Transcripts for the Publishing Rodeo “Hugo Awards Voter-Pack” Episode

Foreward
[00:00:00.200] - Sunyi
The following recording was compiled for the Hugo Awards voter pack. It contains a montage of different clips from different episodes and is intended to give any and all Hugo voters who do not know us a sense of what our podcast is about and the kind of content we cover. It is approximately 30 minutes long and accessible. Transcripts are available on our website with details on the guests and clips which are featured. Full length episodes and their transcripts can be found for free on all podcasting platforms as well as well thank you so much for listening. We hope you enjoy it.

Introduction
[00:00:32.340] – Sunyi 
Hi, I'm Sunyi Dean.

[00:00:34.500] - Scott
And I'm Scott Drakeford, and this is the publishing rodeo podcast.

[00:00:37.400] - Sunyi
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.

[00:00:52.780] - Scott
That pattern repeats itself throughout the industry over and over. Why do some books succeed while others seem to be dead on arrival?

[00:01:01.440] - Sunyi
In this podcast, we aim to answer these questions and many more, along with how to build and maintain an author career.

[00:01:09.280] - 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 to publishing contracts, finances, and more.


Excerpt 1: with Sunyi / Scott, Episode 1

[00:01:29.420] - Sunyi
When I was thinking about this podcast, we'd been talking about it for over a year. I had this idea to do a writing podcast that's maybe a little bit like print run or podcasts like that, that talk about publishing, not craft, although craft does get discussed sometimes because we can't stay away from it. But honestly, we're writers and we're looking at writing as a career. So if you're here to kind of make trade publishing work for you and you don't know how, which is difficult because there's not a lot of information floating around. We can talk about that. There's no formula for success, but there are common ground experiences that people go through, common pitfalls, common things to worry about, especially in your contract. And I guess go over the good and the bad and the bloody ugly. There is some good, but there's a lot of bad and a lot more ugly.

[00:02:23.760] - Scott
Well, I mean, just the. The scarcity of information and the bad information that circulates even among people that are theoretically in the know, right? I've been in the industry, quote unquote, since like 2015, but it's really only been since meeting you, talking with you and the other authors that have kind of gathered around you.

[00:02:54.570] - Sunyi
Yeah.

[00:02:55.070] - Scott
If you don't have some sort of in group, you really don't have a good understanding of what publishing really looks like and where you really stand in that landscape, be it good or bad. The info we have to share is going to be helpful for somebody. Right? Because you shouldn't have to fumble around for ten years to even understand what kind of industry you're in. My function on this podcast is mostly just to be a truth teller.

[00:03:32.500] - Sunyi
No, I mean, that's very important because I think we're kind of getting into the meat of why the podcast exists if people haven't gotten bored at this stage. But it's effectively that at its heart, publishing is very unfair. And I was explaining this as a kind of metaphor to my partner earlier. It's like, you know, if you want a job in a regular industry, you might go to this big corporation and send an application, and you come in at the lowest level and you work your way up and it makes sense, and there's progression. You know, you're getting paid, you know, what happens at every level. And publishing, the equivalent is like, you want a job in this building, so you send in a general application and you don't get to pick what position you'll be in. And you have to wait by the door for a long time, and maybe no one will answer. Maybe they will, and maybe when answer, they'll say, well, congratulations, your job is to be our company doormat. Or maybe, let's say your job is to be our company CEO, and you will go like, you know, that would be ludicrous as a model, but that is a bit what publishing feels like.

[00:04:27.970] - Scott
You query, you get an agent, you go on submission. You don't actually know how well your book will do until it gets picked up. And when it gets picked up, it's like its fate is almost decided. I mean, it's not that rock solid there. There are books that get picked up for nothing and do well, and there are books that get picked up for a lot, and they bomb. And there's both ends of the extreme. But generally, publishing has a very tiered structure where, yeah, it's like applying for a job in a big corporate building, and you just get a job that kind of defines your career right out the gate almost. That's what it feels like from our end.


EXCERPT 2: with Sunyi / Scott, episode 2

[00:05:06.100] - Scott
This is the point in the podcast where I decide how much I want to say. I couldn't even get answers. I would ask about, you know, hey, you know, I'm hearing that this is kind of a big deal in, in getting ready for launch. Like, what are you doing and what can I do to help? Right? Because I was, I was full time already at that point. I was very willing to, to dig in and do whatever I could to help, and it was just, you know, vague answers or silence or deflection, and I was left very confused. But also, at the same time, I could feel, you know, I could feel it coming. I kind of got a sense at that point of like, oh, God, this isn't going to go anything like what I thought it was going to be. And, you know, I saw the tour calendar, I'm sorry, the Tor catalogue come out right. And, like, I had to scroll all the way down to find my book and, like, they didn't have my cover in there. And I think my. Oh, my bio was wrong at that point.

