638. Smart Bitches After Dark – Tara interviews Sarah & Amanda

[music]

Tara Scott: Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 638 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. Tara Scott here. I am your host today. I’m one of the staff writers at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, one half of the Queerly Recommended podcast also, so if you like hearing my voice, you can go check it out over there too.

I am beyond excited today because – who knows why, but Sarah decided she’s going to turn over the keys to this podcast to me, and I’m interviewing the interviewers today. So Sarah and Amanda are in the hot seat; we’re going to talk about an exciting new development called Smart Bitches After Dark.

Sarah and Amanda, welcome to your very own podcast.

Amanda: [Laughs] 

Sarah Wendell: Support for this episode comes from Playmaker, a Hidden Attractions novel by author Deanna Faison. If you’re a fan of Tessa Bailey and Elle Kennedy novels, then Playmaker, a spicy football romance, is for you. Spring Break may be about having fun, but a steamy friends-with-benefits relationship that started out as a game and has to be kept a secret turns out to be more than Cam and Maddie were expecting. Cameron is a hot NFL prospect, and a total player on and off the field. But his moves do not seem to work on Maddie. And while she once crushed on him hard, that crush has since faded. She has big plans of her own, and they don’t include him. Then Spring Break turns their plans, and their feelings, upside down. Maddie and Cameron start a steamy affair, sneaking around behind their families’ backs. But there’s one big problem: Maddie’s way overprotective brother, who happens to be Cameron’s best friend. Will Cam be able to admit he’s got feelings? Will Maddie be able to stand up to her brother and make her own decisions? Cameron may be the pro, but Maddie is calling the shots. Readers who loved Playmaker say that the chemistry is captivating, and it had the perfect balance of plot and spice. It’s perfect for people who love a lot of yearning in their romance. Originally published on Wattpad as My Brother’s Best Friend, Playmaker by Deanna Faison is available now wherever books are sold. Thank you to Wattpad books for sponsoring this episode, and thank you for supporting our advertisers. You can find out more in the show notes or head over to Smart Bitches for more information under episode 638.

Okay, Amanda, are you ready? We’re going to be interviewed. This is –

Amanda: I’m ready!

Sarah: I feel, I’m, I, I am actually nervous? I am –

 [Laughter]

Sarah: I am act- – I just need you to know I’m actually nervous. I’m nervous to talk about this; I’m nervous to be interviewed. Like, okay. So, you know.

Tara: I am a known cruel interviewer –

Sarah: I know; be gentle.

Tara: – [laughs] – so that makes a lot of sense!

Sarah: I am terrified right now.

Tara: I like gotcha questions; I like saying mean things – no, I’m kidding. Okay –

Sarah: My watch just beeped at me and was like, Your pulse is elevated; are you okay?

Tara: Oh no!

[Laughter]

Tara: All right, jokes aside, for real: Smart Bitches After Dark is really, this is super exciting. It’s a huge development. I think, you know, there’s already, you know, the post has gone live; this is going up, I have no idea when; soon after we record, I assume. But, like, the buzz is kind of a-buzzing. So for people who aren’t familiar yet, what is it, and what can people expect when they sign up?

Sarah: Oh wow. They’re going to expect absolute mayhem and technological wonderment, ‘cause we’ve been working on building this for a couple of months now.

Tara: [Laughs]

Sarah: Smart Bitches After Dark is Old Skool Smart Bitches. Basically, we are going to be a little bit more snarky, a little bit more raw, a little bit more bonkers, and create a community where people can be a little bit more of themselves. One of the downfalls of being on the internet for so long and, and for the internet to be as popular as it is is that you have drive-by people? We call them drive-by commenters? They’ve never commented before; they’re not part of the community; they have lots of opinions about how horrible we are. We’re just going to circumvent all that, put it behind a paywall.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: We are going to do a lot of really fun things, but what, the reason why it exists is to create an opportunity for Smart Bitches to stay public. The biggest trend in websites right now is to move everything behind a paywall, or to launch with a paywall. I mean, the, the new, new media is Substack, and you have to pay to have access to it. This keeps the site open for everyone, which is the most important part? We don’t want to move what’s available behind a paywall, right Amanda?

Amanda: Right. I’m, well, Sarah mentioned that this has been a few months in the works, and I feel like that’s not completely true. Sarah and I had this first discussion about sort of a bonus paywall community I think last November or December, so we’re kind of on like a year –

Sarah: Whoa!

Amanda: – since we first met and talked about this and started brainstorming in an early Google Doc of what we could offer, what we refuse to move behind a paywall. I think the biggest thing that Sarah and I agreed on is that what is currently free will stay free. We’re not looking to suddenly remove something from the community, and that was super important to us.

Sarah: The trend is take what you have and put it behind a paywall so people pay for access. We want to build something new behind the paywall related to what’s open for the public so that everyone who’s just discovering romance or has googled an author name or has googled the name of a movie or a show will find us, and we’re still available, and we’re still up, but there’s extra stuff if you want more fun.

Tara: And obviously, like, as somebody who, I was a fan of the site way before I ever joined the staff, and I think that’s true of probably all of the staff writers, but, like, I remember laughing until I was crying at some of the old posts. I was, like, half delirious, either pregnant or on a parental leave with a baby, and that’s like, there’s something about pregnancy and parental leaves that I think is like some of the most isolating times –

Sarah: Oh my –

Tara: – of your lives. Even though –

Sarah: – gosh.

Tara: – you have a billion people in your face all the time, it’s still this, like, But I’m still me. I’m still a person; I still have my interests; I still have my – and so to go to this website where I could, like, read these reviews or these conversations and, and laugh in that way that just, like, lets all the stress out of your body was such a gift, and so when you said it was like, We’re going to bring back some of the old shit, I was like, Okay! Like, the fan in me blew up all over again, because it was so exciting, and so I, I think a lot of other people – I mean, even seeing the comments – a lot of people are getting excited –

Sarah: I know.

Tara: – and I hope a lot of people come join us, ‘cause it’s going to be so fun!

Sarah: Yes. And I’ll give you a little behind-the-scenes. Listeners, Tara has been helping me with the marketing copy, because I am not good at it and Tara is very good at it. And one of the things that we realized was that if we call out specific old reviews to signal the Old Skool Smart Bitches, that it makes a lot of sense. So basically, if you like The Playboy Sheikh’s Virgin Stable-Girl review, which is one of my favorite things I’ve ever written, that’s the style of what we’re going to do behind the paywall.

Tara: Yeah, that was the stuff I remember. I would send them to my mom, because, again, it was just like, This is the funny – I did not send her – Amanda, what was the one that you, you called –

Amanda: Decadent.

