[00:00:01.500] - Sunyi
Hi, I'm Sunyi Dean.

[00:00:03.140] - Scott
And I'm Scott Drakeford.

[00:00:05.290] - 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 of our careers went in very different directions.

[00:00:21.180] - Scott
That pattern repeats itself throughout the industry over and over. Why do some books succeed while others seem to be dead on arrival? In this.

[00:00:30.350] - Sunyi
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.

[00:00:59.630] - Sunyi
Welcome to this week's publishing radio, and I'm going to break from our usual intro format just a little bit to say that last week, or whenever it was, we broke the 100,000 downloads mark, which was really cool. I just wanted to say thank you to all the people who've listened and all the people who've shared, and also our supporters who we've never mentioned because we never actually actively sought support for the podcast. But it does almost pay for itself now, which is very cool. It means we don't have to resort to starting an OnlyFans for Scott. With us today we have Gayle Kerriger, who has had a really interesting career throughYA and other age categories and different genres. I think actually might be best if we let you introduce yourself, Gayle, and have I said your name right? Sorry. I'm suddenly panicked. It's like Jill.

[00:01:53.070] - Gail
It's okay. It's funny. I chose a pen name that I thought would be easy to pronounce and then nobody who pronounces it right. My real name is impossible to pronounce, so that's one of the reasons I have a pen name. But it's Kerriger with the hard G, but it's a pen name. Oh, Kerriger. Okay. But it's a pen name, so you can pronounce it however you want. I understand the game. Yeah. So hi, I'm Gayle Kerriger. I was trad for a really long time and now I'm a pretty solid hybrid author. I just celebrated my debut book's 14th birthday a couple of days ago. But I had a lot of contract negotiations first. So technically, this is my 15th year. I'm the author of being a published author. So, yeah, people come to me for advice starting out and what it's like to be an author right now. And I was like, I can't help you because it's been over a decade. But you should listen to this podcast. Because that's why I started listening, is I was like, I can't give advice on a thing that hasn't happened to me in a really long time.

[00:02:49.030] - Gail
And then you started to give me PTSD because I was like, Nothing has changed.

[00:02:56.290] - Sunyi
Yeah, it changes and it doesn't. So how did you get- We hear that a lot. How did you get into publishing and what was your experience with that, for Sporeys? So I'm one of those.

[00:03:05.600] - Gail
Writers who always wrote and I always wrote fiction, but I actually grew up in a hippie commune situation with a lot of poets. And so I thought, Well, we don't make money writing. That's not a valid career path. We're never going to do that. We'll just do this as a hobby. It'll just be fun. Fun times. My background is actually as an archaeologist. So I have an MA and an MS. I'm a Materials Analyst by training, which means I'm a social scientist. I have a lot of background in stats and research and material science and that thing, which I'm mentioning because my obsession with data and data analytics has really helped my career as an author. My delight in spreadsheets, for example, turned out to be a magic superpower for a writer. So that's my background. I was most of the way through my PhD and pretty much a full-time academic, adjunct faculty and teaching and stuff when my first book got picked up. And that's just because I wrote because I liked writing, and if I wrote and finished a thing, I might as well try to publish it. It was my attitude. I had a couple of shorts published and.

[00:04:16.880] - Scott
Things like that. Talking about spreadsheets, you mentioned that spreadsheets have been a bit of a superpower for you as an author. What do you mean by that? What have you used your stats and spreadsheet acumen.

[00:04:28.480] - Gail
For in this world? My magic power? This is something... So one of the things I'm very thoughtful about and careful about over the years has been my brand. So I don't really publicly talk about teaching or the background of publishing. I don't have my own podcast like this one. I only appear on other people's podcasts. So I actually had the reputation for years in that I didn't teach, I didn't talk about creative writing, all this stuff, which I've slowly been changing over the last couple of years. But it's mostly because when I am on social media and online, I would like to interact with my readers. That's what my time is being spent for, not my fellow authors much as I love you. My job online is to promote my books and my brand and talk to my readers. So I've been very careful about not associating the two. So that's the starter. But I do love data and I have been collecting it from the get-go. And I actually started a hybrid model just with some short stories way back in 2016. So I started to upload my own content rather than going through publishers, specifically because they obfuscated data and I wanted to know things, mostly because I'm obsessed with efficiency.

[00:05:42.390] - Gail
And I was like, if I am spending time online or if I am being sent on a 10-city, 10-day book tour, I would like to know concretely whether that is effective or not. So please, publisher, tell me, how many additional books did you sell off baseline because you destroyed my health for two weeks, right? Can we talk about that? No, it turns out with the publisher, you cannot talk about that. So I was like, I need access to data. Your publisher tells me I must be on Twitter. Yes, but when I post about a book on Twitter, does that lead to clicks or clicks and conversions? Do I actually sell books or is it just a bunch of looky-loos on Twitter? So the only way to find that information out is to upload the book and then track what's going on with it myself. And so that's how I started. And so I have been collecting this wealth of data on effective places online, on just tracking things via my website mostly since 2016. And I was frontlist already by that time. So I have a good, solid fan base, and I run experiments on them constantly.

