[00:00:01.480] - Sunyi
Hi, I'm Sunyi Dean.

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

[00:00:05.280] - 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 those 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.

[00:00:58.560] - Sunyi
I guess I'll start by saying welcome to the Publishing Radio Podcast, the last episode for Season 1. There was some discussion about whether or not there would even be a season two, but we'll get into that in a minute. There will be one. I hope it'll be a little different to season one, a little better, a little more better planned. Maybe we can actually give people a schedule of who's going to be on it so they know what will be there. Well, that was my thinking, as we could be like, Oh, here's the list of names. It might not be exactly in that order, depending on when people get to record and when I get to edit. But that's the rough idea. We were going to do another episode, which didn't happen for various reasons that I'll get into in a second. But yeah, obviously we've slowed down. It's been a great year doing it. This tiny project that we thought would be niche is blown up a lot bigger than we thought it would be. But I think it's safe to say we are pretty burnt out at this particular point in time. When was it?

[00:01:55.620] - Sunyi
I think, right after we recorded Carrie's episode and then I went on holiday and I came back and I was just not feeling it. I think I loved all the guests we had, but every episode was a little bit of a struggle. I used to check all the stats to be really excited and then I started dreading it in case it was like, Oh, what if this is the episode or we start tanking? It's just got to the point where I think we need a break and we need to stop and recoup and regather for the new year and also actually get some fucking writing done.

[00:02:24.510] - Scott
Because.

[00:02:25.370] - Sunyi
I don't get paid if I don't have anything else.

[00:02:27.710] - Scott
I was going to say a lot of that burnout has to do with other stuff. Yeah. That's true. Turns out we still have our own lives to manage and our own writing careers and various other things to take care of. But that is funny, right? I think we're almost ready to get burned out on a podcast that we started just for the hell of it with very few expectations of anyone listening.

[00:02:55.250] - Sunyi
And 12 episodes planned. We've done 30 now.

[00:02:58.970] - Scott
Is this 30? Really?

[00:02:59.970] - Sunyi
This is 31.

[00:03:01.460] - Scott
Jesus Christ on you.

[00:03:03.520] - Sunyi
Plus the Forbidden episode that never made it to air plus the Jericho episodes. It's actually 33.

[00:03:12.260] - Scott
Oh, did we never run the Jericho thing?

[00:03:14.410] - Sunyi
I ended up not running the Jericho one in the end because I think we've really misjudged that audience. We went in with all this more advanced publishing stuff to talk to and then discovered that a lot of the people who attended that were at more an entry point, which is fine. But it was a lot of backtracking to explain the difference between a Vanity Press and a Trad Press, and it's like, okay, we need to give you a bit more basic bones here. I really don't think it had anything new. I will get the transcripts up for it at some point. But between my poor sound quality and the fact that it was publishing 101, I just don't think it has a lot for the general listeners. But yeah, it's not a conspiracy to hide or anything. It didn't quite fit the rest of the show.

[00:03:57.330] - Scott
Yeah. I just never even noticed it.

[00:03:59.950] - Sunyi
Oh, my God. Very quickly. Before we get into any meat, any of the one question I was going to address this year, any regrets or highlights?

[00:04:14.370] - Scott
Do you want to start or do you want me to? I've got some things that come to top of mind, but I feel like my memory is working at about 40% these days, so I'm sure I'll miss a lot.

[00:04:27.070] - Sunyi
I guess I regret making drama on Twitter about Orbitz, works, digital imprint thing. That's really not our MO, it was to stir up drama. It was obviously just an error. It did annoy everyone is talking about it in all the discord and stuff, right? But it shouldn't... I don't know. I just regretted it because that's not what we do. I think I should have done that on my main account if I was going to be a little bitch about it. That's my one regret. I think that, and I wish I hadn't split Richard's episode into two. That's like a really tiny editing regret that just bugged me. I should have left it as it was. Let it be a bit long. My highlights is actually one of your highlights, which is that guy who message you to say, that he'd basically listened to the podcast and as a result of that, sent out loads of arcs and approached book sellers or something and also had a conversation with his editor?

[00:05:25.650] - Scott
That is Stephen Ronson. And he contacted because of the podcast and basically just said, hey, thanks for saying this stuff in public because he wouldn't have known otherwise. I may get some of the details wrong, but he's written a book that has just come out called The Last Line, I believe. And I have not started listening to it yet. I have the audiobook.

[00:05:52.910] - Sunyi
That's right. Yeah, one more thriller.

[00:05:54.800] - Scott
Yeah, I think it published with Hotter. God, I'm going to probably butcher this, but I think it's some a mystery thriller set.

[00:06:04.070] - Sunyi
In-.

[00:06:04.770] - Scott
In World War II. -in World War II.

[00:06:06.280] - Sunyi
Sorry, I looked it up on Goodreads.

