July 2026: The Publishing Industry + Update

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

The awesome co-hosts for the July 1 posting of the IWSG are Rebecca Douglass, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Cathrina Constantine, and Jacqui Murray!

The following link will allow you to peruse everyone in the Blog Hop.

Link | IWSG Blog Hop Participants 

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July 1 question - Is there anything you'd like to see changed, added, and/or rearranged about the book publishing industry?

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Hello, friends!

This post is WAY late. July really snuck up on me. HOW DARE the first be on a Wednesday?!

So I am going to keep it short. Not a ton happened in June. I finished my first round of pass pages! So that was fun. I found a rogue "her" that survived from when I rewrote The Tinsel Twist from third past to first present... it survived three readers looking specifically for that, three professional editors, and myself another like five times. And people wonder how typos make it to print? That's how. It was so close to making it through to the final pass. I only caught it because I was having Siri read aloud my pages to me!

I wasn't going to take any editing clients in June and work on some drafting instead, and then one of my cats got sick. She has a massive bladder stone that may require surgery, so I was like okay! I'm open! So I booked an editing client. Because kitty surgery is expensive. We're trying some other treatments first, but if those don't work in the next few weeks, we'll have to go for surgery. So that sucks, about the surgery anyway. Booking a client was great! I'm having a lot of fun reading this one.

Oh! Also! I started an editorial internship with a small press, Rowan Prose Publishing. I'm doing light copy edits for them, kind of pre-editing, to save the regular editor some time looking for echoes and simple grammar things. So that's cool! Trying to build up my portfolio.

The only major thing that's happened I guess is that I started getting blurbs back from authors about The Tinsel Twist! They're all on my homepage but I'll share a few here. All of these authors are amazing and I'm so glad they agreed to blurb me.

Rosie J. Potter's debut, The Tinsel Twist, is as fast-paced and page-turning as it is sexy. Full of small-town holiday charm and swoony best friend's brother yearning, it's the perfect book for readers who like their romance with a side of danger. —Meredith Schorr, USA Today bestselling author of Roommating

The Tinsel Twist packs all the cozy holiday magic of Hallmark with high-stakes suspense, heartfelt yearning, and the irresistible slow-burn tension of a second-chance romance. You’ll be rooting for these characters until the very last page! —Linny Mack, author of Changing Tides (Cape May #1) & Beneath Still Waters (Tidehaven #1)

"Unputdownable. A delightful romp with chemistry that sizzles so hot it belongs in Adelaide's kitchen, I was totally enraptured by her and Jace. The journey to their second chance had me kicking my feet, giddy at the prospect of these two finding their way to each other again. The Tinsel Twist is so much more than a holiday romance. With suspense that had me up all night and a love I couldn't help but root for, this story shines brighter than the Christmas lights of Tinsley Falls." —Tristen Crone, author of Playing For Keeps, I Think Olive You, and Under Locke & Key

So those are just a few of the blurbs I've received so far! It's so surreal to have my peers reading my book and saying nice things about it. I hope to get a few more before my deadline on July 20th.

It's also been sent out to Trade Reviewers like Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly. I don't know if they'll agree to review or not, but that made me a little unwell for a bit knowing it had been sent.

I am definitely barreling toward release day! In just over four months, my book will be out in the world!

Still holding out hope for an audiobook deal to come through sometime soon.

If anyone is interested in being an early reader, the sign-ups for my ARC team are still live. But I'll be sure to share the link to NetGalley when it arrives there as well!

Link || ARC Team

July Question

Today's question asks: Is there anything you'd like to see changed, added, and/or rearranged about the book publishing industry?

Lord, I could write a novel about this question! I know I'm having a book published by a traditional publisher and my experience has been a dream, but by and large the publishing industry sucks.

Everything is so opaque. They don't want to lift the curtain to show you what really happens behind the scenes. And lately, all trad publishers are doing is plucking up successful self-pubbed authors, giving them huge deals, and repackaging their books. Which, no shade to them, good on them for getting that money, this is a publisher issue not an author issue. I am happy for them, but I also think about the many, many debut authors floundering in submission hell getting passes like "we just took on something like that" and the thing that they took on as a seven-figure deal to an indie author with a similar concept, when they could have bankrolled many new books and new authors for that same amount.

There's also the part where there's a lot of editor turnover and then books just get orphaned. Publishers want to wait and see if a book does well before signing an option, which I get, but also don't put an option clause in your contract if you're just going to string the author along for years, when sometimes they can't do anything else because of the contract wording until the publisher decides what they're going to do about the option book.

They say they want one thing but then tell you no when you give them that thing and then publish the thing they said they were tired of.

The Big 5 especially is opaque and wishy-washy. I think they like it that way, but it's really hurting publishing as a whole, in my opinion. It is, however, leaving room for self-publishers to thrive and for independent presses to fill a gap left by the Big 5.

Also, I would like to see a more staunch stance against GenAI in book publishing, whether publicly or at least in contracts for authors. Analytical/Data-driven AI, fine, I get it. But GenAI for writing/covers/marketing? Will immediately turn me off from a publisher. I don't want to read books from them, and I certainly don't want to submit my work to them.

I'd also love see booksellers more willing to stock a few more titles that aren't the blockbuster bestsellers. It's so hard, even for established midlist authors, to get onto the shelves like Barnes & Noble, even if they've had a good track record.

I know a lot of this comes down to business, but in general, there's an unwillingness to change and an unwillingness to branch out and try new things in the industry. And that's where self-published authors are smoking the traditional industry. And readers are HUNGRY for it.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this, like I said, because I have THOUGHTS, but it's already noon here so I'm super late to posting, so I will stop.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by!

Looking forward to traversing the blog hop and reading about other people's experiences with their old writing.

For now,

Rosie J.

The Tinsel Twist in which a recipe for love requires a dash of danger releases November 3rd from Turner Publishing.

Add on Goodreads or preorder wherever books are sold (including internationally).

Link | Linktree

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