Weekly Takeover

Left Unread Books, Michael LaBorn, • Jul 4 2025

Good morning! It is Friday. You know what that means!

We are taking over!

If you did not read my previous post about our weekly pre-order take-over, here is that article: leftunreadbooks.binderybooks.com/item/yAMZV3D9vTDNY3jthuNM/. Feel free to go give it a read if you would like to. But here is a quick summary:

• Pre-orders play a huge role in a book's early success
• Cry, Voidbringer comes out in less than four months, on October 28th
• Devil of the Deep comes out in nine months, on April 7th
• To help push these books towards commercial success, I am aiming for each book to reach at least 1,000 pre-sales

If you want to help us reach this goal, you can join us every Friday as we collectively attempt to flood social media with posts about these books and/or a call to pre-order them. I will provide graphics, talking points and excerpts regularly. And it would mean the world to me if this community would help us to really ensure these books succeed.

If you post a link for people to purchase from, obviously use whatever you'd like. It is available in plenty of indie bookstores, as well as all major retailers. I am primarily posting bookshop.org, and I add a new Black or brown bookstore to get commissions every week. If you have an affiliate account, I encourage you to use it. If you want to use my links, here they are:

• Cry, Voidbringer: https://bookshop.org/a/87137/9781964721521
• Devil of the Deep: https://bookshop.org/a/87137/9781967967049

Obviously, you do not need to use my graphics or talking points. I welcome your own creativity. But if you want some pre-developed content, here are some talking points and graphics you can use for each book today:

Cry, Voidbringer

Summaries:

• Cry, Voidbringer is an anarchist dark fantasy that challenges readers to wrestle with the cost of complicity in the face of tyranny and systemic injustice.
• Cry, Voidbringer is an anarchist story about powerful women who are fighting to resist tyranny, both from the colonial empire they are at war with, and the ruler who oppresses them in the name of her own liberation.
• Cry, Voidbringer is an anarchist dark fantasy about a conscripted warrior who was taken from her home and raised to be a soldier in someone else's war against a colonial empire. Now, decades later, she is being asked to train a child who has been gifted by the gods with supernatural power to become a weapon for that same army. A task she has no intention of honoring. But resistance means choosing between either fighting to reform a broken and corrupt system that never had her freedom in mind, or burning it all to the ground and seeing what rises from the ashes.

Talking points:

• This is an anarchist fantasy
• The story has conversations about colonialism and its impact on ethnic identity, the harm of complicity, and the inherent evil of empire
• This is a dark fantasy with very strong dystopian vibes
• The vast majority of early readers have loved this book so far

Graphic:

Devil of the Deep

Summaries:

• Devil of the Deep is a Haitian fantasy that follows a mermaid, a pirate, and a navy captain as they attempt to thwart an underwater cult's efforts to reshape the world in the image of their forgotten god.
• Devil of the Deep is a Haitian fantasy about a mermaid who must flee an underwater cult and band together with a notorious pirate and an ambitious navy captain to prevent the end of the world as they know it.

Talking points:

• It is Sapphic
• It has Black, queer, trans, and disabled representation
• It has conversations about colonial religion, imperialism, Black spirituality, and how systemic oppression actively disables us
• This book is a direct commentary on Christian nationalism and the harm it is doing to the real world

Graphic:

Thank you so much for showing up over and over again and I can't wait to see all of your content. Feel free to tag me. If you create any original content, please feel free to make me a collaborator. You can add my page and the Left Unread page. I will also throw everything I am tagged in into my stories. And if you are in the discord, we have a page for community action links, that is specifically for you to post links to these posts so that we can boost them as a community.

Let's get this done! Ahhh!!