Our weekly literary news podcast, Literally This Week has reached 100 episodes! In order to celebrate, this week's episode will be recorded on video. It will be posted on Sunday to the aois21 YouTube channel in addition to it's regular release on Podomatic, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, Google Play, Tune In, and audio.aois21.com.
Once again, American Presidents at War by Thomas P. Athridge was aois21's bestseller, coming up with strong in person sales for the fifth straight month. This title is now available in eBook, paperback, and hardcover in an expanding market. It is one of the select titles you can now get at Novel Books in Clarksburg, MD, aois21's newest retail partner. We'll be announcing some events featuring Tom this summer and give readers more opportunities to hear the war trumpets call!
This month also continued a series of strong online sales for the sexual memoir, "Dating" as told by the Modern Whore by Aylin Vega. Since these sales have continued well above expectations, we decided to give a proper shout out, naming "Dating" as the bestselling aois21 eBook for January. Though not previously awarded, "Dating" is actually on a three-month win streak for strong eBook sales. With Aylin Vega expected to return to the podcast air waves soon, hopefully this streak will bring new listeners to the Modern Whore as her stories continue to be #BetterThan50Shades.
Interested to see what's got people shelling out the dough? Stop by the aois21 market today to join the crowd!
With the announcements last week of changes to our podcast lineup, and the third anniversary of the release of our first podcasts, Publish Me! and Passion on the Page, upon us, we have decided to take stock of our burgeoning podcast network. In order to do that, we are asking you, (yes, you!) the listeners to take a short survey on any or all of our podcast series. Even if you've only listened to one or are a diligent subscriber, your feedback will help make our shows better!
Click on the icons for each podcast to the right (or below depending on where you're reading this) and take a short 10 question survey. For your time, we will send you a promo code for 21% off at the aois21 market. The surveys will only be available during the month of February and the promo code is good through the end of March, so strike while the iron is hot!
We are happy to announce that Novel Books in Clarksburg, MD, is now stocking select aois21 titles! Located just off Interstate 270 near the Clarksburg Premium Outlets, this quaint bookstore is a must stop on any visit north of DC.
We are happy to partner with owner Pat Darby after meeting him at the Gaithersburg Book Festival and are eager to work with him on events featuring aois21 Creatives. Thank you, Pat, for your support of our authors and their stories!
If you've got a bookstore and are interested in carrying aois21 titles, contact us atoutreach@aois21.com!
aois21's audio offerings continue to grow in the new year. Many existing series are continuing, thanks to the strong work of aois21's Creatives and the generous support of our Patreon patrons. For those that haven't been keeping up, we wanted to make sure you were aware of some of the changes in our podcasting lineup.
First up, thanks to a profound run of inspiration, aois21 Creative Evan Tucker has been updating his history podcast, It's Not Even Past, weekly since the end of December. With each episode dropping on Thursdays, Evan has taken a unique look at the news, pop culture, and society through a historical view. Episodes are about 30 minutes long and have been growing in popularity each week.
In the meantime, his first podcast, Tales from the Old New Land is taking a break, while his educational series, History of the Symphony, has been building numbers with each monthly release. His planned second educational podcast, Modern Jewish Literature, was unfortunately cancelled due to poor attendance at the lectures. We are fortunate to work with Evan as he continues to create high quality content week in and week out.
Absent from our podcasting lineup for the past few months has been the sexuality podcast Sexed Vexed Perplexed, hosted by aois21 Creative Aylin Vega. After a twice-weekly release and weekly rerun on WDLS Internet Radio, Aylin decided to take the summer off and extended her sabbatical through the end of the year. We are happy to announce she will be returning to the airwaves, but in a new series with details to be announced. For fans of SVP, past episodes aren't going away, and be on the lookout for a special episode with Aylin announcing her new series, launching later this year.
