[00:00:00.000] - Sunyi Hi, I'm Sunyi Dean. [00:00:03.020] - Scott And I'm Scott Drakeford. [00:00:05.840] - 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. [00:00:20.700] - Scott That pattern repeats itself throughout the industry over and over. Why do some books succeed while others seem to be dead on arrival? [00:00:29.850] - Sunyi In this podcast, we aim to answer this questions and many more, along with how to build and maintain an author career. [00:00:38.090] - 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. [00:00:59.770] - Sunyi I I actually start it whenever we start. Okay. And then Scott always complained that I stealth, even though there's a giant number on the screen. It's not stealth. [00:01:07.900] - Scott No, she takes pictures. You know how she posts snapshots? Screenshots every now and then. She doesn't tell you when she's taking that. She just takes it. She just does it. [00:01:22.580] - WRAGGMAN It's just like, ignore the countdown. That doesn't mean anything. That little red light, that's just for show. [00:01:30.600] - Scott Yeah, exactly. [00:01:31.840] - WRAGGMAN We're wisely okay. [00:01:32.730] - Scott Don't worry. I'll edit this out. Okay, sure you will. [00:01:36.020] - WRAGGMAN This is why I had to make a list beforehand, although it was only a mental list of things I must remember not to say. [00:01:51.130] - Scott Then you told me, we were chatting just before this, and she told me that you had mentioned that there were a few things you wanted to stay away from. I asked her to relay the message that this is not a safe space. [00:02:04.140] - WRAGGMAN Yeah, you say it, you own it. [00:02:06.290] - Scott I get it. Honest to God, I haven't listened to probably 80% of the episodes, so I have no idea what's made it on. [00:02:16.600] - WRAGGMAN They've all been good. It's compelling listening. [00:02:20.530] - Scott Yeah, compelling listening and good to not me is one thing, and good to me might be another, but I will just never know. So we'll see. [00:02:30.490] - Sunyi I'm more cautious than you. I remember, yeah, I think the launch day damage run, I edited about six times before it went out because it was just... [00:02:40.600] - Scott Joking aside, I have listened to that one. But joking aside, Anyone where I'm like, Oh, fuck, what did I... I have a sixth sense about having said something dumb I've listened to. But joking aside, that's really a testament of my trust in Sonye. And I just don't feel- foolishly placed. Yeah, foolishly placed, maybe. But so far, it has not steered me wrong. [00:03:05.350] - WRAGGMAN Yeah, or at least no one's told you about it because you have to listen to the episode. [00:03:09.090] - Scott That is correct. Yeah, maybe that's why my book doesn't sell. I don't know. [00:03:13.980] - WRAGGMAN It's a fun If one thing, we should get to the bottom of that. [00:03:21.410] - Sunyi Very belatedly, I guess. Two minutes in. Welcome to the Publishing Radio, guys. This is our first episode after we get to publicly say we actually made it to the Hugo Shortlist because of you folks. So thank you for that. We are going to the loser's party. Make sure to vote in someone competent so we can lose. We have with us laughing in the background, David Wragg. [00:03:42.160] - WRAGGMAN Hello. [00:03:43.050] - Sunyi He's a fellow harper author. He's famously known for being ludicrously tall. [00:03:49.610] - Scott I can see your head next to the ceiling. [00:03:52.120] - WRAGGMAN Yeah, sorry. I am also standing up tonight to try and keep it fresh. [00:03:56.870] - Scott Yeah, I just thought you were in a hobbit house or something. [00:03:59.590] - WRAGGMAN All my houses are hobbit houses as well. [00:04:02.090] - Scott On that note, can you introduce yourself, David? And then we'll lead in from your- Yeah. [00:04:11.570] - Sunyi Journey. [00:04:13.770] - WRAGGMAN Hi, I am Dave Wragg. I'm the author of the Articles of Faith series, which was the Black Hawks and the Writers, the first of which came out in 2019. And I am the author of the new tales of the Plains trilogy, the first of which the Hunters came out in Hardback July last year. That's 2023 for those playing along at home. And the next part of which will be out in Hardback in August, which is at time of recording four months away. And you think we'd have announced the title and the cover by now, but you'd be wrong. [00:04:49.110] - Sunyi Yeah, David, I seem to remember because I've just been reading your most recent two books and they were, to use Premee’s term, secret. Secret books. They came out and I'm not sure they really got anywhere near that. Well, I know, not sure. They didn't get anywhere near the publicity they deserved, which to me seemed like an absolutely brutal shame. [00:05:12.900] - WRAGGMAN It's very kind of you to say so. I appreciate that. [00:05:15.960] - Sunyi And if you're the person who really enjoyed Black tongue Thief and Christopher Buelhman, you'll probably really like David Wragg’s books, which is why I'm going to throw that out there. [00:05:24.370] - Scott I did hear that. Yeah. You like those books. [00:05:27.600] - WRAGGMAN You get those books, yeah. [00:05:29.260] - Sunyi I think he did. [00:05:30.540] - Scott Confession time. Yeah. Me and Richard did. Well, for one thing- You can't respect everyone who comes on the podcast. [00:05:38.370] - WRAGGMAN It's okay. [00:05:39.130] - Scott I am chronically behind on a lot of the reading I want to do just because I had a surprise child about a year ago. [00:05:49.030] - WRAGGMAN We've all done it, some of us, twice. [00:05:51.380] - Scott Well, so anyway- Congratulations. Yeah, thank you. It's been wonderful in most respects, but not all of them. [00:06:00.970] - WRAGGMAN The mouth says yes, the eyes say something else. [00:06:04.730] - Scott God, honestly, it's so amazing, but it is certainly a different path than I thought my life would take in the short term, at least. No, I haven't read Christopher Buelhman’s books yet. I intend to. I have not read your books yet. I intend to. [00:06:23.520] - WRAGGMAN Most people haven't. [00:06:24.740] - Scott Well, Dave, I understand exactly how that feels. So I am sorry for that, but I do plan to remedy it. I have stacks of books upstairs. So I'm in my basement. I have stacks of books upstairs in my main living area that are my to be read piles that just float around the house. And yours is on top of one of them. I might even pick it up soon. We'll see. It's the Black Hawk. [00:06:52.610] - WRAGGMAN I'm going to move it to another part. That's fine. The Black Hawk's in. If we're going to get ourselves back on track. That is probably the best introduction to my work, if you like, because it's the thing that I set out to write, and it's far from perfect. I'm well aware of that. The books I've written since have been much better books, but that is the one that contained the, I'm going to write fantasy, and lul, it's not going to be very serious