Sarah: Decadent by Shayla Black.

Tara: I did not send her the –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Tara: I did not send her the one for Decadent. But it’s like…

Amanda: Good, good call.

Tara: The review about anal I’m not sending to my mother, but – [laughs] – I did send her Pregnesia, and I did send her that other one you just called, ‘cause I was like, You’ve got to read this. This is wild. And actually, also hilarious, full-on aside, and I’m just being self-indulgent – I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this – my mom was prouder of me joining as a staff writer on this site than anything I’ve done in my career.

Sarah: Get out of town! [Laughs]

Tara: I’m serious! It was so funny. I was like, Wow! [Indistinct] Couldn’t give a shit about the podcast I do or all the other – like, Okay, thank you. Yeah, it was pretty funny.

But back to this. I think, you know, it’s important to also talk about the reality of where things are at online. Like, you’re right; there’s, Substack is very, some people like to be very open with what’s there; some people put almost nothing open. Medium is impossible to use anymore without paying for it, and even, like, New York Times, you get what, a couple free a month? But, like, no. I also like, just as a caveat, too, for people listening, I work in tech, so I have a particular perspective?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Tara: So that, it’s, this is bigger than just, say, like, content itself, and a couple of years ago, something, almost two years ago, I read an article that Cory Doctorow wrote for Wired that really stood out to me, where he was talking about the enshittification of TikTok, which then, now, you know, this term enshittification is really taking off –

Sarah: Mmm.

Tara: – encapsulating how companies are offering these, like, in-, increasingly worse experiences for users online, and so that they can really, like, just scoop up as much of the profits for themselves as possible. So when we look at how much kind of like being online has changed, how do the two of you see enshittification impacting the viability of blogs, whether it’s, like, discovering them or continuing to enjoy them?

Amanda: So in terms of blogs, I started reading this site when I was in high school, so early 2000s, and I’ve been an employee and member of the site for eleven years now.

Sarah: Cheers!

Amanda: So half of its –

Tara: [Laughs]

Amanda: – yeah, age. And I think one thing that Tar-, or that Sarah and I struggle and have struggled with is new forms of media, and whether or not we should engage –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – because we’ve seen, you know, Bookstagram; we’ve seen BookTok; we’ve seen Twitter and sort of how it’s the hot new thing and everyone wants to become a Bookstagrammer, everyone wants to become a BookTuber, and then those platforms change. They change how they monetize things, they change how the algorithm works, and suddenly that is not a viable strategy anymore. And so we go back and forth of like, Oh, should we start a TikTok? And then it’s like, Who has the time or energy? How long is this going to be relevant? How long is this going to be relevant in the way that it is currently relevant and working? And I think with blogs, especially for Sarah and me and the work that Sarah has done in sort of maintaining our own ad server and, you know, hiring a creative team, like a development team for the site to make it better and more easier to navigate – we did, I think, the big move in 2015 from the old site to the new site?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: I think for us, the level of control that we have in the way we create our content, the way we can market out content on our own and not have to rely on an algorithm or an ever-changing monetization scheme – of course Amazon Affiliates notwithstanding – you know, allows us to prevent that sort of luck-based third-party element that goes into content creation that is out of our hands.

Sarah: Luck-based is such a good way to put it, because it really is, like, the whims of some random broligarch shithead that, like, the things that you use to connect to your community disappear or become unusable. Like, ugh!

I also want to point out –

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: – Smart Bitches is almost twenty years old; it’ll be twenty years old in January 2025. Twenty years old for a blog is really, really old. Like, that, I am an old technology. This is an old, old form of internet communication, and when we moved from the, to the new site, what we were doing was moving CMSs. We used to use a program called ExpressionEngine, and we moved to WordPress. That was, that had to involve custom coding to make those two systems talk to each other long enough to transfer the content. It was a hot mess. If I mention ExpressionEngine to some of the developers, they get very twitchy and they’re like, Don’t you, don’t…

Tara: [Laughs]

Sarah: We don’t, we don’t talk about that.

I think that enshittification has moved in alongside with the fragmenting and siloing of communities. There is a lack of really public communities that you have access to that are chronological, that are active, and that are open, that you can discover them. And if you think about the migration away from Twitter, as an example, Twitter is still where breaking news is. When there’s a weather thing, I’m looking at Twitter. And when you move away from Twitter –

Tara: Yeah.

Sarah: – where are we going? Like, you mentioned Medium, and we have Mastodon, which I have never figured out; Bluesky, which –

Tara: No!

Sarah: – I like a lot because it is chronological, full stop. Like, it’s not an algorithm boosting things; it is just chronology? Threads? Threads isn’t chronological, and they’re having moderation problems –

Tara: It’s awful.

Sarah: – with Meta. At the foundation, I think, of the internet – and this may be a little optimistic for someone as cranky as me – people still want valuable connections! And they want –

Tara: Yeah.

Sarah: – to connect with people and things that they like online. And the places where we used to go to do those things are all disappearing or changing, or they’re just too toxic to be in for more than two minutes. And for blogs, like I said, this is an old technology, and for Smart Bitches in particular, our strength is the fact that we are independent. I pay for hosting on a server. When I post on Smart Bitches, that is copyright to Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, LLC. And I used to talk about this when I talked about social media for authors: anything you post on a social media platform belongs to them. It’s in the Terms of Service. That’s not yours; that’s theirs. So I spent all this time building a following on Twitter of forty -some-odd-thousand followers; that following is useless now, because I get no engagement anymore, because of how the platform has changed. It’s kind of lonely? To be a blog? I took The Hairpin for granted. I took The Toast for granted! I took –

Tara: Yeess!

Sarah: – all of these blogs that I loved, I took them for granted that they would always be there. And having run this as a business for almost twenty years, I know how hard it is to stay in business, and I know how difficult it is to fight enshittification, because blogs are just as much subject to that desire to, you know, harvest data and vacuum up money at the expense of user experience, and I’ve come up against that over and over and over again.

Here’s an example: one of our revenue streams is Amazon Affiliates! A lot of people use Amazon Affiliates. Used to be that Amazon Affiliates had eight percent affiliate income on books. That was great, ‘cause that was the thing that I was linking to! And if you think about it, we’re talking about, you know, eight percent of a $7.99 mass market paperback. That’s how long ago this was; there were mass markets.

