Monthly Archives: July 2020

#QueerJoyGiveaway Explainer Post

25 Saturday Jul 2020

Posted by in book reviews

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On Hiatus in 2022.

Due to my ongoing treatment for cancer since March 2021, I’ve had to relearn the new limits of my energy. I’ve suspended a number of side projects, and although I tried to restart the Queer Joy Giveaway back in the fall it became clear that I just didn’t have enough reliable energy to select titles, post weekly on Saturdays, and keep up with fufilling title requests. Therefore, I’m putting this giveaway on hiatus through 2022. I hope to pick it back up in some form in 2023. Thank you for understanding! ~Anna

Queer Joy Giveaway Explainer

On the first Saturday after Massachusetts declared a state of emergency due to COVID-19, in March 2020, I decided to give away twenty-five copies of R. Cooper’s A Little Familiar novella as a way to bring good cheer to people struggling with isolation admidst social distancing and stay-at-home directives.

Original Twitter thread here.

The giveaway has since turned into a weekly event as weeks have turned into months and we’re probably looking at a year and more of some measure of social distancing, quarantine, stress, and exhaustion.

How it Works

The giveaway guidelines are simple:

  • Each Saturday, I post the weekly title on Twitter with the number of copies available (generally ~$25 worth has been my budget).
  • Copies are given out on a first come, first served basis to those who request a title via the request form. 
  • Readers are limited to ONE title per week, but may make a request each week with no limit. 
  • The default mode of delivery is Kindle e-book delivered as a gift via Amazon; if a reader doesn’t use the Kindle platform we work out an alternate method of delivery (I have learned a lot about how hard some platforms make it for you to buy e-books as a gift over the past four months!).

As long as our household finances can support this effort, I plan to continue this project. It’s a win-win-win as far as I’m concerned since I get to put books I love into the hands of readers, signal boosting talented creators and spreading rainbow sparkle happily ever after joy at a time when a lot of us need to be dreaming of queer futures filled with hope rather than despair.

I want to be clear, too, that this is a personal project. No publishers or authors are paying me or supplying these books in exchange for free advertising. These titles are all books I have personally read and loved, by authors whose entire body of work I encourage you to explore — most of them are wonderfully prolific and deserve all the sales! When I make my weekly selections I’m working to be mix it up in terms of relationship types and other kinds of marginalized identity rep — but I’m also sharing my faves so this list definitely skews historical, paranormal, and queer. Super not apologizing for that.

Co-sponsors: If you’re interested in sponsoring copies of upcoming titles, shoot me an email at feministlibrarian@gmail.com. I would be happy to be able to increase the number of copies of certain works, particularly since authors from under-represented communities often cannot afford to sell titles for really low cover prices — meaning I’m left to offer fewer of those works within my budget. Sponsors who donate $25 or more to the project get 1) a shout-out, 2) a copy of their choice of any title I have previously offered and 3) a copy of the title they sponsor.

The Titles

2020

March 14: A Little Familiar (Familiar Spirits #1)* by R. Cooper.

March 21: A Little Light Mischief (The Turner Series, #3.5) by Cat Sebastian.

March 28: Widdershins (Whyborne & Griffin #1) by Jordan L. Hawk.

April 4: The Craft of Love by E. E. Ottoman.

April 11: Let Us Dream by Alyssa Cole.

April 18: A Lady’s Desire (The Townsends #2.5) by Lily Maxton.

April 25: Behind These Doors (Radical Proposals #1) by Jude Lucens.

May 2: Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure (The Worth Saga #2.75) by Courtney Milan.

May 9: Salt Magic, Skin Magic by Lee Welch.

May 16: Briarley Aster Glenn Gray.

May 23: Untamed by Anna Cowan.

May 30: Once Upon a Haunted Moor (Tyack & Frayne #1) by Harper Fox.

June 6 & 13: Hamilton’s Battalion: A Trio of Romances by Alyssa Cole, Rose Lerner, and Courtney Milan.

June 20: Once Ghosted, Twice Shy (Reluctant Royals #2.5) by Alyssa Cole.

June 27: Holly & Oak (Familiar Spirits #2) by R. Cooper.

July 4: Lord of the Last Heartbeat (The Sacred Dark #1) by May Peterson.

July 11: Spellbound (Magic in Manhattan #1) by Allie Therin.

July 18: Starcrossed (Magic in Manhattan #2) by Allie Therin.

