Q. How can I request an ARC from one of your authors?
A. Our ARC request page will show you which ARCs are available, and allow you to submit a request for specific books. We do not currently have a NetGalley account considering how cost-prohibitive it is even when sharing expenses–but our authors are all on Booksprout. Each author page has a link to their individual Booksprout profiles—where you can get updates every time each author has a new book available for review, and have the books delivered to your email or device via the Booksprout platform.
Q. Why do all Blue Absinthe books contain content warnings?
A. Many of our authors deal in tropes that, while popular, are also problematic and can lead to some dubious content. We feel there’s nothing wrong with consuming certain types of problematic content for entertainment and believe that our readers are quite capable of distinguishing between a personal fantasy for pleasure and the reality of something that may promote harmful relationship dynamics, but at the same time we also want readers to be able to make active choices about what they do or do not want to consume when it comes to content that may or may not be personally upsetting to them. So in order to make use of the Blue Absinthe platform, all authors we promote via our channels must consent to including content warnings.
We also have a very firm policy about drawing a distinct line between problematic fantasies versus stories that actively espouse and perpetuate unexamined bigotry or any other kind of hate against marginalized people and protected classes, and will not accept authors who promote the latter in their books.
Q. You’re missing a lot of categorizations and tags from your books page.
A. Only temporarily! We only included categories and tags for books currently listed so that none of them show a blank listing, but the classification system will diversify as we add new titles.
Q. Didn’t you used to be Glissando Publishing Group?
A. Yes. We rebranded. 🙂
Q. Why?
A. Whim. Impulse. A change in scope. We wanted a cooler name. One of our more heavily taboo authors pulled from Amazon and decided to no longer publish their more controversial/forbidden titles to avoid having their other titles under other names banned in a wholesale KDP account action.
Without that specific author we’re swimming in the deep end with some darker themes, but not so far down that we’re in the Marianas Trench like we were before. And while that author will be missed and we enjoyed working with them in their time, this change has also allowed us to expand in scope to include more mainstream titles with somewhat vanilla-dark themes, as well as venturing into working with YA and NA authors.
Since the Glissando name was, quite frankly, associated with pure raunch, we decided a new name was in order.
Not that there’s anything wrong with raunch.
We just don’t want to confuse anyone’s expectations.
Q. Does that mean you’re open to submissions now?
A. It does not. Blue Absinthe Books is still not a traditional publisher, but instead a publishing collective of independent authors sharing a joint platform to reduce marketing costs and minimize the effort involved in building individual platforms. We all work separately, but pool our resources for a unified web and social media presence, newsletter, and back-end resources for fonts, formatting, cover design, stock images, content warnings, and copyright matters. This can especially be useful for authors whose works are permitted by Amazon publishing, but frequently limited or barred by Amazon advertising, such as our authors with Omegaverse stories. Pooling resources on a joint platform allows them to reach a collective audience they might otherwise be denied.
We do not solicit manuscripts; please do not send manuscripts, query letters, partials, or inquiries regarding publishing. They will be deleted unread. New Blue Absinthe authors are generally accepted through invitation/referral only, and on a very limited basis. We try to keep from overwhelming our growing list; joint marketing loses its effectiveness when bombarding our readers with a dozen titles per month.
Q. Why can’t I find most of your authors on social media?
A. Well, that’s the entire reason for this thing.
Many of our authors find building and maintaining an author social media platform to be fairly tedious, and extremely hit or miss; many also find social media to be increasingly distracting and frustrating, impeding their ability to work. So rather than each author individually creating multiple platforms that may or may not gain any traction, we’ve instead combined our resources into a single platform that requires much less maintenance between us, while building a consolidated social media base that serves all of our authors. Our Facebook page and Twitter plus Instagram accounts are usually managed by one author at a time, but we sometimes rotate out.
It saves everyone a lot of time and energy, while allowing all Blue Absinthe authors to support each other by feeding into the consolidated platform.
Also, Facebook has made it increasingly hard to open an account under a pen name without using your legal name, and many of our authors don’t want their legal names tied to the steamier side of their work when it may affect their livelihood or even their safety. So they just don’t bother trying, and we maintain a Facebook page under Scott Sauer’s FB account.
Q. Why the name Blue Absinthe Books?
We’re poison, but you’ll love the taste.
Also most of us just really like the color blue.
And drinking.
Sometimes it’s not that complicated.
On a more serious note, though, absinthe is well-known as the little fairy writers turn to for dreaming inspiration, with a long history in literary canon, particularly in more Bohemian sectors. While we generally look for less hallucinogenic forms of inspiration, we couldn’t resist a little hat-tip.
Q. But there’s no such thing as blue absinthe.
A. Actually, there is!
Do you take a cut of author royalties?
A. We don’t. We don’t even have access to author royalties, since all of our authors are self-published via their own KDP accounts. Instead we use Amazon Affiliate links to generate a little extra money to help cover the costs of hosting.
Q. Right, I’ve noticed you use Amazon affiliate links. Who benefits from the affiliate revenues?
A. All affiliate revenues go to cover website domain renewals, website hosting, Amazon ads, Facebook ads, mailing list services, Booksprout, Bookfunnel, and ProlificWorks. To be honest, our affiliate revenues don’t even remotely cover a fraction of those costs, but the few pennies do help to defray how much we pool out of pocket to cover everything.
Why do so many of your authors use mononyms?
A. Honestly, it’s a case of monkey see, monkey do. We had a couple who did that, and a few others who joined us decided, as they worked out establishing their brands, that they really liked the simplicity of it and wanted to emulate it. So…birds of a feather. We all have similar tastes, which is likely why we work so well together.
Q. Who maintains the website, newsletter, and social media?
A. We take turns often and pass it off between us depending on who has time, energy, and necessary coding or graphic/web design skills. At the moment, it’s Scott Sauer, and Scott’s the one who did most of our initial site installation and customization.
Q. If you’re not a publisher, why is your primary email publisher@blueabsinthebooks.com?
A. It just seemed fitting at the time we were setting this up. We aren’t traditional book publishers, it’s true. But we do publish and curate a select list of books and authors, and we do assist each other with formatting, stock image and font licensing, covers, marketing, joint branding, copyright matters, social media, website things, etc. So we do a lot of the technical work of a publisher and provide many of the benefits of a consolidated brand, but we do not actually acquire, edit, and publish the books ourselves. We help each other get books together, and then send each other off into the wild to self-publish.