[00:06:07.830] - Scott
Yeah, World War II era England. And there was something more to it that I was like, God damn, that's going to be great. But yeah, so as a result of listening and realizing that not every publishing story is a great one, he had some frank discussions with his editor about outcomes, got some straight information, which is awesome, by the way, got some straight information on who is getting arcs, if anyone. And then he did just a ton of legwork on his own to find reviewers in his genre, in his space. And I don't know exactly what he did, but reached out and got them to read arcs. And it seems like it's paying-.

[00:06:57.740] - Sunyi
His book came out last week.

[00:06:58.900] - Scott
Yeah. It's so good for him. Yeah, very recently. But he had, for launch, he had quite a few reviews in on NetGalley and on Goodreads. And I think maybe, I don't think they let you do Amazon until it's actually launched. But he got a lot of people engaged, and it seems like they really liked the book. That's crazy because he's got all these people who really loved it, but they probably wouldn't have even heard of it, let alone read it, if he hadn't gone out and done that work to find those reviewers himself. I agree that is a highlight and representative, I think, of quite a few messages we've gotten of upcoming debuts who have said, hey, this is super helpful and gives me what I need to be able to advocate for myself and understand what I can and can't do. But also we've heard from a lot of people who have said, hey, my debut launched or my career didn't do as well as I wanted or my career has not gone the way I wanted in publishing. And it's nice to know that these things aren't just happening to me. And that there might be some reason behind them.

[00:08:19.350] - Scott
I'd say those have been the highlights for sure.

[00:08:22.650] - Sunyi
There was one thing that I maybe shouldn't address, but I wanted to anyway, which is that I was expecting it, right? That's after the podcast came out that I think Scott started to get at least a couple of reviews from people who said things like, Oh, I picked up this book because of the podcast. But, I think I can see why they didn't give him a lot of money or what.

[00:08:45.480] - Scott
I remember I only remember one of those, but I do remember that one.

[00:08:50.320] - Sunyi
I was anticipating it, but I think my my response to that is I think people are maybe missing the point there. It's not it's not about who deserves what advance. It's about the fact that there's no transparency that you go into it thinking you're on equal footing with other books that that if a publisher comes to you and says, hey, we envision your book selling this many copies, we will and won't give this and that support, then you can make informed decisions and you can't really complain if you sign that contract at that point. But it's very, very... That's what the issue is. It's not what they view your book as or some objective standard of quality, which I'm not even going to get into that fight, but it's about expectations and clarity and communication and respect for each other from between author and publishers, business individuals. That has always been the beef, really. It's not.

[00:09:45.230] - Scott
Yeah. I will say, I don't regret that at all. No refunds. Yeah, no refunds at all. I never went into this with the idea that everyone was going to love it. As I've experienced this industry more, I have become even less optimistic about the prospects of everyone or even a large majority of people loving what I write because I just… God, how do I say this without getting myself in trouble? I am okay writing things that are for very specific audiences, right? And I'm not of the opinion that I am a normal person with normal interests. I never really thought that all the normies out there were going to love everything I put. But I will say that the highlights to counteract that, I have had people pick it up, pick Rise of the Mages up because of the podcast and message and say, hey, I like this. Thanks for being so honest. I've had a lot of people, which is crazy because the book eaters got quite a good lunch. But I've seen a lot of people who mentioned your book and having picked up your book because of the podcast and said that they really loved it, even though it might not have been something they would have picked up otherwise.

[00:11:10.470] - Scott
So I think there's been good and bad on a personal level there.

[00:11:16.100] - Sunyi
I mean, some people might have hated it, but I don't read my reviews, so I won't know.

[00:11:20.230] - Scott
I think when you first mentioned that you wanted to go over regrets and highlights, I started thinking like, do I regret having been so harsh at times, in particular with things that I was assuming or even just guessing at with regards to the industry and people or entities within the industry and their motivations to do certain things? Honestly, no. It may be a little bit, but at the end of the day, no, because I do think it's an industry that needs to change in a lot of ways. Even though there are extremely good people in it and great people that I've been able to work with, I don't think I regret the overall tone of it. Highlights for me, obviously we've had people come to us and say, Hey, we've learned a whole bunch from this, blah, blah, blah, but I've learned a ton, right?

[00:12:20.090] - Sunyi
Oh, yeah. I've got to meet some of my publishing heroes, Cameron Hurley.

[00:12:23.950] - Scott
Yeah. And I mean, it might seem very basic, but even just that… Was it our second episode we did with Jeremy and Auntie's Books in Spokane? God, that was revelatory for me when we were going through how everything worked with how… Just getting a better understanding of how engaged publisher sales reps are and how much the catalog and those sales reps affect what gets into stores and how many. Not just that. There have been a ton of episodes and a ton of guests that I've learned a lot from, but that one always sticks out in my mind just as the one where I sat there like, Holy shit, why couldn't I have done this right before I launched? That would have been great to know.

