[00:00:00.000] - Sunyi
Hi, I'm Sunyi Dean.

[00:00:03.110] - 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.

[00:01:00.670] - Sunyi
After you, Scott, you're live.

[00:01:02.010] - Scott
Okay. We're live.

[00:01:04.340] - Sunyi
Well, you're recording.

[00:01:05.770] - Scott
You never know what Sunyi is actually going to keep. And so I wore a semi-skin-colored shirt again, just to make sure she's not sharing too much, because she gave me a lot of shit for it the other day. All right, now you can actually see me, maybe.

[00:01:24.560] - Sunyi
That's because we got into a recording, everyone was like, Scott, you're not wearing a top.

[00:01:30.050] - Scott
It was a skin-colored shirt, okay? So anyway, welcome to the Publishing Rodeo, where we say the quiet part out loud. We have Agent and author extraordinaire, Kristina Perez. Did I say that right? I'm so sorry if I pronounced that incorrectly.

[00:01:52.960] - Kristina
It's fine.

[00:01:54.560] - Scott
Do you want to say your name the right way?

[00:01:56.100] - Kristina
It's Kristina Perez.

[00:01:58.760] - Scott
There you go. I love it.

[00:01:59.800] - Kristina
. Not bad.

[00:02:01.980] - Scott
I mean, I did live in São Paulo for two years, but didn't learn a lot of Spanish. Portuguese is close enough to Spanish that you feel like you know enough to get by It's the same family, as they call it--

[00:02:18.700] - Kristina
I can fake it when I go to Portugal.

[00:02:21.540] - Scott
I actually ran into somebody from Argentina when I was down in São Paulo, and I did not realize that they were speaking Spanish at first, and I thought I had had a stroke. It was close enough that I was like, I should be understanding this. Why can't I understand this person? Anyway. Okay, so we are so glad to have you, despite some technical difficulties on my end that made us get to a late start. Okay, Sunyi, I did a horrible intro. Do you want to lead us in with your scheduled programming?

[00:03:06.190] - Sunyi
“Scheduled programming.” What we would usually ask to, because I think your journey is very unusual and you've seen not just both sides of the fence, but maybe a few different angles of that yard, so to speak, to completely destroy my metaphors. If you could just walk us through the basics of how you got to where you are and became an agent and an author.

[00:03:26.940] - Kristina
So very squiggly career path, I suppose, over the last 20 some years, after I completed a PhD in medieval literature, I decided I didn't want to do that full-time. And I backed in to becoming a journalist out in China in 2007 in the run up to the Beijing Olympics, which was amazing. And I was out in Asia for nearly a decade in Beijing, in Hong Kong, and Singapore, teaching at the University of Hong Kong and in Singapore as well. And during that time, I put out an academic monograph based on my PhD. So I guess that was my first foray into traditional publishing book-length form. Obviously, I was working for Wall Street Journal and CNN, Kani Nass Traveler, doing all kinds of mostly travel and art-featured pieces on China and the region. So I'm also familiar with that side of publishing and what those contracts look like. And as a freelancer, which I was most of the time, I was essentially my own agent. A lot of the same skills are involved, where you're producing the content, you're pitching the content, you are creating those agent relationships, you're negotiating the contracts, and then you are chasing people for money, which I still do all the time.

[00:04:50.730] - Kristina
Actually, there's a lot in common between being a freelance journalist and being an agent. You're essentially running a small business. And I tell my authors always to think of themselves in the same way as a small business, because they are. And so that was how I got my start, I suppose you could say. And then I started playing with fiction a bit, and I sold my first book, which was a young adult novel, although it was not the first one that came out because of publishing and its hijinks back in 2015. And then I sold a few more young adult novels, and ended up moving back to the UK for my husband's job, and suddenly found myself a full-time author not on purpose, and did that for a few years before realizing that I don't really like being a full-time author. I still like writing a lot, but I really missed running things, having a business. And so I decided to take everything that I had learned creatively from being the author side of the business process and try and get into agenting. So I I joined an agency here in London called Xeno Agency that specializes in SFF, and that has been primarily what I've been doing at that time.

[00:06:09.200] - Kristina
So it made sense. It was a really good fit, and I started there after about, I guess, three and a half, four years, I decided to just set up my own shop. Actually, it's funny. It's auspicious timing today when we're recording because it's exactly your anniversary.

[00:06:28.340] - Sunyi
Hey, congratulations.

[00:06:29.830] - Kristina
Thank you.

[00:06:31.210] - Scott
Wow. I did not realize that it had only been a year for you with your own agency, and that is amazing.

[00:06:39.230] - Kristina
Thank you. Yeah, it's very exciting. A good celebration today, tonight, I'm sure.

[00:06:44.400] - Scott
How would you say your stress level is as an agent compared to as an author? I've just always been curious about that.

[00:06:53.720] - Kristina
People stress about different things, because as an author, I'm all too familiar with the feeling of not any control over things that are extremely important to me. But as an agent, you don't have nearly as much control as perhaps people think you do, or authors would like you to, or that I would like to sometimes. But you do have to be responsible for authors' careers, or at least giving them the advice, and obviously, they make their decisions. But certainly, I feel a huge duty of care towards all of my clients who are trusting me to give them the best advice that I can in a given situation. So I think you stress differently, I guess you could say.