[00:06:09.610] - Sunyi
Like, it was the wrong author.

[00:06:11.520] - Scott
Yeah, it was the wrong author. My, my real name is Scott Smith, and I didn't publish under the name Scott Smith because there's another Scott Smith who publishes thrillers, and he's also a screenwriter. Yeah. And he's fairly well known. Like, he's my, my agent's favourite thriller author. So my agent and my editor were like, yeah, you should probably find, like, another family name. And so Drakeford is family name. So come. Come to find out, you know, I look up the catalogue and they have that guy's bio. Like, they ignored the bio I sent them. They ignored the bio that my agent had given them. And, like, my, my editor is fully aware that I'm not this other Scott Smith, and I'm using this name because of the other Scott Smith, and yet they literally just went online, I guess, and stole this other guy's biology. Like, he has film credits for whatever, you know, books have been turned into movies.

[00:07:10.650] - Scott
I'm like, what the fuck? This guy's gonna, he's gonna come sue me now.


EXCERPT 3: with Sunyi, episode 9

[00:07:20.900] - Sunyi
So I will say this for the benefit, since you don't necessarily know us, and for anyone who maybe is starting not at episode one. Scott and I have this same publisher. We debuted in the same year. We write in the same genre, but we had very different experiences in our launch years. And we are kind of looking at publishing from that angle of what happened when authors fall on other sides, you know, opposite sides. That mid list dividing line.

My best guess for my sales in North America and UK Commonwealth territories combined is about 60k copies. And. And the thing that I really want to point out here is the ratio of difference between my sales and Scots versus the ratio of difference between. Between my advance and Scott's. So Scott's advance was 30k for three books on the US side. My advance was 300k for three books plus the uk side. And he didn't get a UK separate deal. Right. So that's a ratio of one to ten. And his, his estimated sales, so far as we know at the moment, are about six k 6000 copies shifted. My estimated sales, conservatively are about 60,000 copy shifted. Again, that's a ratio of one to ten. And obviously there are a lot of factors there, and that data is not fully accurate. But it is really stark how closely our advanced sizes are reflected in our sales sizes. And that's because advances that are bigger tend to come with a lot more marketing push that are proportional to the amount of money your book was purchased for. And obviously, there will always be exceptions. There'll be the books bought for a lot that sells less than hoped, and there'll be books bought for a more conservative deal which sell really well.

But certainly in, in our particular example, you can really see the correlation between marketing spend and sales and how much they're linked, which is one of the main things I really just want to drill in for people. Even with all factors considered, there is a relationship between publisher spending and how a book performs. 


EXCERPT 4: with Dr. Kerry Pray, episode 23

[00:09:34.360] – Dr. Pray
Well, hello. I'm glad to be here. My name is Doctor Carrie Spencer Frey. I am an assistant professor of writing at Stevenson University, which is in Maryland in the United States. The thing we're talking about today is mostly my dissertation research, which I had to do a dissertation for my PhD. And so I decided I was gonna decide to study what makes books sell or not sell. And it was sort of like, everyone was really shocked by this question. When I like, it was like this like forbidden question, why are you like, what sells or not sells? Like, obviously a book, if it's good, it will sell. Or obviously, like, we don't ask that question. That's like a debasement of art. And I was like, I was writing young adult fiction primarily at the time. And I'm like, listen, young adult fiction is literally defined by the market. It's not a real genre, it's a market category. And so, like, you have to understand the market if you're going to write ya. And so it's just, it's just marketing. And not only that. And so I continued, studied it for a lot of years, and I got.

[00:10:33.910] – Dr. Pray
I've gotten grants over the years, and I've had research assistants over the years and consulted with different publishers over the years because they don't always understand why things are selling or not selling. Once you have all those things, you can play, plug them into the algorithm that we made, and it will come out with how likely it is to sell or not sell based on those numbers. And it's accurate about 75% of the time, actually. So we can predict at the point of acquisition with about 75% accuracy how well a book is going to sell. A good book is not enough to sell, and even like, a good book. Plus, marketing is not always enough to sell. And what actually makes it sell is a little more chaotic. But you will have zero chance at selling if you don't hit the marketing viability threshold.


