Oh wow, I had no idea that was such a challenge that must have been incredibly frustrating, especially when larger companies couldn’t help. It’s amazing that you turned that gap into something useful for others who speak Valencian and other underrepresented languages. That must have felt incredibly rewarding to create.
Thanks, Roxi. It was less a decision than a slow inevitability. You hit enough walls and eventually you stop knocking and start laying your own bricks. Valencian deserved better tools. It still does.
"They mean something else. Something more visible."
Sadly, you're probably very right on this. Usually underrepresented to them is non-white and/or non-western authors. Unless you made a concerted effort to express your "Mediterranean experience" then maybe they might see you, haha.
While this project might not be as helpful to me, my husband and father-in-law, who is native Mexican, will likely find this useful when I share it with them. So thank you!
Thank you, Siobhan. The “Mediterranean experience” line made me laugh — in publishing, that usually means someone’s Tuscan memoir, not an actual Mediterranean writer trying to get his language to show up in a search result. Thank you for sharing it with your family. That’s genuinely what the tool is for — real readers looking for books in their actual language.
PS: — maybe I should lean into the “Mediterranean experience” angle. Olive trees, sea breeze, existential dread.
I was just using the language publisher so love to use. You know, “the immigrant experience”, “the black experience”, “the trans experience”, etc. But I guess the “Mediterranean experience” does sound more touristy, haha.
And it is a dreadful thing to walk under a olive tree once its olives have dropped. Squish-squish!
Oh, I know the formula well. The [adjective] Experience: always capitalised, always on the cover blurb. And yes, the olive tree thing is real. Nobody warns you about that. You think Mediterranean and picture white stone and blue sea. The reality is stained shoes and wasps (and more languages that anyone can imagine).
Very cool project. I am a software dev as my day job and always appreciate when people solve real world problems with technology instead of creating more fluffy garbage
Appreciate that. The world has enough apps that solve problems no one has. This one started with a very specific frustration: I couldn't find books in my own language. Turns out, neither can most of the planet."
Oh wow, I had no idea that was such a challenge that must have been incredibly frustrating, especially when larger companies couldn’t help. It’s amazing that you turned that gap into something useful for others who speak Valencian and other underrepresented languages. That must have felt incredibly rewarding to create.
Thanks, Roxi. It was less a decision than a slow inevitability. You hit enough walls and eventually you stop knocking and start laying your own bricks. Valencian deserved better tools. It still does.
"They mean something else. Something more visible."
Sadly, you're probably very right on this. Usually underrepresented to them is non-white and/or non-western authors. Unless you made a concerted effort to express your "Mediterranean experience" then maybe they might see you, haha.
While this project might not be as helpful to me, my husband and father-in-law, who is native Mexican, will likely find this useful when I share it with them. So thank you!
Thank you, Siobhan. The “Mediterranean experience” line made me laugh — in publishing, that usually means someone’s Tuscan memoir, not an actual Mediterranean writer trying to get his language to show up in a search result. Thank you for sharing it with your family. That’s genuinely what the tool is for — real readers looking for books in their actual language.
PS: — maybe I should lean into the “Mediterranean experience” angle. Olive trees, sea breeze, existential dread.
I was just using the language publisher so love to use. You know, “the immigrant experience”, “the black experience”, “the trans experience”, etc. But I guess the “Mediterranean experience” does sound more touristy, haha.
And it is a dreadful thing to walk under a olive tree once its olives have dropped. Squish-squish!
Oh, I know the formula well. The [adjective] Experience: always capitalised, always on the cover blurb. And yes, the olive tree thing is real. Nobody warns you about that. You think Mediterranean and picture white stone and blue sea. The reality is stained shoes and wasps (and more languages that anyone can imagine).
Hey, you could give them the REAL “Mediterranean experience”: dancing around fallen olives and swatting away wasps. 😁
Very cool project. I am a software dev as my day job and always appreciate when people solve real world problems with technology instead of creating more fluffy garbage
Appreciate that. The world has enough apps that solve problems no one has. This one started with a very specific frustration: I couldn't find books in my own language. Turns out, neither can most of the planet."