[00:07:33.170] - Scott
I mean, yes, since they're almost certainly a lot busier. Now, can I go, Sonia, if you have something butt in for sure. But you, Christina, you said that you tell your authors to treat their career as a small business, do you have a primer or an initial few quick tips that you give your authors that you could give to us right now on what that means to treat your career like a business and how even existing established authors, but especially new authors, can adopt that mindset?

[00:08:17.810] - Kristina
For sure. I think what it means is to diversify your revenue streams, if you can, which is to write across multiple genres or categories. It is harder to stay published than to get published. And the most likely way to do that, in my experience, is to be able to wear lots of hats. Then there's all kinds of very practical advice about, I cannot give tax advice, but I suggest that you get an accountant that you think about whether you want to be a limited liability company or not, and the pros and cons of that, joining either the Society of Authors here in the UK or the Authors Guild, and availing yourself of all the resources that they have, thinking about authors liability insurance, all kinds of little things that you would do if you were setting up a business are things that I definitely will recommend to newer authors. Actually, it's funny because I was talking with my assistant Isabelle today that we're planning on putting together a little bit of a a debut author's guide or a welcome to publishing 101 for our clients, and then we're deciding what materials would be useful in that, because it encompasses so many different kinds of skills.

[00:09:41.500] - Kristina
And people who have been freelancers before, it's probably telling them what they already know. But if they haven't, then there are a lot of things to consider, keeping all your receipts so you can claim that back, and the percentage of your apartment that you use for your work, you can claim on your rent, and all that thing. Yeah.

[00:10:00.980] - Scott
You said a few things I'd like to skip back to, if that's okay. Sure. So the first one is the most concerning one. You said something about liability insurance, and I have never, ever heard anybody talk about liability insurance in terms of a career as an author. I mean, maybe it makes sense to me right now in my head for a journalist, a freelance journalist. But do you recommend that for even a fiction author, et cetera? And why? What's that all about?

[00:10:39.700] - Kristina
Well, I mean, I'm a super risk averse person, and so I have author's insurance for myself for my fictional works. You can get it through the Society of Authors here in the UK. They have a relationship with an insurer, and I'm guessing that they do in the authors' bill, too, in the US. I'm just not familiar with it since I'm based here. Yeah. I mean, as a journalist, I would say the premiums would probably be higher because you're more likely to get sued. But if you are going to think of yourself as a small business, then that is just one thing to consider as you would get any professional indemnity or employer's liability insurance.

[00:11:18.320] - Scott
Yeah. Have you had anybody that you represent or anybody that you know even have to take advantage of that as a fiction author?

[00:11:29.230] - Kristina
What was the circumstance? Personally, no. But of course, you do hear about various more high profile lawsuits that happen to do with plagiarism, whether spurious or not. Sometimes, things are based on fan fiction. It's just You can't stop people from suing you if they want to. So in the US is a more litigious place than the UK. And well, that's just not to emphasize that, but it's just something to think Yeah, that is really...

[00:12:02.270] - Scott
I mean, it makes a lot of sense now that you're saying it. And you just gave me and everybody else something more to worry about. So thanks for that.

[00:12:12.010] - Kristina
Definitely what my plan was.

[00:12:18.200] - Scott
Yeah, I mean, that's really interesting because, I mean, you're absolutely correct. Anybody can sue anybody for anything. And people use that as a tool, intimidation or to get them to settle to get them to cease and desist, whether they're correct or not. And that sucks. Yeah, that's a really good idea. I am going to look into that.

[00:12:39.100] - Sunyi
I was going to ask, there's a lot of emphasis. We talk a lot about our debut years, and It's become something that Scott and I have felt strongly, is that how you launch is a huge stepping stone for the careers, and there's different levels of opinion on that from the different people we talk to. But I'm interested in the agent perspective, particularly when you're looking at career planning with an author, do you talk about the impact that certain deals will have or not have? Are there things that you feel authors can do to help themselves launch well? And just generally, how important or not important you think that first début launch year is for their career long term, if any of that makes sense?

[00:13:24.530] - Kristina
I think that everything in publishing, it depends, and that Obviously, some people don't do... Their first book doesn't break out or what have you, but they come to prominence with their second or third act. Publishing is a marathon and not a sprint. Getting a huge deal right off the And that comes with tremendous pros and cons. And it's hard to turn down the life-changing amount of money because you might not get that again. And so is that the right decision to turn it down because you're afraid you won't earn out? Not necessarily. It really depends. And I think that I'm sure everybody you've talked to on the podcast has talked about how much the industry has changed, and that making a living as a midlist author is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. And so as an agent, of course, that is something that you talk through with your author in terms of what are the ramifications of the different offers that you've been given, and and the different publishers and the different things they are saying that they're going to do for you or not do for you. And all the paths look different.

[00:14:38.680] - Kristina
Every single author of mine, their path has been different. I work with a lot of mid-career authors who are often switching gears, maybe changing category or genre because things didn't go exactly as they had planned the first time around. And I actually really like working with mid career authors and planning and strategizing and scheming and trying to turn things around or in a new direction.