Also launching soon will be a new podcast series hosted by aois21 Creative Deepan Chatterjee, Ph.D along with his wife, Shreyasi Deb, Ph.D. The series will focus on politics in the Maryland suburbs of DC with more details to be announced in the coming weeks. We are now busy contacting stakeholders in the local political scene for possible interviews and background information. Please contact us atoutreach@aois21.com if you have any input or want to help out.
We are also happy to announce the hiring of Gareth Phillips of Appomattox as an audio consultant providing audio engineering support to aois21 audio, assisting Zach C. Cohen, chief of audio production. Welcome to aois21, Gareth!
We're giving you a lot to listen to, and we hope you enjoy it! Be sure to visit audio.aois21.com and check out all of the great audio content we now have available!
aois21 had its best month of sales ever as in person sales of American Presidents at War by Thomas P. Athridge lead him to the sales lead for the final four months of the year, an narrowly beat out the previous sales leader, "Dating" as told by the Modern Whore by Aylin Vega. The two titles combined in December to give aois21 the highest number of units sold, along with free downloads of 48 Game Misconduct by Keith F. Shovlin.
As we spent the month encouraging readers to #GiveABook, the book community responded through our various distribution sites such as Lulu.com, Amazon, and iBooks. Bookstore orders were also high for American Presidents at War as more stores will be carrying on its shelves soon.
We were so happy with the turnout for the #GiveABook events that two of them will be continuing monthly as part of our partnership with Walls of Books in Washington, DC. Come on out on the First Friday of every month for Literary Game Night from 6 to 8 pm. Two weeks later, on the third Friday of the month, we'll be back with Poetry Open-Mic. Various aois21 Creatives will be taking part throughout the year either as emcee of the open-mic or participant in the game night. It's all happening in the Park View neighborhood, you won't want to miss it.
Furthermore, we have booked a new conference. The Possibilities Conference, headed up by our friends at the Possibilities Publishing Company, will be held April 7th in Falls Church, VA. We are happy to announce that we will be taking part in this unique addition to the literary calendar.
We have so much going on in the months to come and we can't wait to share it all with you! Remember to like and share these updates and check back atnews.aois21.com as more develops!
Check out our 2018 resolutions!
Read MoreIt has arrived! HIVE: A Matter of Gravity will be available this Friday in eBook and paperback! Join us at Walls of Books in Washington, DC, for the launch event from 6 to 8 pm. Author James D. King will read from his latest release and take questions from the audience. We'll be holding a cosplay contest and the best costume will win a prize!
Can't make it in person? We'll live stream the event not the aois21 Periscope feed and the book will be available on the aois21 market and everywhere books are sold!
We are happy to announce that American Presidents at War is now available in Hardcover! For just $35, you can pick up the built-to-last copy of Thomas P. Athridge's scholarly work. Available now from Lulu.com and the aois21 market. Find it soon on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and more!
We are also happy to announce an extra event as part of the #GiveABook campaign! We have partnered with Smashwords to offer a special rates to our fans! All aois21 eBook titles will be 25% off, but only for the last week of the month! From Christmas to New Years, you can get all of our titles for 25% off the price. In the case of titles previously sold for 99 cents, they will be free, for this week only!
Visit Smashwords.com to check it out pick up your copies of any of our great aois21 titles.
This is the final week to help bring Michael B. Judkins' vision to a new audience through the stage play Mercury Rising, adapted from his poetry collection, Interlude to Sentimental Me! The Indiegogo project has only raised 2% of its goal, which it must reach before next Friday, December 22nd.
Last week, Judkins announced on Facebook that Union Baptist Church - Brother Knoxley and the Youth Committee would be the first venue to host the play. With a venue booked, Judkins is scheduling a table read for January and is currently looking for actors for the performance. If you are interested, message Judkins through his Facebook page or the Indiegogo campaign.
Until then, show your support by donating to the campaign. We will be rolling out some special perks for this final week, including complete collections of aois21 titles and the chance for special appearances at aois21 events.