Tara: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Sarah: And then they lowered the affiliate rate across the board, ‘cause they didn’t need us to persuade people to shop at Amazon; we were already doing it. Now the Amazon revenue system includes creator bounties. This is aimed at influencers. They want you to hit a revenue threshold. So you send a certain amount of revenue to Amazon and you get a bonus. So even though affiliate rates keep going down, they’re like, But you can sign up for creator bonuses, and that’ll make up the difference? Okay, well, all right, for a couple of months now we’ve been hitting the minimum, the minimum-minimum revenue. This is the money that I send to Amazon; this is not coming to me. The minimum revenue is twenty-five thousand dollars, so if in a month we sent twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of money to Amazon – yes, that does hurt my soul – 

Tara: That’s a – people couldn’t see how big my eyes got –

[Laughter]

Tara: – but in my head I was screaming, Holy shit, that’s a huge amount for book sales!

Sarah: Yeah, yeah, was a lot.

Tara: Is the minimum. Fuck off! Like –

Sarah: [Laughs] Sometimes we will see in the affiliate board, like, somebody bought a hot tub! Somebody bought winter tires, and we got a share of that! Thank you to everyone who does their shopping. But the bonus for sending twenty-five grand to Amazon was seven hundred and fifty dollars to the creator. Then there was like a tier up higher, higher, higher.

Tara: Come on.

Sarah: Well, now, starting October 2024, they’ve taken away that low tier, and so now you have to hit thirty-five thousand dollars. So that puts me in the position of thinking, Okay. Do I want to do more Amazon influencer-style posts to try to reach a revenue threshold of ten thousand dollars more than I did before? And believe me, Amazon makes this very easy. They would like to tell you what products – every, every company looks like a license plate? All of those companies –

Tara: Yeah.

Sarah: – well, they’re going to give you twenty percent commission if you sell their products, and it’s like, Well, I don’t know what the hell this is, but, you know, that’s the way you make money. I ‘m like, This sucks! I don’t know what this is! And I know that people trust me and trust my opinion about books and other stuff, and it feels deeply shitty to be in this position where, Oh, well, hell, if I want to try to maintain the revenue from Amazon that I’m accustomed to, well, now, I’m going to drop considerably unless I do a lot more influencing posting, and I don’t want to do that! That sucks! That’s not what we do! I would like people to buy books –

Tara: No.

Sarah: – and things that they love, and I love when people shop through Amazon, because everyone has fabulous taste and I get to, like, see links to things. Please know: I see the link to what was bought; I do not see who bought it. I, I don’t have that kind of data. But you know, sometimes there’s really neat shit in there, and I’m like, Aw, somebody got a really big vibrator! I hope they had a really good time!

[Laughter]

Tara: Uh-huh!

Sarah: But that’s like, you know, eight-five cents to me! And that’s great! But let me tell you, that seventy –

Tara: Yeah.

Sarah: – seven hundred and fifty dollars? I’m going to miss that seven fifty! I’m going to miss it a lot! But I don’t want to have to do influencer work to make it back! That sucks! And that’s also not our job. That’s not, that is not a job I want. I do not want to be an influencer personality, and there’s certain aspects of our jobs that create a, like a, like, people know who we are.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: But I want you to read what you like, and if you like things that I don’t like, I still want to be able to tell you what things you might like, even if it’s not my jam. That’s, that’s, that’s different. That’s a different thing.

Tara: Yes.

Sarah: And that, I prefer to do that than say, Hey, this fuzzy, weird, synthetic, microplastic sweater is super cozy, and I love it! And in reality it’s a thirty-percent commission item, and that’s why it’s being featured.

So yeah, the enshittification has come for everything. And I look back at blogs that I loved that are no longer there, and it makes me even more determined to fight the enshittification as much as I can.

Tara: Well, and also, like, at the end of the day, to run a site with the kind of traffic that you have, there’s a financial reality to that, and on top of that I will say, you pay, you pay the staff members!

Sarah: I do.

Tara: You pay us for our posts, and I don’t think people understand that that doesn’t happen at every website that does book reviews. I, this is the, I’ve participated in four websites for reviewing over the years, including a very prominent, popular lesbian magazine that didn’t pay anything. There was another site that did pay, but yours paid the most, and so, like, you’re also committed to making sure that what we’re doing is fair! That there, there is a fair exchange of value. Does that mean that you should be boosting a fuzzy sweater? [Laughs]

Sarah: A fuzzy microplastic sweater? God, I hope not.

Tara: No. I don’t think, I don’t think that makes sense. So yeah, I don’t know if you want to have the whole thing about, like, paying people, but it’s also true.

Sarah: Yeah!

Tara: So that’s what –

Sarah: I have no – I mean, absolutely, this is a paid position to write for this site. I don’t, I don’t underestimate how long it takes to read a book, think about the book, form opinions about a book, and then write them down in an order that makes sense to other people. That’s hard work! [Laughs]

Tara: So, you know, we talked a lot about enshittification. There’s just so many terrible online experiences. How do you see Smart Bitches After Dark as a real alternative for the people who are craving something different?

Sarah: I want to answer this question by talking about Amanda.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Tara: Love it.

Amanda: Oh boy.

Sarah: We are an alternative to a lot of online experiences because we are actual-factual human beings who want you to enjoy yourself. We want you to find things that make you happy, to read, to watch, to craft, to game. We are after helping you find the things that you like, and we’re real people who do that. You can email me. I will respond unless you’re being a buttnoid. And we genuinely want real connections and conversations with other readers around the world to happen, and our job is to create that space. I think, I think Smart Bitches was in existence for like fourteen years before I came up with a mission statement, which was apparently something I was supposed to do first? But I did that, like, after. And our mission statement is to connect romance readers around the world with one another and with what they want to read.

And that doesn’t change, but with After Dark we can make it more personal and more direct. One of the things that we’re going to offer is the opportunity to ask Amanda for a personalized rec list. Now, Amanda has the most terrifying encyclopedic brain. You heard earlier that she’s like, Oh Yeah, and then is the year we’ve ported over from point A to point B and the site got a redesign, and, like, what was that? 2014? 2015? I don’t remember.

Amanda: 2015.

Sarah: I don’t remember! I don’t –

Amanda: It was October of 2015.

Tara: Oh my God!

Sarah: And now you’re scaring me!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: First of all, that –

Tara: Just flexing!

Sarah: See what I mean here? So, like, if you’re like, I kind of like this one book ‘cause there was this one – and she’ll be like, Oh, I have four others just like it; don’t move. I would be like, Oh, there’s this book, and it was yellow, and you’d probably like it! But it will take my brain like a few minutes to be like, Where was I when I read it? What time was it? Can I find a reference to – like, I have to, I have to control-F my brain a lot to search my memory, and Amanda’s like encyclopedia, in chronological order, indexed, alphabetized; there’s a sublist; she’s got footnotes.

