[00:00:01.460] - Sunyi
Hi, I'm Sunyi Dean.

[00:00:03.120] - Scott
And I'm Scott Drakeford.

[00:00:05.300] - Sunyi
And this is the Publishing Radio Podcast. In 2022, we both launched debut novels in the same genre with the same publisher in the same year. But despite having very similar starts, our books and subsequently each for careers went in very different directions.

[00:00:21.480] - Scott
That pattern repeats itself throughout the industry over and over. Why do some books succeed while others seem to be dead on arrival? 

[00:00:30.350] - Sunyi
In this Podcast, we aim to answer these questions and many more along with how to build and maintain an author career.

[00:00:38.000] - Scott
Everyone signing a contract deserves to know what they're really signing up for. In an industry that loves its secrets, we'll be sharing real details from real people. We'll cover the gamut of life as a big five published author from agents to publishing contracts, finances, and more. Welcome to The Publishing Rodio, the best, worst podcast in the world. We have with us, Wes Chu, author of... Those are some very impressive stretches, Wes.

[00:01:13.670] - Wesley
Let's roll this party.

[00:01:15.090] - Scott
Author of most recently, The Art of Prophecy. And Wes, I'll hand it to you to give your own intro and maybe give us an overview of your publishing journey. And then we've got some specific questions because we've done at least a little bit of homework. And we even have some viewer questions, I guess, listener questions, because we don't do YouTube that have been submitted ahead of time. So, yeah, give us the condensed version of who you are and what you’ve done.

[00:01:43.590] - Wesley
Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. My name is Wesley Chu. I am the author. I think I'm at 13 books now. I debuted in 2013 with The Lives of Tau with a small press called Angry Robot Books. Since then, I have written for Tor, I've written for Saga, and I'm now currently with Del Ray Books. I've had the full spectrum of... And I do have a little bit of self-pub stuff, so I've done a little bit of everything. I've seen contracts. I think I've signed about six or seven contracts now since I've started out. They started in four figures, and the most recent one is in the six-figure range.

[00:02:30.270] - Sunyi
I remember when your book came… Well, I remember seeing it, actually, because I submitted to an angry robot one in 2016, one of their open windows and I think one of their poster child is like, Oh, here's the one we picked from the slush. Lives of Tau, Wesley Chu.

[00:02:47.670] - Wesley
I will say this. The Lives of Tau, honestly, and it was a great place to start and a small press. It was a small press, so the advances weren't big, their budget was limited, but they were punching above their weight. They had great distribution. Honestly, it was a great place to start when you're a debut author. Obviously, you don't get the big contract. I think The Lives of Tau advanced about $4,000, and even worse, the royalty rate was about 5%. But saying that, it came out mass market, which means it came out at a lower price point for physical. The book earned out in about a week.

[00:03:28.140] - Sunyi
Holy shit, dude.

[00:03:29.340] - Wesley
Well done. Since then, I think it's sold probably upwards closer to six figures. Six figures of, I'm sorry, 100,000 copies now. I actually don't know. I stopped keeping track after a few years, but it was climbing towards that number.

[00:03:46.210] - Sunyi
That's really decent.

[00:03:47.720] - Scott
Yeah. And I mean, so being that it was a slush pile book, a small upfront contract and a small publisher. Is there anything that you noticed specifically besides the good distribution and the good price point for a debut author in Physical, is there anything that really worked or was it just happenstance that you found the right crowd of people who really connected with your books? What happened there?

[00:04:18.420] - Wesley
Look, man, I'll be honest. I had my 10-year anniversary earlier this year, and I still don't know what sells books. You want me to be honest? I don't know why that book blew up. I actually didn't think it would blow up at the time. One of the first lessons I learned in publishing was when I first got the cover for The Lives of Tau, it was this really bright yellow book with black silhouettes. I absolutely hated it. You're a debut author. I wanted art. I wanted all those beautiful pictures that I saw on the cover, so I just hated it. And then it's what worked. It goes to show I am not a subject matter expert on marketing and cover design. One of my first lessons was there are a lot of things that go into the production of a book that I just wasn't aware of. Ego and what personal dreams aside, what they did was brilliant and much better for the book than I could have ever come up with. That might have been one of the factors is it was a very original cover that just popped out on the bookshelf in a sea of pretty pictures.

[00:05:30.120] - Sunyi
So this is something we ask a lot of people. What did you know about the industry when you went in? Because you came in from banking, I think, which is a very business-oriented career. And then here's publishing.

[00:05:42.080] - Wesley
So that's the funny thing is I was a dummy back then, and I didn't do any research. For some reason, I came from IT background, but for some reason, I never bothered to look online for resources. I eventually stumbled upon Absolute Rights sub-form. That's been a great resource for me in terms of querying, in terms of learning about parts of the industry, learning about genre, learning about word count. But that was really the only research I did. I wrote the book... I wrote a low fantasy in 2005, which fantasy is always been my dream. Then I wrote my first book, It's 180,000 words. It was a terrible book. Then in many ways, it was the most important book I've ever written because I really made all my mistakes there. After a year of the book not going anywhere, I trunked it, got drunk for a week, and then wrote the next book, which became The Lives of Tau. That was in 2007. Then I took a two-year hiatus after I wrote the book because I was raiding World of Warcraft, as you do. I was a raid leader in the number one guild on my server.

[00:06:50.820] - Wesley
We were big time back then.

[00:06:53.020] - Sunyi
Yeah, that was a- Yeah, big time sink.

[00:06:55.040] - Wesley
I will say this. You will not have any better experience of becoming a middle manager than running a guild of 150 kids and old people. An entire spectrum of people who are all after fat loops. I, as the recruiting officer, was the gatekeeper. I learned so much managerial skill of doing that. I didn't get paid for it, but whatever. After I know about the World of Worldcraft days, I brushed the Engie Robot open submission of 2012. They had that open submission. I found out absolute right. For that one month in April, anyone can submit to them. I submitted the lives of tell. At the end of the day, they had 9 and 5 submissions. Out of those 9.55, I think they asked for partials from 65, fulls from 25 or 24. Then out of those, five people got deals, and I was one of those five. That's amazing. It's like publishing.

