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Book Ratings Systems Are Not a Solution: Book Censorship News, November 25, 2022

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Because of the holiday in the U.S. this week, the roundup of book censorship news and insights will be shorter than usual. Although there are several right-wing groups eager to implement movie-style book ratings to library titles, the reality is, book rating systems are an exercise in futility and bias. Julia Rittenberg does an outstanding job explaining why book rating systems would not work, and in addition, I recommend tuning into a recent episode of the You’re Wrong About podcast that delves into the history of the movie rating system and how easily bought, subverted, and problematic it has been....

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Take Our Book Website Design Quiz to Improve Your Click Throughs

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Reading Time: ( Word Count: ) Book website design can be tricky. Mostly because it’s easy to get caught up in wanting to include everything you think should matter, when in actuality you’re making it more challenging for your visitor to simply buy your book. So we created this simple quiz (it’s only 7 ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions) to kickstart the conversation about whether you’re on the right track with the creation (or maintenance) of your author website. And try not to look ahead, I promise doing this organically will serve you better in the long run! Now let me...

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Why is Writing Stuck in the Paper Age?

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As someone who is equally devoted to books and the internet, I am endlessly fascinated by the failure of online writing to live up to its potential as a form. Previously, I wrote about how interactive ebooks were once seen as the future of books, and how they have completely failed to live up to what was projected about them. They are such a tiny niche that it’s arguable about whether they even count as books as at all — what’s the line between a pick-a-path video game and an interactive ebook? To some extent, I can see how interactive...

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A Quick and Helpful Education on Publishing Trends

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Whether you’re a firm fan of futurism or a little hesitant about where tech and other trends might be taking us, engaging with what’s to come is important in sustaining a profitable business in publishing, as in any other field. Four women in our industry who have a keen eye for predicting future trends are Alliance of Independent Authors Director Orna Ross, Enterprise Advisor and futurist Joanna Penn, strategist for authors and publishers, Jane Friedman, and author success coach Becca Syme. Today, the AskALLi team asks them how they predict and profit from publishing trends–so you might do the same. We...

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Ellen Wittlinger, Author of Hard-Hitting Queer YA, Has Died

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On the same day news broke about the loss of YA author Marcus Sedgwick, the YA community lost yet another legend in the field. Ellen Wittlinger, who wrote groundbreaking, hard-hitting realistic YA featuring queer characters in an era where such stories were exceedingly rare, died November 17, 2022. Wittlinger’s career began as a playwright in the 1970s and 80s, after she earned her MFA at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. Though she continued to write plays and be active in the playwriting world, she found a true home with her writing skills and writing voice in YA. Hard Love,...

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