[00:15:05.570] - Sunyi
Do you think that careers can be recovered? Because this is something I think that come up a lot recently with some of my author friends. They've gotten to this point where they've had their first debut, they've had their contract, they've fulfilled it, they've done, and there's nothing left. And so it feels like starting from scratch again for them, but harder.

[00:15:22.670] - Kristina
Yes, I think that they can. I mean, myself as a Y. A. Fantasy author, those books did well. Not amazing. I have fans. They get tattoos. That's awesome. But I switched gears, and I have my first adult thriller coming out in May, and I'm really excited for it. It's totally different. I'm hoping that maybe it finds a wider audience or some of my audience comes with me. I had a lot of fun writing that project and just going into my cave during lockdown and just coming out with it. So we'll see. Maybe that will go dramatically differently. Maybe it won't publishing. But yeah, no, I mean, I've definitely had authors I've taken on whose careers have maybe stalled out a bit and who have... It depends on how you want to measure success, but if you want to measure success in six-figure deals, then I've gotten that for them. So, yeah, it can It's not going to happen.

[00:16:16.200] - Scott
So pretend you're on a podcast with somebody who got a small deal and got punted into a black hole and now wants one of those six-figure your deals, what do you tell them?

[00:16:33.840] - Kristina
Do you have a high concept hook?

[00:16:37.030] - Scott
I mean, that's a really good answer. Yeah, that's a really good answer.

[00:16:40.810] - Kristina
I mean, I tease, although not entirely. That will certainly help. Jaws in Space pitches get a lot of attention. And that is not just for satirical reasons. It's because people have very limited attention spans, and you need to be able to sell a product, and a book is a product, So to somebody in, what, 10 seconds on TikTok, if you can say, My book is Jaws in Space, people will be like, Oh, I think I know what that is. So that is important. But also switching names, switching categories, switching genres, all of these things to give you that new car smell again. Yeah.

[00:17:20.220] - Scott
I love that new car smell. So in that instance, do you feel that authors are essentially resetting and going back out there as a debut in a new genre with a new name, et cetera? Or is there some still, I don't know, street cred, whatever it may be that comes from having had a series or a book already out in another genre, even if it didn't do all that well.

[00:17:49.730] - Kristina
By street cred, from whose perspective?

[00:17:53.770] - Scott
Well, I mean, how do you approach it as an agent, right? So say you're now pitching this new career genre shift book for an author. You're going out to editors. Are you telling them about that author's previous career? Does that feature, or are you essentially presenting this author as a new author because they're switching genres?

[00:18:18.570] - Kristina
Well, in terms of being like this is XYZ person, but they used to write as ABC person. Yes, you usually include that in the pitch letter in the bio, that writing as whatever their other pen name was, they published five Y. A. Novels or something like that. You're not trying to disguise who they are in this age of Google and social media. That's not really possible anyway. And so it's more a matter of saying, This is their fresh, shiny branding. But of course, they have completed these novels in the past, so we know they can complete a novel. They know, which is often a question with a debut. And so I think that can be a positive. But to be completely frank, sometimes it can be a negative. If you go back to a publisher where they had been before. I have definitely had a bad sales track, even in a different category, impact decision making, and that's just true. So in that case, you have to rejig your thinking about that particular publisher or that particular imprint.

[00:19:22.110] - Sunyi
How are we feeling about platform these days? Because I feel like TradPub has gone through... It went through this phase. It felt like everyone was wanting to know that you had TikTok talk on Twitter. And then I think it felt like from the author side that publisher suddenly realized that wasn't actually very useful, and they went back to not really caring. But I just wondered if you'd seen one way or the other from editors.

[00:19:43.080] - Kristina
I think that it depends on what category you're writing in, whether it's important or not. I mean, obviously, non-conviction is all about platform. Even if you're a super expert academic in your field, they want you to also probably be a media Dawn, or that you have a podcast or a sub stack or something that shows that you can engage the general public on your topic and not just other academic. So I say that non-conviction publishing is a different kettle of fish, where that is important for reasonable reasons, where when a non-conviction editor, which because I also rep non-conviction, is pitching a book, they know more accurately who the reader for that book is going to be, because it's not just who likes fairies in space. It's who is looking for a book that's going to help me figure out the answer to this problem. For those reasons, I can understand why platform is important, although it can also sometimes be frustrating. Then the fiction, I think that right now, obviously, there's a lot of emphasis on book talk titles, and new adult, and romantasy, and there, obviously, having engagement with the readers is really important.

[00:21:04.210] - Kristina
I mean, it's a whole part of the kit and caboodle of what fans are looking for from that experience. And so I would say that, yes, in those areas, people will sometimes ask, well, are they very active in their community? Do they have fans online? That thing. I've never been asked that when it comes to crime and thriller, for example. So I think it really varies.

[00:21:27.550] - Sunyi
Do you think that romantism is something that's here to stay? I mean, this is probably something I'll talk to a romantism author a bit more about in-depth, but obviously it's escalating a lot in our genre. It is the topic of the moment in a way.