[00:07:55.500] - Scott
Through Doberman. At risk of soliciting comments are not quite kind. How did the other four do from that batch of five?

[00:08:05.540] - Wesley
I heard from someone else many, many years later, and I'm not sure if it's true, but it did came from an ex-employee of Angle Robot that throughout their entire run up to 2017 or 2018, only two of their books were profitable, and I was one of the two.

[00:08:24.140] - Sunyi
Was the other one, Jeanette Ng's books?

[00:08:27.180] - Wesley
I'm not sure that number was accurate because I know... Actually, I don't think it was. I think it might have been Remesnam, and there are a few others, but I'm not sure how accurate that number is, but it's basically one of those... That's how publishing is. There's tent poles and then there's a lot of gambles, and most of the gambles don't.

[00:08:47.220] - Sunyi
Pay out. Yes, moving on from Angry Robot, how then did you get an agent after that point? And how did you branch out from there?

[00:08:53.820] - Wesley
When Angry Robot first offered me the contract, the first thing I did was I went to my top few agents with the contract in hand. Then that's how I got my current agent, Russ Galen. Even then, even with me saying, Let me give you money, he gave me a little interview, talked to me for two hours. Because a good agent wants to walk that journey with you. It's a long-term relationship. If they just want to negotiate that first contract for you, that's not what an agent should be doing. I've been with Russ for 10 years now, and so it's been a really good relationship. That's probably one of the better ways to get an agent. Obviously, flush pile is hard, but if you have a contract in hand, you automatically get bumped up to their reading pile. Russ has Diana Gabidon and the Crawdads book. I'm more like a hobby for him.

[00:09:45.030] - Sunyi
Oh, he's got Crawdads. Holy shit.

[00:09:47.030] - Wesley
Sorry. He's got Crawdads, man. He's got Crawdaz money.

[00:09:50.440] - Scott
I was going to say those of us who sign small deals are probably a lot more work for our agents than we're worth. I'm very conscious of that when I'm-.

[00:10:02.940] - Wesley
Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[00:10:05.540] - Sunyi
So you're keeping them on their toes. Go on.

[00:10:08.320] - Scott
Yeah. In a rare fit of positivity for me, on this show, I am a huge fan of my agent, Matt Bieler. Couldn't be happier with him. Just an amazing person.

[00:10:22.120] - Wesley
If you're listening, Matt, there's your shoutout.

[00:10:26.270] - Scott
Yeah. We'll see if he gets through to episode whatever this is. It looks like just going through your list of books, not only are you incredibly prolific, which I want to talk about in a minute, but it looks like your book with Tor, so Time Salvager, came out just six months after the third tow book came out from angry robot. So Sonia and I obviously were in a little bit different situation. She's in a very good situation. I'm in a tenuous situation. But we're both in our first contracts, almost to the point where we're looking to strategize on our next. How did you go from that first to that second? What was your strategy? How did you end up with Tor instead of angry robot? Interview, can you walk us through that?

[00:11:17.030] - Wesley
The thing about angry robot is my initial contract was for a two-book deal. By the time the first book came out, the second book was already in the can. Because they're small press, small press have the ability to be a bit more nimble. They basically pushed out book two towards the end of that year. And around early 2014, January 2014, I had just gotten laid off by my company, my Bank of America. I had a job offer the next day from Chase. That's at that moment where I sat down and went, My writing career is doing well, but even though I wasn't making a lot of money, but it shows that maybe I have some of the chops to take to actually make a career out of it. I made a deal with my wife and she was like, Look, you're going to have two years to make something of yourself or you're getting a job. I wrote two books a year for three, four years because I really just hated working. That was my motivation was I really hated my job. Sorry.

[00:12:18.740] - Scott
What exactly did you do? Just out of curiosity, because I really hated my job as well.

[00:12:23.600] - Wesley
I was a computer science major. I was an internet architect in a large financial institutions, and I was just working. The technology I worked at was good for insurance, financial institutions, banks. It wasn't even cool technology. It was more middleware, tedious stuff. I'll be honest, I sucked at it. I was not good at being a software engineer. I was not good at IT. In a way, thank God I found publishing because I am now unemployed. I have nothing to fall back on except for my ass if my publishing ever fails.

[00:13:09.690] - Scott
Desperation makes for good motivation.

[00:13:13.120] - Wesley
Desperation was my motivation. I think what happened was after the two-book deal, Angry Robot wanted to finish the trilogy. It was a very successful series for them. We negotiated getting my foreign rights back from them as part of the third book, and I immediately was looking to move to a big five publisher. One of my strategies early on, which was very effective for me was I went to a dozen conventions in 2012 before I was even published. I went to even more in 2013. Because I was new to the industry, I just came in hard at every single literary convention out there. World-con, World-Fantasy. I was at Reader-Con. I just hit them off. Because I came from a day job background, I had the resources to just go to every single convention, go to pay my own dime to do that. It really helped. Networking is always a very intangible thing when it comes to publishing. You just don't know we're going to get out of it. You don't know if it's worth all that, what you're putting into it. I have a very direct correlation between that moment in 2012, 2013 when I was networking and actually getting something out of it.