fantasy. [00:07:20.290] - Scott Yeah. Well, I mean, and the closest thing that I have read and really loved that sounds similar is the work of nick Eames. I don't know if you read that. [00:07:32.070] - WRAGGMAN So they pitched me. I mean, the original Black Hawks cover was like when Harry saw it, he went, oh, they've gone for Kings of the Wild. I'd never heard of Kings of the Wild at that point and looked it up. I was like, oh, yeah, that's the same artist and the same cover designer. And yeah, it's just pretty much a cover version. But that's fine. They pitched me as the triangulation of Abercrombie, Lynch, and Eames, and I sat in the middle like a festering embarrassment. [00:08:03.480] - Scott I really like two of those three, and I'm not going to tell you which is the other. That's it. [00:08:08.900] - WRAGGMAN You play hard to get. He can't hear us, Scott. It's fine. [00:08:15.370] - Scott I do not like to speak ill of other writers because- They know where you live. [00:08:21.050] - WRAGGMAN Yeah, I know. [00:08:21.840] - Scott Yeah, they know where I live. I felt the other side of that, too. Where I was leading into is it's It's really interesting that I hadn't heard of you and your books because you're working with a major publisher, presumably in the US, too. I don't actually even know. [00:08:40.310] - WRAGGMAN Yeah, published by Harper 360. So they will sell stuff via Harper UK in North America. But unlike people who don't get a US deal, you can get my ebooks. You can even get paperbacks and things ordered into bookshops in the States and Canada. Yeah. I ordered your physical book and it came right to me, unlike a lot of books that are UK only. [00:09:04.110] - Scott So that's something. But it's interesting because your book is one that... When I saw it, I was like, What the fuck? How did I Each of these things would have probably gotten me to buy the book by themselves. Altogether, I would have been intrigued, let alone because of the blurb and synopsis that was interesting. You do seem to be in the the secret author club, so welcome. We should probably make it a formal club. But yeah, anyway. I'd never heard of David until I met him in person. [00:09:40.320] - Sunyi Yeah. [00:09:40.950] - WRAGGMAN And even then, she still wasn't sure. [00:09:43.070] - Sunyi Even then, I was like, Wow, you're an author. I didn't even know. Harper had a midlist. I thought they just had all top tier authors. [00:09:50.640] - WRAGGMAN There's a special room at the back for the midlisters. And the thing is, they don't tell you when you're in that room about the other room. You think that's the room because you see people walking through it. You're like, Hey, look, there's Rebecca Kuang, there's Saara. Hi, guys. Hi. Hi. Where are they going? Oh, okay. Well, we'll just wait here in the author room. Yeah, no, that's cool. Where are they going? No, it's fine. [00:10:16.100] - Scott Sunyi, she only noticed you because she could see you from her balcony, right? And you stuck up above all the other midlisters. [00:10:24.630] - WRAGGMAN How are you so massive and yet so invisible? It makes no sense at all. [00:10:30.280] - Scott Who's that? Who's that tall one? Yeah. Make him dance. [00:10:31.590] - WRAGGMAN What is that? [00:10:33.680] - Sunyi I'm definitely not in the cool set for Harper. I think the thing is, all the people live up north, I think if you're publishers in London, they do tend to forget you exist a little bit, and you have to periodically remind them twice a year by showing up to events. Trying the life out of them. Yeah. Like, oh, God, you haven't died yet up there in the cold? [00:10:52.040] - Scott We just thought they'd go home. [00:10:54.710] - WRAGGMAN Yeah. Yeah. North of the wall. Do you know- It might be worth, I suppose, for a bit of background, I'll try and summarize how I came to be published because I am a middle-aged white guy with pretty much no redeeming features. So like, one of society's Other than your height. So one of society's chosen. Other than your height. Yeah. No, redeeming. There's nothing redeeming about this height. Yeah, chronic joint pain, do you know what I mean? So I like to think of myself... I don't know. The closest comparison, I guess, is the Richard Swam parallel, except if I rolled twos on all my skill checks. I decided I was going to have a go at writing a book like years and years ago. I had my pre-midlife crisis in my early 30s. Left my job, didn't want to get another one. My wife said, Stop moaning. Why don't you write that book you're always banging on about? So I said, Yes, I will. I will write that book. And then I took about nine months to produce this 240,000-word, what I thought would be maybe Y. A. I did not have any idea what I was doing. [00:12:00.140] - WRAGGMAN And then one of us got pregnant. It's not fair to name names. So I had to go back to work and I continued tinkering in the background. And I was like, you know what? I think I've learned enough after three years of kicking the shit out of this wretched manuscript. I think I'm now ready to write the book I wanted to, which was the book into the Black Hawk. I was most of the way through that when the Grenfell fire happened in 2017. And in the aftermath of that, they did a charity auction. And I said, they, a lot of very well-meaning people did the Authors for Grenfell charity auction. [00:12:30.210] - Sunyi Hang on. Scott won't know what this event is. So there was a series of government housing council blocks in London. [00:12:38.490] - Scott I saw that on the news. [00:12:39.850] - Sunyi Yeah. Yeah, okay. [00:12:40.810] - Scott They're apartment buildings or whatever. Yeah. [00:12:42.130] - Sunyi Yeah. And they massively caught fire. Anyway. [00:12:45.210] - WRAGGMAN Yeah, it was pretty horrendous. And a lot of people band it together afterwards to put lots up. I bid on a few, and one of them was a review of your manuscript and sampled first three. No, first three chapters in a synopsis from the author Francesca Hague, who who is a magnificent writer and poet. She also writes Francesca de Torres, her new historical fantasy, Saltblood, is coming out, I think, this month. So everyone should get that. Anyway, I won her a lot. She reviewed the first three chapters. She said, You know what? This garbage isn't that bad. If you wanted to send it to some agents, I recommend these three. And I submitted to three agents, including some guy called Harry Illingworth, who apparently she sent a nudge to and said, I reviewed this guy's first three chapters. He's not that awful. Harry read my book within a week of submission, came back to me within a couple of days, saying, Can I have the full manuscript? And then came back to me three days later and said, I'd like to represent you. That was I don't know, early 2018. No one else got a look in, and that was my, I'm represented immediately. [00:13:51.540] - WRAGGMAN Look at that. So easy. And then he was like, Yeah, we