[00:13:14.910] - Sunyi
I guess what I've learned from talking to people over the year is that arcs matter and that tends to be my advice when I talk to new authors now. If they ask me for it, I don't volunteer it, which is if you can get arcs, whether it's e-book or print or if you have to author copies, get out there, make yourself a press sheet. I have one on my website. You can use it as a template. It just has basic information about me, my book where you can be bought, the languages it's in, its ISVN, stuff like that, a blurb, photos, take that, take swag if you can afford it, get to book sellers, give them two copies.

[00:13:51.650] - Scott
These are.

[00:13:52.250] - Sunyi
Things you can help you if your publisher is not doing it. The other thing I've learned is, which are more from not the podcast, just seeing it across debits, how so many things just hinge on the smallest of decisions by random people. They're not small, but it's just like the right person at the right time. Choosing to support your book makes a difference of tens of thousands of sales. That remains crazy to me. I was particularly feeling that this summer because Bookeaters launched, the paperback launched as a pick of the month for Barnes and Noble. That's the difference of anywhere between 10,000 and 80,000 sales, depending on your genre. I mean, it's huge, right? But it's like one or two people, again, who love the book and advocate for it. So all of that is just... Yeah. There's still loads of stuff we don't know and still loads of things we hope to learn. I guess I'll get into where we're at after a year if you want to start with that. I feel like I'm talking a lot.

[00:14:49.760] - Scott
Sure. I will absolutely echo that arc's comment. It's obviously not everything, and there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes. As mentioned, your Barnes and Noble Pick, the sales pressure that a book gets behind the scenes with sales reps that publishers send out to all the different book sellers and things. But in terms of things that you can see, it does sure seem like ARX and a high number of ARX is something to push for and absolutely something I'll be pushing for in the future. The other thing I'll say is I think along those lines, editor fit is probably the largest variable in your publishing career, right? All of those things you're talking about, all those little things that happen behind the scenes mostly to affect the outcome of your publishing career, any given book happen because of your editor or don't happen because of your editor, right? And a lot of things may not happen even if you have a great editor and a great editor fit just because of what you've written, what your industry or your genre look like, etc. So it's not like it's a silver bullet. There don't seem to be any.

[00:16:19.780] - Scott
But editor fit, I think, is a huge deal, and I'll get into that in a minute. But the other thing is really just don't sign a small deal. I think that, especially when I went into the industry and got my offer, et cetera, I certainly was of the opinion that I could overcome that and I would do whatever it took to succeed anyway, and I really didn't know what it meant. But from what I can tell, the death rate on small contracts is astronomical high. People in the industry won't be surprised to hear that. But what I think people getting into the industry who aren't on the inside quite yet may not understand is what that means, right? Like if you sign a first deal and that deal goes nowhere, those books or that book goes nowhere, you are not in a great position. The most likely outcome by far when that happens is that you are once again out of the industry after having spent years and years writing, editing, and promoting books that your publisher did not promote.

[00:17:36.920] - Sunyi
And it will be harder than ever to get back in.

[00:17:39.100] - Scott
Exactly. Yep. Because now you're not an enticing debut that could be anything. You're not a lottery ticket to them. You are, in their mind, a known quantity with a poor sales record attached to you. It makes no sense that they don't take into account the fact that they are responsible for almost the entirety of that sales record, but that is how they judge you anyway. And it's funny to me that authors can then go and leverage a good sales record to get more money out of the publisher when the publisher almost certainly knows that they did everything to make that happen. Or maybe not everything, right? Like quality matters fit with readers matters. But they know that when they put money into a book, it means something, right? So I'm imagining a lot of editors or the very least, the senior executives are out there scoffing when authors are quoting good sales numbers and asking for more money on their next deal. Yeah, anyway, I guess do you want me to segue from there into where I'm at a year on what's changed? And then I'll shut up and you can take the rest of the show.

[00:18:50.650] - Sunyi
Not the rest of.

[00:18:52.660] - Scott
It, but yes. Yeah. So along those lines, well, my agent worked a minor miracle or maybe even a major miracle, I'm not sure. I now have a different editor who I feel is a very good fit for the Irebooks. He's a good human. Yeah, and a good human, though I haven't known him for a long time, so you could still disappoint me, Robert. But that's been nice, and that just is going back to the editor fit thing, right? I don't have any solid outcomes to show for that, but even just the personality fit style, interests, et cetera, it's a big deal. So I'd encourage people to look really hard at the editors that they're submitting to when they go on sub and try to talk through that with an agent.

[00:19:46.950] - Sunyi
Just to very quickly clarify you, Scott was essentially assigned an editor, which is not an ideal situation for either author or editor, not very common in publishing. Usually, you're picked up by someone who actually likes your book.

[00:19:59.620] - Scott
Correct. Correct.