[00:06:53.390] - Gail
And they're usually like... But some... The Author Guild or something will publish data on book discoverability and where readers are going to get new books online. And I'll be like, That doesn't seem right. You asked a bunch of authors that question. That's not useful. We should ask readers this question. This should be data that Bookbub or Goodreads or somebody is trying to figure out. Of course, they're not. And I was like, Well, I'll just ask my readers. I have a reader group on Facebook with 40,000 members. I'll ask them to see what survey data I get. And I will get just as many. I'll get up to 1,000 or 2,000 people, which is pretty good, participant levels. So I do that thing all the time. People want to talk about themselves. The survey is just people talk about themselves, readers. Readers love to tell you what they want to read next, what they're reading. Da da da da da. So the answer is I have a big audience and I fleece them all the time. And then at the back end, I'm also tracking everything because people will tell you one thing and actually do something else.

[00:07:51.290] - Sunyi
Imagine if.

[00:07:51.870] - Scott
Publishers did that. Yeah. So what secrets can you share with us?

[00:07:56.270] - Gail
What secrets can I share? Well, I can tell you that way back in 2018, when I first started seriously tunneling to Twitter, I could have told you at that point in time that Twitter is not a place you sell books. It's a place writers hang out and talk about books. And a writer who is tracking will tell you you get great clicks off of Twitter. And that is true. I get great clicks off of Twitter, but no sales or very few sales compared to some of the other venues and marketplaces. So yeah. So I had already what's called outposted Twitter. In other words, I don't really engage very much there. I don't hang out there very much. In like late early 2019, I was like, Twitter is not useful to me. I mean, it can be fun to talk about stuff on Twitter, but it's not useful. So I had fled already. So when everybody else is like... I was like, Yeah, Twitter is not good. It's not a good... It doesn't matter. It doesn't make a big difference. It's not what people are there for. So yeah, stuff like that. I also will Combo data and triage data on...

[00:09:01.030] - Gail
So somebody will make a recommendation on an ads platform or something, and I'll go in and I'll run some numbers and do some quick ad testing of different tactics, ad tactics. Like a guru like Dawson or somebody will make a claim. And I'll be like, I don't think that works for a trad author or like me, a wide hybrid author. I have to charge a different price point than a lot of other indie authors, partly because it's expectation of my brand. And so a lot of their tactics don't work. So I'll run tests a lot on that thing. For example, this doesn't apply to you guys who are purely trad, but there's a lot of chatter about whether you put a newsletter onboarding link at the beginning of your book or at the end of your book and which is more effective. And I was like, well, my ass will test that. Guess what? Equally effective. Do both, everybody. So it basically allows me to tunnel in, change the metadata and test things that other people claim. And admittedly, I'm mostly testing them on me and my audience, but mostly the data I care about.

[00:10:06.170] - Gail
But it is often somewhat applicable if you have a similar career path to mine in terms of how you're trying to reach an audience.

[00:10:15.540] - Scott
So that all makes sense. And you mentioned things that don't work, Twitter and one thing that does. Are there channels, though, that you have found that initial exposure or that ability to find initial exposure and that have worked better for you? And I realised that it's segmented by genre, by a whole bunch of different factors, but it'd still be interesting to hear.

[00:10:43.850] - Gail
Discoverability is that what you're talking about? Discoverability. Yeah, places where new readers find you as opposed to existing readers?

[00:10:51.580] - Scott
Yeah, whether it's being more active on certain platforms or running ads or things that your publisher has done. And we'll get into that. We have a lot of questions about your entire journey. But I'm just curious, since we're on this topic, if there are avenues that have been fruitful.

[00:11:10.870] - Gail
So the biggest thing I tested recently with my Discovery Ability Data poll, which is... And if anybody incidentally out there would like to have access to this, unfortunately, it is IP guarded only for the US. So you need to be US based for it. That's not me, that's WordPress's decision. But just drop me a calling card on my website, it basically sends me an email and it's a protected post, but it is a post that's accessible to people. So if anybody's interested in the Discovery data stuff, just let me know and I'll give you the code word so you can read the post. It's just not public because I don't want it to be scraped and I don't... Like I said, I don't want a ton of traffic to my website that's this back end stuff, but I am willing to share my data. And that particular one, sorry, I initially started it because there's this accepted thing, which is how do you find a new book? And I specifically this was the question I specifically asked is like, I went to open places where you can't do multipoll options first and just had conversations with readers about this, including Twitter.

[00:12:15.750] - Gail
And because I wanted to use the language that readers use when they talk about discovering things. A big mistake that a lot of authors make is in assuming that their readers are going to behave exactly like them, and that's just not true. That's one of the great lessons I've learned over the years, is my readers don't read like I do, they don't act like I do, and they don't have the same language that I do because they're not writers. They're not in the industry. So they don't use words like audience or discovery data or discoverability. They just don't. So I have to figure out how to ask them questions that they entirely understand. So I did a really open one first, which is if you're looking for a new author or a new book brand new to you, what do you do? Where do you go? Who do you ask? And then I just collected things that they said and then tried to formulate them into poll, proper survey questions. So the survey questions were a little long. I also had a different objective than a lot of people. So one of the things I did was divide libraries and bookstores up from each other.

