Crystal has enough books, now. In fact, she has too many books. Her Yes pile is huge; she looks at it and sucks air through her teeth, knowing that they won't be able to get the licenses for all of it. 

She goes through her pile of books and makes a shortlist. There are twenty-five in all, from twelve different universes. She writes up tags for each of them, notes the universe of origin, and provides a short summary of each.

1. Grapeverse [Erotica, S&M, Character Drama, Relationship-Building, Consensual Kink, Fantasy]

Erotica novel about a sadist architect and his masochist learning to build a healthy relationship. Features healing magic, alien architecture. Alien focus on architecture detracts somewhat from the storyline, but the writing quality is such that this is mostly just exotic. 

2. Grapeverse [Interactive Fiction, Branching Storyline, Erotica, Choose Your Morality, Relationship-Building]

Small-scale interactive fiction where you befriend or abuse a magical statue. Optional sex scenes. Very sweet and realistically portrayed.  

3. Homerealm [Nonfiction, Autobiography, Strong Gimmick (Video Game Walkthrough), Cosplay, Alien Culture, Erotica]

Autobiography of an erotic cosplayer, styled as a video game strategy guide. Exceedingly clever; features both visual and written erotica. Hot. 

4. Homerealm [Light Novel, Series, Science Fantasy, Erotica, Transition Literature]

Genius biohackers work for the flowering of all trans women into beautiful, free, sexual beings. Heavy on erotica; each LN is readable in a single sitting. 

5. Homerealm [Fantasy, Hard Magic, Political Thriller, Strong Plotting, Erotica]

Prince and Princess interweave sexually-tinged magic systems to develop new abilities, opposed by their respective advisors. Clever plotting device to introduce both magic systems and the political situation. 

6. Iie*a [Poetry, Anthology, Autobiography, Tragedy, Value of Life, Shirasanmi]

Poetic autobiography of an alien child with a terminal disease. Unpolished, but heartrendingly sad. 

7. Iie*a [Family Drama, Dysfunctional Family, Serious, Thought-Provoking, Hopeful Ending]

Alien family tries and mostly fails to raise a child; child eventually becomes fed up with dysfunction, leaves. 

8. Iie*a [Fantasy, Series, Hard Magic, Complex Morality, Serious, Thought-Provoking, Alien Aliens]

Alien magic-users fight taboo-violating enemies; conflict becomes gradually more complex and morally ambiguous. Deep.

9. Grayliens [Fantasy, Political Drama, Alien Art, Culture Clash]

Obligate carnivores and obligate herbivores treat with each other, and narrowly avoid war thanks to a pair of diplomats. Awkward ending. 

10. Planet [Hard Science Fiction, Character Drama, Strong Characters, Vocational Literature, Terraforming]

Terraforming team has slice-of-life adventures developing an ecosystem. Heavy on scientific detail. Likely to sell well in Eravia. 

11. Planet [Interactive Fiction, Survival, Trade, Politics, Fantasy,  Lots Of Characters, Erotica, Harem-Builder]

Interactive fiction where you command a trading ship in a fantasy world. Realistic cultures, many characters, optional sex scenes. Characters are a bit flat, but there are a lot of them.

12. Planet [Vocational Literature, Alien Culture, Transportation]

Alien vocational literature about several modes of transport (trains, boats, planes, rockets). 

13. Hearthome [Devotional Literature, Alien Religion, Erotica, Ecstatic]

Alien devotional literature that's clearly from an ecstatic sect. Consists of a series of dialogues with a (implied) Great Reflection. 

14. Hearthome [Erotica, Heartwarming, Comedy, Sex Sports]

Immortal aliens develop ridiculously complicated, dramatic and hilarious forms of sexual sport. Commentated by fictional robots. 

15. Periverse [Nonfiction, Informational, Textbook, Alien Biology, Animal Raising, Many-Parent Children]

Textbook on how to keep and raise motherbeasts, which are capable of acting as artificial wombs drawing from many people's genetic material.

16. Periverse [Nonfiction, Alien Economics, Controversial]

Alien economic history textbook on monetary systems and how the Periverse phased out money, to great acclaim from its citizens.

17. Periverse [Children's Literature, Fantasy, Mystery]

Children fight monsters, solve mysteries. Mostly included for breadth purposes and because it'll likely sell well.

18. Periverse [Prism, Fantasy, Alien Aliens, Alien Culture, Not Devotional]

Several alternate-universe versions of the same people come into conflict over magic. Alien genre of personality-examination literature eerily imitates Heart devotional art. 

19. Piecemeal [Historical Fiction, Alien Culture, Alien Religion, Mystery Cult, Coming-of-Age]

Teenager is inducted into a mystery cult that changes his life for the better. Features strong alien culture; will need cultural notes. 

20. Piecemeal [Alien Religion, Shirasanmi, Devotional Literature, Controversial]

Collection of myths about a complicated and sometimes dark Great Reflection known as the Wandering Man.

21. Olam [Nonfiction, Memoir, Alien Culture, Culture Clash]

Woman raised in an uncontacted tribe records her introduction to Hadarite culture. Strong, unique perspective on an alien culture. 

22. Ev [Historical Fiction, Alien Culture, Devotional Literature, Dark, Alien Morality, Controversial]

Criminals sentenced to die for treason during a desperate historical war undergo a spiritual and emotional journey as they contemplate their imminent deaths. Sentence is ultimately commuted to life. 

23. Basiland [Hard Magic, Complex Morality, Villain Protagonist, Deep, Fantasy]

Magical apprentice gradually slides from a restricted, narrow life into a happy, but selfish life as a villainous dark mage. 

24. Basiland [Relationship Drama, Realistic Abuse, Dark, Happy Ending, Soft Science Fiction, Dark Erotica]

Woman is abused by her girlfriend, gradually comes to realize she's being mistreated and moves out. Dubiously consensual erotica scenes, but very realistic in its handling. 

25. Antfolk [Fantasy, Series, Heroic Literature, Alien Aliens, Disability Literature, Action, Realistic Characters, Hurt/Comfort]

Person is captured, enslaved and mutilated by opposing polity; story follows her legendary rescue by a friend and the aftermath. Long-running popular series on its native world.

She sends the list to her boss, presses her phone to her heart, and prays for a moment, wordlessly to no goddess in particular. 

Thyris comes forwards for the Planet docudrama again. It's really interesting to see the web of lies fall apart; it reminds her of some exposés on cult practices in the past few decades. Journalistic and governmental integrity is important everywhere, huh?

She sets it aside to discuss with Snowblossom later.

Crystal's already sent off her shortlist, but it would be remiss for her to not keep reading. She can collect a new stack or two. 

Her next book up is from Planet, the docudrama. It's political stuff again - pretty solidly written, though, you can really feel the anger and betrayal. She starts a new Yes pile and adds it to the top of it.

Crystal's boss, Silver Rose, is currently in a meeting with an author to discuss edits to its* unpublished manuscript. She checks her phone when she gets the alert, nods to herself, and continues the meeting. This is important, but there's no need to be discourteous about it.  

Once she and the author have agreed on the appropriate edits, she opens the shortlist.