[00:21:41.200] - Kristina
Yeah, I do, actually. I think it will shift. I don't think it will be the exact same kinds of romantism that are popular right now. They're going to be popular next year or the year after. But I think that it's... I mean, I'm a romance reader. Like historical category romance is one of my favorite for pleasure reading categories. And I'm obviously a huge fantasy fan. And I think it's a natural intersection, really, of two different genres that have a lot of readers in common already, and that both have very loyal readerships. And fantasy fans will read everything by an author if they like them, and so will romance readers. And so I think it actually makes sense. And so, yeah, I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon. But I think there will be different sub-genres of that sub-genre that will emerge.

[00:22:36.280] - Sunyi
I'm watching Scott take notes on that.

[00:22:39.350] - Scott
Well, I have to, or the only thing I'll remember when it comes time to ask another question is that she used the phrase kettle of fish, and I've never heard that phrase before.

[00:22:49.750] - Sunyi
Maybe it's UK phrase.

[00:22:52.230] - Kristina
I'm so far in the mid-Atlantic now because I moved over to the UK in 1998, that I don't even know what is American and what is British in my language at this point.

[00:23:04.590] - Sunyi
I have to say things like, do you have phrases like swings and roundabouts? They're like, what the fuck?

[00:23:11.750] - Kristina
It's like, what's a roundabout?

[00:23:13.660] - Scott
We've now come to the portion of the show where Scott guesses where our guest is from. I was going to say you talked about having lived in Asia. On your bio, you're very clear being half Norwegian, half Argentinian, and you clearly have the ability to at least pronounce Spanish things. But you sound like a straight up American, despite the fact that you live in the UK. So, yeah.

[00:23:48.230] - Kristina
Okay. You want to guess the state?

[00:23:52.120] - Scott
Connecticut.

[00:23:52.670] - Kristina
Oh, ouch. No. New York. City, baby.

[00:23:56.360] - Scott
I mean, that is so goddamn close. I The fact that...

[00:24:02.760] - Kristina
Not to a city kid. No offense to anyone for Connecticut listening right now. But as a born and read Manhattanite, no.

[00:24:10.790] - Scott
Not to invoke the cursed name of Joe Rogan that most of our listeners undoubtedly hate. But I have seen a clip from him where he just absolutely shits on Connecticut as being, or maybe it's Rhode Island, but in my mind, they're about the same because I'm not from that area, as being the place where everybody drives through and there's just nothing there. People drive from Boston to New York, and that's all that part of the country is.

[00:24:37.570] - Kristina
No, to be fair, Connecticut is very beautiful, and we love the college. I I just want some credit for getting within 100 miles of where you're from. That's not bad. That's not bad. Fair, fair news.

[00:24:52.560] - Scott
That is my favorite segment of the show when it comes up. Sometimes I'm too afraid to try, but sometimes it's okay. So Real question. We talked about, we talked about, romantisies, the new big trend, and retellings, God help us, was the big thing before that. And who knows what the next thing will be?

[00:25:16.190] - Sunyi
Dragon Riders.

[00:25:17.530] - Scott
Yeah, Dragon Riders. I am so pissed that I didn't get in on the Dragon Riders trend, because I grew up watching this Disney animated film that very few people know of, called The Flight of Dragons. That's this bastardized version of a book called The Flight of Dragons, but also another book called The Dragon and the George. Anyway, when my parents were too busy with their jobs in life to watch me or whatever when I was a kid, that's what they did. It's just played that movie. So I probably have watched it like a thousand times as a young child. Anyway, getting to the actual questions and not just insane rambling, do you think there is any a Because this is your business, right? Is there a trick for anticipating upcoming trends, and/or how hard is it to get a big deal outside of the current trend? Because everybody's chasing and throwing big money at romantacy, but not everybody wants to write romantacy. Not everybody's capable of writing romantacy. So what do you do if you still want to have a successful career, but you don't quite fit in the current trend?

[00:26:29.900] - Kristina
Well, I mean, I would say that it's usually like a fool's errand to try and write to a trend, because once you've heard of the trend, you're too late. So I think that sometimes you just get lucky that you happen to be writing something that vaguely fits next to something that has just done really well. And then sometimes the stars can align and the magic can happen. But we see publishers do this time and time again, where they pile in on something that's been successful until it's so saturated, and the things they're publishing are so derivative that nobody wants to see them anymore, or at least the editors don't want to see them anymore. Because I think that editors tend to go off of things a couple of years before the public because the editors have been seeing them a couple of years before the public. And so that's a cycle. It's usually a seven to 10 year cycle. Now people are asking me for vampires all the time right? And you couldn't swing it. Yeah, which I'm totally, totally excited about, because actually, back when I was an academic, I taught a whole course on vampire's Western literature.

[00:27:39.830] - Kristina
So I'm very pro this turnaround. But it's been about 10 years since you could really talk about vampires seriously, right? Without somebody wanting to throw you out the window. So that's publishing's downfall a little a bit in terms of the way it cycles through things. Basically, I don't tell authors to really write to any particular thing, especially if it's not their jam, because they're not going to do it as well as somebody who really loves it. And And for whatever, as they say in the romance community, don't yuck somebody else's gum. Even if something is not your bag, there are tons of people who love it and who are going to write it really well, and the readers are going to respond to that because they're going to realize that the person writing it is in there with them. You don't want us to come along and try and write an ironic fantasy. I don't know. Because it's not going to be popular with people who love it.

