Notices by Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 (susankayequinn@wandering.shop), page 2

I deeply believe we're swinging into an Age of Authenticity, when people will crave the simple, the hand-made, the REAL even more.

So, yes, discoverability is hard (it's always been hard) but you are a creative...so get creative about how you help people find you. They need your stuff.

#art #writing #selfpublishing

When I released my 1st novel in 2011, in that first wave of indies leaving the tradpub path & opting into a new kind of writing career, I thought "this will change not just how writers publish but what they write, what kind of careers they'll have".

That was more right than I knew at the time.
1/n

Something I think a lot of people miss: to be a "success" in tradpub, you have to *appeal* to a wider audience. Enough to make money for publishers and a living for yourself (or not) on slim royalties.

With selfpub, your audience can be more narrow, you can "succeed" w/fewer sales/readers.

THE GOOD: freedom to create, creatively publish, make a living at writing w/out gatekeepers or bookshelf limits

THE BAD: scammers, "minimum viable product" publishing & now fucking AI, both stealing our work & flooding the world with slop

#selfpublishing went from vanity to solid career option tho

Of course every writer wants sales & readers! Money is complicated with books because you want to be read and you need $ to survive and those are connected but also: you mostly want people to read your works! But $ is often a way to access *more* readers. They're connected, intimately.

I've had people say "I don't care about money!" (as if it's a badge of honor) and then they set all their books free (or pub online) to have "widest access" and they think that's the way to get "the most" readers. But it's not. It assumes cost is the most important barrier, but it's really not.

#writing #selfpublishing

(I say this as someone who uses free promo extensively -- free promo works because it lowers the friction for that first try)

But publishing your books on your blog for free or whatever doesn't solve the main problem: discoverability.

Always true but more every day, esp with AI mucking things up.

But here's the thing for my fellow #writers that I beg you to hold lovingly in your hands & take into your heart:

People want your works. They want authentic human-made stories that move them, make them cry & laugh, comfort/challenge them.

THEY DO. They want it even more now, in the age of AI

NOPE
And that earns an unsubcribe from Vox.

we got a lot of work to do to reimagine our relationship with nature

I'm out here using only mah raw brain juice

Food coops and farm shares are just a couple of the ways you can shift your spending local and strengthen your local community while rejecting corporate bullshit and endless profiteering.

I've slowly shifted over years, one thing at a time, to make it manageable and it really makes a difference as things get more chaotic.

https://susankayequinn.com/2025/04/how-to-prepare-not-prep-for-uncertain-times-and-build-a-better-world-in-the-process.html

THIS is why you should seek out & support your local food coop

not just because egg prices will be reasonable
not just because they won't profiteer off you

but because they're looking out for *everyone* in the community during shitty times like this (thanks fascism, capitalism & patriarchy!)

Find yours here: https://www.localharvest.org/food-coops/

Want to read a light-hearted but satisfying story about cleaning microplastics at the bottom of the sea? (also it's queer?)

Yes, you do! (plus it's free, the first in my *Halfway to Better* solarpunk short story collection)

SLIMY THINGS DID CRAWL: https://susankayequinn.com/books/slimy-things-did-crawl

#bookstodon

"What we are calling “decentering” today has often been built from sheer necessity across generations. When we frame decentering as a lifestyle trend, we ignore and erase the women who have been doing it forever."

"Across wealthy nations, the percentage of women aged 25-29 who are unmarried has doubled in the past twenty years, exceeding 40% in many countries. Rates of gray divorce, of people over 50, roughly doubled between 1990 and 2015. "

this article is 🔥

https://sorayachemaly.substack.com/p/26-decentering-men-is-not-misandry

"queer and trans people’s lives are threatening male supremacy for the same reason women’s independence is threatening: all refuse the terms on which patriarchal masculinity depends. You cannot perpetuate precarious manhood without the gender binary. But to have the binary you have to police and enforce it at all times. The violence we live with follows from this logic"

"Masculine identity, in theory a biological state that is fixed, is really an achievement that has to be earned, publicly performed, and reconfirmed continuously. It has to be proved over and over.

This means, for instance, that a single perceived failure — maybe a woman who outperforms a man or withholds deference or a person who doesn’t conform to hegemonic cis hetero norms — registers as a threat, propelling aggressive and disproportionate reactions."

"We are living through the largest exodus from patriarchy and patriarchal systems ever, a revolution in slow motion. I know things feel bleak, but it’s important to register what this means and to understand today’s conservative agenda as a response to a project that is working even as it is under profound and coordinated attack."

So much truth in this.

really good, hopeful thread: https://bsky.app/profile/jysexton.bsky.social/post/3mle2jltcv22u