She sighs. Of course Crystal has sent her too many books. This is going to be a headache. 

She retires to her private office, a small, cozy space with an overstuffed armchair, a small desk, and a pile of blankets,** makes herself comfortable in the chair, puts on her headphones with some light trance music, and places her laptop on her lap. 

Let's go through this shortlist more seriously and cut. Is anything obviously dubious?

#9 is noted as awkward. Cut. She wants to avoid anything potentially politically incendiary - she cuts everything with the "Controversial" tag, despite the possibility for sales. Too high a downside risk. Once the alien cultures are more seriously approached then it'll be safe to publish things like that. Let's have a look at the ones that aren't books next - two interactive fiction, three series. These ones are larger commitments. #8 from Iie*a is a series and not an obvious winner - cut. The other two, from Homerealm and Antfolk, she'll keep in contention. #2 and #11 are up for consideration now... Neither is an obvious cut candidate. Alright, let's look at the nonfiction then, since it's a bit out of their wheelhouse. She can see why Crystal recommended all of these, they're strong and unique... But the textbook on Motherbeasts from the Periverse, #15, is an animal-raising textbook, no matter the fact that it's about magic, and the number of people on Heart who willingly handle animals other than cats is very low. It probably wouldn't recoup the costs of the license. It can be cut. 

Alright, let's go by genre now and look at which areas are crowded. Erotica first, that's a crowded market and anything that hopes to succeed in it will have to be top-quality.

Fully half of her list has erotica elements. Sounds about right. Let's look at this carefully. 

There are two works of erotica from the Grapeverse - the S&M novel and the interactive fiction. Then there are three from Homerealm - the erotic cosplayer's autobiography, the transition literature Light Novel series, and the hard-magic political thriller. One from Planet - their interactive-fiction trading sim. Two from Hearthome - the Ecstatic devotional literature and the sex sports comedy. Lastly there's the hard-hitting abuse novel from Basilland. 

On a closer examination, the two pieces of interactive fiction and the abuse novel don't really fall into the "Erotica" genre even if they have erotica elements - they're not centered on the sex, they just feature it as a natural extension of their themes. She'll set those aside for the moment and come back to them later. So in the primarily-erotica genre they have the grapeverse S&M novel, the three pieces from Homerealm, and the two pieces from Hearthome. All of these are high-quality and competitive in the modern market, but she can't have half of her alien novels be erotica - she estimates she can publish maybe ten alien pieces, a dozen if she really stretches and works hard hours. So something is going to have to go. 

What here is the most obvious winner? That would be the Ecstatic devotional literature. Contact with an alien religion with common values will be a big seller. Alright, so she'll publish that one. She can afford to do one or two more in this category... The first runner-up looks like it's the erotic cosplayer's biography on the strength of its gimmick. It's also nonfiction so that gives some breadth in the space. 

Competing for the third and final slot, that leaves the series of transition-literature light novels and the political thriller from Homerealm, the S&M novel from the Grapeverse, and the hilarious sex sports novel from Hearthome. The obvious losers here are the political thriller and the sex sports novel - neither is really primarily erotica. She might come back to them later on the strength of their other qualities, but they don't get an erotica slot. 

That leaves the Grapeverse S&M novel and the transition literature Light Novel series. Neither of them are perfect. The S&M novel has a weird obsession with architecture, and the series is, well, a series. If she wants to go for breadth of worlds published, that argues for the S&M novel, since Homerealm already has the erotic cosplayer's biography on the stack, but if she wants to go for writing quality then that argues for the transition erotica. 

Quality first. She has to publish things she can stand by one hundred percent, and the Grapeverse novel just doesn't hit that criteria for her. The Light Novel series gets a slot, and the Grapeverse S&M novel is cut.

Alright, looking at the remaining unsettleds, there's a bunch of relatively dark or serious books. Let's put them up against each other as well. We have the heartrending Iie*a poetry anthology, the dysfunctional family drama from the same world, and then two books from Basilland - the villain-protagonist morality play and the realistic abuse story. 

It's pretty clear that the poetry anthology has to be published, practically as a moral duty for her. It'll sell, and if it doesn't it's still worth having tried. It'll probably win awards. Overall it'll be excellent for her company's reputation. 

#7, the alien family drama from Iie*a, and #24, the realistic abuse drama from Basilland, are clearly up against each other - they're so similar in themes that it'd be silly to publish them both at the same time. She would say that the realistic abuse drama wins, here. #7 is cut, and the abuse novel... goes back on the pile to consider. It might be a little controversial. But it says something very important...

She sighs, and looks at the two remaining books in the category. The villain protagonist book is morally complex as well and quite thought-provoking; it can stay for now, but it's not an obvious publish. Same to the disability-handling antfolk series. ... Actually, she's already committed to publishing one series, so that's a slight strike against the antfolk series. But it's not quite fatal. She'll come back to it. 

Let's look at the books she hasn't touched yet and see if there are any clear winners. There are six left. Olam-uncontacted-biography, Planet-Terraforming-Adventures, Planet-Vocational-Literature, Periverse-Children's-Book, Periverse-Prism, Piecemeal-Mystery-Cult-Coming-Of-Age. The uncontacted-biography is a clear winner; it gets moved to the publish list. So does the Periverse Prism - it's just such a strong look at an unexpected confluence with an alien culture.

The remainder get sorted in with the leftover books from earlier. There are nine candidates left and four-to-six slots remaining. She needs to cut at least three. 

Looking at the tags on her books to publish, it seems like she already has two fantasy novels. That's a strike against anything remaining that's fantasy - the Periverse children's literature, the Planet trading video game, and the Antfolk series. The antfolk series already has a strike against it because she's already publishing a series, so it falls off the bottom. 

There are three works under consideration from Planet - two pieces of devotional literature, and the trading video game. She wants to publish a diverse set of books, so let's only keep one of those three. The book about transportation and the video game are clearly weaker than the terraforming novel at this stage - they're both cut. She'll publish the terraforming novel as representational of the world. Similarly, Basilland has two pieces; the abuse novel is clearly stronger than the villain-protagonist one, so it wins and the villain-protagonist one is cut. 

There are three works remaining under consideration - the Grapeverse interactive fiction, the Piecemeal Mystery-Cult novel, and the Periverse children's mystery. Ideally she should only negotiate for two. The Periverse already has a work on her publishing list, so that cuts the children's mystery (which is also fantasy anyway.)

Her final list for negotiation looks like this: 

2. Grapeverse [Interactive Fiction, Branching Storyline, Erotica, Choose Your Morality, Relationship-Building]

Small-scale interactive fiction where you befriend or abuse a magical statue. Optional sex scenes. Very sweet and realistically portrayed.  

3. Homerealm [Nonfiction, Autobiography, Strong Gimmick (Video Game Walkthrough), Cosplay, Alien Culture, Erotica]

Autobiography of an erotic cosplayer, styled as a video game strategy guide. Exceedingly clever; features both visual and written erotica. Hot. 

4. Homerealm [Light Novel, Series, Science Fantasy, Erotica, Transition Literature]

Genius biohackers work for the flowering of all trans women into beautiful, free, sexual beings. Heavy on erotica; each LN is readable in a single sitting. 

