live from the forest, it's e.m. anderson! - 🎵 it's beginning to feel a lot like 🎵 E please stop it's only november
industry news that for once is not shitty, even though mostly the industry is still shitty
if you haven't been keeping up on the state of the publishing industry...well, actually, you're probably happier than the rest of us lol BUT. some at least vaguely good news has come down the pipeline.
which is nice, because we really need something good to happen somewhere after a month that has been terrible and tragic.
prh/s&s merger blocked
you might remember DOJvPRHSS from back in august. this case involved the department of justice trying to block a merger between penguin random house and simon & schuster. the defense's testimony was BONKERS, not to mention rage-inducing if you know literally anything about the industry. but I'm pleased to announce that judge florence pan saw through the bs, blocked the merger, and wrote a decision full of polite legal jargon for "actually, you're full of shit."
and according to this tweet, prh is for real and finally out of the running, which honestly shocked me because I was certain they'd try to appeal.
someone still has to buy simon & schuster, but at least this particular dumpsterfire was put out for the time being.
hcpu on strike
harper collins employees recently formed a union and, this month, went on strike! while harper collins says its wages are ~competitive~, they're competing against super fucking shitty wages, so no gold stickers for them. publishing employees are famously underpaid and overworked, and this didn't change despite the industry's record profits throughout the pandemic.
so my twitter feed is filled with union updates and supportive messages from authors, agents, readers, and more. undoubtedly the union has a long fight ahead of them, but I'm delighted to see this shakeup in the industry. I hope it means there's more coming down the pipeline.
if you want to support the union, check out their twitter thread on different ways to support the strike. (please note that they are not asking for a boycott of harper collins-published books at this time.) you can also learn more about the union by clicking around their linktree.
speaking of twitter...
in addition to union news, my twitter feed is filled with tweets of a y2k-is-upon-us, nero-fiddling-while-rome-burns nature, thanks to musk melon's rich-man temper tantrum and subsequent purchase of the bird app. if we connected on twitter and you'd like to keep up with me elsewhere, you can also find me on facebook, tumblr, and instagram.
will I meaningfully use any of these other platforms? good question. so far, my facebook is mostly lord of the rings shitposts and my tumblr is mostly our flag means death shitposts. and my instagram is tumbleweeds, because I avoided that particular platform until musk melon endangered the only platform where I am effective at networking and book-marketing, and I am extremely resentful about it.
but you can find me there regardless.
book things
the remarkable retirement of edna fisher
finally turned in my line edits this month, a week late (oops). I love line edits. I have an english degree, I love language, and I love grammar. doing a deep dive into my own language use and being super intentional about it is one of my favorite parts of the writing process.
but I stalled.
admittedly, this was partly due to grading. (not teaching next semester & already v glad about it.) it was partly for personal reasons, too. the faster I work, the closer I get to book release. and even though this has been my dream for two decades, there's a little part of me that doesn't want to finally do it. because when I finally do it, I'll be doing it without one of the people who was most important to this dream.
so that was a thing. crying in my office, crying in a friend's dms, bullying myself into doing line edits. y'know, the usual.
anyway, line edits are done and turned in. the cover is out there in the ether. the remarkable retirement of edna fisher is over 700 adds on goodreads, so close to my stretch goal for the year that it's unreal.
I've also applied for approximately 5,000 different interviews and book events for 2023, because what's the worst they're gonna do? say no?? this book was forged in the fires of the query trenches. more rejections cannot hurt me 😤
add Edna on goodreads or storygraph. preorder the hardcover or paperback through Hansen House Books today!
short stories
I had a short story acceptance this month! the story is a rare contemporary (not fantasy), has been on sub for close to a year and a half, and was super painful to write because it's about the aftermath of a platonic breakup. more on that later, but I'm so grateful I'll finally get to share it with everyone.
obligatory new york pictures
it's been a minute since I did pictures from my first-ever trip to new york city back in may, because october's newsletter was all cover-reveal.
today's topic: the american museum of natural history. and by "today's topic," I mean "our topic for the next several months," because my friends and I spent all day at amnh (and still didn't see everything).
by the time we left, I felt like Edna in a very literal sense. toward the end of the day, we went up a flight of stairs. my knees and especially hips objected. and I said, "okay, we need to find an elevator, because I cannot do stairs anymore today."
(stairs: the true villain of the remarkable retirement of edna fisher. sorry, probably should've said "spoiler alert.")
