just another blog

In the book industry, Amazon is Goliath, the giant who overshadows everyone else. But there’s a new David on the scene, Bookshop.org.

It doesn’t expect to topple the giant, but it has launched a weapon that could make Amazon’s shadow a little smaller, and help local bookstores fight back.

Bookshop.org, a website that went live at the end of January and is still in beta mode, is designed to be an alternative to Amazon, and to generate income for independent bookstores. And, perhaps more importantly, it seeks to give book reviewers, bloggers and publications who rely on affiliate income from “Buy now” links to Amazon a different option.

Profit from books sold through Bookshop will be split three ways, with 10% of the sale price going into a pool that will be divided among participating bookstores, 10% going to the publication that triggered the sale by linking to Bookshop.org, and 10% going to Bookshop.org to support its operations.

with every purchase, they tell you how much you’re putting toward independent booksellers, which is fun and cute:

it’s also amazing for authors! i’ve been asked a couple times about the best way to support my books. this site is now the answer. it reports sales figures to the NYT and Bookscan, a type of tracking that helps authors hit bestseller lists. and even better, authors can set up affiliate pages, and if you buy through those pages, we get an additional 10 percent of each sale on top of royalties. this is a massive deal!!!

for reference, many royalty rates are in the 6-8 percent range. so if you buy through Bookshop author affiliate pages, authors get more than twice as much from sales of their books, with no additional cost to you.

the site is still in beta, but it also has a fun interface where you can make book lists for favorites or recommendations, sort of like goodreads (except better, because goodreads is owned by amazon).

and like that’s always struck me as such meaningless bullshit, I’ve always hated those. They’ve never had that element that truly motivates me.

So, I took matters into my own hands and I made my own artsy motivational wallpapers. Enjoy.

“I made it myself for FREE!*”

This is what the village idiot sounds like on Twitter.

And conservatives have spent the last 40 years snarking about Personal Responsibility and spitting in the face of any social obligation to others. 

Did you refuse to give money to a homeless person, and as a result, they starve to death? They should have been more financially responsible! 

Were you a homophobic dickhead who got a queer coworker fired? Sure, that might be mean, but if they can’t survive without a job, that’s hardly your fault. 

Did you rape someone? I mean, okay, technically that was your fault, but like, what was the victim wearing? Were they flirty? Did they get drunk? Obviously the real problem isn’t the person who did the action, it’s the victim for not being responsible!

This is especially true the larger of a scale you’re looking at (people might accept that a mugger is responsible for the theft of a wallet, but systemic wage theft by a corporation is the fault of the workers for choosing to be employed by that company), and the more marginalized the victim is.

You’ll notice that the inverse of this is rarely true (ex: if you give money to a homeless person and it’s used to buy drugs, that is your fault, so you should never give any homeless person money out of fear that they might do drugs). And it’s an incredibly self-centered way of thinking, because under this framework, you have no obligation to help people whatsoever, and any suffering that occurs because of your inaction is not your fault. 

So, in a pandemic, the Personal Responsibility folks are being extremely predictable:

if people get sick, that’s not my fault

I have no obligation to prevent people from getting sick

a lot of places have a culture that valorizes never sleeping and not eating right and not taking breaks and stuff like that. 

fuck that. I want like

look at how comfortable and well rested I am. I am well-nourished, I take bubble baths, and I have a good work-life balance. 

self-care has made me strong. has running yourself into the ground made you strong?

I will destroy you. and then I will have a pleasant lunch.

Hi everyone!

My series “FANGS,” a love story between a werewolf and vampire, has reached its halfway point. The story is free to read and will update twice a week until July, but the entire story is available if you opt to unlock it!