6. Iie*a [Poetry, Anthology, Autobiography, Tragedy, Value of Life, Shirasanmi]

Poetic autobiography of an alien child with a terminal disease. Unpolished, but heartrendingly sad. 

10. Planet [Hard Science Fiction, Character Drama, Strong Characters, Vocational Literature, Terraforming]

Terraforming team has slice-of-life adventures developing an ecosystem. Heavy on scientific detail. Likely to sell well in Eravia. 

13. Hearthome [Devotional Literature, Alien Religion, Erotica, Ecstatic]

Alien devotional literature that's clearly from an ecstatic sect. Consists of a series of dialogues with a (implied) Great Reflection. 

18. Periverse [Prism, Fantasy, Alien Aliens, Alien Culture, Not Devotional]

Several alternate-universe versions of the same people come into conflict over magic. Alien genre of personality-examination literature eerily imitates Heart devotional art. 

19. Piecemeal [Historical Fiction, Alien Culture, Alien Religion, Mystery Cult, Coming-of-Age]

Teenager is inducted into a mystery cult that changes his life for the better. Features strong alien culture; will need cultural notes. 

21. Olam [Nonfiction, Memoir, Alien Culture, Culture Clash]

Woman raised in an uncontacted tribe records her introduction to Hadarite culture. Strong, unique perspective on an alien culture. 

24. Basiland [Relationship Drama, Realistic Abuse, Dark, Happy Ending, Soft Science Fiction, Dark Erotica]

Woman is abused by her girlfriend, gradually comes to realize she's being mistreated and moves out. Dubiously consensual erotica scenes, but very realistic in its handling. 

She checks over her list, decides she agrees with her own decisions, and goes to start making phone calls.

*It's nonbinary.

**Having office blankets is just standard, on Heart. 

The rights holders are happy to let the publishing rights go! They can talk about other editions later if this works out, if you'd like? It's traditional within the sect to write your own items, and there's a good number of different translations and annotated version that could be adapted if there's an appeal to that. 

They mostly just want for a substantial chunk of the proceeds to local charities for transition or inter-world biotech research and development.  

All of the working group's submissions are old enough not to be subject to any intellectual property* provisions. Silver Rose's firm is welcome to publish it, although they won't have exclusive right to do so unless some weird quirk of Eravian law lets them do that. And of course they, and anyone else, can produce whatever translations or modifications they like.

*'intellectual property' is a term that would almost never be used in canaanite, 'information-royalty-gratuity' would be the more literal translation.

The Grapeverse interactive fiction author is looking to maximize availability of the work to diverse audiences. If Silver Rose is planning to ask for any sort of exclusivity deal here, she had better be prepared to make the case for how that maximizes availability. Otherwise the author is not too bothered about details, though there might be something that's standard on Heart that sounds very weird to a grape, or for that matter vice versa; grapeverse publishing contracts, for reference, generally balance the proceeds from sale of the work between the author and the publisher in some fashion.

The translator-pod of the poetry collection seems somewhat surprised to be contacted, but they confer amongst themselves!

They want the book available, is the main thing. They're not sure how large-scale capitalism works, but even if it turns out they have to put the poetry behind a paywall or something, they want to be sure that people can read it if they care enough. It would be ideal if the full text were available online and Silver Rose sold physical copies and [merch | paraphernalia | idols]* for people who liked it enough, but they recognize that this could be a dealbreaker, which would reduce exposure, and will accept if instead she merely provides copies to public libraries, which they have heard of and which seem like a fairly reasonable innovation if you can't get all the way to anarchocommunism due to weird alien bullshit.

* Apparently these are linked concepts, and the main thing provided by the closest Iie*an equivalent to a publishing house.

The contract negotiation with Hearthome goes easily enough; Silver Rose is familiar with riders like this on devotional works, and feels that she should be able to make a profit even after charity's cut. 

Damn, the work from Olam is public domain. It's still worth doing a print run if she can contract with the translator, but she can kiss her exclusivity goodbye. She calls them next.

As soon as the Grapeverse author makes it clear that availability is their highest priority, Silver Rose drops the exclusivity part of the contract. The profit-sharing scheme is not unfamiliar to her. Overall it's as expected. 

The Basillian author is somewhat concerned about handling of the larger timeline; Silver Rose assures them that printing rights for a single book does not imply a series contract, and manages to secure a proper exclusive deal for the novel. 

Silver Rose accepts the stipulations of the Iie*a translators' pod, since publishing the poetry collection is more of a reputational move for her anyway; she'll do a limited-edition print run and publish the electronic edition for free on the company website. 

Homerealm's concepts of ownership and authorship are... fluid, compared to Heart's. She's eventually able to hammer out contracts with both the translator and the original author for publishing rights on Heart with the understanding that derivative works should be treated lightly and that the liscense should not be used as a weapon. (Protective stipulations are written into the contract.) She's not able to get an exclusive deal, but it's good enough to publish with. 

The author from Planet, however, is much more reasonable. He wants merchandising; Silver Rose knows better than to try and merchandise an unknown property, so she offers to let him contract seperately with a Heart merchandising platform for those rights. He accepts; she takes a slightly higher unit price into the bargain, but walks away satisfied with an exclusive publishing contract on Heart. 

That just leaves the Periverse and Piecemeal authors. She calls them next.

(Translations were done by staff of the Union Diplomatic Corps, which is generally unwilling to agree to any exclusivity unless Silver Rose can make a persuasive case that it's necessary to maximize availability.)

The author of the coming of age story (titled Reinvention, in its original language) is happy to negotiate rights - they have a summary of local copyright law (as distinct from the many other polities nearby, though it probably has some implicit assumptions that Eravia doesn't share) and a form request for Eravian law. The standard proposal for their home-state would give the publishing house twenty years of exclusive rights in Eravia and nonexclusive rights for a century, plus permission to sell onward nonexclusive rights to publish in other polities and the right to be notified and given a chance to negotiate exclusivity if another party is contracting for publishing rights elsewhere. Also included is name and contact information for the author's preferred bordercross* to route the contract through.

*This is a combination Paypal/foreign-exchange service/arbitrageur/polylaw negotiator/general financial-legal intermediary, a highly necessary industry for the fragmented city-states and alliances which Piecemeal contains that would otherwise make friction costs enormous.

Silver Rose gives on exclusivity for her contract with the Union Diplomatic Corps for their translation. It's too bad so many of these works' authors are primarily concerned with availability.

The contract for Reinvention is actually a longer length than she's used to working with - copyright terms on Heart, by international treaty, are only twenty years before the work enters the public domain, so it's not legal in Eravia to take a hundred-year nonexclusive-rights contract. That dealt with, the rest of the proposed contract is reasonable to her.

The negotiations with the Periverse are refreshingly straightforwards - she's able to get exclusivity for all of Heart. 

Now it's time to actually publish. 