[00:28:46.590] - Sunyi
But I always figure, I mean, I'm not into romance at all. I think in today's lingo, it'd probably be classed as aro or something. So I don't read books that have a strong romance element most of the time, unless it's something like The Girl With No Reflection, where there's lots of weird trippy multi-univers stuff going on in there, which is itch my jam. But I always think, well, I don't read it. There must be other people who don't. I think there's this thing, it's like, yeah, the romantasy market is huge, but a small market in Trad is still tens of thousands of people. That's a relatively small market, and that's plenty for one author. And if you could find a small market, it can still sustain you career-wise.

[00:29:29.730] - Kristina
I I mean, in theory, I think it's just a matter of actually the discoverability, and how are your readers going to find you? And I think that did used to be easier in the past, but then perhaps people have been in the industry longer than me will say that it wasn't. Although you listen to publicists, and there used to be a million more media outlets. I mean, I was on the other side of it being pitched 15 years ago, and I used to be the other side of getting a million press releases. And I still get a million press releases because you never get off those lists. But it's really interesting to know what the new cool thing is opening in Hong Kong every day. So I get that in my inbox. Yeah. No, I mean, the problem is just that the media landscape has drastically changed, and so the outlets that you can pitch books to has drastically changed. The LA Times, what had just got rid of their books editor a month or so ago. And so there are fewer column inches reporting on books. And I think that's one of the big problems in how people find things, which is why it has shifted onto social media as much as it has.

[00:30:42.050] - Kristina
And you have much less control of that. I mean, the algorithm controls that.

[00:30:46.660] - Sunyi
It's like the Guardian and the Daily Mail in the UK, which I had such mixed feelings when Harper like, Oh, the Daily Mail are going to review your book. And I was like, Do they have to, though?

[00:30:57.780] - Kristina
You do have some I've read some women's magazines here, like Red and Grazia, that still have... But very few magazines still have books sections. I mean, when I was a teenage girl, I mean, we had Jane, and 17, and YM, and I'm really dating myself here. But, you know.

[00:31:20.600] - Sunyi
Scolastic Book Fairs. Is that something? Yeah.

[00:31:22.700] - Kristina
It's a huge thing. It's here, too, actually. It's a big portion of the revenue for the whole company. But But yes, so I would have found out probably about romantacy in the back of YM magazine in 1994. Yeah, I think that's part of the problem. There's so many things that have been rapidly changing, and publishing. It is doing its best to keep up. It's just not always succeeding or not always succeeding as quickly as we would like it to. But nobody's in publishing for the money, not really. Every single person that I know works really hard. The publicists are completely overworked. The marketers are completely overworked. So I do have a lot of sympathy, and perhaps with my vantage point as an agent, where I'm dealing with multiple marketers and publicists on a daily basis for all of my clients, and not just the one person that has been assigned to me, you understand how much stress they're under and why burnout is so high.

[00:32:24.950] - Sunyi
Are there things that authors can do to, I don't even know if this is the appropriate to, I guess, alleviate that stress for those industry staff to help themselves and to help the staff working with them, if that makes sense?

[00:32:39.700] - Kristina
Well, again, it very much depends on the setup at your publisher, But usually, there should be some publicity or marketing plan, maybe about three months out, perhaps six months, if you're a really lead title. But those things are getting closer and closer to publication, in my experience. And having questions, but also suggestions of if you can come into your publicity marketing meeting and saying, Here are the 10 podcasts that I think are most relevant to my book, or Here are the 10 bloggers that I think are most relevant to my book, and presenting them with things that are constructive and additional functional and helpful, understanding that they're probably not going to be able to do all of them, or even if they do pitch all of them with their most earnest effort, it doesn't mean any of them are going to come through. We lost Scott.

[00:33:44.080] - Sunyi
Yeah, I think you'll come back in a sec, hopefully.

[00:33:47.580] - Kristina
I think that to be part of the solution, I think, is probably the best way to approach those discussions, if that makes sense.

[00:33:59.680] - Sunyi
It It does, yeah. And I want to ask a question that's really specific, if I can. Sure. It's one that I asked our bookseller guest/author guest last week, sorry, two weeks ago. And I actually felt bad about it because I asked him what good presales or pre-orders look like for a book, and he answered it, but we didn't really explain it that much. I think we started a bit of a panic among the debut authors who listened to this podcast because they were all going, Oh, no, am My pre-orders and pre-sales don't look like that. So first of all, I was going to say that when we were talking about pre-orders, we were talking about customer pre-orders as well as corporate book presales, and we just lump them together because they tend to be lumped together. But I thought I'd try again with that question and ask if you happen to know, for Sci-Fi and fantasy, what either what good presales or good pre-orders look like for debuts or just for any book launching in general, or if that's too difficult.

