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

[00:00:03.320] - Scott
And I'm Scott Drakeford.									

[00:00:05.840] - Sunyi
And this is the Publishing Rodio podcast. In 2022, we both launched debut novels in the same genre with the same publisher in the same year. But despite having very similar starts, our books, and subsequently each of our careers, went in very different directions.

[00:00:21.960] - 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.

[00:00:59.900] - Sunyi
Oh, I should just get going. It's probably just a conversational one. So really belated welcome to Publishing Rodio as you catch us in the middle of a conversation because I hit record at random and don't care. I don't know when we'll air this. This is the first one we've recorded since World Con, although we have at least one or two, I think, that are recorded but not released because we need to... Because Matt Holland is the busiest man on God's Green Earth.

[00:01:28.410] - Scott
Oh, has that one... Yeah.

[00:01:29.600] - Sunyi
Has that one still not gone? No, he's not had the time.

[00:01:34.700] - Scott
Yeah.

[00:01:35.390] - Sunyi
And it's fine. There's literally no rush, so I don't care. Yeah. So we've not really recorded in a long time. I think as we were just talking about, that's because it felt really important to start the conversation and have the conversation, and now I've had it. I just want to write books and actually get paid again. I'm writing more than I've ever written. I've got four projects to maybe hand in this calendar year, and it just doesn't feel like anything is moving, which is probably the thing I was going to talk about today, which is the issue of momentum in publishing and your publishing career, whether it's a real thing. I think it is, but not for readers. Re readers are not really bothered by three or four year gap. I think your publisher is. I think there's an element where in three or four years, you might have had six editors come and go. People don't know who you are anymore. You've been replaced by literally 40 other books in the interim. That's the part that's always really scary.

[00:02:35.060] - Scott
I do wonder, and I'm sorry to interrupt, but I do wonder something we should ask an editor or maybe multiple editors is How... I'm going to message Robert right now. How far do expenses carry on a PnL? When you sign your deal for 300, How long does that count against their profits? I would imagine if they're doing it right, I would imagine it is there forever and they account on a per book or per deal basis. But if they're accounting on a strictly per year basis and they only look backward one or two years when they're making decisions, that loss could have already been discounted against whatever gains they had that and may not have the same leverage. Maybe you know. I don't know.

[00:03:33.600] - Sunyi
I don't know. I think that's a question. We actually had a couple of editors at Worldcon say that they were interested in coming on to fill in the gaps and correct some things that they thought were not quite right. We will hope to have them on, at least do two or three more episodes because it's just a few things I wanted to wrap up. But I guess I also wanted to do a catch-up where we've been, what we've been doing, what's happened to the guests who come. I guess the first thing is thank you to everyone who did nominate us for an award we definitely did not deserve and thankfully did not win. I didn't have to go on stage.

[00:04:10.360] - Scott
And shame on you to all the finalist ballots or whatever they call it that didn't vote for us. I don't know even who does that, but you should feel very sorry.

[00:04:23.890] - Sunyi
Worldcon is good. There's two sides to Worldcon. There's the side where all the readers are going to get signed copies of books and attend panels, and that's fine, and it's really good. Then there's the other side, like another con happening simultaneously, and it's just authors going from party to party to party, party for four days. I don't know if you talk to Clay or JD or Shalyn about this, but they were basically out from 6:00 in the morning to 3:00 at night. That was good. I didn't enjoy it as much as I could have done because the Hugo's was hanging over me. I think if I had one defining thing learned from World Con, it's that I don't ever want to be on their nominee list again because everything and it was stressful start to finish. It just felt like a... I was talking to my editor about this. It felt... It just feels like it was a sword because she was up for nominations, too. It feels like it was a sword hanging over you. You don't know what's going to happen. In the ceremony itself, they had some technical issues that meant sometimes some of the committees were played a few times.

[00:05:24.370] - Sunyi
So people were just sat on the edge of their seat, really stressed.

[00:05:27.620] - Scott
Because they care about getting a Hugo that much? Is that what you're saying?

[00:05:31.890] - Sunyi
No, because they're all introverts. They don't want to go up on stage and have to give a speech.

[00:05:36.490] - Scott
That's hilarious. We have an industry full of people who are terribly afraid of getting up on stage to accept an award. That's amazing. Who set this up? If all these people are just dreading this process, why do we have this process?