July 25: Lord of the Last Heartbeat (The Sacred Dark #1) by May Peterson.
Co-sponsored by Stephanie Richmond

August 1: The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics (Feminine Pursuits #1) by Olivia Waite.

August 8: Waiting for the Flood (Spires #2) by Alexis Hall.

August 15: He’s Come Undone: A Romance Anthology by Emma Barry, Olivia Dade, Adriana Herrera, Ruby Lang, and Cat Sebastian.
Co-sponsored by hazmatilda

August 22: The Mage on the Hill (Web of Arcana #1) by Angel Martinez.
Co-sponsored by Stephanie Richmond

August 29: Hexbreaker (Hexworld #1) by Jordan L. Hawk.
Co-sponsored by Lauren Leslie

September 5: Edge of Nowhere (Nowhere #1) by Felicia Davin.
Co-sponsored by Anoymous donor 

September 12: Proper English (England #2) by K.J. Charles.
Co-sponsored by Anoymous donor

September 19 & 26: Small Change (Small Change #1) by Roan Parrish.

October 3rd: The Mysterious & Amazing Blue Billings (Black & Blue #1) by Lily Morton. 

October 10th: Undertow (Widdershins #8.5) by Jordan L. Hawk. 
Co-sponsored by Anonymous donor

October 17th: Nine Years of Silver (Love Has Claws #1) by Parker Foye.

~ gap week 10/24 ~

October 31st: Best Laid Plaids (Kilty Pleasures #1) by Ella Stainton &
Nothing More Certain (Familiar Spirits #3) by R. Cooper.
Co-sponsored by PSMH and Ella Stainton.

November 3: A Little Familiar (Familiar Spirits #1) by R. Cooper.

November 7: Reverb (Twisted Wishes #3) by Anna Zabo.
Co-sponsored by Kayci Wyatt

November 14: Hold Me (Cyclone #2) by Courtney Milan.

November 21: Immortal City (Sacred Dark #2) by May Peterson.  

November 28: The Doctor’s Discretion by E.E. Ottoman. 

December 5: Iron & Velvet (Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator #1) by Alexis Hall. 

December 12: Corruption (The Bureau #1) by Kim Fielding.

December 19: Caroled (The Bureau #7) by Kim Fielding. 

December 26: The Remaking of Corbin Wale by Roan Parrish.

2021

January 2: Tit for Tat by R. Cooper. 

January 9: Eating Stars by Angel Martinez. 

January 16: Frostbite by J. Emery. 

January 23: The Engineer (Magic & Steam #1) by C.S. Poe. 
Co-sponsored by Anonymous.

January 30: Unhallowed (Rath & Rune #1) by Jordan L. Hawk
Co-sponsored by Anonymous.

~ gap week 2/6 ~

February 13th: Magic in Manhatten #1-3 by Allie Therin.

February 20th: Shortbread and Shadows (Hedge Witches Lonely Hearts Club #1) by Amy Lane.

~ medical leave hiatus ~

June 12th: Blind Tiger (The Pride #1) by Jordan L. Hawk. 

June 19th: Hither, Page (Page & Sommers #1) by Cat Sebastian. 

June 26th: Foxen Bloom by Parker Foye. 

July 3rd: The Faerie Hounds of New York by Arden Powell. 

July 10th: A Beginner’s Guide to Wooing Your Mate (Beings in Love #3) by R. Cooper. 

July 17th & 24th: His Secret Illuminations (The Warrior’s Guild #1) by Scarlett Gale. 

July 31st: In the Middle of Somewhere (Middle of Somewhere #1) by Roan Parrish.

August 7th: Unhallowed(Rath & Rune #1) by Jordan L. Hawk.

August 14th, 21st, 28th & September 4th: Warehouse Sale! Choose from backlist titles here. 

*A number of these are part of a series, but if they aren’t the first books in the series I’ve been careful to select titles that may be read as standalones.

salary transparency

09 Thursday Jul 2020

Posted by in library life

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Last updated 20 July 2022.

Salaries and wages in the non-profit libraries/archives/museums field are — no secret — chronically low. Many staff in the field struggle to cover basic necessities like rent amidst a rising cost of living plus financial obligations like student loan debt and retirement savings — if that’s even something they can think about putting money aside for. (And that’s all without the context of a global pandemic.) Salary transparency is one way to hold employers in our sector accountable. During the annual Society of American Archivists meeting in Austin, Texas last year (2019) an impromptu Archivists Salary Transparency Open Survey was created that, as of this writing, has over 500 entries (if you work in the archives field and feel safe sharing some of your own salary details, please consider adding your job to the list!).