The person who’s going to answer your request for a recommendation is a person that you know online, and that is what we want to encapsulate and highlight in After Dark. We are real people, and we want you to find the things that you like, and our jobs in that space are to do that as directly and empathetically as possible, and that is one of the things where Amanda is really, really good. Now, I can make recommendations; it’ll just take me a minute; I can’t do them quickly. Just, you’ve got to control-F up there.

Amanda: Yeah, this isn’t an algorithm. Like, you’ll have real people.

Sarah: Yeah!

Amanda: Yeah. I’ll, I’ll be googling and sleuthing myself and doing all of that background work. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah!

Tara: Yeah. I would say it’s not even just something that you’re really, really good at. Like, it is one of your true superpowers. And, like, it’s unparalleled in anyone I’ve met ever. It’s so good. So yeah, I think people should definitely show up for that.

I don’t know which one of you is best suited to speak to it, could be either of you or both, but why is it so important that this experience is community-funded?

Sarah: Okay, so funny enough, I had an experience that illustrates this reasoning, like, like, why this is important today.

So episode went up on the podcast, podcast released on Friday, and I got an email at four in the morning Eastern time – I was not up – that our podcast goes up at 2 a.m. Eastern. The reason, if you’re curious, is that 2 a.m. Eastern is already daytime in Europe, and I know there are folks in Europe who listen, and so they get the episode midday or afternoon, and then the folks on, in the United States have it for the morning commute. So that’s, that’s why that’s 2 a.m. Four a.m. I get an email from a listener in the US who got an, a dynamically inserted ad at the start of the show, anti-Harris, from the Heritage Foundation. And was like –

Tara: Fuck off!

Sarah: – Did you know? And I said, No, I fucking didn’t! Now, one of the problems we have with revenue, as I’ve mentioned, is the enshittification factor. Now, we have two ad platforms running currently on Smart Bitches. We have the server that I run, which is every ad in the right-hand sidebar in the content with, you know, you can usually tell they’re ads I, if I’m designing them, and I design a lot of them, I animate them very slowly so they’re not, like, bothersome?

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And then we have an external platform that does insertion ads. The same is true on the podcast: there are ads that I read, and then there are dynamically inserted pre and post. I can also do a mid-roll, but I refuse to give them the mid-roll because I don’t trust these bozos ‘cause that’s why! So I get on the horn to the podcast host company, and I have to go through their stupid help bot five times before I get to a prompt where I can ask for a human and say, I would like to block a category of ads. I would like to block politics, and then later on today, Amanda sent me a screen grab of an ad for a gun on Smart Bitches! So then I had to go to the other platform and say, I would like to block this advertiser. Now, the problem here is that there are advertising categories, many, many, and they all have a little code. It’s almost like BISAC codes for your books. Advertisement feeds into different categories. I have blocked these categories on the site: I have blocked politics, I have blocked news, I have blocked firearms, I have blocked some pharmaceuticals – there’s a bunch that I was like, Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. What advertisers do is they mislabel their ads so that they get through anyway, so you’re going to see ads for right-wing politicians, you’re going to see ads for guns, and I have to go and individually play Whac-A-Mole with this company and say, Please block this advertiser; here’s the link; here’s the screenshot. I don’t want this, and I’ve already told you I don’t want this, but we have to, they also have to go play Whac-A-Mole. So that’s one example of enshittification.

But with the podcast –

Tara: Yeah.

Sarah: I get on the horn with support, I finally reach a person, chat-chat-chat, and I’m like, I received this ad. This ad is not in alignment; this has nothing to do with my subject matter, and I need to block this advertiser, and as a matter of fact, I’d like to block a whole category. I know the category ‘cause I’ve already done this, so what is the category? They respond, Even if the advertisement gets added to your show, we only play ads that are related to your podcast’s subject.

Tara: No!

Sarah: No! No! No, you didn’t, and no, you did not, and so then they send me a Google Form. They sent me a link to a Google Form so that I could tick off all the ones that I didn’t want. That was not hard; like, I’ve done this before, tick, tick, tick. And I’m like, So this wasn’t available to me when you started running ads. This was not available to me on my backend. This was not anything that was given to me. I was just, you know, Just accept all of these ads and you will make money! It’s not a lot of money. It’s like a hundred and ten dollars. So I’m pretty pissed off about this, and I’m like, This is yet another example where I have to make a choice between revenue that pays for my business and advertisements that are harmful.

And the reality is maintaining revenue online is really hard right now. It has been hard for a couple of years. It goes up; it goes down; it goes up; it goes down! And the revenue streams for the site have changed so much in twenty years, and I don’t mean this to be like whining and complaining; this is just the reality. Advertising dollars shift directions. And, you know, it used to be that, like Amanda was saying, used to be all the ad money and all the resources were going to Bookstagram and BookTube! There’s another one in there, wasn’t there? Some other Book Thing. Book Twitter maybe?

Amanda: BookTok…Twitter.

Sarah: BookTok; now it’s BookTok! And I would say that directing funds to BookTok is of limited success for the most part, because we’re still only hearing those same six books.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: All of the podcast ad money has also disappeared over the past two years. I used to have, you know, four ads per episode? Now it’s usually just one. And podcast ad money is going towards the top ten shows. Like, the top ten shows in each category, those are the ones that get a major ad budget, and this is why when you listen to a random show you’re going to hear BetterHelp, Stamps, HelloFresh, some other meal kit company. Sometimes you hear B to B ads that are inserted, but most of the time it’s five companies. So with spe-, with Smart Bitches, over and over and over, I have to make choice. What, what am I going to do to sustain revenue so that I continue to operate and keep the site open?

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: How much am I compromising to do that? And I got to the point where I had a choice to make, whether we were going to embrace a community-funded support model or increase the number of ads on the site from external sources. Video overlays, pop-ups, multiple margin ads that come in from the right and the left. You know how when you’re looking at a – usually it’s a cooking blog; food blogs get a lot of this – you’re scrolling on your phone, and there’s two video ads, one on top of the other, right where your thumb is going to be?

Tara: Oh yeah. That kind of stuff happens too, even though, on, like, CNN?

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Tara: Like, some of the major news websites have been completely borked.

Sarah: Overlaid.

Tara: Yeah.