EXCERPT 5: with Sunyi / Michael Mammay, episode 6

[00:11:18.600] - Sunyi
I think people also are scared to reach out, because I feel like so many people have disappointing experiences with publishing, and a lot of people carry this sense of shame about it. And I remember, it reminds me of after my daughter was born, and I used to go to these baby groups, and everyone there always seemed like really on top of it and really happy and really buzzy. And then about four or five years down the line, when our kids were older, one of the women that I knew in those groups started talking about how she'd really been going through lots of postnatal depression and just generally been completely fucking miserable. And we were all like, oh, yeah, we were all feeling that. And it was like everyone was miserable, and no one would say it first. And there's a lot of that in writer groups. There's a lot of people struggling or just unsure of what's going on. They don't know what's normal, or they feel bad, or they feel like their sales are their fault, or their career is their fault, and nobody will say it first because we're all trying to keep up appearances.

[00:12:12.490] – Michael Mammay
Right. Well, it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing to come and say, like, when I say the misfit soldier undersold, it's not that bad for me, right? Because I have a successful series, and, well, this must be the blip. It might not be, but it's okay. I will tell you that Scott coming on here and talking about his situation is, like, one of the gutsiest things that I've seen in publishing, because people don't talk about, you know, that people don't talk about, hey, I wrote my first book and it failed. They talk about it in private, in private groups all the time. But to come on here and say that is, is really something, you know, because it's shining light on something that happens to, I don't know, 60, 70% of all mid list debuts. I don't know what the number is. I heard you all throw some numbers out in a previous episode, but I can't source that. You know, more than not, the default position of a mid list author is failure.

[00:13:10.370] – Michael Mammay
If you do nothing, if you just turn in the best book, you do and do everything you can, more mid list debut writers are going to fail than succeed. And that is just a fact of life, and it's not your fault.


EXCERPT 6: with Scott / Sunyi / Peter McLean, episode 16

[00:13:25.740] - Sunyi
Okay, now this is a really weird question. I'm just kind of curious about when did you first learn the term mid list? Because I think there's a point where we all first hear that word.

[00:13:37.310] – Peter McLean
Oh, shortly after I landed on it, I think. Certainly not before I was published. This was, this was all a bit of a horrible, rude awakening that there is this purgatory of published but not famous or making any money that most people end up on. Oh, well, fuck, I wish I'd done this in advance. The industry is inexplicable, man. Is that there is, other than marketing spend, there is no way to predict whether you're going to sell or not, you know, and even some books with a huge marketing spend still die on their ass. And some books with no marketing spend have runaway successes. So I don't know. I don't think any of us know really how it works.

[00:14:27.170] - Scott
Yeah, that's why we keep having people on. We're trying to figure it out. We don't have any answers, but we try.

[00:14:33.690] – Peter McLean
Let me know if you ever get there because I'd love to know.

[00:14:37.720] - Scott
Well, we just keep asking people one at a time and none of them know, so nobody does.


EXCERPT 7: with Scott / David Wragg, episode 37

[00:14:46.160] - Scott
First question, did you know when you signed the contract and when you launched that you were midlist?

[00:14:52.000] – David Wragg
No, but that's, I think because no one, no one has ever told you on midlist, like, midlist is a, is a fallback status when the signifiers you would otherwise be looking for don't appear. And as is, 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, you know, by, by other people, well wishers, people with the best intentions they can, they can say things like, oh, you should get a marketing plan. Or you'll find out details about your launch. Or, you know, wait until you 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? Me 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.

[00:16:02.490] – David Wragg
It's like 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. 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 like a kind of 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? So you can be the politest, stinking burning bin in the world. And that's certainly better than being an obnoxious gift. But it's not going to magically create any more people to lavish attention on you.


EXCERPT 8: with Scott / Sunyi / Richard Swan, episode 4

[00:16:59.050] – Richard Swan
It was a very painless process for me and I only learned, sorry.

[00:17:05.050] - Scott
People are going to love you, Richard.

[00:17:06.690] – Richard Swan
I know it's a story I don't volunteer that often. And I had no idea that people could be waiting on submission for months, even years sometimes. Like, that was. I had no idea that that was a thing because my personal journey was so smooth. I submitted it to three agents. In the end, I think it was three. It certainly wasn't more than three, but it might have been two.

[00:17:30.760] - Sunyi
I’m watching Scott's face.