Check out the campaign today and donate!
The results are in and American Presidents at War continues to dominate in sales! November was one of aois21 strongest months for sales and it was close, but Thomas P. Athridge takes the crown once again.
American Presidents at War is now available in eBook and paperback with hardcover available soon. This past Wednesday, Athridge presented his work in a lunchtime Book Talk at the Library of Congress James Madison Memorial Building, sponsored by the Library of Congress Professional Association. Video from the event is now available on the aois21 YouTube Channel.
With so many great titles now available and more to come, visit the aois21 market today and #GiveABook this holiday season, or just get one for yourself!
aois21 has partnered with Walls of Books in Washington, DC for this year's #GiveABook Campaign, reminding you that when shopping for friend and family, #GiveABook. For this year's campaign we have put together four Friday night events with our friends at Walls of Books from 6 to 8 pm.
First up is this Friday night, where we will be part of Park View's First Friday festivities. It's Literary Game Night and the full roll out of the campaign. Play literary based games and win prizes. Wine and lite refreshments will be served. aois21 video will be recording live reactions and sharing them on the aois21 YouTube channel.
On December 8th, aois21 Creative Bianca Palmisano will be emceeing a poetry open mic night. All are welcome to take the stage and perform their original work! The event will be live streamed on the aois21 Periscope feed and then shared on the aois21 YouTube channel.
On December 15th, we have a panel discussion commemorating the 100th anniversary of America's entry into World War One. aois21 Creatives Thomas P. Athridge and Philip J. Sipkov will be joined by Margaret Wagner of the Library of Congress Publishing Office to share stories from the Great War. The event will be live streamed on the aois21 Periscope feed and then shared on the aois21 YouTube Channel.
The final event is December 22nd and we go out of this world with Sci-Fi Night. Come to Walls of Books in your favorite book or movie sci-fi costume as we release the third book in the HIVE series, HIVE: A Matter of Gravity by James D. King! King will be reading from his book and taking questions. The event will be live streamed on the aois21 Periscope feed and then shared on the aois21 YouTube Channel.
All of these events will be in addition to savings at the aois21 market! Find out more this Friday night at Walls of Books and visit events.aois21.com for more information!
The third book in the HIVE series by James D. King is here for the holidays! Preorder your copy as of Tuesday in eBook or paperback, just $3 for the electronic and $7 for paperback.
This is the latest entry in the sci-fi series that started two years ago with HIVE: First Contact. In this story, the Hive threat reaches deeper into the Earth Empire. Now all that stands in the way is the Space Navy manned by brave but young crews. Will the unlikely combination of an old space marine, tired of living, and a young naval ensign, fearful of dying, find a way to defeat the Hive and save humanity?
For the first time, we are releasing eBook and Paperback at the same time, as part of a launch event Friday, December 22nd from 6 to 8 pm at Walls of Books in Washington, DC. The event will feature a live reading from James D. King, as well as a costume contest! Come dressed as your favorite sci-fi character from literature or film and you could win!
Visit market.aois21.com for the next title, coming soon this holiday season!
aois21 is happy to announce the signing of Tommy Reynolds as an aois21 Creative. Tommy recently completed his first manuscript, the baseball epic currently titled The Game: Baseball & America Growin’ Up Together. This title will soon be available in paperback and eBook everywhere books are sold.
Liam Miller, the son of a wealthy and well-connected father in early 1700s Ireland, immigrates to America in 1732. Through connections and hard work he becomes prosperous, with each generation after him playing a pivotal role in significant events in America's early history. Succeeding generations embrace baseball, producing successive major leaguers. They play integral roles during four of the most crucial periods of baseball history: its origins in the 1870s, the Black Sox scandal into the roaring twenties, the civil rights era and the dawning of the Major League Baseball Players Union in the 1960s and 1970s, and the modern union of the late 1990s and today. Parallels are drawn from 1865 through today, depicting the rise of baseball as the national pastime coinciding with America becoming a world power.