don't need to do much to this. We'll send it straight out. Over the next couple of months, he came back. He was like, Yeah, And then, Papa Voyager, really interested. It's all looking good, all doing good. I'm like, Wow, this is really going somewhere. I didn't think the book was that good. And then there were no other offers. Gradually, one by one, everyone else fell away. And what went from extreme excitement on the Voyager side became a, so just us, is it? And then the offer came in, and the offer was a two-book deal, which is what I wanted because I didn't want to do a trilogy because everyone else is doing trilogies. I wanted to do a two-book because I am just a contrarian twat like that. So they offered five grand advance per book and fairly standard royalty rates. I do have them. I've got a spreadsheet somewhere on over there. [00:14:46.450] - Sunyi You're organizing me. [00:14:48.000] - WRAGGMAN Yeah, it does mean actually reading what's on it. I'm going to say 25 % per e-book and audiobook, although that is, of course, 25 % of the 70 % they make or whatever it is that Audible lets them have. And then the paperback stuff is between eight and 10 %, I think. Not even that. It goes up seven and a half. Seven and a half a paperback, down to four and a half heavily discounted. [00:15:14.430] - Sunyi In US money, that's about 6,300 per book. [00:15:18.610] - WRAGGMAN Yeah. I think by the time we finish recording the podcast, it will be about $5,000. But hey, arbitrage opportunity. So this was It was better than nothing, which was the alternative, but it was certainly not a runaway success. Harry basically went, Well, it's this or nothing. I assume you want to take it. And I went, Yeah. So that was that. And we at least we got we got Arx. The book was only delayed by three months between when it was originally planned and when it actually came out. Hang on, four months. And it did fine. It did okay. And then things gradually began to slip from there. Again, COVID did not help. The second book got delayed by a year, even though it was already written by the time the first one was out. And then things just got lost in the mire after that. So the terms of the new series, again, exactly the same, £5,000. So let me say, £6,300 per book. Same royalty rates, but this time with hardback. So the hardback rate, it is better. It is 10%, I think. Yeah, 10%, unless the discount is greater than 57%. [00:16:28.760] - Sunyi Do you have royalty escalators? No. [00:16:31.100] - WRAGGMAN I mean, no, I say I do have royalty escalators, but they've never come up in the nicest possible way. They're written into the contract, but yeah, mysteriously have not yet made it onto any royalty statement. They're all joint accounting as well, of course, which means the entire series must earn out before we get anywhere into royalties for any of the books, which leaves me in the wonderful position where certainly in the first series, the first book had paid off more more than they had given me in advances because we hadn't yet had the second set of milestone payments for the second book. For a while, they actually owed me money. [00:17:09.300] - Scott I just looked at Goodread's numbers, and I have two questions, so I'm going to try to calm myself down and only ask one at a time. First question, did you know when you signed the contract and when you launched that you were midwest? [00:17:26.820] - WRAGGMAN No. But that's, I think, because no No one has ever told you on Midlist. Midlist is a fallback status when the signifiers you would otherwise be looking for don't appear. And this will not be news to you. As it becomes apparent, it can take a very long time to... What's the phrase? Give up hope. So you can be told to expect by other people well wishes. People with the best intentions, They can say things like, Oh, you should get a marketing plan, or, You'll find out details about your launch, or waiting to see the arcs when they be cool. And you wait to hear, and you wait to hear, and possibly maybe even if you've got balls the size of cantaloupes, you send an email going, Hey, what about this thing? And publishing being publishing, you won't ever get a, Shut up, be quiet. Haven't you worked it out yet? What you'll get is, We'll come back to you on that. We're all so excited because they are and because they're all nice people and because fundamentally there aren't enough of them. The common lament is there are not enough people working on these books to give them all the treatment that they deserve or you'd hope they all get. [00:18:48.140] - WRAGGMAN And the reality is that stuff is going to then fall through the cracks because I've never worked inside a publisher, but in my head, I just imagine a series of fires that one person is running backwards and forwards with a teacup full of water just going, oh, shit. And then when you send an email, you're just like a smoking bin in the corner that just burps up this little gout of green flame. And they're like, oh, God, that's still there. Quick. Did anyone know? [00:19:17.010] - Scott So you can be the politest stinking, burning bin in the world. [00:19:22.870] - WRAGGMAN And that's certainly better than being an obnoxious gif. But it's not going to magically create any more people to lavish attention on And I mean, in many ways, I went from being midlist to being mid, mid, midlist between my two series. Because at least with the first one, I got the Richard Anderson cover. I got a cover designed by Micaela Alcaino. I got Arx. I got a launch party, which admittedly, yes, I did have to organize myself. But Voyager, Tash came along. It was a really wonderful evening. It was great fun. And sure, it was straight to paperback, but it just meant it sold straight through. We got a really good audiobook done. I've never heard any complaints about the e-book. It got as much of a shunt as a fairly down the road, like no hardback, no special edition. But we got Goldsboro through on, obviously, because of the Goldsboro connection DHH. [00:20:14.620] - Sunyi For those who don't know, our agency owns Goldsboro books. [00:20:19.410] - WRAGGMAN Don't tell anyone. They won't know we're special. Sorry. But if you like the fairest throw of the dice we could have got. And then none of that for the second book. Literally nothing because it was the middle of COVID and even getting the book finished and published was a struggle. But at least I was thinking when the new series came out and they said they wanted to do it in hardback, I was thinking, well, this is cool. Sure. We've got no increase in advance. We've got no increase in royalty rates. We got pretty much no improvement to any terms whatsoever. However, they're going to do it in hardback. But there were no arcs and no real publicity. Beyond quite a lot of stuff that I organized myself, at least. They sent me to comic Con, which is nice. No one there knew who I was, but I didn't care. [00:21:11.260] - Scott