[00:17:37.010] – Richard Swan
And then they just wield this big dump truck of money outside my house and they said, richard, please just write books in perpetuity. Here's a blank cheque. What I did was I just went on the Internet and I just literally googled science fiction fantasy agent. No idea what I was doing at all. Just picked one. And then the second agent I applied to was Harry Illingworth, the DHH agency in London. And then a deal came in almost exactly one month after we sent it out, pitch out. And that was a preempt. So, you know, that's for those who don't know, that's the kind of, they get in before anyone else gets a chance to make an offer. So they say, here's a big sum of money for you to completely remove the pitch from the market, and we'll keep it. So that's what happened. And orbit offered it was a six figure sum of money for the three books. And we did a bit of negotiation to get that number a little bit higher and. Yeah. And that was that. So it was very, very smooth sailing.

[00:18:44.010] - Scott
The funny part of that story is that when things go wrong, right, like I would say they did for me and they do for so many others, I think the temptation, or the tendency, at least in my case, is to look back and think, what could I have done better? Where could I have mitigated the risk? You know, I should have researched more. I should have known more. I should have been more involved, whatever. So it is really just hilarious to hear that you picked agents off a random list. It was some friend that read your book and was like, no, you shouldn't self publish this one. Like the other 18. You should actually submit this. And you're like, oh, okay.

[00:19:29.120] – Richard Swan
Yeah, maybe that's a good idea. Yeah, right? Okay. Yeah, I'll try to get this one published. If you think that's a good idea, I'll do it.

[00:19:39.890] - Scott
If you insist. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:19:41.640] – Richard Swan
Okay. No, that's probably right.

[00:19:43.840] - Scott
All right. We have now reached the portion of our podcast where we ask Richard to sing his favourite song to us.

[00:19:52.760] – Richard Swan
It's called authors karaoke. Spin up that track.

[00:19:58.720] - Scott
Go ahead, Sunyi. Sorry.

[00:20:01.160] - Sunyi
No, no, it's fine. I've completely forgot what I was going to say now. This is something that Richard was talking about, actually, the other day. I was thinking about how, you know, it's not like we're not stupid, right? And I think publishers have a tendency to kind of either out of compassion for our egos or just, it's easier to manage us. They have a tendency to assume that writers don't want to know stuff, and no writer I've ever met has felt like that. So it's just frustrating because I think if they were honest and upfront, I mean, Richard even suggested, like, if they're approaching people saying, look, you've got a tier one book deal, a tier two book deal, a tier three book deal. This is what it means. This is what we commit to. I think people would sign that I think they would still get people saying, fine, I'm happy to be mid list. I know what it means. I know what's expected of me. I know what my limits are and what I won't get pitched for. Yeah.

[00:20:55.060] – Richard Swan
I mean, for most people, it's the difference between having a book deal and having nothing. So, you know, people will, I think in most cases, except I remember orbit once saying, you know, our goal is to be the number one choice for science fiction and fantasy authors. And I just remember thinking to myself, people will just take any deal they can get. You know, it's not like swimming in like ten publishing deals, but I'm going to go to orbit because then the premier kind of, it's like, well, I've got one deal, so yes, I'm going to accept it. I mean, it just made me laugh at how kind of the idea that all these authors are just kind of like choosing which publisher they want to go to because they've positioned themselves in that way.


EXCERPT 9: with Premee Mohamed / Scott, episode 17

[00:21:41.980] – Premee Mohamed
And I was like, well, you know, I'll survive. I'll coast on savings. For a little while. I didn't realise really how burnt out I was like that. I had just been digging and digging and digging and finally reached the end of myself, which is like a horrifying feeling.

[00:21:57.680] - Scott
Yep.

[00:21:58.330] – Premee Mohamed
And that was when I decided to leave. I just could not do anymore, could not take anymore, almost couldn't function anymore. And I didn't want to miss any writing deadlines because that would be bad. So since then, I think I've just been recovering. And if I had any advice for past me, it would be something like, don't set yourself on fire to keep the worst people warm. Good advice. Just evaluate who exactly you're warming by throwing your bones on there because I feel like I may have vented some inappropriate things here. Please edit out all the parts where I'm like, I'm dying, I'm going to quit publishing and I hate everybody.

[00:22:48.340] - Scott
That's a lot of parts.

[00:22:52.860] – Premee Mohamed
Just leave in like the first five minutes and we should be okay. You guys can just vamp for the rest of it.