[00:13:17.720] - Gail
They probably should be confined because essentially that's a foot traffic reader loyalty, print loyalty situation. So it's often a very similar demographic. So the people who will say, Well, I walk into my local bookstore and find a new book that way, are pretty much the same people who say, I'll go to the library and see what's on the recommendation shelf is a shared thing. But I divided them up because when I'm doing indie, I can reach libraries, but it's real hard for me to reach bookstores. So for me, it's important to have that. So understand that I also have a personal objective when you're looking at this data that I'm gathering. But essentially, I wanted to know if the old adage, I find a new book because a friend recommended it, was true. We've all accepted that for years, that that's the number one reason people buy a book is because a friend recommended it or a colleague or whatever. I was like, Is that true? Or is that just one of these publishing industry things? Green Book Covers don't sell as well as other books. Publishing is full of these weird things. So I was like, I'm going to test it.

[00:14:22.410] - Gail
Yeah, it's true. The highest percentage to buy a landslide was a friend recommended it. Now the definition of friend can include parasocial influencer friendships, because I didn't ask people to distinguish what they mean by friend, whether it was an in-person friend or an online friend or like in how nuanced, right? And that's generational as well, different generations think about what friend means differently, if you come of age online or not. So I didn't ask them to distinguish that, but they themselves chose to distinguish whether it was an author recommendation or not. So to make this very useful for people listening, recommendation by a friend was number one by a landslide. Then, shockingly, coming in just after that was recommendations by an author. So not a cover blurb, but an author actually, and not a retweet of your launch post, but an author actually on their social media or in their newsletter saying, Oh, my God, I read this new book and I loved it. So that's a really good tip. So if you have an author who you love and who agreed to blurb your book and actually really liked it, encouraging them to not just blurb it, but to actually talk about it in some concrete way does seem to be very powerful.

[00:15:43.930] - Gail
So that was one big takeaway for me. And then a surprising number said within Bookstores and within the library, for me, I think that's because I come out of Trad. So I'm asking my own audience these questions, but a lot of them do that. A shockingly high number said, from my perspective said, the publishers of social media feeds. So if your publisher is specifically Tor, is very popular, it turns out. Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I encourage anybody who's really interested in this just to drop me a quick email and I'll send you the blog post and the.

[00:16:24.780] - Sunyi
Yeah, we'll post up a link towards it in the the show notes and stuff at the end. But yeah, I was wondering actually, before we get too much into the date, if we go back into how you did get picked up and what that story was like for you.

[00:16:37.020] - Gail
We jumped.

[00:16:38.760] - Sunyi
Scott got excited.

[00:16:40.060] - Gail
We jumped ahead. So the story is Solace, and this is back in 2007, was one of when Tor still had open subs, among other things. And it was a Slushpile pick, my first published book. So a publishing house that shall remain nameless, of good reputation, if not particularly substantial size, picked up Solace and fell in love with it and really wanted to publish it. And I said, That's great. Let me get an agent. So I went through the process of finding an agent, which was interesting, but it landed me with Kristen Nelson, who is still my agent 15 years later, who I love. You're going to have one relationship for the whole time. Having a good agent is optimal as far as I'm concerned. So she went into negotiations with the first house that had interested. So essentially I went with an offer on the table. It was not a very good offer. It was like three grand or something like that. But I didn't really care that much because again, happily archaeologist and academic, like having a grand old time in my other career. And so I was like, okay, go negotiate. And that negotiation turned out to be an absolute nightmare.

[00:18:00.010] - Gail
Now I remember you guys talked with a couple about this, but in my case, it was the option clause, which is sometimes called the exclusivity clause or whatever it is. But essentially, I'm a full-time academic. This option clause is for anything I wrote under any name. That's way too broad. And I literally was like, I cannot sign that contract. I will not sign that contract. And the editor was like, But we don't... I was like, I'm an academic. I will be publishing white papers. I have one on submission right now. You want my non-fiction. You cannot have my non-fiction. And the editor was like, Well, we don't want it. You don't actually... I was like, It says in the contract, I have to give it to you. If you don't want it, exclude it in the contract. And they were like, Nope, it's the boilerplate or nothing. And I was like, Well, then I won't sign. And this took six months, seven, eight months. This was just insane. And my poor agent, brand new agent is getting screamed at by this editor, literally. And Kristen is pretty baseline nice lady, Midwesterner. And she was like, This is ridiculous.

[00:19:14.470] - Gail
And I'd be like, Oh, if she's screaming at you, she's probably going to scream at me. So I'm not married to Liz. And eventually my agent was like, Let's just see if anyone else is interested. Let's just see. Now you're not supposed to do this when you're in the middle of negotiations. But I was like, Yeah, let's just see. And it turned out others were interested in this book. And it's a weird, funny little multi-genre book that probably would not get picked up now. But at the time, it sat in a niche that was open, which is comedic sci-fi fantasy written by a female voice with a feminist bend and historical and a bunch of other weird things. It's Steamunk, essentially. The other houses were interested in it and eventually we ended up just going with Orbit. Now, Orbit offered me a 25k deal, which at the time is a very good deal. I don't know what publishers would call it, but it was a good deal for two books. And that's one of Orbit's, I think it's still one of their standards, is they tend to option for a two... They like a two book deal.