They still don't. But yeah. I didn't mean that aimed at you. I mean that Because sending somebody to a convention just to send them to a convention is, in my opinion, more to placate you than to actually get your attention. [00:21:26.550] - WRAGGMAN I was very grateful for the experience. But there is something about, I think, going to a massive fan-based convention like Comic Un, where you do a little panel and then there's a signing afterwards, especially if you're quite late in the day. And you've seen some other panels, and you've seen the signing lines after those panels. And then you do your little 5:00 PM special, and you can see the number of people in the seats is dwindling and dwindling. And then they say there'll be a signing afterwards, and you've never seen an exhibition center empty so fast. Yeah. It's a massive ego boost, Scott. Thoroughly recommend it. [00:22:03.060] - Scott Oh, yeah. I mean, unless they're doing something like a book giveaway for you, your book, and making an event of that, I just don't see how that's helpful for authors who otherwise have very little visibility. [00:22:20.150] - WRAGGMAN I mean, the fact that I didn't get a six-figure deal, I think, made it fairly clear I was not midlist. But I did get Arcs. I did get a launch party. We got some. I got a blog tour of seven or eight blogs, one of whom seemed to be surprised when she appeared on my blog tour listing and I emailed her to go, Hey, hey, hey, and she went, Who the fuck are you? Yeah, there'd been a mix-up. She was not on the blog Sure. However, that is probably more than we've had for any of the releases since, where most of the publicity is being... I got an email from an editor around the time of the second book's release where I said, what publicity activities are lined up for me? I'd like to know how to plan the weeks leading up to release. And I got an email back that went, oh, yeah, crap. Are you on good terms with any bloggers? [00:23:13.020] - Sunyi Always a good email to get. Yeah. [00:23:14.960] - WRAGGMAN So I think that's the thing that possibly defines the midlist experience. [00:23:22.330] - Sunyi So are you getting negative royalties in your royalty statements from that second series? Is that rude to ask? [00:23:29.250] - WRAGGMAN Well, at the moment, the whole thing is a big minus line. I am actually getting some negative royalties. This is something which I do raise an eyebrow at. So Blackhawks came out in October 2019. I've got a royalty statement which is for six months period ending 31st of the 12th, 2023. So that is comfortably four years after its original release date. And there are still line items on this royalty statement of copies of the Blackhawks paperbacks at full price being handed back. 32 units, no, sorry, 39 units for the period activity have been handed back. So I was charged my share of that, which is £29.22. They deducted it from my royalties. So somebody somewhere handed back the best part of 40 copies of the book in paperback four years after it came out, which, I mean, fair play to them for hanging onto it for this in the hope that perhaps it would skyrocket and they'd be able to flog them on eBay. But it does feel a little rude. What is that? Like 48 months or something later to just go, No. [00:24:42.690] - Scott Refund, please. Yeah, it probably got lost in the stock room somewhere. [00:24:48.240] - Sunyi Using it as a table. [00:24:50.960] - WRAGGMAN Yeah. Lifted up a bit of canvas and went, Oh, my God, what is that? Jesus, get rid. Harper Collins, get an extraction team We've got an infection. Yeah. So after they finished fumigating the place, somebody went to the trouble of tallying that up and deducting £29.22 from my royalties as just a little, just a little, fuck you, four years down the line. So, yeah, not only is your book not selling that much, but also people are giving it back and we're taking, we are unselling. So that's nice for the new one because it is jointly accounted. Yes, so three books at 15 grand. And we have sold of the new series, a little over, I don't know, 1,500 copies maybe, maybe a little more than that. What I love about royalty statements is how easy it is to find things on them. [00:25:43.030] - Sunyi God, why are they like... I can't Wait, did you get your newest royalty statement? [00:25:47.520] - WRAGGMAN Yeah, just this week. [00:25:49.170] - Sunyi Oh, see, I get the payments. Getting the actual fucking statements is a massive thing. I always have to chase them down. [00:25:57.610] - Scott I haven't seen a statement in over a year. I didn't get any for at least a year after. [00:26:02.870] - WRAGGMAN I mean, no, two years maybe. I'd already earned royalties before I got my first statement, but now they are at least appearing. If only just with a little post on them, they go... I've given up and trying to count these things up. It might actually be more like two and a half thousand copies sold. I don't know. Either way, it's not 5,000, which is what we all consider to be the success. Success is the wrong break-even point. I don't know. So I am minus 12,452 pounds in the hole at the moment. On the other hand, I've only had two payments so far. So I should probably pay me for a manuscript, except this is the second book now. Yeah. Harry? [00:26:42.920] - Sunyi Yeah, carry on to that. [00:26:44.730] - Scott Did I understand correctly that for this second contract and for the Hunters as a series, they did not do arcs and the same things they did for your first? [00:26:57.450] - WRAGGMAN Yeah, no arcs. So it's been very little in the way of... It compared to Black Hawks, it is even less. But because it came out in hardback, the books themselves are beautiful. I don't know if you're... I'm going to stretch the cable. So this is just for Scott here. This is the Goldsboro Special Edition. It is a really nice piece of work here. This one's a bit bashed because I carry it around with me like a Teddy bear. And I I'm just I'm so excited about the second and third books, just all for the covers and anything else. But, yeah, beautiful artifacts. Everyone should own several, but very few people know they exist. And of course, being a hard cover, the price point is that much higher. So people are less likely to take a punt on a book they haven't heard much about that seems to cost more. And also then there's a year between hardback and paperback release. So paperback for this is coming out in June. So that will be 11 and a half months or whatever it is. So maybe we'll see a few more copies sold. Maybe you should do. [00:28:05.980] - WRAGGMAN But it's already been on e-book sale for 99p. So I feel like if people were going to pick it up, they probably have by now. [00:28:13.450] - Sunyi No, no. I mean, if it It helps. Because I actually got Explanations. That's one of the things you get. Explanations? I know. Yeah, if you get out of it. So BookEaters had a hardback release pretty soon after it had a '99' sale