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Me: I had the WORST day. Nothing can come close Katy Perry, recently trapped in a giant bottle because fans refused to roll her towards the stage: Hm

A rainbow stack for all seasons! Featuring all Neon Hemlock titles. Neon Hemlock is THEE premier queer SFFH indie press. Top notch fiction chosen with the very best eye! Everything they put out is a must read for me and something I highly recommend to you!!

Lynne Freeman got a write up in the fucking New Yorker to turn people against Tracy Wolff and it absolutely fucking sucks that all the people who read that salacious piece will never know that Lynne Freeman lied to the court, conducted this litigation in bad faith, and had absolutely zero case.

On Saturday, August 15 at noon EDT, join authors @oliviawaite.com, @tjalexandernyc.bsky.social, @roselerner.bsky.social, @alexandravasti.bsky.social, @ericaridley.bsky.social, & #EEOttoman for #HistoryIsQueer. Tickets (free) at the link. www.eventbrite.com/e/1995208331...

The reduction in cost of printing sprayed edges is an enormous factor in this, you’re right!

My Haitian friend was just fired from his job. "They said I don't have a legal status now." This is likely happening to hundreds of thousands of people across this country today. Sick.

Oh! and of course: Sympathique by Pink Martini

Careless Whisper by Wham! (he never wants to dance again!) I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’ by the Scissor Sisters Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John Young Hearts Run Free by Candi Staton

If you have type-O positive blood and you can manage it, please consider donating blood *as soon as possible* - this is a very bad situation.

Tales of Inthya is a queernormative fantasy setting about ladies doing magic and going on adventures and falling in love! You can check out the first two books at linktr.ee/effiecalvin

This is not a question of “shallowgirl readers choosing glitter over literary substance.” It is a question of “publishers are making decisions to try and fill an emptying market niche, and this is the thing they think has the most money in it.” Blame the corporations, not the kids.

It’s arguably one of the biggest shifts in publishing history and we don’t even know yet all the ways it’s going to shake out. We are mid-earthquake, and you can bet that the publishers are freaking out about it.

To return to my original, long-ago starting point: I brought up Everyman’s Library because its history demonstrates one thing so clearly: new luxury book lines tend to pop up alongside major book format shifts. We are seeing glitzy romantasy editions right when the mmpb has been declared dead.

In a world where the Folio Society will sell you a $100 edition of Batman comics — a genre which also used to be coded as ephemeral trash for young readers with no taste — it is *absurd* that the only place to find a fancy edition of romance classic Lord of Scoundrels is on Kickstarter:

Publishers are making the same cynical assumption as the luxury presses: that romance/romantasy texts are always unimportant *as texts.* Publishers are issuing brand-new romantasy with the aesthetics that should mark important genre classics; luxury presses are ignoring classic romances entirely.

It’s true there is a blatant cynicism in the way publishers are issuing so many special editions, so close to publication. It feels like throwing spaghetti at a wall. These books have barely arrived! We haven’t had time enough to see yet which ones will stick around or transform the genre!

So when a publisher markets a romantasy special edition with the gilt foil and slipcase that designate an Important Text, people get upset. Those readers are fans, not curators! They have no taste! But the curation problem is with the publisher, not the reader.

The exception is: romance. Romance sales numbers are not permitted to measure importance. When multiauthor romance box sets started to dominate the NYT bestseller list in the early ebook era, they *changed the rules of the list* to exclude them. Sales are what romance gets *instead* of importance.

The Folio Society clearly uses sales as one measure of a text’s importance. Hence the $2200 (not a typo) edition of Game of Thrones, billed as “the greatest fantasy novel of our time.” By literary merit? Or simply by sales numbers? See also: Jaws, “the ultimate pulp thriller,” a reasonable $70.

Luxury editions — both romantasy special editions and things like the Folio Society -- trouble this understanding. Because a classic and a blockbuster are both measured in sales: the blockbuster does it quickly, the classic over time. Or today’s blockbuster becomes tomorrow’s classic.