[00:20:27.500] - Gail
It's one of their things.

[00:20:29.550] - Sunyi
And- Still 25k as well. Yeah.

[00:20:34.200] - Gail
25k is not peanuts. Like I always say, it's also not an income, right? That's 25k minus my agent's cut, minus da da da minus the.

[00:20:45.350] - Sunyi
Tax cut. Yeah. Sorry. What I mean is it's not gone up. Yeah.

[00:20:51.000] - Gail
But I'm telling you the blank numbers because you guys have talked about this before. That tells you how much they're willing to risk on your... What your advance tells you more than anything is how much they're going to spend on your marketing budget and what they're going to do with you and what they're going to be interested in doing with you. It told me and eventually I didn't realize this at the time, but my agent that they were going to spend something to try and get this, try and get some traction. They weren't going to do the throw the spaghetti at the wall for three grand policy. They're going to do something with it. So they flew me out to BA that year the year of my debut. And a bunch of stuff happened at BA. Tor had pulled out. It was the first year they weren't there, which meant the big rep for sci-fi fantasy was this void at BA, and it had been last minute-ish. And so a lot of the attendees didn't really know that. So that was the first thing that happened. I had begged and pleaded for Solace to be released as a mass market paperback.

[00:21:54.750] - Gail
I don't know if that did much good, my pleading, but that is what they released it as. And that was great because it had a low price point because Briggs and Butcher, and this is Kerriger, Briggs and Butcher had big releases in their Urban Fantasies. And I thought, I'll sit next to them on the shelf and I really want that market share. And someone's going in to buy those suckers at 30 bucks a pop because they're hardcover releases. Maybe they'll spend another eight bucks on my little weird mass market. And that is exactly what ended up happening. But it meant that The Ark was mass market and Tor wasn't there. And a bunch of people in New York who were genre readers just picked up this little mass market thing with a weird Steamunk cover. What's the Steamunk thing anyway? Pocketed it and read it on public transport on the way home because there was no other genre really being released at VA that year. And so it had this weird little bubble of sensation, and it just hit a bunch of reviewers and librarians and industry folks within the market. It had a really unusual, very eye-catching cover that would go on to win awards and stuff like that.

[00:23:09.750] - Gail
Now it looks really dated. At the time, it was really unique. And yeah, that jumpstarted it. The buzz started at that juncture. And so people knew about it by the time it was actually releasing into the world, and it didn't have a strict on sale and SOS. So it started dropping a little bit early. People started picking it up at Borders because Borders still exist in Barnes and Noble. Jim, who was the buyer for CNN, loved the cover too, so did the Borders people. So they ordered more than they normally would. Also, again, it's cheap. So most Borders had about 12 copies or something for a debut. A lot of weird, serendipitous stuff happened with this book. It's an October release. There was no major competition in the industry at the time, except for these heavy hitters within serieses. And it just people picked it up.

[00:24:06.740] - Sunyi
It's.

[00:24:06.950] - Scott
Really funny because you know- So you mentioned-.

[00:24:08.640] - Sunyi
Sorry, I was just going to say, it's funny to me because we were talking about how Trad has all these rules for things that are and aren't set in stone. And one of them, one of the rules that's always set in stone for sci-fi fantasy is, steam punk doesn't sell.

[00:24:22.790] - Gail
I.

[00:24:24.310] - Sunyi
Just find it funny to listen to the story of the the the Steam punk book that could.

[00:24:29.370] - Gail
So Yes, it's the one. I mean, Paula Botchaglopies, Wind-up Girl, which is a Steam punk dystopian, and Cherry priests, Bone-Shaker. And then there was a... Levi Van Wakes, Scott Westerville. So there were a couple that did pretty good. Yeah. So it did surprisingly well. It surprised everybody. The other thing it did was really well in ebook. So for Orbit, it was the top ebook seller and also unusual percentage wise. And there was like 25 % sales in ebook, which Orbit had never had before.

[00:25:07.140] - Scott
And you've listened to the show, so you know this. But we talked to a lot of people about specifically what variables may have influenced that initial wave of attention. So you mentioned that Orbit had made arcs and had them ready in time to send you to a big industry convention. That's what BEA is, right? That's what I'm understanding.

[00:25:37.930] - Gail
Sorry, yes.

[00:25:39.200] - Scott
Is it a lot of book sellers and and libraries and stuff that are there? People who are decision makers on buying or who's the primary attendant there?

[00:25:48.320] - Gail
It used to be the biggest basically book industry convention probably in the world. I think probably bigger than Frankford, I would like to say, having been to both of them, it felt bigger. But it was at the Javits. I think it's still going, but it's probably quite a bit died down now. But it was massive and it was mostly publishers. So mostly publishers and industry.

[00:26:15.510] - Scott
So do you happen to know how many ARCs they printed? And I'm asking this for a particular reason. I have a theory. Well, it's.

[00:26:25.990] - Sunyi
Not a very unique theory. There's like a minimum viability of ARCs thing.