an e-book. And Vicky was very pleased about that. And she basically said the reason why they do that is because they have to apply to them by Amazon. They can't just decide to do it. And Amazon granted it. And what it does is it pushes your book up the rankings in Amazon. So they're doing it as a form of advertising because they do actually want to push the hard back because it's got a lot butter price margins. But then if they can get the e-book on sale, you'll shoot through the rankings, get a lot more eyes on the actual novel, and hopefully that generates print sales. [00:29:00.920] - WRAGGMAN Yeah, it certainly worked. I mean, I think we had something like three reviews on Amazon, three ratings on Amazon in advance of that 99p sale. And now it's up to something like 60 something, which is a massive increase. And I would imagine most of those ratings came from the 99p sale. But I imagine it has shifted some books off the back of it because it's gone from being a book with no ratings at all, or at least one of them, but that's probably from my wife, to, oh, Well, that's clearly not a nothing book. [00:29:33.870] - Scott Interestingly, my book, so I only have one out so far. The second is coming out in November. And they recently, somewhat recently, put my book into the Kindle Unlimited program rather than a down price. I've had one gold box deal at 2.99 for 24 hours. That did really well. I I had my e-book at 2.99 for a month on a deal. That did nothing. Kindle Unlimited has done nearly nothing. [00:30:07.520] - WRAGGMAN How long is the book in pages? [00:30:10.230] - Scott My book? [00:30:11.150] - WRAGGMAN Yeah. Are you saying you don't know off the top of your head? [00:30:18.250] - Scott You think I read my own fucking book in print? 386. You know how many times I read this in digital, dude? I wrote this. I started this in 2012, anyway. [00:30:31.080] - WRAGGMAN Well, the reason I asked about the length there is that the anecdotal commentary that I've had is that on Kindle Unlimited, the longer books do better. It's similar with the Waterball. It's something that I love to discuss with some of my dear indie colleagues, the notion of the 15-hour sweet spot, which is whatever that is. [00:30:54.380] - Scott Yeah, I think my book is- I can't remember how many pages that is. [00:30:57.310] - WRAGGMAN 600 pages or something? [00:30:59.590] - Scott I I think my book hit right around those targets, right? I think it was... God, I went through so many versions, but I think book one ended up around 150,000 words. I don't know if they do different font size for different tiers of books. God, I'm on an audible. Where does it even show? Okay, so my audiobook is 16 hours and 11 minutes. [00:31:33.390] - WRAGGMAN But it's 400 pages, less than 400 pages, and they've stretched that to 16 hours. [00:31:37.990] - Scott I mean, well, so- Is that someone reading really slowly? No, the narrator is awesome. I was so impressed with the narrator. And this one, you probably can't see it at all. It feels like the text is insanely small. [00:31:54.630] - WRAGGMAN That's like when I try and read non-fiction books, I pick up a non-fiction book. I really want to broaden my horizon. I really want to educate myself about this deeper media of a subject. And it's like, look, it's only 350 pages. And then you open it and you're like, shit, magnified last time. [00:32:08.730] - Scott I was going to see if I had Sonja's book here. [00:32:11.000] - WRAGGMAN One and a half pages before bed, if I can do it. Yeah. [00:32:13.840] - Scott Do I have Sonja's sitting there. [00:32:16.590] - Sunyi Yeah, my book is just under 300 pages in front. [00:32:22.140] - Scott Under 300. [00:32:23.260] - WRAGGMAN Okay. Slender. [00:32:24.320] - Scott I've got Richard motherfucking Swans' book. [00:32:27.590] - WRAGGMAN We love that guy. [00:32:29.940] - Scott Do we? [00:32:30.800] - WRAGGMAN I mean, it says on the card, we have to say that every time it's mentioned. Otherwise, we don't get our free pastels. [00:32:39.400] - Scott So holding it up is meaningless. But not only is his hard cover taller by About a half an inch, 0.75, maybe, using my engineer eyes. What do your engineers like? Yeah. Well, if you have dealt with a A measurements as often as I had to in my earlier life, you get a sixth sense about it. Anyway, I don't know that you can see this, but his text is probably... I mean, it's significantly larger than mine, despite the larger format. I think my book probably has a third more lines on each page than his. [00:33:28.970] - WRAGGMAN So it's like- What you're saying is his book is bigger and the words are also bigger. He is taller than you and just generally- That's right. Better, I think, is the impression I'm getting. [00:33:40.260] - Scott I haven't thought to compare this before, but the spacing is different. The line spacing. He's got so much more space between his swans. [00:33:49.100] - WRAGGMAN He's got premium spacing there, Scott. Look at this. [00:33:50.990] - Scott It's different. [00:33:52.570] - WRAGGMAN That's swan spacing. [00:33:54.940] - Scott I had no idea. I had not thought to even look at that, but they did. They really did just to cram the shit out of those words. [00:34:02.100] - WRAGGMAN It makes the books easier to read. [00:34:04.210] - Sunyi I remember one of the things that my midlist friends, she just listened to this podcast, fought over and lost was getting a scene break graphic between scenes because they will cut so many corners for books in the lower budget. Even things like that can be... So the first book comes out and there's just no... The first book in that trilogy, there's no graphic for the scene break. And so a lot of people, a lot of readers, are confused because they just thought that there's a line skip and then everything's changed or sometimes the point of view has changed or whatever. [00:34:38.340] - WRAGGMAN Yeah, I've got a couple of line feeds. That's mine. That's the premium experience. Occasionally, there's an asterisk, Times New Roman, 11 point. Oh, what have you got there, Scott? [00:34:48.360] - Scott Oh, just the fanciest scene break you've ever seen. A barely visible gray smudge. [00:34:57.010] - WRAGGMAN That's pretty good. Mate, I kill for a barely visible gray smudge. This is the midlist of scrapping in the dirt over scene breaks. It's not even Roman alphabet. Come on, man. I believe-I can't believe- Scot, you have a second question. [00:35:13.300] - Sunyi Yeah, what was your second question, Scot? [00:35:15.220] - Scott Oh, I don't fucking know anymore. [00:35:18.160] - WRAGGMAN What are you doing? I'm not asking them both. [00:35:20.210] - Scott No, no, no. Yeah, I know, right? You actually answered it. I wanted to know what your experience was between the two books. I guess a follow-up to talking about your books, specifically, would be, subjectively, in your opinion, do you feel that there is a quality difference between the