The alien fiction already has plenty of buzz, so marketing can be minimal. As for presentation... It feels right to her to go with something reserved and understated. Hardcover, definitely. This is a historic event, the first publishing of alien work on Heart. She wants to present it as faithfully as possible - and that means not adding anything to it, nor taking anything away. She could contract with the original artists for the covers of the works on their home worlds, but that would slow her down and no doubt add expense. 

So. Simple black books. Silver frontispiece with the name and title of each on the front. No slipcases. That format will still look good a hundred years from now. It's not flashy, but then she doesn't need to be very flashy to get sales with this quality of work. Word of mouth will do the work for her. And the unornamented style will make her books instantly recognizable in the sea of publishers trying to appeal to the eye.

She commissions one sketch for the front cover of each book from an artist she's used before, simple linework in symbolic forms, nothing garish. She's particularly fond of the stylized Joey for the collection of poetry. It feels right. 

She finally hands over the final documents to the typesetters.

She clasps her hands over her chest, close to her heart, over the necklace she wears, and prays quietly to her Keeper that she's been a good girl.

(She and her Keeper spend the rest of the night snuggled up in bed, doing aftercare on her job.)

The population of Heart notice the free poetry anthology first, never one to miss a good deal on something worthwhile. It goes viral almost immediately, the link to the publishers' website quickly making it to the front page of many mainstream blogs. The site strains under the load of visitors, but holds.* The news picks it up within the hour, and then the servers finally gasp and die. 

However, in that hour there have been many thousands of downloads of electronic editions, the poetry anthology has been mirrored a dozen times, and the word has gotten out that these books are available in stores. 

All of the alien books sell out pretty much immediately, even the public domain works. Bookstores are slammed with callers asking if they have any on back-order. Scalpers relist their first editions at hair-raising prices. Articles about the scalping run in the press. In general, it's a circus. Local coffeeshops and parks have a sudden infestation of people doing public readings of the alien books, which draw crowds.** People abandon their jobs just to listen to a live reading, not even to get a hold of one of the books!

There is a little bit of crime - people trying to snatch books, primarily - but generally people are satisfied with the public readings and the gatherings remain peaceful. One woman in Eravia is rather badly beaten for trying to snatch a copy of Reinvention in front of a crowd, but fortunately recovers. 

The reactions to the individual works start to filter in.

6. Iie*a [Poetry, Anthology, Autobiography, Tragedy, Value of Life, Shirasanmi]

Poetic autobiography of an alien child with a terminal disease. Unpolished, but heartrendingly sad. 

This book is the focus of most of the readings, since it's been freely distributed to everybody's phones and each poem is short enough to speak in a reasonable amount of time. The spoken-word poets of Heart compete to put the most passion and emotion they can into it. The best and worst performances are distributed online, and are a major source of more people finding out about the alien book release. People cry. People write response poetry, most of it not very good. An anthology of good-quality response poetry spontaneously materializes within 24 hours, though it's only published online. (Silver Rose snatches up the contract to publish it in hardcopy, stealing from next month's budget.) Everyone is shaken by the strength of the aliens' art. Everyone thinks to themselves, "if the poetry's this good, what else is in these books?"

4. Homerealm [Light Novel, Series, Science Fantasy, Erotica, Transition Literature]

Genius biohackers work for the flowering of all trans women into beautiful, free, sexual beings. Heavy on erotica; each LN is readable in a single sitting. 

Every single club for gender diversity abruptly acquires a copy of the first published Light Novel in this series. (And in many cases, the rest of them as well, despite the difficulty in finding an original data dump from Homerealm.) Most of these are pirated, in the spirit of I'll-buy-it-when-I-can. You can tell which clubs are good clubs because they have hardcopy editions. The best clubs have official hardcovers.*** The first light novel is read aloud in public places and there's some controversy about exposing children to the sexual content in it, but general opinion is that This Is An Exception, Aliens Are More Important. It quickly becomes confusing on the internet which stories are official and which are fanworks; a wiki is founded to catalogue them all, and crashes the free wiki hosting architecture. 

2. Grapeverse [Interactive Fiction, Branching Storyline, Erotica, Choose Your Morality, Relationship-Building]

Small-scale interactive fiction where you befriend or abuse a magical statue. Optional sex scenes. Very sweet and realistically portrayed.  

The Grapeverse interactive novel is promptly ripped and distributed widely, along with the digital editions of the books. Again, the failure of the publisher's website leads to a lot of I'll-buy-it-when-I-can. Those who aren't attending public readings of the books stay home and play. The general opinion of everyone is that the sex route is best, though the sadists appreciate the capacity for evil in this one. An incredible amount of [my-favorite-reflection]/Marble**** fanfiction is written within 24 hours, often S&M flavored. Many people spontaneously develop reflections of Marble. Fanart is also popular, mostly imagining different visions of Marble and her ruins. 

The reactions to the rest of the books, being longer, take a little longer to come in. The reading parties stretch, people ordering multiple cups of coffee or passing the book around to rest their voices.  

There is one book that has a bit of a different reaction, though -

3. Homerealm [Nonfiction, Autobiography, Strong Gimmick (Video Game Walkthrough), Cosplay, Alien Culture, Erotica]

Autobiography of an erotic cosplayer, styled as a video game strategy guide. Exceedingly clever; features both visual and written erotica. Hot. 

As the gimmick of this one becomes obvious, as does the presence of pictures, many of the public gatherings around it go a bit... sideways. Someone recommends going somewhere more private so that the pictures aren't shown off in public, a few other someones put up money to rent a large cuddleroom at the local il'ka*****, it turns into a bit more of an intimate gathering, the porn gets everyone horny, and, well, things proceed along those lines given charismatic Suns and their tendency to acquire new polycule members in the oddest of places. There are only three reports of outright orgies, but a lot of people leave early in pairs or trios or foursomes. A few people manage to lose their books in the process; a post on social media about someone looking for their book because they were distracted by IRL sexy goes viral. There's not much fanwork, though; most people seem to have the opinion that canon is good enough and also it's weird to write fanfic about an alien who actually exists and might not be okay with it. (Some people argue that obviously she'd be okay with it. There are internet arguments. A small Sensate sect that already focused on cosplay adopts the author as their Great Reflection.) 

Another similar book gets a different reaction yet again. 

13. Hearthome [Devotional Literature, Alien Religion, Erotica, Ecstatic]

Alien devotional literature that's clearly from an ecstatic sect. Consists of a series of dialogues with a (implied) Great Reflection. 

A lot of people don't believe this one is really from aliens. Some people in Eravia close it and set it aside. There's a fistfight over whether the reading should continue or not, in one case. Meanwhile in Anadyne, people are having spiritual experiences and praying in public****** and fetching pillows for the book. The erotic content isn't considered marked in a spiritual work, but the incidental hypnotic content whammies a few people during the live readings, and the spiritual depth of the book produces a new sect overnight dedicated to its teachings and the mysterious Great Reflection described within its covers. Many people report being asked questions in a quiet woman's voice following this book's release; there's a small spike in psychosis admissions to the careholds.

It's around now that Silver Rose is called by a reporter wanting to interview her about her work on the books. She accepts. By good fortune, providence, or sheer blind luck, her interview comes on just as people are setting their books aside for a moment for a collective lunch. Speaking on the phone to a reporter, her words are carried on the radio to fully a quarter of the population of Heart.