[00:20:00.450] - Sunyi
Yeah. Or at least has an interest in your book. And I think your previous set are mostly published as sci-fi.

[00:20:06.540] - Scott
Yeah. And I will say that the relationship was quite good for quite a long time. And there's nothing personal there. But yeah, I think the fit is a huge deal, right? It's like that thing in corporate America, well, corporate anywhere, where they say you don't leave a job because of pay or whatever. You leave jobs because of a bad manager, or people stay because of a good manager, whatever. The editor-author relationship obviously isn't a managerial. Well, I mean, but it's not a direct report situation. But it is hugely impactful. The other thing that I probably I don't know how much I should even say, but I'm going to anyway because that's what we do on this show. I am writing The Age of Ayr and finishing that out. Book two has been edited by my new editor, and I've got those edits and I'm going through them now. The book will be ready to go and will be published in late 2024, so I'm super excited about that. I got the audiobook deal, but I've covered that in the past, so I don't think I need to go over that, and that's out now. But my personal plans are to go to a completely different genre.

[00:21:27.850] - Scott
Because, primarily, because once you launch in a genre and you're not a lead and/or you don't climb the ranks to lead status regardless of where you started, that's it. The best case scenario for you is that you probably sign another deal like your first deal that is then ignored like your first books were ignored, and you're just going through the same fucking dance with the whole second contract, which is years of your life, right?

[00:22:04.400] - Sunyi
Probably less money as well.

[00:22:06.440] - Scott
Probably, yeah. In my case, I don't know that it gets to be less, but maybe. So yeah, I'll be going to—and I am writing currently on the side—historical fiction. I'm planning on doing some historical fantasy or maybe historical horror. It depends on how you classify it. Some thrillers and mystery in the future I have on my to be written list. But yeah, that's what I'll be doing. The Aure trilogy will be out sooner rather than later, and nothing will be different about that timeline from Tor. But I really just don't feel like there's a future for me in science fiction and fantasy because of how my first contract has gone. So I will be gala venting in other pastures for a time and maybe make a return to fantasy someday. Maybe not. We'll see.

[00:23:02.930] - Sunyi
Off the back of that, just to sound like a total douche. Yeah. So my book followed its marketing trajectory, and it probably… I really struggled to understand and I knew how my book was selling compared to Midlands Friends as well, say, but I didn't know what that meant relative to my advanced bracket and my publisher's expectations for what they spent on it. But I would imagine that they are pretty happy. In the States, book eaters earned out the money for just itself, basically by Christmas of the same year it launched and it has been giving me pretty decent royalties. I had a bigger royalty check than I was thinking this autumn. I think as far as I can work out, I think that means if Torid paid me 150k a book and said 100k a book, it still would have earned out by a little bit. That's so awesome. I'm guessing and then on theobviously in the UK side, all three books are earned out, so that's royalties as well. I think that it's probably sold just a bit over 120 copies worldwide, all formats. I'm not totally sure.

[00:24:13.860] - Scott
Because- 100-120,000, right?

[00:24:16.180] - Sunyi
Yeah. I'm guessing because it's in the '70s for the American side. It's at least 30 in the UK, so I don't know what it is the rest of the world over. The Spanish edition has been out and they tagged me every so often. Then there's like foreign language editions which appear here and there. But again, it was like it followed its marketing trajectory. It's as far as I know, performing within that marketing bracket. I'm in a very different position from Scott where as a result of that, I'm going to try and probably re-contract before even my first contract is for all the books in that contract are out. I'll get into that in a minute because we did actually have a reader question some weeks ago where someone said they'd love to see an episode and what it takes to sell a book and proposal and at what point in an author's career can that happen? What does that look like? The short answer is it can happen as soon as you have any leverage to do it.

[00:25:09.140] - Scott
But.

[00:25:09.610] - Sunyi
Before I get into that, I guess other things have happened. One thing I do want to address, I'm in the process of changing literary representation. I wasn't going to mention this, except that a few friends who knew me and were aware that this was happening, a couple of people were saying, Oh, I look forward to the next publishing radio, exposé, or whatever is going down. Which made me just want to say, There's no drama, there's no exposé. If there was drama, I would just say nothing. But it was a very complicated decision, a very sad decision. Lots of different things going on for me to leave my agency. Don't go pull your queries from bookends or whatever. They're still fine. Naomi is still a great agent. There's so many factors I'm not going to get into, but I thought I'd say that because basically once my 60-day notice period runs out with bookends, I'll probably be popping up. I'll probably be popping up with a different agency at that time. I don't want people to think that there's like stuff going on. It's just a business thing. So that's been complicated and interesting. But one of the things I've really been thinking about doing that is, man, querying.