two? Because there has been a sales difference and a treatment difference between the two. Do you think there's a quality difference between the two, positive or negative, between your debut and the second series, whether in terms of your own output and how it turned out or whether it was aimed appropriately at a good target audience, that thing? I'm just curious. Your thoughts on, I guess, merit versus just shit that has happened to you that has- Yeah. [00:36:22.840] - WRAGGMAN It's the where did it all go wrong question. I was really lucky, I'd say, in many ways with Blackhawks. I think that the cover did extraordinary things for it. It's a really striking cover. It's a great piece of art, however much I can moan about how there's no way the Prince should be holding a spear and Lemon is far too good-looking, whatever the hell. But the cover is spectacular, and it just drew an awful lot of people in, and that generated sufficient interest, sufficient sales. Now, as a book, I know it's got issues. Some people will find them more rejectional than others, but I took the choice when I was writing it, I was going to be like, Oh, I'm going to subvert as many fantasy tropes as possible. So one of them was explaining what was going on. I thought that was facile and trite. So I didn't explain anything that was happening. [00:37:13.290] - Sunyi Just had- Like our Lord and savior, Gene Wolfe. [00:37:15.750] - WRAGGMAN So I just had characters talking to each other. It's like, you better get your shit together. Oh, I don't want to. Well, you better. Oh, okay, then. And a lot of people were like, why haven't you explained the political system? Why haven't you explained why they're talking to each other like this. Why haven't you explained anything? The answer is, Tee-he, because I don't want to. The other trope I decided to subvert was having a satisfying narrative conclusion, which again, passe, it's been done. Basically, finished it almost mid-sentence, lull. However, everything is resolved in the second book. I like to think that I put enough charm and invention in it to make up for the fact that I really didn't know what I would do. The biggest difference between and now is that I know how to write a book. I have a process. I actually work out story and stakes and even sometimes character motivations, sometimes. The new series are structurally far better. There's a beginning, a middle, and end. There are character dynamics. There is even, God help us, occasionally a theme. There are satisfying conclusions, give or take. Some would say too satisfying. [00:38:31.730] - WRAGGMAN But I think because I am a tittering fool and I just refuse to make life easy for myself, I don't want to keep doing the same thing. So I wrote the first series as a, Wouldn't it be funny if instead of writing Western European fantasy, I wrote Eastern European fantasy? And that went over a lot of people said. The whole thing is set in an allegory an analog, sorry, of transcaucasia. But flipped to Southern hemisphere. Again, why? Lol, because it can be. How many fantasy books get written in the Southern hemisphere? And then for the second book, decided I was going to do Westerns, or second series, sorry. I was going to do Westerns because I didn't just want to keep writing fantasy. I didn't just want to keep doing mercenaries, fighting against unfathomable evil, saving the Kingdom, all the rest of it. So I wanted to do much smaller scale. I wanted to prioritize female characters because it was quite male dominated in the first series. So I ended up writing a fantasy Western about essentially a parent-type daughter relationship with deserts Sure, there's a mercenary in there, but explicitly not the same stuff again. [00:39:51.270] - WRAGGMAN And I think it turns out that a lot of my audience like cod Western European fantasy. They like mercenaries. They like stabbing and stakes and saving the kingdom. And although I might have decided I didn't want to write that, they're perfectly happy to keep reading it. The other problem I made for myself is that I wanted to subvert the trope of having magic or monsters Because fantasy is full of that thing. So yes, none of that. And then when the publisher said, Can we have more books set in the same world? I found myself in a prism of my own creation. That's a prism, but also a prison, where I'd created a fantasy world, where you could do anything except there was no magic and no monsters. So it all had to be realistic to no overstatement. I like to think of my setting as roughly equivalent to the Fast and the Furious in our world in terms of physics. [00:40:47.420] - Scott One thing I would interject in that is that you termed them issues, but I didn't hear any issues. I can think of books that succeeded This earbud keeps falling out of my ear. When I push it in, either frozen 2 soundtrack starts playing because that's the last thing my daughter was playing. [00:41:09.860] - WRAGGMAN Sure, your daughter. Yeah, my daughter. [00:41:13.670] - Scott Anyway, sorry. I'll start that over so suddenly you can help me out here. Anyway, you turned them issues. I don't feel like any of those things you said are issues, or at the very least, I can think of books that have succeeded wildly with similar what I would call stylistic choices. But it is interesting, and the reason I asked that is that, A, I've asked myself many similar questions and obviously started a podcast about what kinds of things go into success or failure as an author. But it sounds like from your perspective, you feel like your second series is stronger from a structure and craft It's a bit more connected and yet because... Yeah. [00:42:03.470] - WRAGGMAN So I'd say the book that's coming out, the second book of the new series coming out in this August, it's the one that Sonia has just bravely plowed her way through. That is the best of all of my bobbish work so far. That's the one I can look at and go, Yeah, that is my best work. I have written one thing that is better than that, but Harry won't let me submit that to anyone yet because it's not fantasy. I'm coming back to that. I wrote it in 2018, it's been sitting in a corner, and anyone who's ever been trapped at an event with me has heard about this. I won't subject you to it here. [00:42:39.010] - Scott I do want to hear about it whenever that might happen, but I'm going to shut up so Sonja can ask me questions. [00:42:45.270] - Sunyi No, you're fine. I was just going to ask you both the question I warned you about, which is how do you think your experience publishing has shaped your self-perception, if it has? And you can go as deep or shallow as you like. All I'm on to yours for going first. [00:43:01.600] - WRAGGMAN I want to hear Scott's answer before I know how deep to go. Okay. [00:43:05.960] - Scott Yeah, sure. I'll just step right in it. I'd echo some of the things I heard from you in your story, right, Dave? My answer is a little bit complex