Tommy Reynolds was born in New York City and raised in Long Beach, Long Island, seven houses from the beach. He attended Chaminade High School and Manhattan College, where he was a sports writer and co-sports editor of the school newspaper, The Quadrangle, covering the Jaspers basketball, baseball, and crew teams. He is an active racquetball player, softball player, and umpire, currently residing in bucolic Mendham, NJ with his three children.
Visit aois21.com now to find out more about Tommy and his upcoming title!
We'll be rocketing across Virginia this weekend as we bring out books, podcasts, and video series to you! Find us Friday at the Job Fun Fair in SpacesArlington from 3 to 8 pm. The new shared office space in Rosslyn, site of the old Artisphere and Newseum, is launching with this innovative job fair and networking event. aois21 will be showing off it's books and services and interview tech companies for the aois21 live series. To find out more, visitJobFunFair.com!
On Saturday, we head south to Charlottesville for the Charlottesville Book Fair. Sponsored by the Blue Ridge chapter of the Virginia Writers Club and organized by aois21 friend Carolyn O'Neal, the event will draw together independent authors and publishers from across the region. We'll be there from 10 am to 4 pm and we'd love to see you! Visit events.aois21.com for more information!
And there's more to come in the weeks ahead. Don't miss out!Busy weekend for aois21
It's a strong start for Thomas P. Athridge's American Presidents at War, taking the bestseller status for the second month in a row, the only two months its been available. For October it was strong sales of the just release paperback version that catapulted it to the top of the sales rank.
aois21 will be holding the official launch of the new title at the Library of Congress on November 29 at Noon in an event sponsored by the Library of Congress Professional Association. The one hour event will feature Athridge discussing his title and will take place in the Madison Building of the Library. Due to ethics restrictions, there will be no sales of the book at the event, so you will need to purchase a copy beforehand if you want it signed.
You can now order copies from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, in addition to the aois21 market. Copies can also be found at Walls of Books in Washington, DC, and can be ordered at any Barnes and Noble, Books A Million, or Amazon Books store.
To get your copy now, head on over to the aois21 market so you are ready for the 29th!
aois21 media is also announcing two new additions to its podcasting lineup, educational series from new aois21 Creative Evan Tucker both recorded as live classes.
History of the Symphony
Recorded at Grace Methodist Church in Baltimore, MD
The ability to hold a person's attention through music without text over a long span of time requires enormous contrasts, invention, discipline, and knowledge. A Symphony is an attempt to fuse the very best of extremely diverse elements of music and pay tribute to the millions of different sounds and forms and contents and cultures which music can show us. The Symphony is a musical democracy through which every kind and possibility of music's meaning is sounded together in dialogue with one another, and it's the ultimate musical, and perhaps even poetic, statement of a culture that means to live together in peace.
Modern Jewish Literature
Recorded at Beth Am Synagogue in Baltimore, MD
Books by Jews and about Jews, their relationships to other Jews, to gentiles, to their communities, to their Jewish communities, and to the community of nations. Kafka, Babel, Aleichem, Singer, Bellow, Malamud, Roth, Ozick, Grossman, Oz, Levi, Wiesel – they’ll all be there, ready to kvetch and kibbitz their ways into your souls and help you live more interestingly, more meaningfully, more Jewishly.
The podcasts are being hosted by Podomatic and will be available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, Google Play, TuneIn, and at audio.aois21.com. These will be the ninth and tenth podcasts in the aois21 podcast network, and will be released monthly.
These podcasts will soon be available at audio.aois21.com.
Definition of Creative expanded to embrace new media
Mount Vernon, VA – aois21 media, LLC announced today the signing of Evan Tucker as an aois21 Creative. Tucker has been working with aois21 over the past few months on his audiobook Tales From the Old New Land, being released as a podcast series.