[00:26:29.120] - Gail
Yeah, I don't know. I do know my first print run was 10k for Solace. And I also can tell you again, because I read my royalty reports and I'm really clear about my numbers, that back in the day for MassMarket for New York Times, you had to sell 10k in a week to get that list for mass market adult listing. It's more than that for Hardcover. And it was again later because I was released later on Hardcover. So again, I always try to pay attention to what my print runs are and what my sell through is in the first week when I hit a list, because I'm like, How many? What are they? Hackable, right? It isn't, but I was curious anyway. The print run does make a difference because you have to have a print run big enough to hit the list to start with. And it was for the first... So my first five book series all came out in mass market and pretty much consistently for them, because every single one hit after that, it was about 10,000. And in that first New York Times window period, Tuesday to Tuesday. And that's about what I could tell you.

[00:27:38.280] - Scott
Yeah, just a fun comparison. My print run, my initial print run of Hardcovers was also 10,000. But I got none of the rest of it. None, right? So I have this theory, and again, I'm sure it's not a very unique theory, that there's two primary methods from what we've seen here on the show and heard on the show and just generally have been able to hunt down. That, like Soniae said, you have to hit some critical mass. And the best ways that people or publishers are doing that are one through massive exposure to consumers, right? And so that's things like huge arc giveaways. We've heard stories of arc giveaways and tens of thousands of sneak peak giveaways in the hundreds of thousands or even millions for these series or books that end up becoming very popular. Or more often, it's effort put into what I would call leveraged distribution and pre-publication hype that affects that leveraged distribution. And what I mean by leveraged distribution is exactly what you're describing is building hype with book sellers and industry people, where for every one of them that you win over, you're selling probably in the ballpark of 20 to 100 plus books every year, right?

[00:29:14.550] - Scott
So yeah, that makes ton of sense.

[00:29:16.570] - Gail
I have to say I had the librarians in a big way. I got the L. A, the Alex Award from the librarian market for Solace. They were early, big recognisers. They were also the bloggers. They were also at VA. They were prime category. They just happened to jump on and love this book in mass market, but for libraries. This is why from an indie author perspective, it's so hard to hack the lists, is because that distribution is particularly tightly controlled. The distribution to the movers and shakers, for lack of a better word. In the end, it's all networking, right? It's networking to your author career. I can't tell you how many authors I know who found their agents at events or because a different author told them to try their agent or gave them a personalized I think your personalities would suit. I'll rec you to my agent. Sure. You know, that thing. So yeah, a lot of this is networking. One of the newbie authors will come up to me together to talk, early career. And I'll be like, I don't know how helpful my advice is because it's been so long. But I can tell you one thing, which is make author friends.

[00:30:28.300] - Gail
Make author friends. Author friends now, author friends as you progress through your career. One of my favorite stories to tell is actually a Wesley story. You interviewed Wesley Shew a little while ago, but I was at World fantasy when Barnes and Noble... Barnes and Noble had really pressed me to do 500 signed pre-ordered. So if people pre-ordered this third book from Barnes and Noble online, they could get a signed edition. And so they had missed the tiptoe windows. So they had to send me the physical boxes of books. It had been this nightmare to organise. I had to go and sign 500 books in the space of an afternoon at a weird hotel. It was all a nightmare. And then they promptly lost them. And then they just sent out 500 emails saying, Your order has been cancelled.

[00:31:15.990] - Gail
And in the release day, not before or just release day. And so I lost 500 sales. And so I'm at World fantasy when this happens because I'm on, I'm like, midway through a book tour. And I'm hanging out and I'm drinking at the bar at World fantasy. And I am telling this to Peter Brett and Wesley Chue and I just started balling because I don't know what can I do. And they just did this protective huddle around me where they were the living to be still just freaking out. And they were just so sweet and so kind. And Pete, who has had this thing happen before, who is one of those friends, like a peer of mine, basically was like, Here's what you do. You calm down, you get on the Internet tomorrow and you have a little window of time and you email every single one of them back and you say, When I get off my tour, if you want to send me your address, I will send you a signed sticker that you can put on a copy of the book. And you are out the 35 cents for the stamp, and it's going to take you quite a bit of time.

[00:32:28.740] - Gail
You're going to have to sign 200, 300 again, but that's what you do. And that's exactly what I did. And then it made it all better. And I got 250 emails of my fans who I would eventually pop on a newsletter, little benefits. But yeah, and that was author friends. The moral of the story is make author friends. You have no idea when you're going to need them, but you need them.

[00:32:54.290] - Sunyi
No, I would very much agree. And I think even for me not being able to do traditional networking, I could still build online communities and found that very helpful. I was just going to ask two quick questions. One for Scott, which is Scott, why are your nails painted black? And the other one for Gayle is just very randomly. Do you happen to know what a good preorder number looks like on a book?

[00:33:20.200] - Gail
A good pre-order number on a book? Yeah. Oh, that's a good question. Scott, you answer first. Why are your nails black?

[00:33:26.350] - Scott
Why wouldn't they be black?

[00:33:30.550] - Sunyi
 Fair enough.

[00:33:32.280] - Gail
They.

[00:33:32.960] - Scott
Look great, actually. Up close, they don't look that great. My eight year old painted them for me, as she does every now and then. I have to make sure it's black or something somewhat acceptable and not princess sparkles or whatever. But yeah, so it's Halloween-appropriate. And I look fantastic, thanks. I love it. Sparkles are.

