Posts By: Elly Blue

The Autism Partner Handbook

Learn key communication skills for succeeding in a neurologically mixed relationship, gain a better understanding of your partner’s mental processes, troubleshoot your sex life, and level up your appreciation for your partner’s relationship strengths. Autistic-allistic relationships, as well as relationships between two neurodivergent people, can work out splendidly, but there are a few consistent and predictable areas where they can get in trouble, which you can work through together once you know how to spot them. Dr. Faith G. Harper, author of Unf*ck Your Brain and Unf*ck Your Intimacy, joins Joe Biel (an autistic publisher and author) and Elly Blue (a partner of an autistic person), to offer hard-won guidance on a wide range of relationship topics.

Publishers + Libraries = Love, but How?

Today on the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, we are joined by guest Guy LeCharles Gonzalez to talk about a topic near to all our hearts: How publishers can better work with and support libraries! Guy works in this exact field and has a lot of great advice and perspective on the joys, challenges, and practical logistics of nurturing a mutually fruitful relationship with library buyers.

From Dream to Reality

Want to make a living as a freelance writer? Here are the resources, answers, and real talk you need about what it takes to make a living as a writer for hire. Drawing on her own varied and successful years of freelance copywriting experience, Jessie Kwak (author of From Chaos to Creativity and From Big Idea to Book) offers valuable insights on how to figure out if this fast-paced, ever-evolving career is for you—and how to make it work if you decide to go for it. 

50 Ways to Protect Bookstores

Bookstores are important. So are booksellers. And they—and the ideas and communities they serve—need protection. Danny Caine, the best-selling author of How to Resist Amazon and Why and co-owner of the Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas, writes a stirring call to action. Bookstores are not charities, he writes, and they shouldn’t get a pass on exploitative labor practices, but they play a vital role in our society that is worth upholding. Preparing the ground for a more expansive book on the topic, Caine offers 50 ideas for protecting this idiosyncratic business niche and, by extension, the neighborhoods that bookstores anchor.

Consensuality: How to Love Other People without Losing Yourself

There are infinite possibilities in human relationships, but the fairytale ideal of companionship does not exist for most people. In Consensuality, Helen Wildfell and her co-adventurers detail the process for creating or finding a healthy, successful relationship as well as common pitfalls and how to avoid them. Tackling topics like gender identity, sexual boundaries, power struggles, emotional dysfunction, and overcoming regret and resentment, the authors describe a journey towards a respectful social environment. Their experiences lead to lessons of self-empowerment and communication tips for building healthy partnerships. In a consent-based relationship, partners recognize one another’s preferences and boundaries and discuss how those fit with our own. Filled with personal descriptions of the complex layers in human interaction, mental health, trauma, and desire, the book combines gender studies with memoir to truly make the personal political.

How to make lemonade out of book problems

Today on the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, Joe and Elly somewhat belatedly talk about an incident that happened at a Chicago bookstore over the holidays, where a customer made a huge purchase, then came back to return it all a month later. Those indomitable booksellers turned the situation around in the most charming way possible. Like bookselling, publishing can be economically precarious, and we talk about this and other incidents when seeming disasters can be turned into wins for everyone.

Let’s get honest about publishing: An interview with Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

This week on the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, Joe and Elly are joined by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, whose influential publishing industry commentary on blogs and social media has been influenced by years of experience in every part of the book world; as an author, editor, slam poet, marketer, publisher, and more. In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk about the benefits of coming into publishing from an untraditional background, publishers’ tendencies to keep their cards close and why we all want to change that, and plenty of insights and predictions about the current state of the industry.

Everyday Herbal Teamaking

This unfussy, spirited guide to 35 readily accessible herbs offers botanical names, medical reputations from various modern and historical sources, good-humoredly honest tasting notes, and illustrations to help identify what you’ve just foraged, grown, or bought at the herb shop or health food store. With teacher and tea aficionado Glenna McLean as your guide, travel back in time by enjoying a blend of herbs that King Tut savored, a tea that was thought to ward off the Plague in the 14th Century, and the herbs imbibed by druids at Stonehenge and Puritan church services. Quaff brews purported to bring you courage, quench (or ignite) lust, ward off scurvy, and soothe stress and pain. Includes warnings and contraindications so you can pursue your herbal tea habit safely and happily for years to come.

The History of Miami Hip Hop – an interview with John Cordero

This week on the People’s Guide to Publishing podcast, we interview special guest John Cordero, author of the brand new Microcosm book The History of Miami Hip Hop. John was a teenage hip hop head and graffiti artist who started an underground newspaper, The Cipher, with his friends in the late 90s to chronicle the burgeoning scene around them that was being ignored by mainstream magazines. He drew on his reporting, memories, and interviews with others who were there to bring us this fun and fascinating book, full of photos and vivid events. He joined us for a video interview to talk about the book (and offers some of the best advice about publishing we’ve ever had on the show).

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