[00:26:17.270] - Sunyi
When you have a book that's sold well is a really different experience from querying when you were just an unknown author. I will always be grateful to my first agency and my first agent for being the only person to actually think that my books were worth something before there was any monetary proof. I'm not very good about promoting my books on social media, and I think actually in some ways, sometimes people are a bit surprised to find out how well it's doing because I just try not to talk about it very much. But agents know and it's, Oh, this sounds terrible. I'm just going to have to edit it later or something.

[00:26:56.540] - Scott
I think.

[00:26:57.130] - Sunyi
You're doing fine. You don't query when you've had a successful book. You let agents know that you're interested and then you have discussions and you interview them and it is a totally different dynamic. That brings me into the conversation about leverage, which is what does it take to sell a book on proposal? It takes leverage and you get that in a different way. So non-fiction books are sold on proposal because you have a platform or you have expertise and that platform can be you're a celebrity or you're a doctor and you've written a book. Like what's it called? This is going to hurt. That was like a memoir about being a junior doctor. At what point in the career can this happen? I've written three books. One of them is published to in edits, ones with my editor, and I'm looking at recontracting. At this point in my career, I have sales from a book that's earned out really well, which is outside of my control. I didn't do jack shit to promote that book. I did nothing other than drop some cake pops off and make a podcast after it really came out. But that doesn't...

[00:28:00.260] - Sunyi
I didn't really do anything. But the point is, even though it was out of my control, the book sold well because the publisher's efforts paid off. So now I have the leverage to go to a publisher and say, Well, I want to recontract and I have a pitch. So when I go into those negotiations, I won't have a completed book. I will have a proposal for one book and some pitches for one or two others, depending how many books they choose to buy off me again. That's essentially... I mean, there's timing issues. Michael Mame has talked about this a lot with us in private that basically when your books come out and you have sales, you then know how the book is done. And when you have sales in a book that makes the money that you ask for a really simple calculation. If your books are worth $20,000, that's how much they sell every time. You're going to get that advanced offer and it's probably not very negotiable. When it becomes dicey is in situations like mine where they're going, Right, the first book sold. We don't know how the next two will sell.

[00:29:03.650] - Sunyi
So then I'm taking a gamble where it's like, I could wait till my other two books come out and then recontract. And if they both do really well, I'll get a lot more money than I would trying to recontract now. But if those next two books absolutely bomb, I'll get less money than I would trying to recontract now. So it's like this weird poker game where you're trying to convince the publisher that you might do well and they're trying to gage like, Oh, do we want to miss out this book and risk losing it? Or do we want to risk overpaying but make sure we have it and then hope that it does well and it's like a whole little shell game doing with each other. That's where agents are very useful. So definitely don't try that yourself. I'm just saying that because someone told me it recently. Oh, you don't need an agent. Just go and get society of authors to do the contracts for you. Don't do that. I mean, that's the sum total of leverage. Sorry. Yeah, go on.

[00:30:01.000] - Scott
Yeah. No, I was just going to add some contrast to that. I have been told by people that I trust to be telling me the semi-objective truth that I probably will not sell another book on... Rather, I will not sell my next book on proposal. I do not have that leverage. And I just wanted to mention a couple of things. One, my book actually hasn't bombed. I don't have my recent royalty statement, but my agent was pretty stoked about my numbers given the deal and deal size, etc. My agent was pretty stoked about my numbers and has said that other publishers he's put authors at that have achieved less than that in terms of sales have been pretty happy about giving a next contract to those authors. That said, especially with my plans to... Well, I'm not going to rule out locking in another contract with Tor if that's the way they want to go and if I have something that is meaningful to me. But I'm pretty sure even if it is with Tor, I'm going to have to write a complete book and they're going to have to see that book, judge it, and I'm still going to have that sales record hanging over me without the context of, Okay, well, how much support did it get?

[00:31:27.510] - Scott
It's just pure what did it sell.

[00:31:29.810] - Sunyi
I've got friends who are out of contract and in very similar situations or possibly tougher where they're staring down the barrel of like, right, now I have to go on submission again with the sales record hanging over me like some criminal record and convince publishers that I'm trustworthy, even though what happened isn't their fault, yada yada. There's degrees of it. You said there's pitching a proposal and there's pitching sample chapters and the amount of sample chapters can change depending on how much of a risk you are. So one friend is writing 100 pages, typed pages, just like a third of a novel, basically, to go on Subway. So it's not quite a full novel, but it almost is. That's interesting. Yeah, there's all variations in between and it's a very intricate calculation. I think a proper agent could talk to you more. I had originally intended for my agent to come on and have that discussion, but now that we've part of ways, I'm not going to... I feel it would be weird or mean or something to invite them onto the podcast now. So we've not done that as we're still working through our 60 days of just entangling, book divorce.

[00:32:39.060] - Sunyi
Yeah, it's hard that the leverage won't. And I think just as a side note as well, if people are ever thinking about changing agency, I'm always happy to talk about that in private or through email. It's just not something I felt like going into here because it's way too complicated.

