A gift from me to you 🎁
Get your free copy of The Practice Kiss and stuff your e-reader this Christmas
It’s nearly Christmas! I’ve landed in my hometown to spend the holidays with my family.
Thanks to movies, songs, and books, I tend to romanticise the notion of a “hometown.” I really enjoyed growing up here in Hawke’s Bay, NZ, to the point that it feels like a magical place. Whenever I return, there's a rush of memories. I get that wonderful sense of nostalgia.
It's just me, my younger brother, and my parents, so Christmas is a very low key affair for us. It’s nice, but I like this time of the year for a different reason. I love to plan for the new year. I love that "fresh start" energy. January is always a productive month for me.
My 2023 goals are to dedicate more time and focus to writing, build a TikTok following, and build my newsletter readership. I also want to keep up with running and swimming.
Going forward, this newsletter is going to look a little different than usual. I want to follow a more consistent format, write less essays and more personal updates, and include more giveaways and promotions.
As always, thanks for the support. Happy holidays!
-Sara
The Practise Kiss ebook is currently FREE on Amazon. Ends 25 December.
The Romance Bookworms “Stuff Your E-Reader” event is back on 26 December. Free romance ebooks galore! One day only.
Link roundup
The love boom: why romance novels are the biggest they’ve been for 10 years [The Guardian]
The books that might once have been hidden in bedside drawers are flying off the shelves – and young readers are the driving force. How did happy ever after come back in fashion?
Which lasts longer, an e-book or a physical book? [Seattle Times]
The internet engineer and entrepreneur Brewster Kahle took a shot at the book publishing industry a few weeks ago by pointing out something well known to technologists but unappreciated by the general public: that e-books and other digital artifacts have shorter life spans than the physical items.
How Will BookTok Change Publishing in 2023? [Rolling Stone]
RIGHT NOW, ONE of the biggest hubs in the book world isn’t a city, or a Manhattan high-rise, or even one particular publishing house — it’s TikTok.
Books Hitting the Public Domain in 2023 [Book Riot]
Every year, a new batch of books comes into the public domain as their copyright term expires. Once a work is in the public domain, no one owns the copyright and therefore anyone can, well, copy it.
The 10 Biggest Literary Stories of the Year [Literary Hub]
For the sake of posterity, and probably because we’re masochists, this week we’ve been counting down the 50 biggest literary stories of the year, so you can remember the good, the bad, and all the literary non-hotties we met along the way.