*Silver Rose bought the heaviest-capacity temporary-load solution she could find on short notice, spending all of her remaining budget for the month. 
**In any ten of Heart's inhabitants, about four will have done a similar public reading before and be actually good at it. 
***Most of the printed copies are improvised coil-bound editions made on a public printer and binding machine. 
****The universally-accepted fanon name for the statue girl. 
*****Like a cross between a hotel and a kink club, but unmarked to visit for adults. More or less the Heart equivalent of a pub with rooms above it, except alcohol isn't served. (Most Heart natives hate the taste and don't care for the effects either.)
******This is considered extremely gauche, on Heart; prayer is intimate and private and not shared with others besides your polycule. 

Transcription of the interview on Radio Eravia follows:

RE: I'm here this afternoon with Silver Rose, the first publisher of alien fiction on Heart. Today the world has been taken by storm by reading parties for the ten pieces of alien fiction that Silver Rose is responsible for bringing to our world; people are cutting work to listen, bookstores are slammed, and I'm told your website's gone down as well despite the measures you've taken. What's your reaction to the chaos today, Silver Rose?

SR: It's beyond my wildest hopes. Obviously I don't condone any of the violence that's happened, but as a publisher I always pray that the works that pass through my hands will find people who care about them and brighten someone's lives. Seeing people drop the rest of their lives to experience something I helped bring to this world is humbling and wonderful.

RE: It's practically an informal holiday out there. Are you planning to participate?

SR: I prefer a quiet life, honestly. This interview is kind of surprising to me, even though I know rationally that people are going to be interested in how these books came to be on Heart. As a publisher, usually I'm invisible - nobody knows me, they just know the work that passes through my hands. The authors are the ones with the fan clubs. So if I go participate, it'll be quietly and anonymously. You might be able to spot me from my big silly grin. 

RE: *laughs.* I'll keep an eye out! Are you planning to publish more alien books?

SR: Assuming these ones sell well, yes! So that's pretty much just a yes, at this point - I've already received reports that most of the physical editions are sold. 

RE: Speaking of selling alien books, when is your site going to be back up? 

SR: I've bought a new hosting package against the advance sales of the books, and the technicians say the site should be back up within a few hours with a lot more capacity. Please wait patiently! There will be an announcement when the site returns. 

RE: I've heard that some people are turning to piracy during the period of unavailability. What's your opinion on that?

SR: I get it, I really do, you want to read it now and participate in this great historical moment. You say to yourself you're going to buy it later. It's understandable. But you have to keep in mind that if you don't buy it, the people who write and distribute these things don't have an incentive to bring you more. So please, I don't mind if you pirate a temporary copy, but please actually buy a digital edition when the site comes back up. I promise to use the funds I earn to bring you more. 

RE: Do you intend to prosecute any piracy that happens? 

SR: I don't believe in punishing individuals for that kind of thing. As for the distributors, well, I can't promise anything. I'm bound by my contracts with the authors to act to preserve their copyright, and part of that is shutting down any illegal distribution I become aware of. 

RE: What about the public domain works? 

SR: Obviously you can do anything you want with them. None of my contracts there are exclusive; I expect fan translations to be pretty fast. 

RE: Since the hard copies are largely sold out, how long until the next print run?

SR: The initial setup - making the press plates and so on - is done now, but there's still quite a lot involved with making several thousand copies of each of these books. I expect the first physical editions of the second print run to be available in about a week. They'll be hardcover too, the same binding process as the last batch.

RE: Do you plan to release paperback editions? 

SR: For anything that sells out its second hardcover print run, yes.

RE: Do you have a favorite book from the set you've published?

SR: It's so hard to choose! I think I like the biography from Olam the best - it's such a clear depiction of an alien culture in a way that makes it very clear and obvious how it functions. It's a kind of nonfiction that's only really possible to see in the modern era because of the contact with the aliens. And it's a rare nonfiction book for me, I generally publish fiction so the nonfiction stands out more to me.

RE: I'll have to see if I can find a copy! I think that largely wraps up the interview. Is there anything you'd like to say to the world while you have the airwaves?

SR: Keep reading, keep loving, keep working to find your lifepath. It can lead you to places you never expected to ever go. 

RE: Thank you, Silver Rose. 

SR: Thank you.

Audio clip:

Dramatic music swells. "What's your reaction to the chaos today, Silver Rose?"

"It's beyond my wildest hopes." *anime sparkle noise*

EXPLOSION, distant sirens, "Oh god my leg, my -" (Audio cuts out like the microphone just got knocked down) 

An animatic of the audio meme is created with a fan interpretation of what Silver Rose looks like. (Long, flowing silver hair, big flowing gilded coat like the one the Sanctified wears, but black with villain spikes on the shoulders.) Silver Rose is shown from behind overlooking a city with sirens in the background and rising smoke; she doesn't speak, just turns towards the camera in four sketchy frames and flashes a huge goofy grin and a peace sign. (She's wearing a domino mask that hides her face; nobody actually knows what Silver Rose looks like in real life at this point, and it's kind of beside the point.)

People mill around and finish eating. There are lines for the bathrooms. Eventually, the readings resume, raggedly and scatteredly - but nobody puts down their alien books. There's still a thrumming energy, the kind that would normally be found at a really good convention or festival. Everybody* wants to hear the aliens' fiction. 

Gradually, people get deeper into the longer books, and the first groups reading longer works start to finish them in the afternoon. Spoilers get taken extremely seriously; a few trolls try to post them to social media and get almost immediately platform-banned for a week. Around now the publishers' site comes back up, and a truly staggering number of electronic editions are sold using the more robust architecture. It uses a queueing system; people wait on their phones while listening to readings. Silver Rose makes back her hosting fees in the first hour. 

More reactions come in.

18. Periverse [Prism, Fantasy, Alien Aliens, Alien Culture, Not Devotional]

Several alternate-universe versions of the same people come into conflict over magic. Alien genre of personality-examination literature eerily imitates Heart devotional art. 

A lot of people skipped the introduction to this one and think it's alien devotional art. Nobody prays in public over this one, though a few people develop reflections from it. The dark/light personality magic concept gets picked up almost instantly as a Shirani** tool and a huge number of people do dark and light versions of their favorite reflections.*** Some confused people want to talk to the alien sects that are devotional to these particular Great Reflections and possibly join, if only on the internet?**** 

24. Basiland [Relationship Drama, Realistic Abuse, Dark, Happy Ending, Soft Science Fiction, Dark Erotica]

Woman is abused by her girlfriend, gradually comes to realize she's being mistreated and moves out. Dubiously consensual erotica scenes, but very realistic in its handling. 

This one has a lot of people stressed out! The reading parties around it get gradually tenser, the crowd hanging on the speaker's words in every sentence. A lot of these groups skipped lunch. The more intense abuse scenes result in a lot of hugs even between strangers, and the eventual hopeful ending releases a lot of tension. People cry. People internally swear to get their own physical copies. A lot of people are treacherously turned on but keep it to themselves in the crowds; some really dark sadistic erotica gets written where the abuse goes even further before the protagonist eventually escapes. There's some debate about whether to ban it because of Alien Relations but the idea of censorship gets fierce "no" responses and the moderators drop it. People ship the protagonist with all their favorite broken birds.***** Continuation fic gets written. 