Sarah: It makes me think, it makes me think of that line in Murderbot where Murderbot is trying to access the feed, but all of the companies that have paid for advertisements are being staticed by companies that have paid to block the ads, so all it’s getting is pieces of ads and, and static, and then you have to, like, pay even more to get to the clean feed of information that you need to access the port. Like, that is the kind of, like, bullshit we’re dealing with. If I turned on every option available to me through that platform to add external ads to the site, mobile and desktop, I would increase my revenue exponentially, but it would be so shitty. And I would have to welcome ads that I don’t want. I would have to have politics; I’d have to have news; I’d have to have crypto! So much crypto ads!

Tara: Ew!

Sarah: How, how? Even now, there’s crypto money. There’s money for crypto advertising; there’s not actually crypto money. [Laughs] But I would increase my revenue and make a very unpleasant, deeply shitty visual experience for the people who come to the site who I value! And that’s not what I want to do!

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So even revenue options have become enshittified.

Tara: Yeah.

Sarah: The reason for us to go to community funding is to say I don’t want to offer a crappy, profitable online experience for myself and other people. I would like the community that loves the site, that comes and hangs out with us, to be part of what I think of as our next chapter. It is actually, it was, the hardest thing for me was asking for help. That was really hard. Getting to the point where I was like, I would like to continue to keep the site free, and I would like to sustain. Like, I don’t, I don’t want ex- – [laughs] – I don’t want exponential growth! That makes me tired. I would like to sustain, and the operation that we’ve been, we’ve been doing for twenty years. Asking for help is really, really hard, and that was probably the hardest part of doing this, but I will say, and I haven’t talked about this publicly ‘cause we just finished it yesterday? One benefit to joining After Dark is that I have removed all those external ads from the template, so once you log in it’s just the right sidebar. All of the external ads are gone. It’s a low-ad template. So when you join, you are bypassing all of the external ads, and then eventually I hope to get to a point where I can turn them off entirely, because playing Whac-A-Mole is not a good use of my time.

Tara: I mean, I do encourage people, if you have the time, to go read Cory Doctorow’s article about enshittification.

Sarah: I will link to it in the show notes! I already have it on my file.

Tara: Yeah, it explains a lot about how we got there, that there’s these, like, any kind of a community-based business – and so social media is a great example, which is why he went for TikTok with that – I think is, you know, it starts with you have to have an excellent experience for users. And then the next stage is, it’s an excellent experience for advertisers! Advertisers, come here; you can make so much. This can work for you so that you can make more money in the long run, which means it gets worse for users. And then they get to this final stage where it’s horrible for advertisers and it’s horrible for users, ‘cause they’re taking kind of all the money, and so I think that is how you end up with a business that says, No, no! You can personalize it. It’ll only be what’s supposed to be for you, but then you have the organization that wrote Project 2025, which called for banning pornography –

Amanda: Like –

Sarah: Oh, sweet Lord. Which is already happening on state and local levels.

Tara: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: Between book banning and restriction of, of book sales, it’s, it’s just appalling.

Tara: Yeah. It’s so –

Sarah: Enshittification comes for us all.

Tara: Like, I’ve started to wonder, like, Where does the future of online go? And my hope is that it is going to be more community-based like this? And we’ve seen some other companies do similar things. I know I’ve, like, Slacked you a lot with my, like, Ee!…they’re doing! Because I’m really excited with how The Onion was recently purchased, it’s under new ownership, and they’re like, We’re going back Old Skool. They’re bringing back the print edition.

Sarah: That blew my mind! When they were like, We’re going to release a print edition, I was like, I’m jealous! 

Tara: I know!

Sarah: Do you know what I would do if I had a big-ass budget? I would bring back RT Magazine! Not as RT, although they did lose the trademark. I just have to fight a candle company for Romantic Times as a trademark.

[Laughter]

Sarah: But I would bring back…Can you imagine romance in print, like a print magazine once a month about romance? I mean, if you think about the number of romances that are available since we started talking, it would be like the size of the New York phone book? But it would be pretty cool!

Tara: Ohhh yes…

Sarah: I mean, I, I have a great nostalgia for print magazines especially, but yeah! Bringing back print is an amazing signal! Like, we are going back to the way that it was.

Tara: Yeah.

Sarah: And I hope that there’s enough people online who remember the way that it was and want to come join us as we try to bring back that sort of spirit and ethos and, and vibe of the site.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: But I’m, deep down, I’m very excited about the nostalgia aspect of it and going back to, you know, internet from twenty years ago in a, in a space for us to do that.

Tara: Mm-hmm. Yes, it’s going to be community-supported, but it’s going to be like a real, actual community with real community-based experiences. Can you talk about what some of those might look like?

Amanda: Yeah! So community-wise, I think some of the things that we’ve discussed are really more open threads, open discussions that allow people to, to give their thoughts, and we hope that putting some of these things behind a paywall will make people feel more comfortable? Because some of the things that we’ve talked about, that we would like to do more of, we’ve struggled with do we want this public? Like, one of the things that is on our list is talking about publishing gossip and book gossip making the rounds on social media, and I’m excited about that. But it wasn’t something that we necessarily felt comfortable just raw-dogging on the internet.

Sarah: All of the gossip that happens in the romance? We, we, we repeat it. Every five years we’re re-litigating the same stuff. Every ten years we’re going to relitigate the same stuff. Like, I think the other day on Threads, people were talking about how, Well, my book doesn’t have a happy ending, but I’m calling it a romance! Again? We’re doing this again? I’m so tired! Like, no! We’re not doing this again!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: But –

Tara: No, we’re not!

Sarah: – behind a paywall I could be like, We are talking about this again, so not only could we bring up gossip, but I could be like, If you hear somebody saying this, here are some talking points that you can come back with. Like, I will, I will help seed the good gossip. [Laughs]

Tara: You both have encyclopedic knowledge; Amanda just accesses it –

Sarah: A lot faster.

[Laughter]

Tara: Yes! It’s romance historians that are going to be in there with you and not just, like, the actual going – well, there might actually be some scholars in there; we don’t know – but, like, being able to say, What’s this about? and get tea from twenty-five years ago, where else can you go? There’s not many places!

Amanda: Well, community-wise, so for those of you who have been on the site for a while, I would say like the last seven-ish years? Sarah and I used to have a Twitch channel, and we would play games with our community members.

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Amanda: So Jackbox Games, we played a game called Mount Your Friends?

Sarah: [Squeaks] Mount Your Friends! [Laughs]

Amanda: Very good.

Sarah: Y’all need to google that.

Amanda: Highly recommend Mount Your Friends.

Sarah: It, it – don’t do it at work! [Laughs] Don’t, don’t google that at work!

Amanda: And – [laughs] – yeah, there’s lots of wet, slapping sounds, so –

Tara: [Laughs]

Amanda: – have, have headphones on. So those were really fun, and we’re looking forward to bringing those back, but we are going to be engaging with the community in a multitude of different –

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Amanda: – levels. And also en-, encouraging the community to engage with each other?