[00:14:25.110] - Wesley
In 2013, World fantasy was in Brighton, and I actually flew to the UK on my own dime just to go to world fantasy because why not? I became friends with Holly Black. Oh, wow. We just we hit it off, got drunk, yada, yada, yada. Then a few years later, when Saga, when Simon Schuster wanted to write the Magna Spain, Eldis Kirsten's books, they're looking for a cowriter with Cassie. But if anybody knows Cassie, Cassie has this sisterhood of the traveling pants, like close-knit circle of friends that she works with, but never of anybody else. Magna Spain is a 400-year-old half-Asian warlock. They're looking for someone who fit that role, who has a good right with a sense of humor, who can just check off all those boxes. When my name came up on the shortlist, Cassie didn't know who I was. She was like, I don't know this guy. I don't know if I'm going to work with him. Holly went to bat for me. She's like, I know, Wes. You can totally do this. And that's how I got that job. Right there is my story about networking can be very beneficial.

[00:15:36.850] - Sunyi
What I take from this is I need to have an excuse now to get drunk with authors.

[00:15:41.700] - Wesley
Yes. Which is actually not that hard to do. We're all looking for that.

[00:15:46.650] - Sunyi
Yeah, we're all on the booths.

[00:15:48.890] - Scott
Most of us. That's funny that you mentioned it because I was actually at that very same convention. I did the exact same thing you did, and that's how I met and later signed with my agent. So lots of things happening at the world fantasy in Brighton. I'm missing out.

[00:16:08.380] - Wesley
Anyway, go on. That was a fun.

[00:16:11.240] - Scott
Convention, I have to say. Yeah, it was. I liked it a lot. So how much do you want to say about cowriting? I believe you were calling her Cassie, but Cassandra Clare, it sounds like it was quite the process to get that job. Do you treat it as a job? Did it feel like a job? And how different was it than you're writing your own stuff?

[00:16:35.630] - Wesley
There's a separate discussion we can have about tie-in. Co-writing with Cassie was extremely educational. Obviously, she's one of the big authors out there, one of the biggest authors out there. When it comes to her fanbase and her world, she is the queen of her world. I had a really rough entry into her fanbase because they're extremely passionate. It's a learning curve for that. I got to say, I learned a lot about writing, I learned a lot about worldbuilding, and I learned a lot about how to create intricate relationships within her world that grab certain segments of fan bases that really make them super fans. It was a great experience. One thing I was not really skilled at back then was writing romance or writing sexy. The eldest curses follows Magnus Baine and this nepheline named Alec, who's 19 years old. There's definitely some factors in there that I have to be a little bit careful of as a parenteral gay romance. I'm a guy who never wrote romance before. What happened was Diana Galbadon took me under her wing and she sent me an email like, Okay, Wes, here's some advice, here are some tips.

[00:17:49.270] - Wesley
Let me send you my not yet published how to write romance book, how to write sexy book. She sent me all that information. It was like a firehose of just things to read, things to research. At the very end, she was like, Wes, have you ever seen Yaoi? I was like, No, what is that? She goes, Why don't you go look it up and watch it? It's a Japanese erotic anime, gay anime meant for straight women. It's very specific. I did look it up. I'm at home. I have a 80-inch TV at the time, and I'm watching it on YouTube, and I'm half covering my eyes the first time around. My wife comes home and she's like, What the fuck are you doing? I was like, I don't know what's happening with my writing career anymore, but... I mean, it was extremely educational. I learned to write really good sex scenes, just learning not about the actual sex, but about the power dynamics, about how communication works, about subtle movements. And it was really great. I came out of all the Curious books being pretty good at writing sex scenes. And the next project I had after that was The Walking Dead.

[00:19:13.710] - Wesley
Robert Kirkman asked me to write The Walking Dead set in Asia. I wrote The Walking Dead typhoon. And in that book, I put in a six-page sex scene.

[00:19:24.150] - Sunyi
Not with the zombies, I hope.

[00:19:25.940] - Wesley
What? No, not The zombies.. It was The Survivors of the Apocalyptic. And at one point, the editor was like, Wes, I just read your draft. You have a six-page sex scene in here. It's really good. But this is The Walking Dead. And I was like, Look, man, what else are you going to do in the middle of an Apocalyptic? And he's like, It's going to have to be only a page and a half. And I'm like, You're not fucking right. It's what I told her, I think. I think it ended up being a page and a half, but that was my foray into it. I need to learn these skills. It was a great experience. I really enjoyed. I don't usually look for Thai and work. Thai and work has its own limitations in terms of who owns the rights. Usually, you get upfront fee. You get very little, if any, royalty with it. But in terms of The Walking Dead and the Pekasi books, I really, really enjoyed that experience.

[00:20:30.740] - Sunyi
Is that - I'm going to ask something. Sorry, just off the cuff that everyone always wonders. Do you not worry about family and friends who are reading it? Because even the spicy people in our discord are like, Oh, no, don't let my family read my super sexy romanticity novels.

[00:20:46.660] - Wesley
Here's the thing about my family is they're very supportive and they always buy many copies of each of my books, but I don't think they read any of my books.

[00:20:55.540] - Sunyi
Yeah, their mind as well.

[00:20:57.730] - Wesley
So I'm always like whenever every day always tell me that, Oh, yeah, I got more copies of your book. I'm like, Well, the important thing is that you bought it, not that you read it. Let's just be honest. I love my readers, but the most important part is that they actually bought the book.

[00:21:13.730] - Sunyi
Yeah, that's true. I think my mother said to me very early on like, We're very proud of you for writing this book, but I'm not going to read it because I don't like books like this. I was like, Yeah, that's fine. Please don't read it ever.

[00:21:24.650] - Wesley
I mean, early on in my career, I was actually angry about it because my Rowan Tan, the lead protagonist for the Labs of Tau, is named after my nephew. And then the Cameron, who is Rowan's son in that series, is named after his younger brother. This is before I had kids, obviously. I basically named characters after family and friends, and he didn't read the book. But then I got over that. I got over that real quick.

[00:21:59.120] - Scott
Yeah, I just wanted to know whether you got into IP work being both The Walking Dead book and The cowriting. Did you get into that intentionally? Did you go to your agent and say, Hey, I'm interested in doing IP work and your agent then went and found that? Or did it just come about organically? How did that happen?

