Guy (aka glecharles)

@loudpoet.com

935 Followers 107 Following

Sometimes loud, formerly poet, always opinionated. As in guillotine... Here via BlackSky, but more active elsewhere: https://loudpoet.com | https://gardenstate.social/@glecharles

"While the goal of increasing access to digital books on fair terms is laudable, we must not encourage this direction in public policy making because it invites the possibility of other future mandates on how libraries must operate." Alan Inouye
Lots of fake moral outrage happening right now about AI companies destructively scanning used books. I have zero patience for this nonsense. If you want to preserve old books for public access, fund libraries. If you want to make the contents of out of print books more widely available, shorten the term of copyright. Do those two things and there is no reason to stress about destructive scanning. Newsflash for people taking to their fainting couches and clutching their pearls over destructive scanning: books are just goods for sale on the market. They can be bought and destroyed by anyone at any time for any reason or none. The market doesn't preserve books. Having out-of-print books in the hands of private sellers or buyers does society at large no more good than having them in a landfill. Most books, even library books, are destined to wind up in a landfill, anyway. If "Windows 93 for Dummies" helps Claude write better marketing prose before it meets its inevitable end, win-win. If you're OK with a copyright system that lets five multinational corporations control the printing and circulation of 90% of books for ~150 years after they are written, you are in no place to whine about what happens to the last few copies of the books that these corporations refuse to re-print. If you think it's OK for publishers to force libraries to rent e-books rather than owning a preservation copy, you cannot complain when the last physical copy is in the hands of a company you dislike rather than a research institution you trust. /rant
How Librarians Actually Choose Indie Books and Why Metadata Matters By Guy LeCharles Gonzalez Getting a book into library collections is harder than most authors realize. Large publishers have systemic advantages that smaller publishers and indie authors simply can’t match—including distribution relationships, professional reviews, and sunk costs. However, with the Big Five unwilling to collaborate with public libraries on ebook pricing, the opportunities for smaller publishers and savvy indie authors are greater than they’ve ever been—but success requires understanding how libraries work, where the gaps are, and how to fill them.
ALA Annual 2026 Press badge
June 23-26 anti-prime day Free Shipping on All Orders Bookshop.org
First, this study has no historical baseline; it can’t claim book buying is down. The headline takeaway is that only 25 percent of print and ebooks read in the last month were bought new or obtained through a paid subscription. But does that represent a change in consumer behavior? We don’t know because this study is a snapshot only, not a comparison with prior studies. To be fair, it is well known that digital borrowing has surged at libraries, especially since the pandemic. In particular, it was revealed in 2019 that library ebook revenue for Macmillan increased by 800 percent over five years. But if readers have truly abandoned buying for borrowing, total book purchasing, especially for fiction, would be falling. In fact, the opposite is happening. The fiction market has seen some of its strongest growth since the pandemic.
Q: When will you make them in adult sizes? Not every car loving kiddo has tiny feet. Verified Reply - Tim the Shoe Guy: Interesting idea. While the Garage shoes are for kids only currently, it's possible these could be made in bigger sizes later on.
Publishers choosing the nuclear option with James Patterson makes me think the recent library ebook bills are gaining real momentum and have a chance at succeeding. They're sensing the tide is turning and are willing to risk their reputations to keep readers from having a consumer-friendly way to access ebooks that still makes them plenty of money. If you're a publisher that doesn't support your primary political organization's agenda, now would be a good time to speak up.
The 2026 U.S. Book Show is June 2–3 at The New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10029.
Ronald McDonald sitting on a bench, smiling, a destroyed McDonald's in the background. "Vote!" is written on the picture.
A Slack message from me: "Is it Friday or Monday? 2025 or 2026?!?"
An album cover with a Goofy lookalike and the title, "This ain't it" in all caps.
A set of 7 metal dice with a Dwarven vibe.
Me in an Effin Birds t-shirt: "Can we have a break between cluster fucks"
Superman The Movie poster
Comics Plus' virtual booth for LibraryCon Live 2025.
Forever My Lady by Jodeci
But, what’s sad about Star Wars is that its inhabitants (save for our heroes) seem so complacent and lacking in imagination that this sort of thing was bound to happen in one way or another. In reality, if a whole culture relied exclusively on a group like the Jedi to not only guard justice and truth, but also be the only educated, literate people around, that culture would be seriously screwed up. Meanwhile, these people simply rely on their droids to do everything else.
Old school cartoon panel with a woman looking out of a window at a city skyline in the distance, saying, "What a stupid time to be alive."
Photo of several diecast cars and a mini bookstore, with an "Alphabet St" sign hanging above them.
"That night, no one spoke a word."
Moreover, I’d argue that the last 10 years haven’t been all that revolutionary for publishing, at least not as much as the 10 years before that. Yes, new players have changed the landscape, consolidation has continued, there are political battles. But the industry I reported on in 2015 operates in fundamentally the same ways, so when I talk with writers I’m not telling them anything dramatically different today than I did in 2015. In fact, it would be easier to write an article about all the changes that did not come to pass. (I can’t resist; that’s coming in a later issue.)
Screenshot of PW's newsletter intro with this sentence highlighted: "On Substack, author Lincoln Michel presents his “grand ballroom theory of literature,” and linguist Emily M. Bender recounts an AI panel she participated in at this year’s WorldCon."