because it's mixed. I simultaneously left my career and then semi-permanently left my career when I didn't plan to necessarily, at the same time as I had my author career that I had very high hopes for just absolutely creator, right? Everything you were talking about with you email your team asking for a marketing plan and they pretend they don't know what a marketing plan is. [00:43:49.170] - WRAGGMAN Yeah. Looking at each other being like, It's cute when he emails, doesn't it? Bless. Anyway, who's putting out that fire? [00:43:56.740] - Scott Yeah. I mean, It's a real thing that happens, right? The mental and emotional health aspect of having these hopes, feeling like you've, quote, unquote, made it or that you've got a shot to make it right. And then having that not happen. It's like thinking you have a winning lottery ticket and then you show up to redeem it and you find out you're dyslexic. [00:44:30.370] - WRAGGMAN This is how we find out. Thirty-six. [00:44:38.060] - Scott Yeah, it absolutely has affected me. But for my part, I think It's not the first time I have encountered a major change to what I thought my life would be and have had to to figure out a completely different life or career path. I've done that a few times in my life already. That's where I've turned. It was frustrating, dark for a while, at least in terms of how I felt about myself as a writer, because that was what I spent the majority of my time doing, myself. But it was not insurmountable. I think at least my answer, and I'd like to hear your plans for the future, Dave, and I'd like to hear this from everybody, but my plans are to go hard at taking a different path to where I hoped to get to in publishing. Then we'll see because it hasn't fundamentally changed me. I think the saddest thing I see and hear, and maybe this is a better path that leads to less stress and less mind numbing anxiety and depression or whatever you might call it. But the saddest thing for me is when I see people who obviously have hopes and dreams and want to find success and then talk themselves into to, Oh, well, this is okay. [00:46:18.440] - Scott Publishing is just a shit show that doesn't pay anybody, and it's okay to be making poverty wages as an author, and that's just what it is. That's not my path. My personality hasn't changed to the point where I'm okay with that. So, yeah, I think it was an undeniable hit to the ego, but at the same time hasn't really changed my goals It hasn't really changed my intended path to where I hope to get to. Or rather, it has changed my intended path, but not the- Destination is the same, but the route It was different. That's correct. [00:47:02.680] - WRAGGMAN Well, I feel like I need to say thank you for sharing after that. [00:47:07.180] - Scott I told Sonia when she said that's what she was going to ask, I was like, Well, I hope you're excited to play therapist because there's years of this shit built up. [00:47:21.640] - WRAGGMAN We'll all put the therapist hat on. I'll try and dignify things then with a matching response. So the one thing I would say is that I am obviously much, much older than both of you. I am incredibly old. Are you? I'm 45. So I can hear the sharp intakes of breath across the world. 45, and you still act like that? What the fuck, man? [00:47:53.670] - Scott I feel like when you get to this age-ish, because Sonia and I are basically the same age. When you get to this age, it's less effective to count up, and it's really a countdown at that point. So it's like, do you look okay? Do you feel okay? And how long do you have to live? [00:48:13.650] - Sunyi And so- My kids are older. [00:48:15.330] - Scott Yeah. Numerical age doesn't matter. Anyway, sorry. [00:48:19.740] - WRAGGMAN But there is very much. I mean, again, without wishing to be too morbid, I lost my dad in 2022. My uncle died at the start of this year. My My wife's aunt died last year. So there is a winnowing going on of the generation ahead of mine. And there's an increasing sense that time is running out in many ways, which I did not have five years ago, certainly not 10 years ago. So A, crashing into middle age without really being mentally prepared is one thing. But then looking around and going like... Being the height I am, I'm very poorly constructed. Part of me have been falling off for quite a while now. I'm looking at... You're on that switchbacks. Yeah, it's none of the good ones, Scott. Don't worry. I'm looking at shoulder surgery later this year. I'm probably going to have a steroid injection in my hip next week, maybe, if I'm lucky. They're just mainly sticking things in me to see what happened. But in terms of active lifespan, this is now a time where I'm looking at a series of books or even box sets and going, Do I really want to commit to this? [00:49:27.000] - WRAGGMAN Am I really going to read all the Aubrey Maturin books? I don't want to start? The answer is yes, yes, I am. But that's a compulsion and not something to be talked about here. To address the actual question, which is something that's relatively rare for me, I think irrespective of how midlisty I am, and the answer is very, very midlisty. But having published a book with a serious publisher that even your wife's godparents have heard of, goes to a huge way to answering a whole load of questions that you didn't even know have been asked. Because one of the things about, I think, possibly getting to the very squeaky end of your 30s and realizing that, Hey, actually, this is it. This is life now. And what are you doing with it? And I wouldn't want to say drop any of my friends and contemporaries in it, but I know plenty of people who I'd look at their life's style of like, they get to watch the TV shows, they get to play the video games, and I'm looking at them going, Oh, man, why? Why do I spend my weekday evenings sitting in front of a keyboard or occasionally standing? [00:50:44.520] - WRAGGMAN Instead of actually watching the things I'm interested in, I've got so many books to read, I've got so many TV shows I'm never going to get to, I've got all these video games that I want to think like 600 hours into and then another 600 hours. Why do I do this to myself? But then there is that question about, what are you doing, though? Really, what are you doing with your life and how are you going to leave the world different? I know that that is a ridiculous thing to say for someone who writes essentially disposable swear fantasy. That's a great genre. But that notion of creating something out of the ether that did not exist and would not have existed had you not sat down and actually put the work into it? Another friend of mine said years ago, Why books? Why not a screenplay? They're a lot shorter for a start. But I've always fallen back on that. A screenplay is the first... It's the opening line in a conversation, isn't it? The gulf between I've written a screenplay or even a first drafted one, and seeing a film