In aois21’s transition into an independent media company, the decision was made to expand the definition of Creative beyond writers. Tucker is the first such Creative as all of his work is being output through audio production. While Tales From the Old New Land is Tucker’s primary project, he is also working on the history podcast It’s Not Even Past, and is currently recording a to limited-run educational podcasts, launching soon.
Evan Tucker is a columnist for the Baltimore Jewish Times and holds a degree with University Honors in music composition from American University. For six years he was director of the chorus: Kol Rinah, at Chizuk Amuno Congregation, and is currently working on a project in which he composes music for all 150 Biblical Psalms. He is the lead singer of the band: Schmear Campaign, which is Baltimore’s only band to play songs whose lyrics are exclusively in Yiddish. Evan Tucker says, "If you're listening to this podcast, I would imagine you're here because you're already quite fond of music, but you also want to understand more about it. What's most extraordinary about music is that it can be enjoyed as music, but we can also associate as many concepts with music as the human mind can conceive. The reason that music has such a universal appeal for so many people is that it has this dual-concept, it can both be appreciated as nothing more than pleasant sounds, and that these pleasant sounds have infinities of meanings behind them.
“Evan brings some much-needed humor to the aois21 stable, and we’re thrilled to welcome Him,” said Corey Parker, aois21’s chief of publishing. “He’s a perfectionist and won’t settle for anything less than a perfect product, and he metes out levity and gravitas in equal measure.”
After months of work by aois21 Chief Technology Officer Joshua Silberman, the newaois21.com has launched this week. This new site is built around the three parts of aois21 media: audio, video, and publishing.
Right from the front page you'll see our wide-ranging focus in view as the front gallery features the three attributes that make up our company. Under aois21 video, all of aois21 video series now have their own full pages with embedded episodes from YouTube.
Under aois21 audio, all eight of our podcast series are presented in a user-friendly format, allowing easy access to past episodes and ways to reach out. Each page also includes links to the Patreon page for aois21 and our pages on Advertisecast so you can support the network through sponsorship or advertising.
Click on the aois21 publishing image for a gallery of all aois21 titles linked to the aois21 market. The updated Creatives pages also include links to the other places across the web where you can order our titles.
More updates will be made as the site moves along. In the meantime, please take a look and feel free to email outreach@aois21.com if you find any problems!
Thomas P. Athridge - Excerpt
Donny Barilla - Poetry
Mat Byerly - Short Story
Rana Gainer - Art
Daniel Goodman - Short Story
L.S. Engler - Short Story
Michael B. Judkins - Poem
Eftichia Kapardeli - Poetry
James D. King - Excerpt & Short Story
Meghan Mrla - Poetry
Simon Perchik - Poetry
Paul Dickinson Russell - Excerpt
Gerard Sarnat - Poetry
Keith F. Shovlin - Video & Excerpt
Adam Wallick - Photography
After teasing it in last month's edition of the I Stand podcast, we are launching a crowdfunding campaign this Saturday through Indiegogo to help bring Michael B. Judkins' poetry to the stage.
Over the past year since it's release, Judkins has expanded his vision for his second poetry collection, Interlude to Sentimental Me! He hired a scriptwriter and began formulating a plan to bring a section of the book Mercury Rising to a wider audience.
This 60 day crowdfunding campaign hopes to raise $10,000 for a stage performance of the production. The cost would cover the rental of the space, the hiring of cast and crew, costumes, and other incidentals.
As rewards, you can receive producer credit, as well as copies of Interlude to Sentimental Me! and goodie bags from aois21 and Oct14 Publishing and Creative Services, Judkins company.
Judkins will be giving audio updates to the campaign on I Stand as well as progress reports through Facebook and Twitter. The whole campaign wraps just before Christmas, when it will have the possibility for InDemand funding to gain ongoing support.
Check news.aois21.com and Judkins' page on the aois21 website this Saturday for the links, and let's bring this production to life!
