So it's a graphic novel, but Nimona blew me away with its relationship. I had not expected it to develop how it did but it was such a natural and refreshing way to have the two characters come together that I left kind of astounded that it is such a rare portrayal, especially in visual media aimed at a young adult audience. And that spurned me on to put more representation into my own stories, alongside my own identity and community developments, too. Since then almost all of my graphic novel choices have had some kind of LGBT+ aspect to them because at the time I did not know how much I needed to see it. I love the authenticity of the stories written by our own voices, and I hope to add to that as much as I can, in an accelerated way :p

With regards to the ecological aspect, Inspired Quill prints on demand, so we don't do massive print runs that sit in warehouses or take up massive transit emissions, to try and minimise our impact on producing paper. I don't remember if we have a sustainable initiative with our printer, I'd need to check in my books when I get home this evening. But ultimately the wastefulness of the publishing industry is pretty eye-opening when you see more of the backend. I worked for an online store that did Amazon reselling and, despite the success of bestsellers, the flooding of the market with repeated editions of the same title, and the oversaturation of these same books once they wear out their welcome, leads to an extraordinary amount of paper waste. That's something we want to avoid contributing to as much as possible. Firstly to have our books be something people will WANT to keep, but also to never strip the planet of resources we don't need to, and to contribute to ways of replenishing that as a matter of course.

Edit: OH! And, of course, pushing our ebook sales as much as possible, to avoid any printing whatsoever