10. Planet [Hard Science Fiction, Character Drama, Strong Characters, Vocational Literature, Terraforming]

Terraforming team has slice-of-life adventures developing an ecosystem. Heavy on scientific detail. Likely to sell well in Eravia. 

Everyone loves Snake Lady, though they can't really relate to her wanting to actually put real snakes everywhere. Animals are cool but you wouldn't want to live near them. The official merchandise plushies sell out, the snakes almost instantly; sales of shirts and mugs and so on are slower, but they eventually sell out as well. The terraforming detail nerdsnipes hundreds of Eravians and a fan wiki goes up once the wiki hosting software recovers. In Anadyne the appendixes and footnotes are generally skipped, while in Eravia they're generally read in full. A lot of Eravian atheists have what someone from another world might call "spiritual" experiences****** about the multiversal love of science and technology shown in the work.  

21. Olam [Nonfiction, Memoir, Alien Culture, Culture Clash]

Woman raised in an uncontacted tribe records her introduction to Hadarite culture. Strong, unique perspective on an alien culture. 

This one is a little less popular, but those who read it quickly grow to appreciate the protagonist and a small Sect forms around her as a Great Reflection overnight. A lot of people want more contact with Olam and especially the Hadarites. The wiki that collects information about the aliens is slammed with traffic viewing the page on Olam. Fanwork is quiet; again, there's a general feeling that it's weird to write fiction about real people, and the historical context on an alien world makes it really hard to do your research properly, which discourages people further. Everyone who's actually read it wants to represent Hadarite culture accurately. There are a few related pieces where someone writes themselves visiting the Hadarites, but nobody really reads them. 

19. Piecemeal [Historical Fiction, Alien Culture, Alien Religion, Mystery Cult, Coming-of-Age]

Teenager is inducted into a mystery cult that changes his life for the better. Features strong alien culture; will need cultural notes. 

Everyone is interested in alien religion, and the Anadynes are enthusiastic about it. The use of many names and identities is recognized as a Storyteller tendency of the Piecemeal aliens, and a few sects try to open diplomatic overtures. A major sect reflecting real and fictional inventors announces a performance of one of the described rituals in the book this evening, and gets a crowd of lay visitors participating, some of which go on to actually consider themselves Children of Daedalus as part of their spiritual identity. Continuation fics are popular. 

Supper comes around, and most of the groups have finished their first book. Most of them disband at this point, going their separate ways satisfied with having shared something significant, but a decent chunk (maybe a quarter) have a second book to read and decide to do so. These smaller, hardcore groups keep cafes open late into the night as they read more alien stories aloud; most places are willing to stretch their hours for the historic event, especially considering the crowd is paying. Most of them finally stop reading when everyone is too exhausted to parse the book anymore, late around three or four AM in the morning. Contact information gets exchanged for a couple of these groups, and people decide to meet up again and make a book club of it. People want to share access to their physical editions, and the festival atmosphere was lovely, and these people are cool and they want to meet them again...

Eventually, the immediate historic moment passes.

*The people who genuinely aren't interested are going about their jobs and generally continuing their daily lives. There's actually a good number of people (maybe as large as 50%) who have already read crappy translations of alien fiction and aren't that interested in more, or who aren't really into writing, and so on and so on; but they're not the ones who are participating in the reading parties. Heart's natives love conventions and festivals and this is a really good excuse, so a lot of people get roped in, especially since this is a genuinely historical moment and everyone wants to say they were there.
** Lit soul-flowering; the process of deliberately developing a Reflection in your own mind and distinguishing them from their original source. 
***Dark!SnowRose (chaotic gremlin) and Light!SnowRose (sweet bookworm) get a silly RPF selfcest fic written about them, but it doesn't go viral or anything, it just sort of exists.
****There's nowhere near enough alien internet access bandwidth yet to make this practical, but they sure are trying. 
*****Look it up on TVTropes.
******Heart's natives are generally quite prone to hypnotic phenomena and deep, moving emotional experiences. While spiritualists go out of their way to make these things happen, they're generally considered "normal" and not necessarily faith-based on Heart.

Silver Rose is having an interesting month.

First there was the fanmail to the publishing house. She was in no way expecting that she would get even one letter, but there's been a deluge. Nobody can get access to the alien authors directly right now because there's so little bandwidth, so she's the closest thing to someone responsible for the works on Heart. And people want to express their affection and happiness and joy. She hasn't dared to read any of it, so it's all stacked up in her office at the company. She's not coming in to work; people understand, and the company is ticking along quietly without her.

Then came the accusations. Some people are apparently unhappy about her decision to go with an Eravian artist for the front covers of the Heart editions. They feel that the original alien cover artists have been snubbed. She gives an interview explaining her reasoning and that it was solely a business decision intended to give the books a unified feel, speed publishing and make them recognizable; that produces a wave of defenders, but some people aren't convinced. There are flame wars on the internet. She hides in her house, doesn't go online and snuggles her Keeper a lot. 

She can't hide from taxes, though. There's a government letter in her mailbox informing her that she's stepped into Required Divestment (RID) territory with her recent personal profits. She is permitted to keep enough in investments to make her polycule set for life* and then the rest is to be taxed. RID legislation allows her to earmark her taxes for her personal causes (from this whitelist here) since she's considered to have materially contributed to the prosperity of Eravia and the world; she allocates a quarter to public art programs (noting to prioritize literature) and the rest to healthcare (noting to prioritize psychosis and cancer). She could probably do a better breakdown but she's kind of STRESSED right now, okay? 

An old photo of her from a company retreat gets posted on the internet, and then taken down, and then posted again, and then taken down again. Nobody actually recognizes her in her day to day life but then she isn't really venturing outside her house. Her address doesn't get published, thank all the goddesses.

People email her business email offering high fees to speak at the new alien book conventions. She turns them all down. She can barely look at her own fanmail, she's not going to be able to speak in front of a crowd. 

Weeks pass, and gradually the intensity subsides a bit. She feels safe to venture outside her house again (on her Keeper's arm, just in case.) She gets recognized and asked to sign a book. She does, because what else do you do in that situation? Her crappy signature gets posted to the internet and goes viral. More requests for her to speak at conventions come in. (She still turns them down.)

She looks at the huge stack of fanmail, and hires someone to sort through it on her behalf. She writes a form letter** that gets used for most of her responses. A few pieces of mail want to know how to get started in publishing as someone like Snow Rose; she writes personal responses to those ones. She has also been sent a ton of merchandise and fanwork for the alien books; she displays a couple of the best pieces and donates the rest to a local fanclub. 

The donation proves to be a bit of a mistake, because then the fanclub knows she's close by and starts sending her letters asking her if she'll drop by to see what they've done with the merch. She confers with her Keeper; she gently encourages her to try it. 

She's not so sure about that. 