I’ve been writing about aspects of our family’s finances for a number of years now. I’ve shared our household income and taxes, how much we pay in rent, our student loan debt, and the fact that we have financial support from my parents to offset student loan repayments.*** But despite the fact that a worker’s right to speak about their own compensation is legally protected in Massachusetts, I’ve always found it difficult to speak about my specific salary. It feels awkward, socially taboo, and politically charged. However, I’ve come to believe that maintaining an air of secrecy around compensation both shames workers and discourages concrete, fact-based discussion about what we get paid and why.  When workers are encouraged through cultural conditioning not to speak about money matters, we might worry that we’re paid embarrassingly little — is that our fault for not being good negotiators? — or disproportionately more than our colleagues — would they be mad at us if they knew? I have worried about both of these things. In the absence of data — that clears the air and helps us understand the macro and micro conditions that have led to our salaries — shame and intimidation flourish.

So I have decided to practice my values and be transparent about what I make, and the history of what I have made in the library field. The more I practice saying the words, the more normal I hope it will become.

MY SALARY HISTORY in LIBRARIES

When I transitioned from part-time retail and office work to the library field in 2007, I was newly arrived in Boston from the Midwest. The Massachusetts Historical Society hired me as a part-time Library Assistant for the hourly wages of $14.00/hour. At the time, that was the highest hourly wage I had ever earned.

During most of my graduate school career (October 2007 to December 2010) I worked as a part-time employee in various part-time and stipended positions in Boston-area institutions; the hourly work was paid at $10-15/hour. On January 1, 2011 I was promoted to a full-time salaried position of Assistant Reference Librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society. This was my first professional (MLS required) position in the library field. My starting salary was $34,000/year.

The MHS operates on a fiscal year schedule so our annual raises typically kick in July 1st. Below are the salaries quoted to me in each of my annual salary and benefits statements as well as raises that came with promotions to new positions and salary adjustments that have come in the past two years in thanks to a salary study done by the MHS.

2011: $34,000 (promotion to Assistant Reference Librarian, 1 January 2011)
2011 (b): $35,020 (3% cost of living raise)
2012: $37,120 (6% cost of living raise)
2012 (b): $44,000 (promotion to Reference Librarian, 1 September 2012)
2013: $47,900 (2% cost of living raise + $2k deferred promotional increase)
2014: $48,860 (2% cost of living raise)
2015: $50,080 (2.5% cost of living raise)
2016: $51,080 (2% cost of living raise)
2017: $52,072 (2% cost of living raise) 
2018: $53,665 (3% cost of living raise)
2019: $57,453 (4% salary study adjustment; 3% cost of living raise)*
2020: $59,796 (3.6% salary study adjustment; no cost of living raise)
2021: $62,785 (5% salary study adjustment; no cost of living raise)
2021 (b): $65,775 (promotion to Senior Reference Librarian, 1 July 2021)**
2022: $73,438 (11.65% salary study and cost of living adjustment combined)

In addition to my salary, I currently receive:

  • A 4% match to my 403(b) retirement fund
  • Healthcare coverage, including dental and vision benefits
  • Short- and long-term disability insurance
  • Life insurance
  • Pre-tax monthly transit passes
  • Unlimited paid sick time
  • Twenty days paid vacation time annually
  • Sixteen paid holidays annually

*In 2019 the MHS hired a consultant to do an in-depth industry salary study. Following the salary study, each staff member was told the midpoint “market value” for their position and put on a five year trajectory to bring their salary up to that level (in addition to any promotions and cost-of-living raises). The 2019 midpoint market value for my position was determined to be $65,900. The 2020 midpoint market value for my position was determined to be $67,416. The 2021 midpoint market value for my position was determined to be $68,764. The 2022 midpoint market value for my position was determined to be $81,100. Raises in 2019-2022 were calculated to accelerate me toward that target. 

**On 1 July 2021 I received a promotion to Senior Reference Librarian. This adjusted the midpoint market value for my salary upwards to $76,800 and a salary raise was made accordingly.

***After 120 income-based repayment plan payments, January 2011 through December 2022, my remaining $84,421.35 in student loan debt became eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and was cancelled.