[00:22:21.100] - Wesley
This is a really good segue. I got into IP work after my tenure at Tor books. My time at Tor with the Times Salvager books was a little on the traumatic side.

[00:22:32.090] - Sunyi
Oh, boy.

[00:22:34.020] - Wesley
I mean, look, not going to lie, I had PTSD after Tor.

[00:22:38.940] - Sunyi
You're not the first person to say that.

[00:22:40.740] - Wesley
I know. It was very traumatic. I just wasn't ready to write something original after that time period. I was very fortunate that those projects fell into my lap.

[00:22:58.370] - Sunyi
Do you feel like going into that series at all and talking about it to the extent that you can?

[00:23:03.790] - Wesley
All right. I'm going to speak at a very high level. Tor picked up to sign me up for two books, the Time Salvager books. Time Salvager had a lot of hype leading up to his publication. Michael Bay had just optioned it. What? At that time back in 2014, Transformers was huge, and it had a lot of good things going on at the time. I remember leading up to San Diego comic-Con, I was on several big panels with the big authors. It felt like a coming-out moment for me at the time. Then at some point, another author who was coming to San Diego comic-con didn't like the panels they were on. One of the publicists, one of the senior publicists basically swapped me out and put me in diversity panel instead.

[00:24:00.120] - Wesley
I complained. I was like, You know... I mean, it felt to me exactly like it sounded.

[00:24:07.030] - Scott
Yeah.

[00:24:07.540] - Sunyi
It was the diversity corner.

[00:24:08.820] - Wesley
Yeah. I will say this. I didn't handle it well, but also the publicist who did that blacklisted me within Tor. And this wasn't just like, Oh, and we're not going to send you out. They were like, We're going to basically zero out your publicity budget. We're going to... It felt like we're going to take your book.

[00:24:29.140] - Sunyi
Wow! Okay.

[00:24:29.800] - Wesley
Here's the thing about when you are at a publishing house, your editor is supposed to be your champion. Your editor is the person that goes out there and supports you, supports the book, helps sell the books to the sales team, the publicity team and all that. I just didn't feel like I had that support. My editor was like, You should apologize to the publicist. Which was correct because like I said, there were some things I didn't react well to when it happened, so I did apologize. I did the whole kowtow thing, and it didn't really matter. After those two books, I came out of it just traumatized. Because when you spend a year or two working on a book or two books, two and a half years, and then it falls to the crack like that. Because of reasons like that, it hits you in a really hard way.

[00:25:24.160] - Wesley
Came out of my tour publishing experience just really, really just like demoralised in the I wasn't sure if I wanted to do publishing anymore. It just, it sucked. That was my Tor experience.

[00:25:36.800] - Scott
We talked about this a little bit before we went on air, but yeah, that's basically why this podcast exists. Obviously, I didn't have... I wasn't shoved to a diversity panel because, well, for many reasons.

[00:25:54.720] - Wesley
Being shoved into a diversity panel just feels like there's no winning out of this? I don't want to get shoved into a diversity panel. You don't want to get shot of the diversity panel.

[00:26:04.520] - Scott
No, that's pretty shitty.

[00:26:05.460] - Wesley
Who wants to be put in a diversity panel?

[00:26:08.780] - Sunyi
I refuse to do them. I refuse to do the neurodiversity panels now. No shade on people who choose to do them, but it just feels like they're giving you a token effort almost.

[00:26:19.980] - Wesley
I will agree with that. But here's the thing also is it has to be done. Somebody's got to put in the work. And now because the argument is, Well, white male authors shouldn't be doing diversity panels, so they should be sitting and listening. But if they're sitting and listening, then who's going to be talking? So if no one does them, then there's not going to be any diversity panels, and then those issues won't get raised. But if you do get put on them, then you're like, I'm getting pigeonholed.

[00:26:49.010] - Sunyi
It's a balance. I did do them when I was even newer than I am now, but I think my issues, I didn't want to be stuck doing nothing else. And there was a period of time where that was the only panels that basically the few cons I was going to were really interested in me doing. And I was like, Well, I don't... I want to just talk about actual book things if I go. Sometimes it's a balance. Anyway, go on. It is a balance.

[00:27:14.320] - Scott
I'm just curious, Wes, you were talking about the publicist essentially saying that they were going to tank your book and zero the resources. Did they actually say that? Or is that just the message you got via the actions they took or did not take on your behalf?

[00:27:31.940] - Wesley
I will say this. Tor is a sieve when it comes to gossip. It was told to me through somebody who worked there that this is what's happening.

[00:27:43.750] - Wesley
This Was also eight years ago. It's honestly ancient history. I think that was a previous regime. I think they beat Pellice, but they're doing an amazing job at Tor these days, and they're putting out really great books. When we took out The Art of Prophecy, I spoke with them extensively not only about the book, but also about my previous experience. I don't know what your experience has been more recently, Scott, but I feel like they've been doing a lot of.

[00:28:13.820] - Scott
Good work. Yeah, I would agree with that.

[00:28:16.070] - Sunyi
My understanding is that, yeah, they had a big overhaul and they changed it to be more of a functioning company and a bit less of like a kingdom or something. I don't know. I don't work there, so I can't comment on that. I do think that Cameron's comment about it being a bit like a fiefdom or the different editors can still be a different experience and where you are with that particular editor and how much like your book, it can matter. But obviously, as I've said many times in this cast, I get on really well with the editor, so I never have complaints. I love the.

[00:28:46.090] - Scott
Team that I meet.

[00:28:46.930] - Wesley
Yeah. I mean, for anybody considering Tor, the publicist and the editor are no longer there. They've moved on. 

[00:28:54.550] - Wesley
Like I said, ancient history.

