Podcast
Narrative Decay
Co-founders Rebekah and Seth discuss the woes — and wins — of the publishing industry, fiction, modern entertainment, and the dawn of new media.
- Ep. 04
Are We Crossing a Line?
What happens when the least bookish person on the Lion team also has the spiciest TikTok? Not spicy like smut. Spicy like anti-smut. Rebekah Edwards and Seth Cordle sit down with Hayla, Lion's social designer, whose very first TikTok was her testimony and drew heat from both the LGBT community and Christians, telling her "Jesus made you this way." They get into being bold online without chasing clicks, cross-in-the-bio Christians who bully in the comments, true hot takes versus heresy, and why Rebekah is done wearing rainbow glasses to blend in (she's taking back "spicy" and the rainbow, too). Then it's the book space: why "girls only want smut" is insulting to women, why "non-consensual" as a selling point isn't spicy, it's rape, and why that stuff has no business in the YA section. Plus, the pro-life post TikTok quietly capped, and Hayla's beach read where the guy was dead the whole time. Big picture: we shouldn't govern what people read, but we can change what they're fed. We're flooding the market with better options, and if what we make sucks, we'll fail. If we're right, we won't.
Listen → - Ep. 03
Is "Based" Publishing Harmful?
We ask whether building books for an underserved audience means we're excluding everyone else — a question a drive-through conversation somehow turned into an existential crisis. We get into politics as religion, boycotts, age-appropriate books, and why "I don't want to read that" gets treated as a character flaw. Then: why we don't call Lion a Christian publisher, and why we want good stories from across the spectrum rather than another bubble.
Listen → - Ep. 02
We Need a Better Book Rating System
Why do films have endless rating systems, but books get almost none? We get into the difference between content warnings, trigger warnings, and content details, why “only 6% smut” is still a lot of smut, why sexual content often hits differently on the page than on the screen, and why readers should be able to know what they’re picking up before they’re already attached to the characters.
Listen → - Ep. 01
The Decline of Good Story Telling
Lion Publishing launches this fall with three debut novels, three wildly different speculative worlds, and one very stubborn refusal to make “Let Us Hear Your Roar” the podcast title. (That's Rebekah, because she thinks it's a stupid title, SETH!)
Listen →
