didn't mention it on air. She posted memes critical of Elon on her private Instagram account. Within a day or so, she was fired.

Maybe there is some good to cancel culture after all.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

and I'm willing to bet part of his success is do to the covers alone.

Dude either has his own publishing house or he's a big enough name to have convinced the publishing house to let him design his own covers. Good on him.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

Like a breath of fresh air. Another who understands this is author Christopher Ruocchio has some bitchin cover art, and I'm willing to bet part of his success is do to the covers alone.


I mean, how can you not fucking find those covers cool as hell.

Dude either has his own publishing house or he's a big enough name to have convinced the publishing house to let him design his own covers. Good on him.

Ruocchio went from Daw to Baen and has now gone back to Daw. I guess those Chinky VC shekels are irresistible.

FWIW, ol' JDA is insinuating Baen is a sinking ship, and cites the Ruocchio boomerang as one example of their decline..