Sarah: Yeah. One of the things that I’m very excited about, in addition to things that happen on the site are, you know, Zoom gatherings, Twitch streams, hanging out and doing trivia together online, but also deeper and more nuanced discussions about things? That allow you to really think and, and respond to the other comments, because, like I said, this is, you know, a safe space. Elise is going to do a series called Lady Whiskerdown, and it will be a soap opera about all of the rescue cats at the paw-fee shop, so you’re going to get a soap opera with cat pictures. I mean, where else can you get something that great?

Tara: Incredible.

Sarah: I asked on Bluesky, on a whim, you know, What’s, what’s one book where you could just give a five-minute presentation about this book without any warning? Just here, here’s the book; tell us why this is your book. And I had some really great answers, and there were a lot of Old Skool romances in there. Mine would probably be Midsummer Magic by Catherine Coulter, which is the first book I read, but there’s a lot of really interesting sexual politics in there. People were coming back to me like, Johanna Lindsey’s book is actually anti-colonialist? And I’m like, The fuck it is! Really? Tell me everything! So I want to ask that question on the site, you know, publicly. What, what’s, what’s a book that you could talk about instantly? One book, five minutes, go. But on After Dark we’re going to do the presentations. We’re going to have people sign up; I’m going to do one. We’re going to have other of the staff reviewers do them, and have people who are in the community, like, take the floor and be like, all right, here’s the book, and here’s everything I want to tell you about it. It’s kind of like the Dropout series Smartypants? But specifically about the books that we love. And I, I want to hear somebody tell me about, you know, the number of mentions of turgid manhoods and grottos in a Johanna Lindsey novel. Like, I want to know that! I want to, I want to hear that quantified. I would love to hear a presentation about it. So that’s the kind of thing where, you know, Oh, it’s a, sort of a random thought on social media, a discussion on the site, but the actual presentations will be part of After Dark. That’s the kind of thing where I’m, like, building, like, these rando ideas that my brain spits out? But I can make it into a more inclusive and collaborative experience.

What’s your book, Tara? What book are you going to present? Truth and Measure?

Tara: Probably, because I think there’s really something there about stories that make the leap from fanfic to published fiction –

Sarah: Oh yes.

Tara: – and are better for it, and that’s kind of my, that’s my TL;DR on that one. But I’m also tempted to go with Odd Girl Out by Ann Bannon, which is actually a lesbian pulp –

Sarah: That’s an old one!

Tara: – and it was the second, it was the second bestselling paperback of 1957. I don’t mean of pulps; I mean paperbacks.

Sarah: Wow, really?

Tara: That’s what some-, that’s what somebody who knows more than me told me, and I haven’t fact-checked it yet, but I believe it! I, I would do a thing about how the current world of sapphic fiction could not exist without that book.

Sarah: Amanda, what book would you do?

Amanda: But if we want to broaden it to just romance topics –

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: – and Sarah and I have discussed this one about how I would love to talk about, and I feel like I could talk about how the celebrity status of cover models has been usurped by the celebrity status of cover artists?

Sarah: Fuck yeah.

Amanda: And how –

Tara: Yeah.

Amanda: – an art style is now recognizable like a John DeSalvo? I would talk about that.

Tara: I love that, and I would show up for that one.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Tara: I think you absolutely should, and I think it needs to get discussed. Mm-hmm.

Amanda: As we’ve been talking, I’ve come up with another idea – [laughs] – for After Dark?

[Laughter]

Sarah: Good thing I had a document open! You can tell us and I’ll write it down!

Amanda: I call it TL;DR – too long; didn’t read – and similar to someone talking for five minutes about their favorite book, if there’s a series that you’ve been interested in but you honestly don’t have the time to read six books, someone could just do a presentation on, like, the Cliff Notes of, like, this person’s related to this person and is now the brother of this book who marries this person –

Tara: Oooooh!

Amanda: – who was seen in this book. Like Charlie Day with the red strings on the board? Just sort of like a too long; didn’t read, here’s a sum up of all of, of this half-dozen group of people, and there you go! You don’t have to read the books anymore.

Sarah: Imagine that for, like, Ilona Andrews series or, or Nalini Singh’s? Like, if you, if you don’t want to read –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – all of the first arc of the Psy-Changeling? We can just give you an overview. Here’s –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – here’s what you missed in part one of Psy-Changeling. Now you can start with this book and go with arc two.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: If I could go on a year-long sabbatical and do the Immortals After Dark, which is like over twenty books at this point – [laughs] –

Sarah: Yeah! We’re just going to give you the Cliff Notes. I love that idea! I already wrote it down, so thank you.

Tara: Mm-hmm, that’s a good one.

Sarah: That’s another thing, though, that I just realized: one of the, one of the differences, ‘cause going back to your question about how the viability of blogs has changed, blogs are longer form! Blogs are a longer form of content, especially us. We’re very – I, okay, I, I will speak solely for myself. I am very longwinded and wordy, as you know. I have a podcast and a website; you might have seen it. So, I mean, blogs are a long form! And everything that’s come out since has gotten shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter. Even Twitter increasing its character limit, it’s still only two hundred and forty! And TikTok has longer videos, but are they actually popular? Unless you’re deep diving into specific thing, if a video comes up and it’s more than two minutes I’m like, I don’t want to know – [grumbles] – move on.

Tara: Mm?

Sarah: Everything’s getting shorter and shorter and shorter! We can counter that by doing more nuanced, deep dive, and longer content, basically! But not videos; I don’t want to talk to camera.

Tara: Who do you think is going to have the most fun with us in After Dark?

Sarah: Me. [Laughs]

Tara: No. That’s not on this call or isn’t on staff. Who’s going to have the most fun with us?

Amanda: So, in my opinion, what is the, is it, I can’t remember if it’s Mystic Pizza; I think it’s Mystic Pizza where it’s like, If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me?

Tara: It is Steel Magnolias!

Amanda: Steel Magnolias! I always –

Tara: Hell yes!

Amanda: – confuse the two. I think Steel Magnolias, Mystic Pizza, and Fried Green Tomatoes all live in the same house in my brain?

Tara: Yes.

Amanda: ‘Cause they’re all very…

Sarah: [Laughs] Totally! Totally!

Tara: That’s so – I only, it, I just remember ‘cause a friend recently said that to me, and I was like, So we’re supposed to be best friends. Like, she’s a new friend I met earlier this year, and I was like, Okay, so you just told me we’re best friends now. This is great to hear.

