2025: The Year in Review

As the holidays approach, it's time to review and celebrate what the Racket team and its clients have accomplished over the past twelve months.

The Star of the Show

The publication of our fifth title—Amanda Wick's The Catalysts: The Accelerating Forces Forging the New World Financial Order—serves as the year's highlight. The May release represented the culmination of 18 months of work. (Even better, I finally got to meet her in person a few weeks ago in Florida.)

I am especially proud of this timely release. As I write these words, Wick is putting the finishing touches on the audiobook.

RacketHub Improvements

Going into the year, RacketHub was already the best book-management system on the planet. (Yeah, I'm biased due to the IKEA effect, but that fact doesn't make me wrong.)

Hybrid publishers are not the same as publishing-service outfits.

I kept my foot on the pedal this year and added a bunch of useful functionality. Some changes stemmed from newly released Notion features. I also:

• Rewrote some modules to make them a tad more intuitive
• Added a library of training videos. (Tella rocks.)

New Website Underpinnings

In June, rock star Cathy Sarisky and I moved the Racket Publishing website from WordPress to Ghost. The switch made it far easier for Racket to adopt a subscription model. Read the lengthy post about it here.

Client Work

I've been able to help a few authors conceptualize their books. At present, I'm working with one on a forthcoming leadership text.

Blog Posts

I have penned 71 blog posts on this site since January 1, 2025. Many involved AI, of course. The Great Author Substack Question received the most hits, but my favorite articles include:

• The Incredulous Math Behind One Book's Amazon Reviews.
• On Gates, Books, and Priorities.
• Legacy Publishers' Shrinking List of Responsibilities.
• Is Your Book an Asset or a Liability?
• Author Mistake #1: Superfluous Word Repetition.
• On Author Contrivances.

New Notion Templates

I've released a few new ones to help existing and aspiring authors:

• AI Settlement Tracker.
• Simple Service Provider Evaluation Tool.

Meeting My Peers

In May, I headed to Minnesota for IBPA's annual PubU conference—the first time I attended. (Yeah, that's me on the front page of the website.) I enjoyed meeting many of my contemporaries, many of whom I only knew from our Slack workspace.

The docket included talks and panels about copyright law, AI, rising production costs, and the disturbing rise of book censorship efforts from an unhinged, hypocritical political party that ostensibly advocates free speech. Crazy times, to be sure.

AI and the Speed Conundrum

Legacy publishers have routinely struggled to beat the clock. AI only exacerbates their problem.

Racket PublishingPhil Simon

Looking Forward

A previous Racket client will be returning early next year to work on a second edition of her book. Beyond that, I suspect that our sixth title will arrive in the months ahead.