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2023 Sale Dates, Books of the Year Polls, Sapphics in the Wild, Jae’s Guest Post, and More!

Dear Authors, we’re back after taking a couple of weeks off from Writerly Wednesday because we had writing deadlines!

In fact, before we get started, we should mention that going forward, Writerly Wednesday will be published roughly every other week, though we may send a quick email to remind you of deadlines as needed.

We have a lot to share today, so get ready and make yourself comfy. And maybe grab a snack. Miranda has been craving Girl Scout cookies, so if you have some extra, you know where to send them.

Okay, ready? Great!

Let’s get to this week’s news!


Joint Sales for 2023

We will be organizing 5 big sales in 2023 for authors to join. They may look a little different than last year, so keep reading for the details.

3 of the sales will allow each author to submit up to 3 books per pen name.

Instead of these being 99c sales, we will be allowing price points of $0.99, $1.99, $2.99, $3.99 and $4.99 AS LONG AS the sale price represents at least a 50% discount off the regular price.

The exception to the 50% rule will be books that are being offered at $0.99 and $1.99.

Mark your calendars with the following dates:

March 24-March 28 (We’ll be in touch soon with the submission form for this one.)

May 25-May 29

September 21-September 25

Christmas in July Free Book Event:

Readers loved the Free Fall event last September, and while we wanted to do it again, we also felt the last few months of the year got a little too crowded in 2022. We’ve moved the free event to July and will be doing a “Christmas in July” theme for advertising. This does NOT mean you have to give away Christmas books (you can if you’d like). But this is our chance to give a free gift to readers, so the Christmas spirit seemed appropriate. (And it might even be cold and snowy for our readers Down Under!)

This event will take place July 24-26. Books will have to be free on Amazon to participate.

Mega Sale:

There will be one Mega Sale November 24-November 28.

As with the other 3 sales, the price points will be $0.99, $1.99, $2.99, $3.99, and $4.99, and the 50% discount rule will apply to any books that are offered at $2.99 or more. The difference between this sale and the other 3 sales is that authors will be able to submit 10 books per pen name.


Books of the Year Poll

It’s that time of year again! Readers voted for their favorite new releases each month for a whole year, and now it’s finally time to select the cream of the crop: The Best Sapphic Books of 2022!

If you have a book involved in the poll, we highly encourage you to share the news with your readers on social media and in your newsletter. Readers can vote once a day, and voting ends on February 19th.

If you haven’t checked to see if you have a book involved, you can look here.

Books of the Month Poll

You might be wondering how we select the books for the Books of the Year poll. Every month, we take all the new releases that appeared in the new release newsletters the previous month and run a Books of the Month poll for readers to vote for their favorites. Once the voting is over for all 12 months, all the winners from those polls enter the Books of the Year poll. If you want a chance to be in a Book of the Month poll, please ensure you submit your new releases.

The winners each month have their covers prominently featured on a rotating basis on the home page of the website. It’s another way to get eyeballs on your new release.

Here’s a screenshot:

BOM Winner Example

If you have a book involved in the Books of the Month poll, we highly recommend sharing it with your readers to get them to vote.


Sapphics in the Wild

On Saturdays, TB shares about her latest road trip adventures, including photos and facts about the place she visited. Readers like guessing where TB has been.

Miranda had a brilliant idea to add to TB’s adventures. Starting this month (as long as we don’t get any blizzards), we will begin taking a paperback copy of a sapphic book along for the ride and snapping photos of it somewhere in New England (or beyond!). We’re calling it Sapphics in the Wild.

We will be starting this in the next week or so with paperbacks from our own collections, but we don’t want to limit it to what’s already on our shelves.

This is where you come in!

If you’d like to send us a paperback copy of one of your books (or more than one book, as we’re not limiting how many we’ll feature), please send us an email ([email protected]) so we can provide the shipping details. It doesn’t have to be a signed copy, which means you can simply order it from Amazon or your publisher and have them send it to us if that’s easiest. (For privacy reasons, we’re not putting the shipping address on the internet where anyone can find it and potentially cause trouble.)

Not only will we include photos of your book in the Saturday post, but we’ll share the photo on social media, too. Afterwards, we’ll bring all the paperbacks we collect to local events such as Pride, library events, popup bookshop events, or other places where LGBTQ+ books would be appreciated. They will be used as part of our I Heart SapphFic table display, and the proceeds from any sales will go to supporting maintenance of the IHS website.


Foreign Translation Pirates 

The pirates are at it again.

Jae has been keeping a diligent eye on the pirates and when she spies new pirated versions, she notifies the author. In the past couple of weeks, she’s spotted several pirated copies of books by TB & Miranda, along with many others in the community. These pirates take the English text of sapphic books, run them through an AI translation tool, slap a shoddy cover on it, and then upload it to Amazon as their own work. Removing them from Amazon is possible, but it takes action on the part of the rights holder.

For more on what to do if you get hit by one of the pirates, check out this post.


Writing Wisdom

Adrian's Easy Grammar GraphicAdrian J. Smith is a writer and editor who has a not-so-secret love of grammar.

Today’s grammar tip covers COMMA SPLICE–New Sentence. In college, TB had a professor who railed against the use of the semicolon calling it the most pretentious punctuation. Adrian’s tip this week would make that professor happy. Check it out here.

Jae's Tips for AuthorsIn today’s Tips for Authors, Jae talks about newsletter structure and how to put your information together so readers will read and absorb what is most important.

Check out Jae’s post: Newsletter Tips


Have an idea for a guest post? If you have experience in something that is relevant to SapphFic authors and would like to submit an article about it, drop us a line!

Check back February 22 for more great advice and SapphFic publishing news.

Happy writing!

Miranda & TB

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