*She was already close, as a top exec of a major publishing company, but now it's Official. 

**Dear Fan,
Thank you for your appreciation of the books that I published. I don't personally feel that I've earned your time; the credit should go to the alien authors who actually wrote what I helped bring to Heart. I'm honestly overwhelmed by the outpouring of support, so I'm afraid I can't write you a personal letter, but I hope this reply will bring a little happiness to your life. 

- Silver Rose 

Meanwhile, Crystal is having a great month. As the scout responsible for finding the alien books she gets a small finder's fee (less than a percent) on every sale. Normally this just gives her a small pay bump, but Everything She's Scouted Has Sold Out, and is likely to keep selling out for the rest of her lifetime. Plus her company stock has become ridiculously valuable overnight. She sells her membership in the company to a qualified fan who wants to start in publishing, and retires. 

She also gets a few pieces of fanmail, mostly from people who've actually worked in publishing and know the process. It's worth replying to them, so she does. 

Things are a little weird with her Earth for a bit - she has to reassure him repeatedly that it's okay for him to quit his government job, and write up projections of the sales to come, before he finally agrees that he can retire as well. But her polycule will be okay for at least twenty years. That's good enough for her. She wants to spend time with the people she loves. Scouting was a great job, but she'd rather have lazy days with lots of sex. 

The second printing gets published, and sells out. The public domain books' sales slow, but don't stop. SIlver Rose's publishing company goes through an interesting month as much of its senior staff sell their company memberships and retire, but enough staff are still onboard to keep the company printing money. The remainder of Crystal's scouting list is sold on to a second publishing company as the original one focusses its remaining capacity on the alien books it already has the licenses for. 

Fan conventions for the alien books continue, in both sacred and secular forms. An author interview comes back across the divide from Piecemeal and is messily devoured by the fans. Silver Rose still doesn't make a convention appearance. 

Elm turns over the flash-chip in two of his fingers, and plugs it into his computer. 

A list comes up, short descriptions of two dozen works. Then, in a second window, a data dump, with flags on the files marking them "yes", "no", or "maybe." 

He takes a deep breath, and stills his trembling fingers. He mouses over to the data dump, and scrolls. 

More alien works, unread by anyone on Heart. 

And a list from someone on his level, a fellow scout, who's already marked the first quarter or so of the file. 

He's going to need to go over everything again. Make his own decisions. Most of the good stuff will already have been pulled from the start of the file - ten of the works marked LISCENCED, the books everyone's already read - so it's time to start reading the data dump. There has to be more of the same quality, and he's going to find it. The work will continue. Heart won't be satisfied with only ten books. 

What more is in the slush pile?

Here's a crossover fantasy series about a group of 64 young adults from a wide array of settings who wake up in a sapient, magical library-slash-academy and are trapped there. The characters each bring some form of magic or powers from their respective worlds. They are tasked with surviving for four years so they can "graduate" and return to their respective worlds with new and more powerful magic. The academy itself is hostile, and produces a variety of threats both environmental and active each year. However, the primary challenge is the end-of-year exams, which test the students on magical knowledge (in particular, each other's magic systems,) and which pass only the top 50% of the class each year; the bottom half are turned into books by the library. Dead students are treated as having gotten a score of 0, so students are incentivized to kill each other to increase their chances of passing each exam. The magics brought by the various characters are not at all balanced against each other, and the characters also vary greatly in competence, but beyond these factors, it is difficult to tell which characters will die or fail and which will survive; some characters get more screentime than others but there are no clear primary protagonists. A fair amount of sex is implied but it occurs offscreen, and pairbonding is not a focus; everyone is too busy not dying. Death-school-magic-system-analysis-many-setting-crossover-fantasy is a popular enough combination of tropes to constitute its own genre. This series is an exemplar due to the variety of novel magic-and-power-classification systems studied and invented by the characters, a few of which are groundbreaking by Auderan standards and many of which are refinements of popular classification systems, and which have since entered common usage. The settings and characters involved are not actually from other works; the team of authors who worked on this series took great pride in its originality and scope, and there's a perceptible aesthetic that holds across the diverse settings. There are numerous appendices expounding on the settings and their magic systems. At the end of each novel, this information is included for all of the characters who have died, to minimize spoilers in the intended reading experience.

Here's a fantasy novel about a young wizard who steals a fallen star and embarks on a journey to return it to the sky. The protagonist is targeted by the setting's magocracy, who want to get the star back and exploit it for its magical properties. The protagonist's primary character traits are his curiosity, impulsiveness, and creativity. The star is sapient, and is depicted as naive, intelligent, alien, and adorable. The deuteragonist is a girl who has run away from a family of genetically modified mercenaries with superhuman physical abilities but drastically shortened lifespans. She joins the protagonist and the star on their journey and lends them her acute tactical intellect, her abilities in combat, and her well-honed paranoia. The deuteragonist never expresses vulnerability in an obvious way, but there is a lot of adorable cuddling and casual handholding. The featured magic system centers around sacrificing knowledge to evoke magical effects: to perform magic, a wizard focus on some area of their understanding of the world and figuratively "burns" it to power the effect. Efficiency of knowledge use scales with specificity, accuracy, and relevance of the knowledge used. Overdrawing on knowledge is easy and potentially disastrous, as it can not only undo years of study, but in extreme cases erase fundamental intuitions about the world that can't be easily relearned, such as a wizard's instinctive understanding of heat or gravity. This is played for horror, and depicted as one of the most awful things that can happen to a person ever. A central element of the setting is that anyone at all with significant scientific knowledge can perform magic, potentially to great destructive effect, and so the magocracy has outlawed literacy and study of the natural world among the populace. The novel ends with somewhat abruptly with the main characters overthrowing the magocracy. The characters dealing with the resulting chaos, implementing a better way to deal with the dangers of magic, studying sufficient astrophysics to return the star to the sky, and studying sufficient biology to save the deuteragonist from dying in her 30s is implied to be the plot of one or more sequels. This novel is notable for having been written by a particularly young author, whose style is a bit unrefined in a way that many Auderan readers find refreshing. It's also an example of a work with less heavy magicbuilding.
 
Here's a series of relatively short novels about magical girls whose powers each revolve around conjuring and manipulating some class of ordinary manufactured objects, and who must fight monsters that appear in extradimensional fake nightmares to survive. The protagonist's powers are themed around measuring instruments. Her conjures aren't very scary in combat, but each magical girl has a mental power as well, and hers is highly potent: anything she can perceive with her senses, she can perceive with absolute precision, and she can also move her body with perfect precision and imagine distances and motion in space with precision. Early in the story, she is mentored by a magical girl who can conjure springs in arbitrary states of compression or tension. Before meeting the main character, she had been acting conservatively and laying low, but she takes on more monster fights to support the protagonist, as magical girls depend on dream marbles dropped by the monsters for sustenance. In the third chapter of the first book, she dies, and this spurs the main character on to be more self-reliant and agentic despite her offensively weak powers. Besides the necessary conflict with the nightmare monsters, there is a lot of conflict and combat between magical girls over hunting territory and the limited supply of dream marbles. There are around 20 magical girls who are introduced at various points with interesting powers. The most prominent characters besides the protagonist are a sadistic cleaning supplies-themed magical girl who fights with devastating gases and corrosive industrial cleaning agents, a happy-go-lucky balloon-themed magical girl who can conjure arbitrarily pressurized balloons which create pressure explosions, and a recordings-themed magical girl who acts as a mastermind and foil to the protagonist due to her similarly potent mental power. The second book revolves around a conflict with the sadistic cleaning supplies girl, and by the end the protagonist wins her over by outsmarting her in their cat-and-mouse game and begins to pairbond-date her. The third book revolves around the two of them taking care of and training the balloon-themed magical girl, whose power initially appears useless; there are clear parallels with the beginning of the first book. The fourth book is implied to escalate the conflict between the protagonist's party and the recordings girl mastermind, who has been exploiting other magical girls for dream marbles, but it hasn't been released yet. 