Amanda: [Laughs] And as Sarah knows, I am a #hater. Born hater, will die a hater. If you like to gossip and you like talking shit, like, that’s my vibe. So –

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – anyone who loves some hot goss and is the office gossiper, that, I think –

Sarah: Come sit by Amanda.

Amanda: Yeah, come sit by me!

Tara: I think you can, I, like, I, I firmly believe that I live at the intersection of kindness and talking shit, because they are not mutually exclusive. [Laughs]

Sarah: Absolutely not. ‘Cause it’s like the difference between nice and kind, right?

Tara: Yes.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: As for, I think, who will have the most fun, I think readers who are irreverent and passionate about what they read. If you don’t take yourself too seriously but you’re really frigging passionate about things, I want to talk to you all the time. And the thing is, when you’re sort of building a community in addition to an existing community? You, you want to both welcome the people who have always been part of it, while also welcoming new people? And part of that is keeping the site open for anyone who happens to google, you know, an author and then discovers this site. Maybe someone has read Smart Bitches for ages, or maybe they just discovered romance and want recommendations beyond, as you pointed out, Tara, the same four books on TikTok? This is, I think of it as a romance community for grown folks.

Tara: Yeah.

Sarah: And, and Tara gave me the language, you know, Maybe you flash a little hot, and I waffled –

Tara: [Laughs]

Sarah: – about whether or not to say that, and I was like, No! That is absolutely – we are a romance community for grown folks who are very silly and sometimes snarky. That’s who’s going to have a good time. I also just want to tell you, I still get, I’m still getting the comments from the announcement? And somebody just commented:

>> Smart Bitches has been my home page for so long now, it’s only right that I support you in other ways.

And I can’t tell you how much that means to me, so thank you.

Tara: Mm-hmm. Sooo, I think it’s also important to talk for a minute about authors and whether they should join or not join –

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Tara: – because I think we all know that, like, authors are readers too. You don’t –

Sarah: Oh God, yes.

Tara: – typically go into this, so if you’re not a reader, so –

Sarah: Some of my favorite readers to talk to, ‘cause they know shit.

Tara: Mm-hmm! So is After Dark a place for authors? What does that look like?

Sarah: This is something that Tara and I discussed a lot. Here is my answer: After Dark is for readers, and authors are readers. But I also know that sometimes it is hard for authors to separate themselves from the books that they wrote or themselves from the books that a friend wrote – that’s also really hard.

Tara: Yeah.

Sarah: I know that’s hard. Like, that’s really hard! I get it. But this is a reader space, and so if one, someone wants to be in it and they are an author, I need them to keep that separation in mind, that they are, they are separate from the books. These are two separate entities. And I, I know how personal they are; like, I’m not understating how personal it is to have written a book, especially romance, which is all about emotions and intimacy and sexuality and all that deep, squidgy, uncomfortable, vulnerable shit. Like, I get it! But After Dark, and me especially, we see the book and the author as very, very separate things, and we want to talk about books. We want to talk about books that we like and books that we don’t like. Snark does not mean personal attacks and being mean, and if you notice, I am very attentive, Amanda and I both are very attentive to people going the wrong direction in the comments, and I have a ban hammer, and I do use it. Meanness, personal attacks, transphobia, homophobia, none of that. That’s not welcome. But, and we will provide the same amount of moderation and attention oversight, but because we’re going to be honest about books that we don’t like in a way that might be very particular and difficult, I think that anyone who’s joining needs to keep that in mind, that we expect that separation. What do you think, Amanda? Did that make sense?

Amanda: Yeah! And going back to moderation, too, I want to reaffirm Sarah’s work that she does on the site? Like, even just with editing reviews, and writing a review, sometimes it can, it can be hard to get the language right. I’m an abuser of a subordinate clause, as Sarah knows –

Tara: [Laughs]

Amanda: – but, you know, if we say something in our review that feels pointed towards an author and we’re not checking ourselves to make sure, like, Hey, we’re discussing a book; none of this is a reflection on the author. We don’t know what the author’s thinking when writing this; yada-yada-yada. Sarah’s really good to moderate us! People who are in charge of the community, to make sure that as readers, we’re critiquing the content. We’re not critiquing the person unless you’re a fucking asshole; then, you know, gloves are off, bets are off. But Sarah’s really good even with staff. So it’s not just content moderation; it’s also making sure that we ourselves are also mimicking what we expect our commenters to do.

Sarah: Thank you.

Amanda: You’re welcome!

Tara: Amanda, I would think – let’s start with you first. When we look ahead a few years into the future, what do you imagine a thriving After Dark and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books looks like?

Sarah: I love this question, by the way? Thank you for asking it.

Tara: You’re welcome.

Sarah: It just makes me so happy.

Amanda: I mean, the silly part of me wants to say Sarah as Scrooge McDuck diving into the pool of gold coins.

Tara: [Laughs]

Sarah: Bitch, you’re dipping in with me. Don’t, don’t, don’t pretend like we’re not going to all swim around in that big pool of ducats.

Amanda: Yeah! I mean, I would love, and I think one thing that I haven’t been able to really figure out yet, and it’s been on my mind for a while is, like, we are sort of an older group of romance readers –

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Amanda: – and I would love to find a way to appeal to sort of the people who are just touching romance for the first time or who might be younger, and I think this is such a great experimental space too? And I think we’re all open to feedback, and if people are like, We love this; we want more of this; this isn’t working, we can change it, and we can do whatever the fuck we want.

Sarah: Amanda loves when I say that.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, who cares?

Amanda: Yeah. I’ll email Sarah and be like, What do you think about this? And Sarah’s like, Just do it, and we’ll run it –

Sarah: Just do it!

Amanda: – and we’ll see what happens!

Sarah: Run it up the flagpole; see who salutes.

Amanda: Yeah, so I’m really looking forward to seeing this become this fun, experimental place where we can welcome a bigger, more diverse group of readers with all the cool, fun stuff that we’re doing –

Sarah: For sure.

Amanda: – plus the stuff that we’re already doing on the site. Like, if the paywalled content really interests people, that means we even get more readers for the stuff we’re already doing.

Sarah: Mm-hmm! Yeah.

Amanda: So I’m looking forward to seeing how the community grows, how we can welcome newer people to our existing community? That’s what I’m looking forward to. I would love to see this keep going; I would love to see this, obviously, a, a smashing success?

Sarah: Millions of ducats!

Amanda: Millions of dollars!

Sarah: For me, a thriving Smart Bitches and a thriving After Dark means sustaining. It means we’re here. Like I said, I, I took The Toast for granted; I took The Hairpin for granted. There are so many websites that I love that I visited that are not around anymore. And they’re gone-gone.