[00:34:00.640] - Gail
Appropriate to everybody. Everybody should put sparkles, uncover your inner sparkle.

[00:34:05.790] - Scott
It's got to be okay. Yeah, I mean, no shade to anybody that has princess sparkled fingernails. Whatever you want to do is great.

[00:34:14.290] - Sunyi
A couple of years ago, my partner dyed his beard glittery green for Christmas.

[00:34:19.040] - Gail
I love it.

[00:34:20.960] - Scott
It's mostly the glitter that I don't like. I just really don't like the texture on my nails. I don't like it when it's falling off on stuff.

[00:34:29.650] - Gail
You could do the sheeney, oil, slick, like gun metal or something metallic.

[00:34:36.150] - Scott
I mean, that'd be cool. Yeah, that'd be cool, I guess.

[00:34:37.970] - Gail
Yeah, that'd be cool. All right. What were- Preorder numbers.

[00:34:41.710] - Sunyi
-preorder numbers. I can tell you what... I can tell.

[00:34:44.800] - Gail
Younow with my fan base, what a pre-order number is and what it gets me at the back end in terms of as an indie publisher, because that's what I have the dad on. And the answer to that is it's probably something in the order of about 250 at least. And this is just to hit number one, at least a couple of categories on Amazon, which I question whether that's actually useful or not. And to have a significant sell through in order to hit a bunch of algorithms on some of the other platforms and stuff. So it's about 250 pre-orders on Amazon, which works out to about 40 to 50 on all of the other platforms. And then now these days for me, I get about 200 or so pre-orders on direct sales as well. I've offboarded a lot to direct sales. Just again, direct access to data and direct access.

[00:35:35.620] - Sunyi
To my fans. That is helpful, actually. Sorry, I was just going to say because a lot of people have asked me in private like other debut authors like, Oh, I've got pre-orders. What do they mean? What's a good number? And nobody really knows. I think a couple of people that I was talking to, they'll get upset at like, I've only got 150 or 200. I was thinking, for a debut, that's really good.

[00:35:55.470] - Gail
That's very good. Yeah. Yeah, that's very good. I would say good over a hundred, especially for a debut, because it just means it's just telling you that you're getting the word out to people. And there's a real trust model involved when you're debuting in particular, and especially if you're debuting in Trad because the price point is so high. And so yeah, those period of numbers are excellent because a lot of readers and I get this, they're just not going to take a risk on a newer author like a very expensive book. They're definitely not going to preorder. Yeah. No, I don't. I wait until there's at least a sample I can read first or it's in the library and I can check it. Partly that's because as a writer, I'm pretty invested in the flavor and style of the author's voice. And there are some author voices that just really turn me off and I'm just not going to bother.

[00:36:53.410] - Sunyi
I think people just dream big. Yeah.

[00:36:59.660] - Gail
They do. You do. You do. That's true. But yeah, lower your expectations, everybody. Yeah.

[00:37:06.780] - Sunyi
And very quick. One of the things you mentioned on your list to talk about that I was interested in was selling the film rights and your tight options and what that story involved in was about.

[00:37:18.030] - Gail
Yeah.

[00:37:18.980] - Scott
You.

[00:37:20.060] - Gail
Talked to people who had what sounded like wide options and stuff. And then, Scott, are you going to mention the turning down the deal?

[00:37:26.980] - Scott
Yeah. That's specifically what I want to hear about, is that note you have on there. So go for it.

[00:37:33.050] - Gail
Essentially, when they option your book, they're optioning the rights to the world and the characters, not really the story. This confuses people a lot, which is why when your favorite book gets optioned, you can expect it to be exactly like what was written most of the time. So again, back in 2012, when Steamunk was on its heyday, this is the story Scott Walsh, Sony approached to option the finishing school series. And it was a million dollar offer. Because the finishing school series had hit New York Times twice already in hardcover, they were doing really well. That is the series that I got a six-figure advance for. So they were throwing a ton of guns behind it. It was the heyday of Steamunk. Everybody was excited by this new movement, the beauty of it, so on and so forth. We were negotiating and I was like, Well, for a million dollars I'll be a little less of... I'll be a little bit more relaxed. But the previous series was already under options, so we had to have some negotiations anyway. And then we came to character. We were talking about some of the characters. Now again, this is before Me Too.

[00:38:46.600] - Gail
This is before Black Lives Matter. But my main love interest in the finishing school series is black, and they wanted to whitewash that character. And I was like, No. I was like, Okay, no. And they were like, Well, we won't. I was like, No, now you said that you got to put it in. It needs to be written down that you're not going to whitewash my characters. Also, don't queerwash my characters or straight wash them. I was like, I have a lot of queer characters. You can't do that either. And they were like, No, author you cannot tell us what to do for a million dollars. And I was like, Okay, then I don't need a million dollars. So, yeah, I completely walked away from the deal because I was like, Yeah, I don't... It wasn't... I am not one of those authors who dreams of having my stuff adapted. It's never been something that particularly interests me. I'm not a big film buff or anything like that, but also like, I don't need a million dollars, that's fine.

[00:39:44.440] - Sunyi
Yeah. And I wonder because I'm conscious of time and not keeping everyone too long, but there was a certain publishing experience we talked about at the start before we got going. And I wondered if you had the time and headspace to go into that a little bit.

