Welcome back to Stone and Signal.  I am excited about this episode.  I hope you enjoy it. The Podcast Links Episode 5 on Substack  Edpisode 5 on YouTube Episode 5 on Spotify The Essay The Transcript The Thin Line Between Cancelling and Censoring Every year, Banned Books Week comes around like a mirror we’re asked to look into—and what we see reflected says a great deal about who we are becoming. The books that end up on “challenged” or “restricted” lists rarely surprise me anymore. They tend to be the ones that speak too plainly about what others would rather not confront—identity, power, the environment, grief, or truth. If a story makes us uncomfortable, it’s easier to remove it from reach than to ask why it unsettles us. If I’m honest, many of my own books could probably find their way onto those lists. Stories that speak of youth defying systems, of ancient forces rising against human arrogance, of governments rewriting morality under the guise of progres...

Sharing a model that might help other authors think differently about street teams. Writers are often told to “build a street team.” The advice usually goes like this: gather other authors, book bloggers, and bookish accounts who will share your posts. And while that can create a sense of community, I’ve often felt it traps us in an echo chamber. Authors promoting to other authors. Writers talking mostly to writers. Posts circulating in the same small pond. Helpful for morale, maybe, but not for reaching new readers . So I started thinking differently. A Dream Goal What if a street team wasn’t built from other authors at all? What if it reflected the themes of my books instead: environmental activism, speculative futures, artificial intelligence, and youth voices? What if it looked more like the world itself — diverse, global, and multi-layered? I sketched out a “dream team” target: not because I expect to fill every slot, but because having a map helps me (and maybe...

With more than twenty years behind me as an indie author ( read about that here ), I can confidently say: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Why bring this up now? Because lately there’s been a renewed wave of conversation about the challenges of marketing indie books in a publishing ecosystem still shaped—if not dominated—by traditional models. Every so often, we see a localized seismic shift—like BookTok, before monetization restored the old order and perhaps even pushed us further back. But the broader landscape remains unchanged: we live in an attention economy, and its gatekeepers have made one thing clear—it’s pay to play. Once, platforms offered organic reach. Content mattered. Effort could sometimes compensate for budget. But those days are vanishing. Social platforms have entered their late-capitalism phase: squeeze creators for every drop of value, extract revenue, and wait for the next migration wave. For many—likely most—indie authors, money is tight. Time...