A bildungsroman about a teenage girl who desperately wants to be an ICU nurse but cannot reliably perform tasks which those around her occasionally observe to require much lower executive function than being any kind of nurse; she spends much of the book struggling to reliably perform a set of household chores which have come to represent her difficulties in her mind, culminating in a nervous breakdown at the climax of the book, after which she spends a lot of time in talk therapy coming to terms with her limitations and her options. She spends part of the time she is dealing with her frustration experiencing the urge to self-harm, which she resists. Her problems are at one point exacerbated when she overhears her parents commenting on how if she just set her standards lower then she would be fine, which she resents and resists. 

A romance novel set in a world where everyone is magical beings who have a very specific body type which is probably the author's fetish; it includes bird wings and bug eyes and unconventional arrangements of body fat. The book is about a boy and a nonbinary magical being spending about the first third of the book in will-they-won't-they relationship development and then the latter two-thirds being adorably romantic together and supporting each other as they work through their personal issues. 

An educationalfictionpiece about a pair of engineers in a science fiction setting who have to fix the space station they live on using a lot of technology that is postulated to exist, the workings of which aren't gone into excessive detail about but the mechanics of working with which are; they use complicated calculus to determine what the problem is and how they should fix it, and probability theory to determine how likely various possible solutions are to work, and various other fields of math to handle other aspects of the situation, and also to solve non-crisis-related problems during slower parts of the book. It is mentioned offhand at several points that the two engineers are queerplatonic metamours both married to a botanist but the botanist doesn't get a lot of screentime and the book focuses much less on the romantic aspects of the situation than with the engineers' friendship and the space station crisis.

A traditional isekai novel, with the main character having an even more traditional harem aura, with the main focus of the book being after the "Demon Lord" was defeated of the endeavour of trying to transmit the body of literature they discovered, and the awkwardness of going through the publishing industry with a relatively fixed product. It's very focused on the experience of loneliness after the rush of a simple love, and wistfully wrought. 

The seminal work of the temple - the words of the goddess incarnate, or so they say. It's considered tradition, back in hearthome, for those who aspire to divinity* to avoiding reading sections of the book, and rederive the rest with the imprint** of the light left on them through their studies. It depicts a woman, never described save in her beauty and grace, who studied each and every craft with of the world. 

She studied oratory, and swept nations off their feet, and spun a new theory of persuasion and learning-virtue-internalization***, and then left the field to her students, for there were things that simple words alone could not solve. 

She studied music, and formed an institution of art, appreciation and communion through wherever she went, and left the field for her students, for there were higher harmonies in the world then those of simple song. 

She studied mathematics, and brought an age of reason and comprehension and cooperation and left the field for her students, for there were things higher then merely knowing of the course of nature. 

She studied science, and brought a world of miracles and marvels and left the field for her students, for there were things higher then that which even she could casually explore. 

Throughout, there's constant dialogues about the nature of virtue and value, texts of adoration and admiration, in and out of the bedroom, in each and every field of endeavour. It's considered to be the definitive work of morality, emphasizing the virtues of service, exaltation of the self through doing things impressive and grand for what you are and what you've been, of the importance of charm and the value of concordance, of ensuring each creation is something that will follow the purpose of it's design.  

Most citizens of Hearthome think of themselves as being, amongst other things, partially her, distilled and diluted both, the mortal remnants of the goddess who's light shall shine upon all of creation, in time, and the priesthood and much of the executive power of the goverment is designed around a complicated process around ensuring alignment to the will of the goddess, both in service and soul-self.****

There are millions of versions, each made throughout years and years as a matter of utmost devotion, but the methods work, they will tell you, and the words here are amongst the truest and most divine*. 

There's a series of footnotes and side resources for those who are known to have certain psychological reactions to it! Psychosis is a known problem, and these things are known to help and cancel out most of the spiral in the vast majority of people who would otherwise suffer from it, here's some resources and meditation methods in case other sources of value become suppressed that can help you work through that. 

*Lit "Alignment-with-Her-Guiding-Light". 

**A phenomenon considered deeply related and intertwined with 'plurality' but notionally distinct, as part of something more profound then mere identification or identity, but participation in the ideal. 

***lit. 'indoctrination', though the entire process is intrinsically voluntary and has a very positive connotation. 

****lit. 'self-beyond-revelation', upon which there are not further truths to derive that would modify the conclusion, the results and essential nature of the thing being described. 

A thick fantasy novel about a humble schoolboy in a time loop trying to save the world from an apocalyptic magical threat, with a central looping character whose willpower focus is - to save everyone, all their stories, all the people he doesn't know and will never know - because their loss is simply unacceptable. The magical powers rely on depth of emotion and willpower, and though he constantly attempts to save the world the stress and isolation of looping leads him to despair. He notices himself growing less powerful as he gets wearier, and has a crisis of faith. Will he really be able to save the world? What's the point, if he keeps deleting a year's worth of memories from billions of people? The loop would end if he simply saved as many as he can and fled the planet - a million, two million perhaps. His friends, who he knows far better than they know him thanks to the looping, can't seem to reassure him or understand what he's going through. He could just give up... But that would condemn countless others to oblivion, and break something that should never be broken. That would be *giving up*. He prays, a concept of desperation and even foolishness to Planet. He thinks and thinks. He cries and wallows in his emotions. And eventually, he hits on an insight that lets him bring others into the loop, but only his closest friends, one per loop. After that things seem to slowly get better, as if victory is inevitable - the light at the end of a long tunnel, distant but visible. He's - honestly kind of more miserable than before, subjecting his friends to the same torment, even as they reassure him that this is what they want. Even as the reality of the end becomes clear again and again. Several times, the narrative and tone build up to a great climax - spending a lot more detail on this particular clever solution and why surely we will win this time - only to be forced to loop again. And again. And again. Until, only halfway through the work, nowhere near where one would expect the real climax and in a scene paced just like the past failures- He succeeds, escaping the loop and stopping the world-ending dark miasma before it can consume more than a single city. The rest of the book is devoted to fleshing out side characters' arcs and the main cast's healing and rehabilitation. The final scene is in the same place as the very first scene - a flower garden on a ridge, looking out on a bustling city full of people going about their daily lives, with the boy looking melancholic towards the sunset.