[00:28:56.070] - Scott
Yeah. I should say this, we've talked about it at length on other episodes, but I think in my case, it was a whole bunch of different factors that came together to not work so well in my favor, especially having been on a small deal, a delayed small deal, etc. And I think the message is this happens at a lot of different publishers, and it really does depend on your relationship with your editor and your publisher. We tend to talk a lot about one publisher simply because Sonia and I are both with that publisher and we keep finding other connections to that publisher like you. And so we talk a lot about it. But yeah, I think this is an industry-wide phenomenon that you really have to pay. Attention to.

[00:29:48.460] - Wesley
The truth is publishing is an industry powered by passion. Especially on the corporate side, no one's really doing it for the money. And then on the author side, there are far better ways for all of us to make money than gamble with the publishing career. The ramp-up it takes to get that first book published is usually many, many years because it's that learning curve of learning how to write. It's that period of getting an agent. It's that getting the first book deal. Anybody who goes into publishing saying, I'm going to try that. You just can make money. You're doing the wrong thing, man. Because it's an industry on the author and editors on the publishing side, built by passion, then you are not as disconnected from the product as most industries would be. Because of that, then once you have that subjective mindset and everything, then that's when all the lines get blurred.

[00:30:55.050] - Sunyi
Was there a point in your career where you made that jump as well to like, This is a thing you're desperately doing against the clock, so your wife wants to send you back to work, and it suddenly became lucrative and stable-ish.

[00:31:07.710] - Wesley
I think, well, two things. I think by the end of 2014, and I basically recouped whatever income I had. I took a 95% pay cut to become a full-time writer. I think by the end of 2014, maybe early 2015, I basically like my earning potential had recovered that amount.

[00:31:26.060] - Wesley
On top of that, that was the first indication. Second indication was that I think six months after I became a full-time writer, any knowledge I had of IT went out one year. I had a fine amount of brain space and came writing. I couldn't even log into a Unix system after six months. I was like, just I forgot everything. Then that's when I realized that, Oh, I am no longer employable, especially in IT where everything moves so quickly. It's an alien world to me now, so I have nothing to fall. Back on.

[00:32:00.610] - Sunyi
No, every person listening who starts out with a smaller deal or midlist is going to be cheering for you right now.

[00:32:09.260] - Wesley
It's luck.

[00:32:10.230] - Sunyi
That’s fair. We probably, on the balance, have a lot more horror stories than positive ones coming through, though.

[00:32:16.200] - Scott
Yeah, it's nice to hear the good ones.

[00:32:19.110] - Wesley
I get asked a lot about what keeps you writing. The answer I often give is that because the money is rarely there early on. Even if you sign up really... Let's say you sign a $300,000 deal. That's a significant deal. That's for three books, assuming for three books. That's $100,000 a book, which is very, very fair. Upon signing, which is now broken up into four pieces, you're looking at $75,000. $75,000 to get you going is not going to get you very far in this day and age. The vast majority of writers still have day jobs. The career writer is a dying thing, and there's just very few of us. I always said there has to be an intangible variable, the tangible asset that keeps you going, that feeds you while the money is not there. It's the love of writing, it's the love of storytelling, it's the dream, it's the craft, whatever it is. But that has to sustain you until you get to a level where suddenly, okay, now this is a career where I can go in full-time. Honestly, most writers don't get that far. Most writers don't quit that day job because that ramp-up is so difficult.

[00:33:32.590] - Wesley
Like I said, I debut in 2013, and I remember, I think around 2016, 2017, I went back in time to my debut year, and I tracked down all of my debut author friends that I came out with. I think it was something like 98% of my debut class no longer were writing. I have this theory that the average career for a writer is about five years, which incidentally is just long enough to complete a three-book deal. I honestly believe that anybody has a book in them if they want to write it. Just a matter of grit and determination. And once you get one book out, you could probably get three books out. You could complete that deal. But it takes a very specific person to make a career out of it. It's like not only continue writing, finishing that deal, but having success to keep going and having the mental fortitude to keep writing because it is a tough career. I had a long discussion about six months ago after COVID. There is a mental health cost to publishing that doesn't get spoken of enough in terms of how the industry works, how we're compensated, and how really we're exposed to the public when it comes to how reviews are done, how little control we have over the product that we put out.

[00:35:03.670] - Scott
Yep. I think that's what most people don't understand. Even getting into the industry, Wes, you said you didn't do a whole lot of research coming in. I thought I did a lot of research coming into the industry. But all of my research was on how to make it to the top, how to give myself the best chances of becoming a household name with my writing, etc. It wasn't a lot about what are the prospects? Probabilistically, how much money am I going to make at this even if I make it into the industry? And that's what I hope people take away from this. Sonia, with her deal, the equivalent is like she's a first round draft pick in the NBA, right? Or take your sports league of choice.

[00:35:51.570] - Sunyi
I don't know at all what that means. I hope listeners do.

[00:35:53.770] - Scott
They get paid a lot of money. Even a first round draft pick doesn't always pan out. But the difference between in the NBA, for example, the difference between a first round and a second round draft pick is enormous in terms of the amount of money they make upfront, the amount, the probability that they're going to stick around in the league, that thing. And it's a pretty good analogy, simply because there is this funnel and people like Wes who climb their way out of the funnel and make a really good career out of an initial small deal are few and far between.

[00:36:31.210] - Wesley
Basically, I'm the seventh round draft pick that somehow is still the league after 10 years. Yeah, you.

[00:36:37.310] - Scott
Are Jokic, who became the MVP after being picked 40-something. Anyway, the odds are long. You can do it, but you better fucking love it if you're going to put in the time and the effort. And like Wes said, expose yourself to the inevitable abuse. Whether it's good-natured or not, it feels like abuse at times when you're putting your work in front of people, right?

[00:37:05.510] - Sunyi
I was going to ask if you ever felt like you're burning out just from the sheer volume of books you're putting out, the different things you're doing to build a career there.

