#publishing press

👑 Debuting June 2020 👑

Plastic Crown -- 

A story of a young and reluctant pageant queen who's trapped under her mother's thumb. She makes her first friend, despite her mother's rules, thus leading her to uncover dark secrets she may not be ready to face. 

Created by V.K. Daniel 

https://www.wildstarpress.com/ 

Don’t miss out on winning one of these awesome prizes from our Give Out Day raffle. You could win a copy of Good Girls Marry Doctors, Imaniman, or a gift set of Borderlands La Frontera book and mug. 

I went to grad school right after undergrad, so I'm now in my first postgrad job as an associate editor with a small press, and my God, is it bad. I feel like being messy, and this is the only site where I can, in fact, be super messy about where I work, so here goes:

My base salary is less than 30k/year. This is after I told my boss that I need at least 30k because my fiancé and I need our dual income to be higher since he's pursuing his PhD. Oh, and we live in an expensive city in our state while my boss lives in a rural area.

I'm also one of the most educated people there with a master's degree and I am definitely paid the least

my boss starts everyone there with a part-time position that pays $800/month. My fiancé's apartment, which is a cheap studio with no central AC, is more than that

my boss keeps hiring new people without increasing his other employees' salaries

he wants me to start an imprint in a few years but again, my current salary is less than 30k a year and it will not increase enough to where I am comfortable making the gamble of starting an imprint

I work at a publishing house that only edits the first 20 pages of a book. Our developmental editor has said that in meetings like it's a good thing. Our authors then have to go off of her vibes from those first twenty pages or hire a freelancer to edit the rest of the novel. I have offered to edit the rest and been ignored

as a side note to the former, I review the book in its final stage to make sure the page numbers and section breaks are consistent, and I have had to make last-minute edits on pg 30 because there was a mistake that editing would have caught. And I'm not talking minor grammar inconsistencies, I'm talking structure that didn't make sense

my boss is very pro-AI

we don't get any holidays off technically, no benefits, and no official PTO. No weekends either

got yelled at for wedding stuff that required I was on the move

going back to the pro-AI thing, a lot of our book covers are now AI-generated

also now my boss wants to determine which books we accept and reject based on whether AI says it needs minor revisions, moderate revisions, or significant revisions (without regard for genre or anything about our reader base)

Shout-out to Evan Vaughan, Andrea Ikeda, Shannon O'Brien, and Dieu Hoc Huynh for boosting us even closer to our goal! 💸 Don't forget that when you donate, you automatically get entered in a raffle to win the prize of Borderlands La Frontera book & Mug, #GoodGirlsMarryDoctors, OR Imaniman!

We've officially reached the $1,500 mark!! We only have 5 more hours to make it to our goal.

Shoutout to Becky Fisk, Diana Ly, Alexandra Giordani, Joan Pinkvoss, Katie O'Brien, and Kari Simonsen for helping us make this possible. Let's keep this momentum going, everybody!

Shoutout to Mary McClintock, Brenda Paz, Sophi Scarnewman, Amy Woloszyn, Cindy Cleary, and Courtney Belyea for donating to Aunt Lute for #GiveOUTDay!

Shout-out to Angela Lam, AnneMarie G Ladlad, Adriana Martinez, Lindsey Page, Megan Sibbett, and Nancy and Page Twiss for donating to us for #GiveOUTDay! 🎉