Two panels from V for Vendetta. 1: "We've had a string of embezzlers, frauds, liars and lunatics making a string of catastrophic decisions. This is plain fact." 2. "But who elected them?"
The Clockwork Century novels by Cherie Priest in a stack.
Me, in a "Decentralize Publishing" T-shirt from Hub City Press.
An assortment of zines.
Screenshot of three of my archived tweets from 2019-2020, in date order: "Until #BookCon embraces the full potential of YA's diverse audience and distances itself from BEA's antiquated trade focus, its growth will be unfairly constrained, its success viewed through a cracked lens." (links to a PW tweet) 6/3/2019, 11:59:59 AM "With PRH pulling out, the other Big 4 will surely follow and BEA will have no choice but to postpone or cancel. There's just no way NYC gets back to anything resembling normal in the next 4-6 weeks." (links to a Publishing Perspectives article) 3/18/2020, 8:00:40 PM "COVID was the final nail in a coffin BEA lay in for years, but the inability to build BookCon into something with staying power is as much about industry myopia as any specific failures on ReedPop's part." (links to a PW article) 12/1/2020, 1:43:13 PM
Me, holding up a green "No Kings. no Tyrants." shirt.
New Jersey Bookstore Crawl June 7 - 8, 2025
Overlooked in the outrage over Perlmutter's firing is that Congress, with the support of the publishing industry, voted to hand the Copyright Office over to Trump in 2017, during the president's first term. The Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act would have given Trump the power to appoint the Register of Copyrights for a 10-year, renewable term, subject to Senate confirmation, as well as the power to fire the Register at any time. After rushing the bill through the house, largely, critics argued, to keep the newly appointed Carla Hayden from appointing the next register of copyrights after she removed then register Maria Pallante (who is now the president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers), the bill was ultimately blocked in the Senate.
The Office Life Bundle of zines in a plastic bag, alongside a zine about libraries, and sheets of Hello Kitty and dinosaur stickers.
A video game screenshot of a man walking down a well-lit alley, saying, "Ah shit, here we go again."
Dark PR by Grant Ennis and Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
Various ideas for encouraging reading engagement.
I reached out to Circana to inquire about their BookTok sales tracking and heard back from executive director David Walter, who confirmed they continue to maintain a BookTok author list for reporting on book sales driven by BookTok exposure. However, he added, “It’s not an exact science by any means, as we are not able to attribute sales directly to BookTok—i.e., whether the consumer discovered the book via that means. We include all of the authors’ books too, which also means that the effect we’re measuring will be on the high side.” He also noted, “We primarily use Barnes & Noble’s listing of BookTok books to create and maintain our list, and we add new authors periodically.” Director Brenna Connor added that the current list of authors in their BookTok group is now over 200 and is updated quarterly; she also consults industry sources like Book Riot and Publishers Weekly to maintain the list.
A woman looking out a window, a vague skyline in the distance: "What a stupid time to be alive."
A King Cake from Gambino's Bakery in New Orleans.
The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings and an Octavia Books bookmark.
A lot of people are going to have their values challenged and tested over the next few months, and many of them won't have the luxury to immediately live up to those values without risking losing everything. That's by design. Capitalism makes us all complicit to varying degrees, and paths of resistance will vary. Not everyone can just quit their job, or even openly speak their opposition. Those who can, must do it for those who can't, widening the paths for everyone else.
The Complete Calvin & Hobbes slipcase and hardcovers
Keanu Reeves as Neo, "Oh, God."
A computer monitor with the edit view of a WordPress blog post visible. A glass of Bourbon is in the foreground because January is a long year.
Muted words on Bluesky, in text and tags, including specific people and "news" websites.
Keanu Reeves as Neo in The Matrix Resurrections, "Oh, God."
Gmail's Smart features and personalization options in Settings
Mastodon post from Jared “Indie Social Web” White, @jaredwhite@indieweb.social I would like to propose we start using the term "pro-craft" to describe our movement, rather than anti-AI. craft as a verb: to make or manufacture (an object or product) with skill and careful attention to detail craft as a descriptive noun: an art, trade, or occupation requiring special skill, especially manual skill I am not "anti-AI"... I am pro-craft. I've dedicated my life to being a good craftsperson, in a variety of disciplines, and I'll be damned if I let craft be devalued or dismissed. Jan 14, 2025, 04:07 PM
One copy of Taylor Swift's Target-exclusive Black Friday stunt on a shelf in Target.
Screenshot from Metaphor ReFantazio: "Nervous Soldier: I think that whole Grand Cathedral fiasco reminded them that it doesn't matter how much coin or influence they got, they can still die just like the rest of us."
Long necked dog berating a cowering man: "AI is already a fact of life? Where are your sources?!?"
A stack of 12 books, including Microcosm's Make a Zine.
The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings with an Octavia Books bookmark next to it, which is where I bought the book.
Me, in a green sweatshirt with "Freed Between the Lines." in a word balloon.
A Effin' Birds coffee mug: "Look at this goddamn shit show"
"Ah shit, here we go again." A man in a tight tank top looks down an empty, sunlit alley. Probably from a GTA game, but I've had it saved for uses like this for many, many years.
Six-panel meme of Victoria and David Beckham: "Customers really want this AI feature." "Be honest." "It's highly requested." "By whom?" "The CEO." "Thank you."
My Supermix. An automated playlist on YouTube Music: "A mix of songs that span all of your tastes. Always updating."
Persona 3 Reload Original Soundtrack
Bluesky muted words: substack.com in text & tags
A marquee announcement at LibraryCon Live: "Join the conversation on X!" #LibraryConLive