[00:37:14.780] - Wesley
Oh, no, I'm absolutely burned out. Okay. Absolutely burned out. After The Walking Dead book, I had an idea for Art of Prophecy a long time ago, but I just didn't have the... I wasn't ready to write it. I was also writing science fiction at the time. So switching genres is a bigger deal than especially in traditional publishing than you think. I didn't think it was that big of a deal at the time. It's speculative fiction. But I'm learning now that there are a lot of science fiction fans who don't read fantasy and vice versa. When I wrote The Art of Prophecy, there were a surprising number of people who were like, I have no idea who this guy is. I've never heard of him. I'm not saying I'm a big or anything, but I just always assumed that speculative fiction was just one pot, and we all read both. I wrote the partial for The Art of Prophecy in 2019. For people who don't know what a partial is, instead of writing the whole damn book, you write just a small segment of it, and then your agent takes it out to sell them. If somebody buys it, then you finish it.

[00:38:24.280] - Wesley
In many cases, it's a great way to sell a book, but you have to be at a certain level to pull that off. Also, there's something to be said about after you sell the book, you actually have to finish it, which sucks. But in my case, we sold The Art of Prophecy to Del Ray Books for a very healthy deal. It's for a major deal.

[00:38:45.750] - Scott
Nice.

[00:38:46.410] - Wesley
And then COVID hit. Before COVID, I had the house to myself, okay? And then we had a kid in 2016, but generally it was like, The house was mine. I worked whenever I wanted. Sometimes I worked 22 hours a day. And part of it is because I'd be playing video games. I would write. Whatever lifestyle I had, it was great. And then COVID hit and then everybody was at my house all the time. Then I had a baby. I had another baby, so I had a COVID baby. I managed to get The Art of Prophecy done in 2020, but then the sequel, The Art of Destiny, which is scheduled to come out in October of this year, just killed me. I was able to get my brain together and put up The Art of Prophecy, but then my brain broke. I went from writing two books a year earlier on my career to writing a book every two years. Not only did the art of destiny break my brain, I remember at one point, this is my version of the fourth level of Hell, is that I spent, I think, six months rewriting the first 20,000 words of that book over and over again.

[00:40:02.190] - Wesley
I just couldn't get past that section. It didn't make me happy. I know you're supposed to just move on. That's what they're supposed to do, but I just couldn't do it. I rewrote it. I wrote from different points of view. I mixed things around. I throw it away. I brought it back. That whole process just like, I am so burned out right now, and that's just the way it is. Unfortunately, my revenue streams are rather diverse. I don't... I make money in other ways through publishing other than selling books, and that saved me a little bit. I sell a lot of TV options, and that's been a lifesaver for me.

[00:40:41.650] - Sunyi
You don't have to give specific numbers, but I'm just curious if when you go into option negotiations, do you have a minimum floor where you're like, I don't accept less than this for an option?

[00:40:50.580] - Wesley
For options? Yeah.

[00:40:51.610] - Sunyi
It depends. Okay.

[00:40:53.190] - Wesley
I mean, look, do you have any other offers? Because it's a book deal. If you only have one offer on the table, you have one offer on the table. The question is, do you feel like you'll get another offer later on or not? And then it also comes down to who are these producers who want to option your book? Do they have a track record? Early on in my career, I went for the money because the odds of an option ever getting purchased is fairly low. At one point, I think of something like there are 700 projects in development in Hollywood. They option a ton of stuff, and 98 % of it dies on the vine. I made that number up. But the majority of it dies on the vine, so go for the safe money. And that's what I did early on in my career. I think so far I've sold maybe seven options now since I started to begin publishing. But after the initial like, Oh, options are free money, is I stopped going after the free money. I went after... My calculus became, gives this project the best possible chance of success.

[00:42:03.180] - Wesley
For one of my projects, the guy who made The Matrix wanted to make a movie out of it. That was really cool. I love The Matrix. The Matrix was very formative in my life. But then I did the math and I was like, Okay.

[00:42:15.970] - Scott
In.

[00:42:17.440] - Wesley
This television environment, TV-film environment, what gives this project the best possible chance of actually getting greenlit, of actually getting made? I actually took a lot less money to go on a TV route with a producer who was making great things, who had a great track record, had a couple of shows already in production right now, had some of my favorite shows in production at the time. I knew he knew the voice. I knew he had a track record of getting things done. I just took less money because I wanted it to get made. I think that's my calculus now is options is a big portion of my revenue stream. But more importantly, I really want to have the right team assembled to back it up.

[00:43:06.190] - Sunyi
Do you think it's very crucial for authors to get out a lot of backlist? I mean, I know Indies are always trying to get loads and loads of backlist, but I'm guessing having a lot of books out is just basically the more you have, the better, I suppose, in some ways.

[00:43:18.670] - Wesley
I'll be honest. I don't love that business model of publishing as many-.

[00:43:25.690] - Sunyi
Me.

[00:43:26.070] - Wesley
Neither. -getting out as many books as possible. Look, it is what it is. When you're self-pubbing, when you're in the market, that has proven to be a very successful strategy of just pushing out as many books as possible. And that's fair. Everybody in publishing does what they have to do to survive or to make a living out of it. It's just not for me. I'm not a fast writer. I like to have my stories marinate and get a little deeper and really think things through. Sometimes you don't have that luxury when you're writing quickly. Most of the time, the people you hear about who write a book a month, that's mostly the romance sector. There are advantages to writing in that sector that allows them to do that. I'm not saying they're good or bad authors. It's just a different style of storytelling. That is how that sector works. Traditional publishing can't do that because even if you could write that fast, your publisher isn't going to be pushing out more than a book a year for the most part, maybe two tops. And they don't like it when you push out too many books unless you go to several publishers and you have other problems and you do that.