[00:39:59.600] - Gail
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did allude to this a little bit, but essentially because of the option clause situation where the first publisher that had found me out of Slash, who loved my book, the editor was just ecstatic, was so excited, they were not offering me, and they were offering me three or four grand, but they were a prestige house that I was very familiar with because I read many of their authors were quite beloved. She called me. I was at a coffee shop writing or working on correcting papers or something, and I saw the 212 New York number on my phone, and I was like, What? And it was like, Hi, this is so and so. I'm the editor at blah, blah, blah, and I love your book and I really want to publish it. And Ithink I spat latte foam and then ran out the back of the cafe and quietly had hysterics for a while. So it was very exciting. It is the dream, right? That's the actual dream. And then this is where I always say, never say yes. Always say, let me contact my agent, even if you don't have one.

[00:41:05.870] - Gail
Because I said yes, and that caused a lot of problems. Although this isn't the UK, a man's word is not a spawn. But yeah. And so then I reached out to a couple of agents. I asked the publisher if they had an agent they really liked, and they recommended one that they had worked with for various authors. So I approached him and then I approached Kristen, who had rejected me for a previous YA series. But she'd done it so nicely and with so much thought that I was like, I really like her. I also really liked her business model. She wasn't New York-based, and I knew that she'd broken from a... To start up her own. She was relatively new. She was relatively young. She was relatively hungry. I knew she had no kids. I was later to learn that she is a workaholic. You want that in an agent? It's very good. No distractions from my agent. Thank you very much. So I approached those two agents, and one of them, who shall remain nameless, passed me along to his assistant and it was pretty dismissive. And Kristen got back to me within 24 hours and was like, Yeah, it looks great.

[00:42:16.600] - Gail
I love it. You have an offer on the table? Let's do this. So that was the agent sorted. And then we had this crazy contract negotiation over the option clause, which just went on forever with this particular editor that had praised me and continued to do so to my face on the phone, just like becoming more and more of a heredon to my my now newly hired and beloved agent over specifically the option clause. And eventually I was the one... Mutually, my agent and I were just like, This is totally ridiculous. And I'm like, I mean, this is like end of term. This has been drawn out over the holidays and into spring. And I'm correcting term papers and I'm working on my thesis. And I'm just like, try someone else. This is too ridiculous for this little game of a hobby with this playful, silly book I wrote. Yeah, do something else. And again, I was just like, agent, what do you think? Try something else. And we tried different publishers.

[00:43:18.340] - Sunyi
And it's interesting because, I mean, obviously we won't name them on air, but I do know this publisher and specifically the editor and very recently within the last two years, I've had an author friend who went on submission to them. When things started not working out between them, that behavior is exactly the same. The editor was screaming at my friend's agent, at my friend's agency. There was a lot of vitriol and just like unprofessional behavior. And it did end with the author canceling that contract and walking away because they just couldn't be bothered to deal with anymore. And they found the book a different home. So it's sad, but not surprising, I guess, to hear that that behaviour is the same even across the gap of years from the same place and same people, which is not toured. I'm just throwing that out there. No, you're fine. Yeah, sorry. I feel like we've been a bit all over the place. I might move bits to the conversation around later. But I was going to say, unless you've got further questions, Scott, I was going to ask if you felt like plugging yourself, Gayle, and just telling people where they could find you and definitely- Yeah.

[00:44:33.170] - Gail
There were a couple of things. I did want to mention in case this comes up and you need to point people this direction that I have also been in the position of having to buy myself out of a contract. So I know you mentioned at one point that you'd never... Oh, my God.

[00:44:52.110] - Sunyi
Please stop. It's all right.

[00:44:55.490] - Scott
I'm so sorry about that. I do want to hear about that if you- Yeah, go for it. Yeah, go for it. Tell that. I was.

[00:45:01.370] - Gail
Actually approached by an editor to write a Y-A-Series, and they preempted the offer with a six-figure deal for a four-book series. But I also pitched the follow-up spin-off series for my first five-book series to Orbit. Now the preempt had gone to Little Brown, which is also a Hachette House. Essentially, I had two book deals on the table, one for this four-book Y-A-A series, which I had already started writing. I was already a couple of books in on that one. And then this new spin-off of the Solace series called the Custer Protocol series. And I thought I could write one book and then another book and one book and then another book and another book. And it turns out I cannot do that. I can't do that with serieses, especially serieses that are in the same universe. The main characters voices just started getting really muddled in my head. And I was like, This is not going to work. I tried to do the first book in the new Adult Series and it didn't work. And I had to turn around to Orbit and just be like, I don't know how you want to handle this, but you have two options.

[00:46:15.320] - Gail
I can buy back my advance. The advance was for a two-book deal. That's always what Orbit does. I was like, I can buy back on a two-book deal, or you can hold for two years while I have time to finish this four-book series. And there was a good couple of months there where my agent was like, I've never had to do a renegotiation. And I was like, I can pay back the advance. I just stuck in a savings account. I don't know how this works either. Or but I'm prepared to do this. And we really did think we were going to have to do it. We were really going into those negotiations. And then eventually, Orbit was just like, We'll just hold it and wait. So it did work out okay, but I did start that negotiation. So I do know that it's possible. But yes, that's the one instance where you would have to pay back your advance. And I'm the only one I know who's ever been put in that situation before.