[00:35:00.230] - Kristina
I mean, you're going to hate me, but I'm going to say, again, it depends. It depends on what the expectations are. It depends on what the level of the advance was and how much money the publisher is on the hook for. I think that this is a reason why here in the UK, subscription boxes have become so important, because they are a firm sale. They are not a sale or return sale, and that is huge. And that can get you on the Sunday Times best the seller list here, because the volume is so much lower than you would need to get on a list in the US, where subscription boxes do not dominate so much. I would argue that those things are probably related. And obviously, getting on that list means that somebody sees that on Sunday, they're more likely to buy it just over the point of sale in Waterstones. So it really depends. I think the rule of thumb for a very long time now has been that an average average hardback fantasy title will sell 2,000 hard covers in its lifetime. In the UK, anyway, I mean, that that's a very average one, which is why publishers have always relied on fantasy to have a long tail, and that has been built in to the usual advances, which have been at the lower side of things compared to say, commercial fiction, because they usually grow things over time.

[00:36:31.590] - Kristina
Now, all of that logic is in the process of shifting a bit, but I don't know that we have actually settled upon a new model. So I think a lot of those thinking, that thinking pattern goes into decision making still, if that makes sense. And I am broadly speculating here, and other people in the publishing industry who know more than me are very well to contradict me and educate me better. But I think that that is something that you will see. And then obviously in terms of series, there is the rule of thumb, which is borne out in some statistical analysis that my husband, the finance director of my agency, he is in quantum physics. And so he has done some analysis on Nielsen data, and it does bear out that the trilogy fatigue is real, that the second book in a trilogy sells half as much as the first book, and the third book sells half again as much, and that actually doesn't really change. We have looked at... There'll be a little peak maybe first when a TV or a movie comes out, but then it will drop back down, and the first book always sells better, and the publishers count on that.

[00:37:43.600] - Kristina
So when you see a huge deal go for a romantasy that's been big on TikTok, and only the first book has been big on TikTok, and you see that they bought three or four books, it's because in a lot of ways, the rest of that series is just marketing for the first book that they know people are going to continue to buy.

[00:38:00.590] - Sunyi
Something we've talked about on and off is for me and Scott, my relief at doing a three-books stand-alone contract, and I think his possible regrets at being walked into Being locked into a series because if that first book doesn't sell, then you and your publisher are just chained to those diminishing sales, and that's demoralizing. Do you feel like there are more standalones now? Because I feel like that's something I'm seeing more of, more people on standalone contracts.

[00:38:30.930] - Kristina
I think that there was a lot of trilogy fatigue. I sold my Y. A. Fantasy trilogy in 2016. It came out in '18, '19, '20, and the imprint was folded about a month after the third one came out. And definitely by the time of 2018, '19, people were already saying, Hey, we bought a lot of these trilogies. A lot of them aren't selling that great. Give us a or give us a standalone, give us companion books. Now, publishers feel different kinds of ways about companion books. Some publishers like them. Some publishers feel that unless you have a really big audience already in that world, that people aren't going to pick it up, that they prefer to get invested in one set of characters or one relationship to ship. So again, there's just different feelings. I don't know that it's based on hard evidence.

[00:39:27.910] - Scott
Yeah. I think My personal feeling here is if you are an established author with a following, it's maybe less of a risk to sign on for a duology or a trilogy, et cetera, because you have some track record. You have some reason to believe there's going to be read through and some initial buy-in, et cetera. Now, that doesn't always happen. There are plenty of examples of authors who had a successful first series and then drop off real hard. But my My personal advice to new authors would be to stay as far away from locking yourself into a long series, even a trilogy, as possible. I think Sonye's deal where she has a deal for three standalones and then has a lot of optionality after that, right? It makes a ton of sense. And that is absolutely the direction I would go, because as much as I love my trilogy, and I just turned in edits for book 2, had a blast with edits on that book with my new editor. It was just awesome. It's really hard to get excited about writing book 3 when I'm pretty sure book 2 is going to be somewhat dead on arrival, right?

[00:40:51.100] - Scott
And maybe not dead on arrival because you said 2000 books is average, 2000 hard covers is average for a fantasy novel. And it's always nice to find out your above average. But it's all about personal expectations. And if it hasn't necessarily met your personal expectations with the first book, you have very little chance of doing so with the second and third book in a series. So, yeah, my personal advice, or at least what I'm going to go for, is shoot for contracts with multiple books, but either to be determined or working ideas, et cetera, standalones as much as possible, even if those standalones have potential for future series.

[00:41:33.190] - Kristina
Standalone with serious potential is definitely a good way to go. It depends on what the story is you want to tell. If it's something that really requires two books, and it's just not going to make sense. If you stop after 100,000 words, then you might want to do a duology. I think a lot of trilogies fall down because they didn't need to be trilogies. That is sometimes the case, and that can sometimes be why readers drop off. But on the other hand, it can also just be people get... I'm sure you have also seen on social media people saying, Well, I'm not going to buy the series until all three have come out so I can binge read them. And it's like, Yeah, that's not great.

[00:42:15.930] - Scott
You are the problem, people.

[00:42:18.870] - Kristina
That's part of what our culture, our fast food culture now, it wants to be able to binge it all at once, Netflix style. And that doesn't work for traditional publishing.