[00:44:44.700] - Wesley
So that's a different business model. For what it's. Honestly, with the advent of AI these days, I can absolutely see self-publishing going from a book-a-month model to a book-a-week. Out. There's already so much pressure for them to publish quickly that it's going to be irresistible at some point for someone to figure out, Okay, I figured out how to push out, use Midjourney, use ChatGTP or whatever, and just start just pumping out books because it's a volumes game sometimes.

[00:45:17.180] - Sunyi
For them. Yeah, I think it might already be happening. There are some editors in a group of men who are basically getting requests through Fiverr or work, places like that, for people who've written AI novels. It's like they're generating AI, sending them to editors, wanting the editor to make it sound human and they can throw it on Amazon. Great times to live in.

[00:45:37.360] - Wesley
Yeah, we're student, my friends.

[00:45:39.520] - Sunyi
Go to your question, Scott.

[00:45:42.250] - Scott
Yeah. So going back to the TV options, since you mentioned that they are a large portion of your revenue, and because it seems like you've been quite successful in signing them and getting TV options for your work, did those happen organically with inbound interest just because your books did well? Or is there something you or your agent have done to solicit those or make those happen?

[00:46:09.830] - Wesley
I have a manager. In the Filman TV side, you'll usually have an agent. Your literary agent probably usually have a relationship with one of the larger agencies like APA or CAA. Then when a book comes out, they usually do a submission. One thing that I learned is that they don't really care how well your book is doing unless your book is doing really well. Then that gets on their radar. But generally, the book industry is so much smaller than the film industry that if you move a fair amount of books, they're like, Yeah, that's nice. Let's see if we can make a story out of it. It comes down to matchmaking, how that agent or manager can find a producer who will identify with that story. That's been my secret sauce is that when you go to large agency, they often just... They look at the book and they make a huge submission list and they blast it out. If anybody comes back, then they're like, Okay, great, let's make a deal. More recently these days, my manager curates who I speak with to the interested parties. We have these long meetings and conversations about their vision of the book, where I am of the book and how...

[00:47:32.660] - Wesley
Also, really, if you get along with these people, the best relationships I have with my options is I get along with the producer, I get along with the showrunner, and we shoot to shit. We talk about... There's been times when the showrunner would be like, They want to do this, and I'm really pissed about this. What do you think, Wes? And then I'd be like, Well, let's look at the variables and let's look at the consequences of the variables. If they want to make a decision, how does that affect the deal? How does that affect the story? And how does that affect the probability of this getting made? It becomes like... And here's the thing about options is, yes, you are the source. You are the source of the story. But once you option it out to somebody else to a studio or a production company, it is no longer solely your story. Adaptations are compromises. It's shared storytelling. I'm a huge real-time fan, and I'm enjoying the new season in real-time. And there's a lot of fans who are complaining that this is so not like story. And they're right. It is not like Robert Jordan's 12 books or, I'm sorry, 13 books.

[00:48:38.830] - Sunyi
I don't know. I stopped at number 11 or something.

[00:48:40.910] - Scott
I think he died around 11 or 12, and there's 15 or something like that.

[00:48:45.810] - Wesley
I think there's 13. I think Brandon finished the last two or three. But I also recognize that there's no way you could tell that story as a TV show or as a movie. The proper length for a movie, for a 90-minute movie is a novela. So if you're doing a couple of seasons of television, especially the real-time, it's just so big and expansive, you got to cut things out. I'm very forgiving of adaptations because that's just the reality of the medium. It's a completely different medium and completely different factors that are associated with that medium in terms of… For example, we as authors can write whatever we want in our books. But when you're a screenwriter, a very important variable is like, Can you write a scene where two people are sitting at a table and having a discussion that moves the plot along? You need those scenes because they're cheap to make. Suddenly, budget is a variable. There's so many other factors involved that as a novelist, we don't ever have to worry about. When somebody else comes in and they want to adapt something, you got to understand that they're considering variables that we don't even know exist.

[00:50:03.490] - Sunyi
You've got a lot more option experience in either of us.

[00:50:07.830] - Scott
Yeah. Did I understand correctly that you got connected with your manager through your literary agent then? And that submitting- That's correct. Yeah. And so submitting your book and the rights to your book to a whole bunch of different players in the screenwriting space was part of your process from book one, from series one?

[00:50:36.720] - Wesley
Not from series one. I think my first option was Times Alpair.

[00:50:41.470] - Scott
Yeah. So a friend of the show, slash a friend of yours, I think, noticed that you've got some significant marketing stuff going on for your current series in between books one and two, which seems somewhat out of the ordinary being that most publishers put most of their money and effort upfront with book one. Is there a particular reason for that? You said you signed a major deal, so that might be the only explanation we need. But did you insist on that? How did you make that happen? And/or have you seen good results from marketing during a series release versus just with the first book?

[00:51:24.040] - Wesley
I'm not going to lie. I have no idea what you're talking about.

[00:51:26.640] - Scott
They just sent us and there's something from Instagram, I think, of a blog tour you're doing for your book two in the War Arts Saga.

[00:51:35.800] - Sunyi
Basically, marketing for book two is nearly non-existent. That's the received wisdom that we are told constantly if you're writing series. It's one reason why people dread them.

[00:51:45.420] - Wesley
I don't disagree with that. Like I said, I'm not sure what marketing you're referring to. I will say this. I think Del Rey has done an amazing job in terms of thinking outside the box, of being proactive, of being just really enthusiastic about all aspects of production for the book. It's been a great experience of Del Rey. Art of Prophecy has been... The editing was great. I really pushed for my artist. I pushed for my matmaker. Really, I feel like it's been an incredible product. A funny thing about the Art of Prophecy, the cover artist is a woman named Chan Nuan. The mapmaker is a Korean woman named Seng-ah Park, and my editor is Indian. Then the production designer for the book is Latino. It feels like everybody involved in major steps of the production was a woman of color. A lot of it was just by design, and a lot of it was just being serendipitous. But the thing is, they solicited my feedback every step of the way, so I really appreciated that. I also saying that, I also think that the Art of Prophecy came out at a difficult time. It came out on the tail end of the pandemic, or actually the heart of the pandemic.

