Hey, Left Unread family!

It is almost time for ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) to start going out for Buzzard, our fall 2026 book. Which means that I want to talk to you about how to make sure you get one, and all of the opportunities you have to be more involved in this project as we approach its release!

BUZZARD is a near-future dystopian following Mae, a midwife who happens to be one of the last people in a fractured America who still has the necessary training to perform safe abortions. When she is imprisoned for using that training to help her community, she is stationed at a facility where she is forced to help take care of the medical needs of young women. During her sentence, she begins discovering massive human rights violations and realizes that she is either going to have to keep her head down in the hope of one day getting out and reuniting with her sons...or risk everything and fight to help those young women being abused.

As we have talked about a million times at this point, this industry is designed to ignore the voices of Black and brown authors, and one of the primary goals of building this community was developing a built-in audience that refused to do that. We built this space to be a community of readers who are eager to see Black and brown stories thrive. So, before I talk about anything else, I want to thank you for being here. You are creating so much more change than you know!

That said, let's talk ARCs:

How do you read Buzzard early?

You probably saw a flood of people posting pictures and videos with ARCs of Devil of the Deep a few months back. And you may have even felt like there were way more ARCs floating around than you would typically expect. Especially from an indie publisher. Well, that is because we added them to our paid tier benefits. Meaning every single paid subscriber to this community is guaranteed an ARC of every book we publish!

Don't worry, that is not the only way to pursue an ARC of Buzzard. I will list all the normal channels down below. But I want to take a moment to talk about this because TOMORROW is the deadline to upgrade if you want your guaranteed subscriber ARC.

The reason we decided to add guaranteed ARCs to our paid perks is really two-fold:

1. Your generosity is the reason we are able to compete with major publishers as successfully as we do. I keep telling you that, but I really mean it. The top five publishers have massive budgets keeping their companies moving and can not only afford to throw huge amounts of money into their top books, but they can also afford most of their list to fail every year. We are not in that position. As an indie publisher, we have to be more conservative with our investments and have much less room for failure. Which means your generosity is making a huge difference in how much we can accomplish. So we felt it was only fair for you to get first crack at actually reading the books you're helping us to bring into the world.

2. The second reason we made this change was to help ensure the books are being read and celebrated early on. You guys are already invested in these stories and want to read them. So why would our ARC strategy not center you?! This just makes the most sense. Early reviews make a huge difference in pre-order campaigns. So we are hopeful that putting these books into your hands earlier will help to build excitement for the projects and ultimately get them into more hands!

With that understanding, my hope is that this new approach will ultimately lead to more ARCs going out, being read, and talked about.

Here is a breakdown of how each tier impacts you:

$5 tier: You will gain access to any exclusive content I release, including publishing updates that are not available for the public yet, as well as select essays, blogs and videos. You will also be locking in your guaranteed e-arc of Buzzard and all future Left Unread books. Additionally, you will get a permanent 10% discount to Paperbacks & Frybread, an Indigenous woman owned bookstore based out of NC as well as access to TOP SECRET BOOKCLUB, where we will read this book together once ARCs go out and have group dialogue months before anyone else has read it!

$12 tier: You will gain access to everything listed above, with the addition of a guaranteed physical ARC of Buzzard and all future Left Unread books. We also set aside a page in the back of every Left Unread book where we list everyone who helped make those books happen. Which means your name will be listed in Buzzard and future Left Unread books as one of our official collaborators. You will also get a permanent 15% discount to Paperbacks & Frybread.

$25 tier: You will gain access to all of the benefits listed above, while also getting access to our new Cost of Freedom community reading experience. Which is a quarterly group reading project where Bindery ships you a book directly, along with a huge amount of exclusive content from me helping to facilitate conversations as we read those books. That content will include things like: Chapter by chapter commentary, character and theme analysis, intimate reviews of the book, social commentary, possible critiques of the subject matter, plenty of exclusive essays exploring ideas found in the story itself. This is going to be a very intensive reading experience and I could not recommend it more. Our first book's deadline has already passed, but if you subscribe at this tier, you will still get access to all of the commentary and content I will be making around the book as well as access to the quarterly zoom call where we talk through the book together.

Disclaimer: Physical benefits are only for US residents at the moment because of tariff related shipping issues. I have hope for the future, but at the moment, this is out of our hands. Everything else will still be available.

My hope is that you will consider upgrading today and locking in your ARC of Buzzard. I believe this book is going to have a massive impact and I am excited by the idea of getting it into your hands early and being able to talk about it!!!

But like I said earlier, this is not the only way to pursue an ARC, so let's talk other avenues!

• NETGALLEY

BUZZARD is already available to request on Netgalley. If you are not familiar, that is an online platform where publishers can list upcoming books for readers to request early electronic access to. We listed Buzzard about a week ago and you are free to request it now. Do that HERE.

Disclaimer: All Bindery Netgalley requests are handled directly by our marketing director and I have no direct influence over who is approved or denied.

• REQUEST FROM BINDERY

Another way to request ARCs is by requesting a physical copy on Bindery's website. You can do that HERE.

Disclaimer: Currently, only our Spring books are available to request here. Which includes our book Devil of the Deep. I am hopeful Buzzard, along with the other Fall Bindery books, will be available to request in the coming months.

As always, thank you for being here! I am so grateful for every single one of you and please believe me when I say you are having a huge impact on the future of publishing.

Oh, and make sure you go grab your copy of Devil of the Deep! It comes out in less than a month! Order your copy HERE.