[00:42:31.230] - Sunyi
Some ways for me, the emphasis on standalone series potential means you start getting these fancy books where the first book in the series is so complete that I actually don't have desire to read the others. I think my iconic book for that is The Traitor Baru Cormont, which is a book I absolutely fucking love. But I've never read the others in the series because I read it, I thought, This is perfect. I'm just going to stop. I'm really sorry, Seth dickinson, if you're out there. But I think because it was written essentially as a standalone, I think that's how it was conceived. I know he got a series deal in his other books, but it didn't feel like a Wheel of Time book, where he just basically picks place to stop, doesn't he? The next one continues on.

[00:43:17.260] - Kristina
I mean, it's something that the mystery genre and the romance genre has done really well for a long time, which is having these very long running series, but that you can pick each one up, and it's a complete either Happily Ever After for one couple, or mystery of the week for a cozy mystery, or a paranormal romance back in the day, which is now starting to make a comeback with the Sook Yee Stackhouse and Anita Blake, where it was both. It was sexy times, and it was a murder mystery. And you could just pick up any of them out of order. And sure, you would get a bit more out of it if you knew the world and you knew the characters, but you could just read one out of order. And I think that is something that people are now coming to in fantasy and in YA, that the other genre categories have had a lock on for a while.

[00:44:09.500] - Scott
Yeah. And just to clarify, I'm a huge fan of series, right? Both reading and writing them. Your points are well taken that if you do the first book too well, you wrap it up too well, nobody really has any reason to continue on to the others. I think it's just tricky to avoid that situation where you are contractually obligated to continue a series that isn't commercially viable. And you know it's not commercially viable, probably from the first book, because as much as people like to talk about, oh, well, this book or this series picked up really after the second or third book, that represents five years in publishing time. And that is not a good way to piece together a career, right? Is to gamble on, oh, maybe in five years, I'll have some skills, right?

[00:45:02.030] - Kristina
No. I mean, I think that's why you can do multiple things at once. If you have the time or the inclination to try to be writing in adult at the same time as maybe you're writing in YA or middle grade, because then you don't usually run into so many problems with the non-competes, and just thinking all of that through. I haven't yet had a publisher be like, No, absolutely not. In any way, these causes usually say with written permission. So it's also a matter of being open and honest with your publishers who are your business partners, right? And it's not like you're trying to go behind their back in the depth of night or something. If you say, Hey, I really want to write this middle-grade project, and I know that we have this non-competent that says this, but I don't think it's going to compete, and usually you can work something out. So I would say, Don't freak out if the language in your contract seems maybe more stringent than absolutely would prefer, because usually, and again, I am not giving legal advice here, but usually things can be worked out. It is about the spirit and not always the letter.

[00:46:11.010] - Kristina
Obviously, if you have any concerns, go to your agent first. Listen to me on a podcast if you have specific concerns. Generally, I think that people in the publishing industry do work very collegially together.

[00:46:26.090] - Scott
Whatever word that is, we know where you're.

[00:46:29.760] - Kristina
It's late on the 5:00. It's like 6:00 on a Friday, so I'm just like, I think it is collegially.

[00:46:35.160] - Scott
A lot of words I've only read and not said out loud either. Same. Do not use me as your yardstick for sure, or whatever unit of measurement you use in the UK. Do you have meter sticks over there?

[00:46:46.580] - Kristina
No, it's confused over here. We're not fully continental. We're not fully... Yeah.

[00:46:52.580] - Scott
Look, I am an engineer and had to deal with units so, so many times, and I still don't understand where Yard came from, why Yard exists. So, yeah, I'm not the resource. I also wanted to comment, by the way. Congratulations for having a quantum physics PhD doing your finances, that poor, poor man.

[00:47:12.940] - Kristina
Yes. Well, he loves it, actually. He does. No, I'm not. I bet. And he crunches the royalty statements. Actually, something that we do that's a little bit unique is that we present an annual report to our authors to go over their earnings so that they understand what the royalty statements mean and where they're at. Again, it's that whole thinking of yourself as a small business attitude. That is something I think is really important. A lot of times, authors don't understand how to read royalty statements because they're byzantine.

[00:47:45.560] - Sunyi
No, they're horrendous.

[00:47:47.500] - Kristina
They don't make sense. And that is something that you absolutely should understand, and you can ask your agent questions, even if you think that they're stupid questions. They're probably not. And the other thing is that the publishers make mistakes on all of the time. So if you think something doesn't look right, you should definitely ask. See something, say something. See it, say it sorted, as they say here on the tube.

[00:48:10.730] - Scott
The one thing I, in particular, should probably make clear that you hit on is I completely agree with you that the people in the industry are generally well-meaning, hard working, overworked, underpaid, and are fantastic. And the issues that we talk about a lot on this podcast are typically systemic, and that includes overly prohibitive non-competes and right of first refusal, et cetera, that are giving people fits and that are causing people to, at the very least, delay their plans to diversify their careers, et cetera. So, yeah, when we bring things up, especially negative things, typically those things are systemic. I'm glad that you had a good answer for how to maybe negotiate that and that your answer was to negotiate that, right? And just be upfront with publishers and go to your agent, have them talk through it with your publisher if you're worried about anything that might be keeping you from doing what you want. The other point I wanted to make, and you said that people aren't in this industry for the money, and that is true of the people that matter and that we deal with, unfortunately. But But the publishing industry is full of a lot of very large companies that operate at more or less a 10 % profit margin.