[00:53:12.970] - Wesley
Then it came out right when romantasy has just gotten huge and is eating everybody's lunch. Because of that, publishers are focused now more on many as of romance and speculative fiction. Not everything is hitting. Now, as for the book two marketing that you're talking about, I'm not sure what you're talking about. If you have the insight, let me look.

[00:53:36.090] - Scott
It up right now. It may have been a blog tour that you already did, it looks like. Just a blog tour for.

[00:53:42.900] - Wesley
You know what? I know you're talking about. What happened, interestingly, the Art of Prophecy came out in the UK. It was that new press. That came out almost a year later after Art of Prophecy came out in the US. I mean, the thing about the UK publishers right now is they're doing a lot of interesting things. They're doing more special editions. Art of Prophecy has three special editions in the UK. It's really cool. There's the broken binding version, there's the Waterstones exclusive version, and there's the Taps, Daphne Press version. They're thinking a little bit more outside the box of how do you reach a larger audience with more specialty or more just more creative ways to find readers. They did a blog tour, they hired a PR company, and that stuff pays dividends months down the line because eventually someone's going to see it or someone's going to find it, and hopefully you create that organic, viral feedback loop that gets more readers.

[00:54:47.900] - Sunyi
Yeah, we love Daphne. We had her on for one episode. And just in general, I was, this past couple of years, really impressed with Daphne and Titan and Harper and just in terms of the marketing that they're able to do in with the ways in which they're very creative and very, I guess, aggressive in a good way, getting their titles out there.

[00:55:06.000] - Wesley
Right. Because the UK market is five times smaller than the US market. And the UK publishing scene has always been a quiet monster for a while. So it's nice to see some disruptors come in and just try new things and change the model a little bit so that it's not just we're going to put a book out and then never.

[00:55:26.440] - Scott
Hear from them again. I've heard that five times smaller market from several people, I think, Sonia included, and she lives in the UK, so who am I to question? Is that statistic referring to just the population in general and the theoretical reading target market? Or is that specific to sci-fi and fantasy? Because I feel like just anecdotally based on who I see online and things, feels like the sci-fi and fantasy community in the UK is really strong and they're almost trendsetters in some instances for that market in the US.

[00:56:04.650] - Sunyi
It is based on population. We do have a strong community, and I will say, I don't know what it's at now, but during COVID, the sci-fi and fantasy market in the UK grew by 22%, I think. It was in The Guardian.

[00:56:16.530] - Wesley
Which is- Oh, wow. 22%?

[00:56:18.350] - Sunyi
A fucking insane. And then it stayed strong. At least that's what they told us at the Harper Summer Party. They had a lot of growth during 2020 and 2021, especially in sci-fi and... I think it's more of a fantasy fantasy and then it's not rocketing up anymore, but it's still strong. It's still steady.

[00:56:38.350] - Wesley
Yeah. I mean, the five times smaller market is just a number that gets tossed out. I don't actually have any set metrics for that. I think that US is actually more than five times bigger than the UK. But I also do think that the European market and the UK market have always been a little bit stronger in fantasy than the US. But I don't have any set metrics, like coralling of that. But saying that, I feel like the UK market has generally been more conservative historically. Really early on, I heard that a UK editor said this of an Epic fantasy series set in Asia. This wasn't to me or to somebody else, but they were like, It's ethnic, isn't it? And that's-Yeah. Because the UK market has always been so focused on… fantasy in general has always been so focused on European setting, Arthurs and Legends. It was only really the past maybe five, six years that there's really been a real drive to see not other voices, other settings. There's so many more Asian settings now. There's so many more African settings for fantasy, and it's really becoming like a golden age for readers where now you can actually read stories that are set in places other than where knights and princesses lived.

[00:58:12.850] - Sunyi
And if you still want the knights and princesses, they're there as well, so they haven't gone away. It's just now there's a whole lot.

[00:58:19.270] - Wesley
More variety. I mean, the majority of the stories are probably still set where those knights and princesses. It's not like suddenly they're going to stop publishing stories set in medieval, medieval Germany. But there's our options now. There are people who love that setting, who just want to read that setting, that's perfectly fine. But for those who want to say, Okay, let's see what other cultural flavors affect these stories, then they can do that too.

[00:58:46.640] - Sunyi
I'm out of question, Scott. So if you've got any more, otherwise, we can invite Wes to plug himself in his books. Where can people.

[00:58:54.780] - Scott
Find you? Yeah, go ahead, Wes. You hit everything that I was hoping to ask you.

[00:58:59.850] - Wesley
I don't know where I belong online anymore, to be honest. I used to be big on Twitter or Shitter or whatever it's called. I find myself not there as often anymore for reasons. And Itry to… I haven't gotten into Blue Sky yet that much, so I dabble in it once in a while. I'm taking a step back from social media in general, but you can find me on Facebook.

[00:59:26.750] - Sunyi
Search for Wesley Chu.

[00:59:27.420] - Wesley
I don't know about Facebook pages, to be honest. Search for Wesley Chu. My next book, The Art of Destiny, which is the book two of the War Arts Saga, is scheduled for publication in October 10th of this year. That's what I'm working on right now. Then book three, hopefully, will be handed in by.

[00:59:43.990] - Sunyi
Late next year. Wes died to write those books, so you guys better buy them. Am I? I know.

[00:59:49.620] - Wesley
The third book might kill me, I'm not going to lie.

[00:59:54.030] - Sunyi
You've been listening to the Publishing Radio Podcast with Sonny Dean and Scott Drakeford. Tune in next time for more in-depth discussion on everything publishing industry.

[01:00:05.180] - Sunyi
See you later.