[00:32:56.180] - Scott
Well, another thing I wanted to comment on that very quickly is that I think that's super understandable, right? Yeah. I think people who haven't been through similar things might think of that as a very drastic step and a huge thing. But people change agents all the time. People change editors, usually between contracts, but sometimes in the middle of contracts. And when you're getting into this business, you know so little, or at least I did, right? You're just happy to be there and you'll take whatever you can get thing. Then you learn a whole lot, not just about the industry, but about the person you're working with and about yourself. My plans for my career in writing have changed a lot in the years since I signed a contract with Tours. I think it's a super understandable situation.

[00:33:50.670] - Sunyi
Sorry, go ahead. No, that's fine. I was just going to say also my kidlet projects are probably staying with Bookends for the foreseeable future. I've got secret middle grade picture book projects going. That's awesome. But yeah, other than that, I've hopefully got a fantasy novel coming out early 2025. I'm not totally sure which one it will be because I've ended up writing two at the same time, just the book and another book. After that, I've pitched a top secret sci-fi, which so far has had a decent reception from the people who've read sample chapters and from editor and so on. We'll see how that goes. Is there more- I have to cut that bit because.

[00:34:26.640] - Scott
There's not more of it. No, there's not more than that one. God, that was so good, Sonny. Thank you.

[00:34:32.040] - Sunyi
That's.

[00:34:32.840] - Scott
Another thing I want to say is that I just absolutely love your writing and I have loved getting to watch you operate in your process, and there is a strong streak of madness to it, but you are also just so purposeful and so determined in your quest to understand every single aspect of storytelling, and you are... I've just been super impressed with you both behind the scenes and with what you produce. On paper, if we didn't know each other, I don't know that the book eaters and the other books or scenes that I've seen from you would have been the first thing I would have picked up. But I'm so glad now that I have read them because they are fantastic. So it isn't just- That's kind. Yeah. Well, sometimes I am nice. Not often, so don't get used to it. But sometimes I'm nice. So that's another thing. And I think we've said this before, but just to be clear for people listening and gagging when we say it's all on the publisher to sell your book, et cetera, et cetera, we fully understand that it is not all on the publisher. It is mostly on the publisher in terms of commercial sales, but not entirely because what you write and how you write it does absolutely matter.

[00:36:09.960] - Sunyi
I'm cutting some of that so you know.

[00:36:11.700] - Scott
You better not.

[00:36:15.520] - Sunyi
Oh.

[00:36:16.160] - Scott
Man. I'm not that nice often.

[00:36:18.900] - Sunyi
Enough that you can cut it. No, fair enough. I think some of the best advice I've ever seen for publishing came from Grace Lee on Twitter, which I think was advice given to her, and she was which is that basically every time you see someone succeeding in publishing and you feel frustrated or envious to think about like, But would you have been willing to write the book that they wrote? I always found that really helpful because the answer is often no. It's like you see some book, I can't name a single example without getting myself in trouble, so I won't. Some of them. You see some book that you really hate and it takes off and you're like, What the actual fuck? Then it's like, But would you have been happy to write that even if it made you successful? Hopefully the answer is no.

[00:37:01.010] - Scott
It depends on what level of success and which book. I could write the shit out of- I'm Rand. Well, no. But I could write the shit out of some Dragon books, and if I had a guaranteed payday at the end of it, good Lord, I would be all over that.

[00:37:21.650] - Sunyi
I think that one's a bit different because that's IP. Is that a secret? Is it.

[00:37:27.220] - Scott
Just often? I don't think it. I don't know. I don't really care because they've made it.

[00:37:31.780] - Sunyi
Are we not supposed to say this?

[00:37:33.430] - Scott
Well, I don't think I found out from any privileged individual. I think I heard from you and they've made a shit ton of money on it and they're the ones that sign that contract.

[00:37:44.990] - Sunyi
I think they're well written, but yeah, to the best of my knowledge, I have been given to understand on good authority. Fourth Wing is an IP book by which, I mean, some editors sat down and came with the idea and then approached authors with money and not so great royalties to do it, and that was successful. I think that happens a lot middle grade. In fact, this is what's going on with my middle grade project. If it doesn't fall through, that's essentially what my middle grade project is. This is an editor approaching me for it, but it's not so common an adult, although it's maybe becoming.

[00:38:18.850] - Scott
More common. Yeah. And my immediate reaction to hearing that and the reaction I've seen most often from authors is, Now the marketing push makes sense because the publisher had so much more to gain from pushing that book than pushing a book for which they had to pay higher royalty.

[00:38:37.400] - Sunyi
Rates, right? And also it's been totally vetted by marketing teams and all that, I would assume, has all the elements that they want for a successful story.

[00:38:46.730] - Scott
Yeah.