EXCERPT 10: with Sunyi / Scott, episode 9

[00:22:59.900] - Sunyi
Okay. The theory is that basically it doesn't really matter if mid list makes money, because they are. Mid list picks are effectively like an aesthetic or a mood board for a publisher that they can function in that way. You know, a publisher can say, we've been publish these kinds of books in the way that you as an author might put out a mood board. Say, this is the kind of vibe of my story. This is the vibe of our publisher submit list almost functions as an advertisement for lead titles. That was print run's theory, not mine. So I claim no responsibility for revoicing it.

[00:23:31.050] - Scott
Yes, and I've heard you say it. I've heard other industry professionals say it, and apparently it was on printrun. So it's a known phenomenon. We see it happen, right, because they keep, publishers keep picking up books that they then punt into the sun and never hear from again. Right? So it's obviously happening. And this whole, you know, aesthetic thing, it just didn't make sense to my business brain. So I had to think about it for a quite a long time. And I have a little bit less kind theory behind of it.

[00:24:08.840] - Sunyi
Go for it.

[00:24:10.050] - Scott
I mean, because, because, I mean, you could, you could assume a level of incompetence because on the face of it, what, picking up a whole bunch of these mid list books that don't do all that well does, is it dilutes their brand, right? Like people know publishers for the big books that come out and all these little books that come out and they look like failures, at least because, you know, nobody ever hears about them and they sit on a shelf with the Tor logo or whatever and never move. So at the very least, they're diluting their brand with booksellers, right? So the less, the less kind theory that makes sense to my business brain is that it's still worth it even with that brand dilution, because they are effectively hitchhiking on authors hopes, dreams and efforts to push their own books in the mid list and debut mid list in particular. And they're using that to basically boost their brand. Right? So all the little Scott Drakefords that come out and say, hey, look at me, I got published by, by a big publisher. And we spend years of our lives, you know, trying to drum up interest for it and represent ourselves well and represent our publisher well, that's good for them.

[00:25:35.340] - Scott
And apparently it's good enough for them to risk that brand dilution to pull attention away from the books they apparently actually care about. Might have to cut that. Probably not, though.

[00:25:49.830] - Sunyi
No cuts here, right?

[00:25:51.420] - Sunyi
No cuts here. For better or worse.


EXCERPT 11: with David Wragg, episode 37

[00:25:57.570] - Sunyi
I was 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 with that as you like.

[00:26:09.250] – David Wragg
So one thing I would say is that I am obviously much, much older than both of you. I am incredibly old. Do 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? Again, without wishing to be too morbid, I lost my dad in 2022. My uncle died the start this year. 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 ten years ago. So, you know, a crashing into middle age without really being mentally prepared is one thing, but then looking around and going like, you know, being the height I am, I'm very poorly constructed. Parts of me have been falling off for quite a while now. I'm looking at, you know, yeah, it's none of the good ones, Scott, don't worry. But 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.

[00:27:18.690] - David Wragg
You know, they're just sort of mainly sticking things in me to see what will happen. But in terms of sort of active lifespan, this is now a time where I'm looking at series of books or even box sets and going, do I really want to commit to this? 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, like your wife's godparents have heard of, goes 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 sort of squeaky end of your thirties and realising that, like, hey, actually, this is it. This is life now. And what are you doing with it? Why? Why do I spend my weekday evenings sitting in front of a keyboard or occasionally standing 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.

[00:28:30.410] - David Wragg
I've got all these video games that I want to sink 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? Like, really, what are you doing with your life and how are you going to leave the world different. And I know that that is a ridiculous thing to say for someone who writes essentially disposable swear fantasy, but that great genre, the 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 getting that, getting an agent, getting published. Like these are things that even though the sort of the great, like, rollercoaster high didn't come off, those achievements are still there. And every time I have a moment of sort of, you know, middle aged crisis, uncertainty of what am I doing in my life, da da da da da. Realistically, this series, like, even though the book was coming out in August, it will be the best thing I've ever published. That book is amazing. However, it's probably not going to be a bestseller.

[00:29:42.910] - David Wragg
Realistically, being the second book in a trilogy where very few people have read the first, 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 published traditionally. But I'm never going to stop writing. 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 indie or hybrid or whatever else, it'll still be ticking along. And it will have answered that question of, you know, what have you done with your life? Etcetera. It's like, oh yeah, got married, had some kids, pursued the middle class existence of the straight, white british male.

[00:30:44.240] - David Wragg
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 like them. And that's the part that keeps me going.


Outtro Music

[00:31:02.750] – Sunyi Dean
You've been listening to the publishing radio podcast with Sunyi Dean and Scott Drakeford. Tune in next time for more in depth discussion on everything publishing industry. See you later.