[00:05:57.760] - Sunyi
Some people enjoy it, but the not knowing is scary. In I think I was actually more relaxed than most people because I knew from the moment I came to the pre-reception, I was 99% sure we hadn't won. The reason for that is because they'd forgotten my name off the list on the reception. I thought, If we'd won, they would not have forgotten our name.

[00:06:15.300] - Scott
Yeah, we were up for The Astounding as well, right?

[00:06:18.050] - Sunyi
Yeah, better. I did better in The Astounding than we did in... Well, we were dead last for the podcast. Were we? Were we?

[00:06:24.450] - Scott
Really?

[00:06:25.010] - Sunyi
There were actually two podcasts that had more votes than us, but they were excluded because they were professionals, so they weren't allowed on the list. I was really grateful because I was thinking, Oh, cool. We're going to go to a loser's party. There's no loser's party anymore, Scott. It's just an after-party. Oh, shit. Because people get sad about being called a loser or something, I think. I don't know. It's apparently loaded. But yeah, my whole takeaway from this, I could have spent this two hours probably in the pub and would have been less stressed and happier. I think in future I would turn down nominations even if we were lucky enough to get them again because I don't value getting an award as much as sales. Yeah, for sure. Why would you- There's only one formal event at World Con, and it's the Hugo Awards. I'm going to try and plan a massive fucking party for the next World Con, which is a formal event that everyone can go to. I think that would be loads of fun and we can wear ridiculous clothes, and it'd be great. Anyway, other non-World Con related catch-up because there were things I wanted to catch up on.

[00:07:25.930] - Sunyi
One was that we talked about doing the author data project, and people really positive about this, but we ended up looking into it and finding out it was so much work that we thought it would be easier to collaborate with Dr. Kerry Pray. Dr. Kerry has been very unwell this past year. If any of you are on Twitter still or Blue Sky, I don't know if she's on Blue Sky, you can have a look at her Twitter and she's got updates about it. She had a stroke among other things, so that's not going forward either. I was also reflecting on how there are less of us out of all the authors we've talked to, there are less of us who are agented now than at the start of this podcast.

[00:08:05.880] - Scott
Not even just with publishing deals, but just straight up agented.

[00:08:10.890] - Sunyi
Yeah. Less of us are agented, less of us in contract. The people who are still doing well, like nick Binge is doing really well. He's got a big buzzy film thing going on with his books, and he travels and goes to panels. He was doing well to start with, so he's still doing well. I'm doing okay, and I was doing okay to start with, aside from my lack of momentum.

[00:08:29.740] - Scott
But, yeah. I'm curious about you having said you have four things you might turn in. I know the two, and I know the other third with... No, I know all four.

[00:08:39.340] - Sunyi
Yeah, you do. I guess we don't have to talk about it. No, it's fine. That's the two novels that still need editing, which are I've done a hand in, but need another hand in, a novella, and then mystery project, which can't be named as yet, but it's not anything related to the others.

[00:08:55.760] - Scott
Yeah, I'm excited for several, but I'm excited for that one. I really like I like that opening scene. Have you written more than that opening scene for mystery project?

[00:09:05.270] - Sunyi
Oh, no, that's a different mystery project.

[00:09:06.860] - Scott
Oh, I thought you were talking about the sci-fi that you shared that opening scene.

[00:09:12.400] - Sunyi
Oh, no. I hope that will be the pitch for next contract, but we'll see. I like that one. Yeah, if that was fun. But anyway, how much you talk about your project's ongoing is up to you.

[00:09:22.450] - Scott
I am curious, before we get to that, why a novella? What's the deal with the novella?

[00:09:28.250] - Sunyi
It sat on my computer, half written for about five years. I need to finish it. I'm now in a position where I can get someone to publish it because I can try and send it to tor. Com through Tor. To be honest, I need the money because any amount of money I can get, whether I'm doing other projects, just stuff is dragged out for so long. And it's not like we're going to go broke, but it's more like I might have to live off my partner for a bit, which I hate. He doesn't mind, but I mind.

[00:09:55.050] - Scott
I mean, money is a real thing.