[00:38:48.570] - Sunyi
But you do still need a good author to carry it off. Everyone keeps telling me that the book has loads of interiority and really satisfying relationships and stuff. I've not read it because I don't read romance-related things unless forced to.

[00:39:04.530] - Scott
But- I haven't read it because I have had zero time to read- To read? To read things for fun in the last six months since my latest child was born. Oh, my God. Yeah. But I have heard from a lot of people, both writing people and Normies, like my brother and his wife. I've heard from a lot of people that read it and loved it. I have not seen it, which is somewhat surprising, I haven't seen very many people saying that they didn't like it. Or the very least, I haven't seen a lot of people saying that they hated it, which most super popular books have a lot of people that hate it.

[00:39:42.560] - Sunyi
I mean, they're probably there. There's always somebody on TikTok who's mad at something, but I haven't gone looking.

[00:39:49.320] - Scott
I know, they're too fair.

[00:39:51.310] - Sunyi
But at the end of the day, I don't begudge authors through success. I'm mentioning that as well because that's the question I get a lot from people where they're like, Oh, I wonder what you think of like Lee Bardigo and signing an eight figure deal. What I think about Lee Bardigo signing an eight figure deal is thank Jesus someone is making money in the industry. I hope it's me next. Good for her. Congratulations, Lee. Enjoy the money. Great. I think people have this feeling, right? That's like, Oh, she's made all this money. So it's taken away from debuts. And that's not true. The eight figure. It's not like someone has sat there going, Oh, I'm going to give six figures to the debut. Oh, no, I better save it for Lee Bardigo's advance. That money was never going to debut. It was never going to you. It was only going to go to someone like her who makes sure-fire income, who was a good business investment, who writes books that people love and she will make a shit ton of money from her books and that will go and pay debuts. I have no anger at all about people being successful in publishing.

[00:40:49.410] - Sunyi
Unless there's some plagiarist Nazi or something.

[00:40:52.400] - Scott
Yeah. I particularly enjoy seeing people succeed with debuts and break in from nothing to finding success and finding readers who love their stuff. It's amazing.

[00:41:05.870] - Sunyi
So I think I've run out of things for that. But I will say for going forward in the future, there's a couple of things. The first is that our goal is to learn and we always enjoy learning. And I've loved all of the authors that we've talked to, but for season two, I've really been sitting with it and thinking about it myself what I want from that season. And I don't want to just be an author interview podcast. So although we will still talk to authors, I want to have more of a 50-50, even split where we're talking to industry experts. So, for example, I want to talk to the lady that wrote the article about, is it true that Trad Pub books only serve 12 books a year? No, it's not. She works for BookScan and she's really interesting. People like that, some actual editors who don't run screaming from the suggestion when I approach them, we do have one down on there. And yes, some other authors as well that some people who we promised we talk to and some people we have yet to reach out to. I'll start maybe doing that in January and then at least I hope I can give people an idea of who our guests will be and have a set number of episodes so we don't burn out and get better at saying no, because I was really bad at saying no last year and just said yes to everyone who asked almost until I ran out of space.

[00:42:18.970] - Sunyi
The other thing that we're doing, which is Scott's baby, is we were feeling very inspired by Carrie's research into why books. Although we deeply respected what she did, we do think that adult might have different results or at least ones we could study. So we are hoping to launch a author data project when we launch season two. If you want to talk a bit about that, Scott, this would be a.

[00:42:43.890] - Scott
Great time. I do. Yeah. And in particular, I think Dr. Prase's analysis was amazing for what she was able to access. I think that there is potential. I don't know whether we're going to get the reception that we would need to make this useful, but there's potential to get more accurate and more specific data from authors themselves with respect to their books, how they did in terms of sales, and what variables may have gone into affecting those outcomes. The hard... Well, the hardest part on our end is trying to anticipate all of the variables that we would need to gather from people to then predict sales outcomes, financial outcomes. But also, I'm looking at our spreadsheet right now, we have 50 things that we're asking or that we are hoping to ask maybe more than that, good Lord. We have 70 things that we would in terms of what your advanced look like, what the genre is. We look at Goodread scores, Amazon scores, et cetera. But then we get into things like what was your print run? Things that might actually be hard to know or hard to find out, like what the marketing spend was, whether you got arcs, how many arcs you got, whether they did paid advertising, whether they did Goodreads giveaways, whether they did shelf awareness promo, and many, many more things than that were you highlighted in your publisher's catalog, that thing?

[00:44:34.240] - Scott
Go ahead.

[00:44:34.710] - Sunyi
Oh, sorry. Oh, no, I was just going to say our goal with that is to work out what marketing at Tactics actually work, if any, and to study them. It's not just to like... I mean, we need to finalize it, but it would be hopefully anonymously submitted. No real reason that we need to publicize anyone's data. It's just about figuring out what was it that made this book succeed? Did it have X number of factors like number of arcs, number of shelfware, number of Goodreads giveaways? Is there a threshold for these things that starts making.

