All of my Discords were on fire last night, then Threads, then Bluesky. Berkley influencer program acceptance emails had gone out. I checked my email. Nothing. I checked my email again. Nothing. I did this for about a good hour and then every hour following. I was disappointed. Particularly because Danica Nava, the author of one of my favorite reads from this year, The Truth According to Ember, has another book with Berkley coming out in July 2025 (Love is a War Song).

The more I sat on it, the more frustated I became. The Indigenous book influencer community isn't that big. I follow many of the them. I started to check socials to see if any Indigenous folks were announcing acceptance. I didn't see any.

Berkley's Influencer site states that they "prioritize including influencers from marginalized and underrepresented communities in our programs." It would helpful to not only know the number of Indigenous creators accepted into the program annually, but the total breakdown of acceptances.

Anticipating this reaction, Berkley created the Berkley Influencer Hub for Underrepresented Voices. They offer titles for digital requests for a three month period. Requests for phsyical copies are granted on a case-by-case basis, with no public criteria. I have migraines and do not read digital copies. Will I meet their criteria? Will I meet their criteria every time? How will I find out about new and upcoming releases?

Traditional Publishing, and today I am specifically talking about the marketing departments, fail marginalized authors and this is a prime example. I have over 20k followers on Tiktok and 3300 on Instagram. I've been on Bluesky for a couple of days and have nearly 1,000 followers. Someone who knows how to do their job and who cares about books written by marginalized authors succeeding would know the name of the players to promote upcoming releases. If you know there is a book by an Indigenous author coming out in January, why aren't you sending the book to Indigenous influencers without them having to contact you to ask for it. I have authors reach out to me to tell me they will tell their team to send me a copy of their books. The truth is, if the team was doing their job, they would have already reached out.

This,of course, isn't unique to Indigenous folks. Many marginalized authors and creators have been shouting this from the rooftops for ages. When will we see change? No one knows. Until then, I will have to research every single book coming out and reach out to the publishers directly asking for a copy.

What I love about the Bindery model is that every single author has enormous community support before the book is even published. They aren't going to have to worry about the right reviewers getting copies of their book. I am so excited for whichever author we end up choosing because I know they are going to have the best experience because of all of you.

*If you are reading this from a social media link, please subscribe to my Bindery community to help support our efforts to uplift marginalized authors. You can subscibe for free, or if you can, support for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. We want to make sure Native voices have room on the shelves. We only get the space if we take it.

*If you are already a member of the community, please consider upgrading to at least a $5 tier so that you can take part in the publishing process. As you know, part of the member fees go into the production of the books. We are publishing exclusively Indigenous authors and we want to be able to publish as many great stories as we can.

​