Why authors should put their fictional characters on social media and how to do it by Sandra Beckwith. For fun and reader engagement, perfect for those writers who are shy about promotion.
The Worcester Public Library in Massachusetts announced that people who have lost or damaged a book can bring a photo, drawing, or magazine 
clipping of a cat and get their library cards reactivated. The library calls the program March Meowness, a way to forgive members who misplaced a book or damaged a borrowed item. The program has generated hundreds of returns, multiple postings of random cat photos on the library’s Facebook page, and photos and drawings pinned on a growing “cat wall” in the building.
10 Top Writing-Life Lessons From the 2024 Career Authors Retreat
Trolls Targeted This Librarian. Now He’s Quitting to Rediscover His Library Joy
TikTok librarian Mychal Threets tells Rolling Stone he’s leaving his job to take his own advice.
by C T Jones
Repetitive words can slow a story to a crawl. Here are 43 words you can cut without pain. Use the space to add more story to your story. From Diana Urban.
Readers Take Denver turned into a fiasco. What happened? Here’s the scoop.
Book Ban To-Do List from EveryLibrary.org
Five Tweets or Posts: (that we can draft and give to authors)
- Send a message to your elected officials opposing book bans: https://action.everylibrary.org/banning
- Find a local Library Alliance to support in their Fight for the First Amendment: https://www.fightforthefirst.org/categories
- Ask Congress to support the Right to Read in schools and libraries: https://action.everylibrary.org/fightbookbansact
- Stop state legislation that criminalizes libraries: https://www.fightforthefirst.org/petitions/stop-legislation-that-would-arrest-librarians
- Libraries2024 “Pledge to Vote for Libraries”: https://www.libraries2024.org/pledge
Here three simple things we ask author and publishers to do:
- Ask your followers to sign and share this petition.
- Let your followers know that there is free help if they want to organize and fight book banning in their local community.
- Encourage your followers to donate and share.
ELPAC social media list:
Twitter (X) @EveryLibrary
Facebook facebook.com/everylibrary
Instagram @_everylibrary_
LinkedIn linkedin.com/company/everylibrary
Bluesky bsky.app/profile/everylibrary.bsky.social
Threads threads.net/@_everylibrary_
Mastadon mastodon.social/@everylibrary
Every Library also created a petition titled Don’t Arrest Librarians for Professional Membership.
Louisiana House Bill 777 would allow the state government to hunt down and arrest librarians for their professional memberships.
The Beautiful and Banned
A weekly conversational podcast with Christine Renee Miller and Jessica Goudeau about banned books, plays, and films now and throughout history—with occasional guests.
Book Banners Reach New Low, Censoring Girl Scout Project That Fought Censorship by Rachel Ulatowski. One hundred books were banned, a Girl Scout found a way to make them available, was awarded for her effort, but any discussion of why she received the awards was…banned.
Is This What Author-Centered Publishing Looks Like? by Jeff O’Neal
The six employees have an impressive background and hope to attract writers to their new plan.
A New Publisher Promises Authors “the Lion’s Share of the Profit”
What You Won’t Learn in an MFA by Sassafras Lowrey
An MFA can teach you writing skills, but will the program prepare you for a writing career?
Getting published, contracting, writing to market, accounting, the importance of learning the business side of writing—outside the MFA program.
Sassafras Lowrey writes fiction and nonfiction and was the recipient of the 2013 Lambda Literary Award for emerging LGBTQ writers.
What the closure of small-press distribution means for readers by Drew Broussard
No one buys books
Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ by Elle Griffin
This is about the proposed merger between Penguin and Simon and Schuster back in 2022, which was blocked because it would create a monopoly. The transcripts from testimony of all the major publishing houses and more was compiled into a book, The Trial. This article summarizes the eye-opening information revealed. What books make the money, what books get the attention, what that means for the rest of us.
Photo from Unsplash and Blake Cheek