[00:47:15.170] - Scott
Yeah. I mean, yeah, it makes sense. I think were you to cancel a contract, that's what they stand to lose. Yeah.

[00:47:25.740] - Gail
Yeah. And then that last series was a nightmare series. That was a series where everything that they'd done right with my first series, they did wrong with that last series. They released it in hardcover. They charged too much for the ebook. They didn't roll out quickly enough. They didn't do arcs. It was just pretty much I got orphaned badly twice. I ended up with an editor who was not interested in my books, did not like them. I was like, wait.

[00:48:04.360] - Scott
I know this story. Yeah.

[00:48:07.140] - Sunyi
And can you see that difference in your sales?

[00:48:10.420] - Gail
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was remarkable. And I will often say, I'm sorry to break your bubble, authors out there, but even when you make it and you do good and you give them everything that they want and you're a front list, they will still hand you out to dry. I don't know. In fact, sometimes they're almost more likely to because they expect you to perform without their help. And yeah, I mean, to cap that story, I went on recently to write a series which is non-commercial. It's not a genre that sells very well, which frankly, was what Solace was way back in the day. And it went back out on sub. So I was out on sub recently as a front Lister, as 13 New York Times, right? And 57 rejections later just goes to show that everyone gets rejected, everyone will get dropped. Like, yeah, it can happen. It can happen. I don't mean to be a downer, but all good can happen and all the bad can happen.

[00:49:13.750] - Sunyi
Yeah. It is very, very fickle. Yeah.

[00:49:19.180] - Scott
Yeah, that was fantastic.

[00:49:23.760] - Sunyi
I think so. Yeah. I really will if that's okay, ask you if you want to plug yourself. Where can people find you and your books and your blogs and things.

[00:49:35.610] - Gail
And I'll.

[00:49:36.190] - Sunyi
Get a list of links off you at the end. So this is the.

[00:49:39.290] - Gail
Point where I say I really am on social media to interact with my readers because they're multitudes and they take a lot of time and attention. I do adore them. So if you follow me on the social media, you will hear about my fiction. If you are interested in non-fiction and I do have a massive non-fiction project coming up. But in the Craft of Stuff, that is almost exclusively on my blog. So go to Gayle Kerriger. And I have a Resources tab on my blog, and under that tab are two sections. One is for new authors and one is for established authors. And it is going to be both stuff I've written, just all sorts of things from how cover artworks to other things like that, but also links to good podcasts and stuff that other people have written. I like to help as much as I can. That's the way I've figured out how to help newbies in particular. During NaNoRemo Month of November, I do take over all of my social medias with write stuff where I will talk about being a writer and stuff like that. Yeah. So go to my blog is probably the best resource that I have.

[00:50:49.400] - Gail
The non-fiction project I have coming up is called Going Hybrid, and it is how to move from traditional publishing to self-publishing without going crazy. And it will have checklists and worksheets and all the things. So if you are one of those authors who is thinking about that as a possible career pivot, the book is coming, I promise. It's really coming, because I've been pretty successful doing that. I make as much now as I did when I was a New York Times bestseller. No way. And 80 % of my income is self-publish. And I did that in five years. That's how long it took me to make that transition. Well, it took three years to do the complete pivot, but I gave myself five years to make that transition. So it is possible. You can do it. It can be done. Yeah. So find me on the website.

[00:51:45.790] - Sunyi
No, thanks so much.

[00:51:47.140] - Gail
Yeah. And if you do want access to any of the backend data stuff, just again, my website has a little contact page. Just drop me a calling card.

[00:51:58.940] - Sunyi
That's great. Thanky.

[00:52:00.150] - Gail
Maybe a little while, I'll be in Thailand for a month, so I might be a little slow to respond, but I promise I'll get back at you.

[00:52:07.870] - Sunyi
That's okay. I'm always slow to respond these days. And yeah, thank you very much, and especially thank you to both you, because I'm just so spaced out. I had a two-hour Zoom call earlier and now I'm just like... Anyway, it's been really good. And thank you again so much. I'm really distracted by your nail, Scott. I hope you have a good... Do that one more time. Do that one more time.

[00:52:32.880] - Scott
Well, Gil, it was wonderful chatting with you. I learned a lot. Perfect. Thank you.

[00:52:42.630] - Gail
Thank you. Thanks for allowing me to press you into having me on. Yeah, and I'm glad to talk about anything. I'm glad to help anytime.

[00:52:56.620] - Sunyi
Sometime in person I'll get more stories out of you. But yeah. I will- In the meantime.

[00:53:01.370] - Gail
Yes, that is the rule, is I do do quite a number of conventions. And if you buy me a drink at a convention, I will tell you anything you want to know and then deny it online later. So it's a real secret.

[00:53:16.020] - Sunyi
World con it is.

[00:53:16.860] - Gail
Right.

[00:53:19.100] - Sunyi
You've been listening to the Publishing Radio Podcast with Sonia Dean and Scott Drakeford. Tune in next time for more in-depth discussion on everything publishing industry. See you later.