[00:45:06.520] - Scott
A difference? Yeah. And we'd love to hear from people on what would be comfortable and what would make sense, because I actually don't know that there's a way to... I mean, I guess we don't have to ask for the book title or the author name even, and that could anonymize it. But there's a world in which we do gather specific data. We have you input your title and your name obviously along with all of this. How many books have you sold and all that thing. And obviously, we wouldn't release any of that information, but you just have to trust us with it. We might get better responses if we anonymize it entirely from the outset. So we might run the risk of getting some bad data with people inputting fake numbers and fake entries, and we might just have to live with that. That's the trade-off between anonymity and accuracy. We'll have to think about that and we'd welcome comments from listeners on which of those is more comfortable/more acceptable in terms of do we maybe take a hit on accuracy for the sake of anonymity? But yeah, I think we'd love to hear from people just in general on whether it's something they'd be interested in participating because I think unless we get at least several hundred, like publishing paid me, except for hopefully a little more specific with the things that were done as part of that whole sales journey, I think we need at least 100-ish, if not more, to account for all the different genre variables, et cetera, to be able to really run some good analyzes on what factors are powerful and which just.

[00:46:58.250] - Sunyi
Don't matter that much. And that's without even getting into a lot. I mean, this is just debut analysis, isn't it? That's without even getting into long-term career stuff, which just gets very complicated, I think. But it's more complicated than it's not because after a certain point, your sales history becomes its own straightforward calculation in a way in a lot of cases. But yeah, it's a lot, but it's ambitious, but we hope we can do it. I think people tend to report generally. I think what I wanted to avoid, which I think half of publishing paid me is that because all the data was just open source and everyone could read it, instead of starting a conversation, which is what I was hoping would come out of it, I think it just stirred up a lot of bitterness. There was a lot of like, This person made that... Which I understand that feeling completely, especially when you're like, I don't know, your nemesis, you wrote a book you hated and they got 400 and it sucks. But that's not helpful and that's not something we can learn from. That's just an emotional reaction. This would hopefully.

[00:47:58.160] - Scott
Circumvent that. Yeah. Now that I'm thinking about it now that we're talking through it, I think maybe doing it anonymously from the outset is the way to go, because then you take ego out of it a little bit and you don't have people. Even though it's just me and you that would see it, you don't have people submitting, oh, I got 800,000 just to look cool, I guess, which you would hope that's not a thing, but I can see it happening. So anyway, let us know if you'd be interested. I'm sure we'll tweet about and whatever else. We'll probably put together a Google form and maybe even throw it- Data protection, all that stuff. Yeah, maybe throw it on our website and people can just go put in their data whenever. And if and when we get to the point that we have enough data to work with, we'll start pushing out analysis. And I mean, I want to see it. I want to know. I want to know what works for people and what doesn't. And I'm sure you all want to know too, because I think even if we restrict it to debues only, I think the findings will be valid for, especially people who are publishing subsequent books who aren't on the lead fast track, right?

[00:49:16.510] - Scott
Because I think that's where your sales matter more than anything. But after that, there might still be stuff you can do and/or you can work with your publisher to do that might boost your chances at the very least. So yeah, we'd like to do it, but if you all hate it, maybe we won't. We'll see. Let us know.

[00:49:34.560] - Sunyi
Briefly before we go, because this is going to be probably our last episode till sometime in February, I would think, while I actually write and hand stuff in and try and finish two novels off completely. I just need to finish something. Anyway, if you want other podcasts, there are a couple I'd recommend. So one is the Failing Writers Podcast, and I'm recommending them particularly because they're a bit smaller and you might not have heard of them. They talk to writers at all stages of careers about business and also about writing, and they're a great group of guys. A couple of others, print run everyone knows. One that I've been listening to recently and who were hoping to have on cover meetings, and that's a podcast about cover designers who work in publishing. Other than that, yeah, I don't know. We have plans. We're still around. Things are still happening. We haven't died. But yeah, we are taking an extended break for Christmas.

[00:50:22.100] - Scott
We're just tired.

[00:50:23.570] - Sunyi
Yeah, we're very tired. Huge thanks to everyone who's listened or come up and said kind words. I think the first time I went to a harper party after this podcast launched, I had 12 people come up to talk to me about it, and I was absolutely terrified. But also, thank you. Was it worth it? There you go. That's the question I asked you in.

[00:50:45.270] - Scott
Episode one. Absolutely. Do you mean publishing or the podcast?

[00:50:51.910] - Sunyi
Oh, yeah, publishing.

[00:50:53.720] - Scott
Publishing? I still think yes.

[00:50:56.490] - Sunyi
I.

[00:50:57.100] - Scott
Would have approached it very differently. Verydifferently, especially knowing what I do now. But I still think it's been worth it, for sure.

[00:51:04.710] - 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. See you later.