is so vast. And should a thing ever be made, the chance of actually bearing much resemblance to the thing you originally had in mind is reasonably slim. [00:51:59.790] - WRAGGMAN But you can sit down, you can write a book. It doesn't even need to be published, but you can write a book by yourself, and you probably should. But then getting that, getting an agent, getting published, these are things that even though the great roller coaster high didn't come off, those achievements are still there. And every time I have a moment of middle-age crisis uncertainty, of what am I doing? And we're like, da, da, da, da. Realistically, this series, even though the book was coming out in August, it will be the best thing I've ever published. Everyone should buy it. You don't even need to have read the first book in the series, seriously. You can just go with the second one. It is, and I'm going to use another technical term. It's fucking brilliant. I'm tempted to name it here because it's quite hard to find a book that has no name. But I will hold off for the official announcement, which has to be coming literally any week or month now. That book is amazing. However, However, it's probably not going to be a best seller, realistically being the second book in a trilogy where very few people have read the first. [00:53:10.500] - WRAGGMAN It is unlikely to leave me with a stellar sales record. It is unlikely to mean that I will be able to approach a publisher with subsequent works and say, Hey, it's me, that guy who sells books. It'll be more like, Hey, it's me, that guy who went on publishing rodeo and set fire to everything. Oh, yeah, I love that guy. No, we're not taking anything from it. So this could be like This book and then the one that follows next year, assuming it does get out next year. These could be the last things I ever publish traditionally, but I'm never going to stop writing, even though my kids are growing up in the background and I am increasingly annoying them. Annoying them? No, I'm avoiding them because they're annoying. I mean, sure, yeah, they're avoiding me because I'm annoying, but it helped. Look who their dad is, what chance do they have. So I will keep writing. I'll keep getting this wild, crazy nonsense out of my head and putting it down and making things. And even if I end up going completely in the hybrid or whatever else, it'll still be ticking along. And it will have answered that question of, what have you done with your life, et cetera? [00:54:12.120] - WRAGGMAN It's like, oh, yeah, got married, had some kids, pursued the middle class existence of the straight white British male, absolutely down the middle. Like, no deviation, no hesitation, path of least resistance, no complaints whatsoever. But I wrote some books and some people read the books, and a few of them even liked them. And that's the part that keeps me going. The writing part, I could do without that. But the rest of it, sure. Having written. [00:54:42.500] - Scott Has that always been your outlook and your goal, or has your publishing experience affected that? [00:54:51.200] - WRAGGMAN I think it would have been nice if Blackhawks had been good enough to catapult me into being a full-time writer. And if This will make you laugh. 2018, I signed the first book contract. Well, no, I probably signed it in 2019. 2018 was when the offer was made. I thought, Right, first book, 2019. I could put out a book every year for five years. So they all do okay. I could be a full-time writer by 2023. 2024, it turns out. I can't do math. But, loll. Not even close. So my all-time Gross earnings before agent commission since 2018, £32,000. After expenses, tax, agent commission, and everything else, I have made a sum total of £24,500 since 2019, which Even if I curbed my dairy milk habit, would not be enough to live on. I eat shitload of chocolate, seriously. [00:55:52.020] - Sunyi I hope you find the success that your books and your writing deserve. [00:55:56.300] - WRAGGMAN Well, thank you very much. [00:55:57.330] - Sunyi Do you want to tell us, Pettiest Hill, That you're willing to die on. [00:56:02.420] - WRAGGMAN I've been puzzling about this ever since I started to consider it as a possibility. And the problem is that all of my hills are massive. They're all far too important. Or They're all just a little bit too familiar. For example, we should start calling AI in its current generation AI because it's not intelligence. It is just statistical agglomeration. I think the best description I've heard of it is a collage machine. I know that I'm preaching to converted on this one, but I would cheerfully like to invent a device that delivers a giant boxing glove from space to every single marketing twerp who sends out an email newsletter or a press release with some now with AI in it from the guy who was like, Hey, what if your fridge had AI? And The answer was, What? And he was like, It could tell you when you're about to run out of milk. I know that generally in cartoons, boxing gloves are like, How hard, it's all soft. But this one will have the density of uranium-232 and will splash to them across a two and a half mile square radius. I don't know if that counts. [00:57:19.590] - Sunyi I will accept it. [00:57:21.600] - WRAGGMAN That counts, yeah. That's it. Yes. Anyone who says they're trying to put AI in anything in this current generation when what they mean is a large language model or something link, like a fucking chatbot. No, you can't have it. You get crushed. [00:57:35.680] - Sunyi I'm very conscious of time, but if you want to plug yourself quickly before we head off, David, and then we'll let you return to your disastrous day. [00:57:45.200] - WRAGGMAN Thank you very much. Yes. So you can find me at davewragg.Com. That has links to all of my active social media, which these days is primarily Blue Sky. I do maintain a Twitter presence, even though every time I check on there to see what the notifications I feel like I'm complicit in some crime, and I feel the irrepressible urge to wash my hands. I'm also a mastodon, God bless it. It will just carry on forever. You can find my books in Most Good workshops. You might have to ask at the counter and order them in. But yeah, they're all the Hunters available on hardback. Paperback is published in probably June, probably July. It's coming up soon. And the second secret book is available late August. It is brilliant. You don't need to read the Hunter's to read it. I would say you can find it on listings now. It is on Amazon and other things. So it doesn't have a title, it doesn't have a cover. But go and order it, please. Order my books. They've got no cover, no blurb. They've got nothing. Just order them anyway. They're great. Honest. [00:58:54.530] - Sunyi You've been listening to the Publishing Radio podcast with Sonja Dean and Scott Drakeford. Tune next time for more in-depth discussion on everything publishing industry. See you later.