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loudpoet.com
Guy (aka glecharles)
@loudpoet.com
910 followers 92 following 810 posts
Sometimes loud, formerly poet, always opinionated. Pro-craft. As in guillotine.

Here via BlackSky now; more active elsewhere:

https://loudpoet.com | https://gardenstate.social/@glecharles
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loudpoet.com
I'll be at #LibraryConLive on Thursday w/ @comicsplus.bsky.social!

Our featured session, Comics & Manga RA for Middle Grade & Teens (11am ET / 8am PT), features three great librarians sharing their comics and manga expertise.

#ReadAllTheComics #LibComix

librarypass.com/2025/10/15/j...
Comics Plus' virtual booth for LibraryCon Live 2025.
November 4, 2025 at 7:58 PM
loudpoet.com
Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn’t Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden or Alice In Chains. ("As if!" @reetamac.bsky.social 💯)
Forever My Lady by Jodeci
October 29, 2025 at 1:35 PM
loudpoet.com
Every now and then I remember Ryan Britt's thoughts on literacy in Star Wars, but this time the context wasn't about Star Wars at all. 😞

reactormag.com/most-citizen...
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.
October 14, 2025 at 1:34 PM
loudpoet.com
This is another reminder that social media is an ephemeral data collection scheme, and you shouldn't make any of these platforms your primary source of news, engagement, or connections.

If Twitter and Substack weren't enough, please let Bluesky be the last time y'all fall for this trick. #cmonson
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."
October 8, 2025 at 5:43 PM
loudpoet.com
@lorifreshwater.bsky.social Thought you'd appreciate this. 😁
Photo of several diecast cars and a mini bookstore, with an "Alphabet St" sign hanging above them.
September 22, 2025 at 6:42 PM
loudpoet.com
Man, that scene messed me up so bad, I took a rare screenshot. 😢
"That night, no one spoke a word."
September 10, 2025 at 2:17 AM
loudpoet.com
"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." @janefriedman.com

Everyone in publishing should read this, and if you're not already a subscriber, you absolutely should be.

janefriedman.com/how-publishi...
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.)
August 27, 2025 at 4:38 PM
loudpoet.com
Thanks to @publisherswkly.bsky.social always giving Substack free promo, this makes it sound like @emilymbender.bsky.social is also writing there, which was a disappointing shock.

Thankfully, that's not the case; she's using Buttondown, which somehow doesn't qualify for free promo. 🤔

#cmonson
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."
August 21, 2025 at 3:54 PM
loudpoet.com
😞
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?"
August 17, 2025 at 9:48 PM
loudpoet.com
PS: This is a @cheriepriest.com & The Clockwork Century appreciation post. 👍🏽👍🏽

bookshop.org/a/100022/978...
The Clockwork Century novels by Cherie Priest in a stack.
July 23, 2025 at 1:42 AM
loudpoet.com
Last day of #ALAAC25, my primary takeaway hasn't changed...
Me, in a "Decentralize Publishing" T-shirt from Hub City Press.
June 30, 2025 at 11:55 AM
loudpoet.com
Found you!
An assortment of zines.
June 27, 2025 at 9:13 PM
loudpoet.com
"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." Me, 12/1/2020
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
June 18, 2025 at 4:48 PM
loudpoet.com
Got my Flag Day shirt ready!

h/t @alexdecampi.bsky.social

www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/7259...
Me, holding up a green "No Kings. no Tyrants." shirt.
June 10, 2025 at 7:12 PM
loudpoet.com
The New Jersey Bookstore Crawl: Visit participating NJ independent bookstores on June 7 + 8, 2025!

#NewJersey

www.jerseycollective.org/njbookstorec...
New Jersey Bookstore Crawl June 7 - 8, 2025
June 7, 2025 at 2:49 PM
loudpoet.com
There's so much to unpack in these two short paragraphs, but it's an important reminder that, despite their participation in a few self-serving lawsuits, corporate publishers only really value libraries as marketing channels.

www.wordsandmoney.com/after-trump-...
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.
May 16, 2025 at 7:54 PM
loudpoet.com
This collection of zines from @janineveazue.bsky.social brightened my day, as much for their content as their clever use of paper!

#FridayReads #zines

www.etsy.com/shop/Stitcha...
The Office Life Bundle of zines in a plastic bag, alongside a zine about libraries, and sheets of Hello Kitty and dinosaur stickers. The individual Office Life and Libraries zines.
April 4, 2025 at 5:57 PM
loudpoet.com
Substack has convinced so many people that they're independent creators who own their newsletters and audiences, but every single reference to them is framed as either "their Substack" or "on Substack."

Even worse, many of them use this framing themselves.

#cmonson
A video game screenshot of a man walking down a well-lit alley, saying, "Ah shit, here we go again."
March 19, 2025 at 3:44 PM
loudpoet.com
I'm cheating, with one fiction, one nonfiction.
Dark PR by Grant Ennis and Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
March 14, 2025 at 4:44 PM
loudpoet.com
I've always despised the term "reluctant reader" and discourage its use at the day job, but I'd never taken the time to solidify my thoughts, never mind write them down.

Ellie Lathbridge wrote this excellent essay on why the term needs to be retired.

jcsonlineresources.org/blog/what-is...
Various ideas for encouraging reading engagement.
February 19, 2025 at 6:19 PM
loudpoet.com
It's always fascinated and annoyed me how the industry collectively decided they could measure #BookTok impact on book sales, using the laziest version of last-click attribution I've ever seen.

I'm glad @janefriedman.com had the intellectual curiosity to dig in.

mailchi.mp/hotsheetpub/...
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.
February 12, 2025 at 7:09 PM
loudpoet.com
We'll never know whose insights were mined and synthesized to generate these responses, and because most people aren't very good writers, these tools are going to make it impossible to know who's using them vs. writing authentically.

What a stupid time to be alive.
A woman looking out a window, a vague skyline in the distance: "What a stupid time to be alive."
February 10, 2025 at 9:43 PM
loudpoet.com
@heykellyjensen.bsky.social Ours arrived today!
A King Cake from Gambino's Bakery in New Orleans.
February 1, 2025 at 8:41 PM
loudpoet.com
The description closed the sale, but the cover made it possible. Ended up being my favorite read last year.
The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings and an Octavia Books bookmark.
January 28, 2025 at 10:58 PM
loudpoet.com
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.
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.
January 27, 2025 at 1:08 PM