[00:49:38.890] - Scott
And I believe that 10 % profit margin is quoted after tax and everything. Yes, we love publishing people, and they are underpaid and overworked. However, revolution still needs to happen systemically.

[00:49:55.570] - Kristina
I mean, yes, I was talking about humans, not corporations.

[00:50:01.030] - Sunyi
So we've added in a new segment for our podcast for the season where we ask guests, what is the smallest hill you're willing to die on? I can't think of it in a second. So the one we had last week with Jeremy, as he was saying that he thinks that Kelvin is like your one true temperature measurements. And he explains this divine truth to us. So it can be anything like that. Oh, no pressure.

[00:50:24.540] - Kristina
A non-publishing related hill? Oh, yeah.

[00:50:27.390] - Scott
Yeah. Anything you want, and wide open.

[00:50:30.300] - Kristina
Oh, man. Gosh, that's like, I have way too many. I'm very petty sometimes.

[00:50:36.000] - Sunyi
That's even better.

[00:50:41.090] - Kristina
Yeah. I'm very... I think that there's no amount of coffee that's too much to drink. I'll die on that hill. Yeah. My assistant looks at me a gog as I make my eighth cup of coffee at the Nespresso. Doctors basically give me the side eye when I tell them how much caffeine I drink every day. So that's my hill, caffeine.

[00:51:03.210] - Sunyi
It's linked to longevity.

[00:51:04.950] - Kristina
The amount that I drink is probably not linked to longevity.

[00:51:11.340] - Scott
Yeah. I think it's above two cups. I'm not sure there was an upper limit in the study that I saw, but that might be because they didn't feel like they had to establish that for most people.

[00:51:24.430] - Kristina
Yeah. If I have a headache and I have a shot of Espresso, it usually fixes it. So I know I have a problem, but I'm okay with that.

[00:51:32.260] - Sunyi
I'm probably in about close to a liter a day. It's really bad. It's my one vice other than drinking and... Never mind, actually.

[00:51:44.730] - Scott
Should we list your vices and determine whether it's more than one?

[00:51:50.320] - Sunyi
My other toxic trait is pretending I only have one toxic trait. If you want a chance to plug yourself or tell authors Tell people about your books that are coming out or authors, what things you're looking for or both of those things. That's very welcome.

[00:52:07.570] - Kristina
The agency is Paris Literary and Entertainment. We're based in the UK, but we have clients all around the world. So I have not been open to queries for a little while, but I may be open to queries again by the time this airs. And that's just because I have such a big client list now that I want to make sure everybody gets well taken care of in the production line before I take on anyone new. But I love a little bit of everything from, I'd say, smart romantism with good world building. I am a bit of a stickler on world building to non-fiction investigative journalism because I used to be a journalist Really, really almost anything except for hard sci-fi. The one thing I don't do is hard sci-fi. And I still get sent lots of hard sci-fi by petroleum engineers, but I don't get it. They'll probably now be sending me mean emails, but I have nothing against petroleum engineers. They just genuinely seem to write a lot of hard sci-fi. And then my own book, which is my adult thriller, a book club thriller. My pitch for it is a gone girl meets big little lies in Hong Kong.

[00:53:14.920] - Kristina
That is a bit of a Ramana club of my years out in Hong Kong as a journalist, and it's a satire of the expat scene. There's an heiress that goes off the side of a junk during a luxury gala, but nobody It seems to have seen a thing, and that is called The Many Lies of Veronica Hawkins. It'll be out in the UK in May and the US in September. So if you like some rich people behaving badly and postcolonial critique, you might like that book.

[00:53:48.970] - Scott
That sounds awesome.

[00:53:50.250] - Sunyi
It does. And any books in Hong Kong sound good to me as well.

[00:53:55.880] - Kristina
Yeah. Well, thanks so much for having me.

[00:53:57.470] - Sunyi
No, no worries. Thank you so much for your patience I'm honestly on a scale of one to 10, today is nine for chaos for me. Don't worry. Thank you both.

[00:54:07.610] - Kristina
It's fine. And thank you for getting up so early, Scott, to chat.

[00:54:12.210] - Scott
Oh, it's not really that early. It's only early because we're up all night with a nine-month-old who doesn't like to sleep in regular intervals.

[00:54:21.970] - Kristina
Oh, wow.

[00:54:24.290] - Scott
Congratulations. Oh, yeah.

[00:54:26.160] - Kristina
That's exciting.

[00:54:29.110] - Scott
He's so awesome God, I love him to death, but holy shit. Yeah, having a second one is... Yep.

[00:54:36.960] - Kristina
Well, you knew what you were getting into, I guess.

[00:54:40.040] - Scott
Yeah, we did. We did.

[00:54:46.400] - Sunyi
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.