Tara: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Like, Television Without Pity?

Tara: Ahh!

Sarah: Gone-gone! And that was, that was, that was twenty-five years ago. That’s five years older than us. Now, they got bought, which, good for them! Fuck, yeah! But they’re gone! That’s, that’s all done. You can’t go back to that unless you find an Internet Archive link that still works, that somebody maybe made a mirror of it. Like, I don’t take for granted that we are still here. Like, that’s a big deal, and so thriving means we are still here welcoming readers, that we are still open, and that we can offer readers a connection to people who not only like what they like, but want to talk about what they did and didn’t like and want to find the book that they’re going to reread over and over again, unless they’re men and they don’t reread things. I, like I said, I put a lot of thought and intention into the vibe of the site, and I want to continue to be a good host! I want to continue to be a good host to visitors and regulars and commenters, and especially because commenters – I know you’ve noticed this too, Amanda – commenters describe the site as one of the safe spaces in the comments? It’s, you know, I read the comments at your site. I go to the comments; I read them; I, I comment myself, and I don’t do that anywhere! That is an honor. Like, that is a big, big deal, and I value that more than anything, so thriving means being here and still being that space where you can read the comments and hang out in the comments and be surrounded by people that you know have a lot in common with you. That’s a very valuable thing.

Tara: I’m going to ask one final question. This is actually my favorite question to ask in any kind of an interview, even work-related sometimes, too. Just ‘cause you never know what you’re going to get!

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Tara: What is the one thing I didn’t ask that you both want everyone to know?

Sarah: How grateful I am. Like, all right, I’m going to get emotional and shmoopy.

Amanda: Oh?

Sarah: I got tissues; get ready. Okay. So the response to the post to After Dark with seventy-five comments in twenty-four hours did so much for me, so thank you. That, that is a, I am so grateful! That’s the whole thing. I am so humbled by how enthusiastic people are! People are really excited about this thing I’ve been stressing about for, it turns out, a year – thanks, Amanda.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I love what I do, and I am so lucky to do what I do, but it is so gratifying, because, I mean, it’s, I’m me in my office. I talk to people on Zoom! I love what I do, and I think what we do has a lot of value, and I think it’s important, and I will never stop saying that romance is important! Romance is very important! Pop culture is important. Gossip is important! But I am not going to forget what it felt like to have so many people be so instantly enthusiastic and positive and say so many encouraging and gratifying things! Like, I’m never going to forget that. And I was also not expecting to be emotional about it, so I’m sorry for crying into a microphone, but –

Tara: Don’t you dare apologize for having feelings like a person.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Tara: Jesus Christ. I mean –

Sarah: I don’t like it! It’s annoying! Have you had feelings before? They are –

Tara: No.

Sarah: – the worst! Oh my God, and –

Tara: Not always! I definitely don’t, I definitely don’t cry.

Sarah: – and I made Amanda cry. Now I’m just a disaster. I’m just a big old chaotic disaster today. So yeah, that’s it.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: I, I am so grateful! I cannot express enough how grateful I am.

Tara: Amanda.

Amanda: Are you going to make me answer that now? That’s not fair!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Tara: Well then, give a goofy answer!

Sarah: Sarah crowded the microphone!

Tara: I just, what’s one thing I didn’t ask that you want to say, so you can say whatever you want!

Amanda: To be, to be the yin to Sarah’s yang –

[Laughter]

Sarah: Oh shit! I should get under my desk!

Amanda: Sarah, Sarah’s got the emotional part. I think, like, how can possibly publishers get engaged with a closed, devoted, and excited group of people? How can they work with us? Besides, you know, sponsoring a podcast? What can we do for our other friends in publishing? And I think, you know, Sarah has mentioned in some of the posts that, like, we can do ARC giveaways, NetGalley link giveaways, and you have a curated audience for people who are willing to pay for a community to talk about romance. Even before the paywall, we are a good resource for your authors, for, if you even just, if you’re a publicist who wants to talk about upcoming books, we’ve had plenty of romance publishing people on our site. We have scholars on the podcast, and I think this adds an extra element of curation about people who are willing to put some money towards romance as a genre, as a business? So I invite, you know, publishers with money to burn.

Sarah: [Laughs] ‘Cause there’s so many of those.

Amanda: You want to put me on a cruise? I’ll go on a cruise!

Tara: [Laughs]

Sarah: I think, I think, I think a publisher should send Amanda on a cruise.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Tara: Oh my God. I think so too.

Well, I don’t know how you usually end episodes, so I’m going to make a bunch of stuff up, and you can cut what you want or add your own at the end.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Tara: Thank you to everybody who has listened. Thank you in advance to everyone who is going to join us at After Dark. The link is going to be in the show notes. It’s going to be so much fun, and it’s going to be so real, and just come hang out with us! I can’t wait to see you there.

Sarah: Thank you, Tara! Sorry I cried. [Laughs]

Amanda: That was fine.

Tara: Are you kidding? I cry like once a quarter on my own fucking show, because I get moved by a book or a movie or something, and then I get mad.

Amanda: This is, like, one of the few times I’ve seen Sarah cry on the podcast.

Sarah: Yeah, I don’t usually.

Tara: Well, I mean, you do an important service for twenty years, and then, oh my God, people, it turns out, really like it – [laughs] – to want to say thank you.

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you especially to Tara for interviewing me, and thank you, Amanda, for coming along and helping me answer all of those hard, hard questions.

I hope you enjoyed not having me lead the interview. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you would like information, you can click the After Dark at the top of smartbitchestrashybooks.com; that’s the easiest way to find it. But there’s also going to be posts every Sunday and Wednesday, and I’ll have a link in the show notes where you can sign up for more information.

I also want to say thank you, as always to our Patreon community, and I have a compliment this week.

To Miri J.: Miri, your smile and the way you talk with your hands makes people feel very safe and sometimes delightfully happy, because you are a truly warm and wonderful friend.

If you’ve supported the show, thank you. If you’d like a compliment of your own, please have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

I always end with a very bad joke, and I would not leave you hanging. I almost had Tara do this, but I was not on the ball, so the joke falls to me, which is fine because it’s fun that way. It is the end of October; it is Halloween week. I have a ghost joke. Hoohoo!

What is inside a ghost’s nose?

Give up? What’s inside a ghost’s nose?

Booo-gers.

[Laughs] You probably knew that one. Probably said it with me. But it’s so bad; I love it so much! Boogers! 

On behalf of everyone here, have a very good weekend. We’ll see you back here next week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[end of music]