[00:09:56.790] - Sunyi
It is, yeah. And every time I talk to my editors about the books, they're all Don't worry. The books can take as long as they take. They just need to be ready. And it's like, No, they can't take as long as they take because I run out of fucking money. I don't care if they're slightly less good. Just release them. They'll be good enough. Fucking hell.

[00:10:12.090] - Scott
I mean, that is my biggest, well, One of my biggest frustrations with the industry is that the people in the industry really are, besides disposable, they are treated as less than professionals, and as less than full-time professionals, where it's almost assumed that you just shouldn't count on making money, you shouldn't count on making livable money, at least from publishing, when the economics of any of these deals are actually quite good. If you look at the money produced by a book like Bookeaters that sells however many copies it's sold, I don't want to quote It's a wrong number, but over 100,000, right?

[00:11:02.270] - Sunyi
I mean, across the world. I think last time we checked in, there were about 75,000 print copies in the US.

[00:11:08.420] - Scott
Sure. But regardless of the format, over 100,000 If a copy is sold of any given format means that there's a good chunk of money out there somewhere going to various parties, the publisher, distributors, booksellers, and then finally, you. So the money is there. People are buying books. People are buying your books. But the industry isn't set up in a way to, A, have enough money flowing back to the author, in my opinion. And like you're talking about, timelines and delays that happen, obviously, happen on Obviously, it happened on the author side as well, but delays that happen on the publisher side and on that publisher author coordination aspect really fuck over the economics of trying to make a living as not. Anyway, you asked about what I've got going on. I don't really have much to report that's reliable. I can say, I suppose that I am working on a deal for UK rights that I am extremely excited about, and that's just the verbal agreement or verbal arrangement stage at this point. So nothing set, but I think it's reliable, and the higher series may have a bit of a revival, which I've been working toward for years and years, and haven't given up on that.

[00:12:45.020] - Scott
And that's a big part of why, actually, Book 2 is only coming out now in November instead of having… It could have come out last year. It was ready in time that it could have come out sooner than a year after Rise of the Majors, but various things happened, and I wanted to try to play. I didn't want to give up on this series. I'd be happy to share details when I have those details.

[00:13:14.300] - Sunyi
I mean, you can possibly talk about how you went with a smaller publisher for Rise of the Majors. We talked a lot about not accepting those deals when you might. Yes.

[00:13:27.250] - Scott
Oh, yeah. So That's a good point. So one of the things that I think I've been dragged on Reddit for, among probably other places, is saying, Don't sign a small deal. That's not worth it. And you're going to get you're going to get screwed because the publisher doesn't have a financial reason to care about you, et cetera, et cetera, which I still think is a decent rule of thumb, right? Signing a deal for $30,000 like I did probably means that you're not going to make livable money. That said, in my situation, it wasn't a situation in which I wanted just to sign a foreign rights deal. Tor didn't use my UK or any foreign rights. I signed for World English, so I guess they didn't have my other rights. But they didn't utilise my UK rights. They were shipping, I think, mostly via Amazon over to the UK. So I think you could order my book, an e-book, and hard and get it there. But they didn't produce it. They didn't licence the rights to Tor UK or any other publisher. They just sat on them. They were very cool to give those back after a number of years when my agent asked for them.

[00:14:46.430] - Scott
So kudos to Tor and thank you. But the other option I could have gone for is maybe a $5,000 per book deal, if I was lucky, maybe like two grand, something like that. That's a typical UK debut deal. If I was lucky, I probably would have maybe said that. Instead, I'm looking at going with a newer, smaller publisher because I believe they are incentivized to succeed in a way that well-established traditional publishers are not.

[00:15:18.930] - Sunyi
Yeah. Because they have- We'll hopefully go into it more at some stage, but they have a very unusual rights division where basically authors keep their e-book, I believe.

[00:15:29.320] - Scott
Yeah. I mean, that's all negotiable, and I'm not actually sure how I'm going to structure that, but yes, you are.

[00:15:33.990] - Sunyi
Yeah. Certainly, it's a thing for some authors, which I think is really interesting, really promising for the future.

[00:15:39.430] - Scott
Yeah, that actually- And the cool thing is they've figured out... Oh, no, you're totally fine. They figured out how to make good money for themselves without just sitting on rights and parasitizing, I suppose, on e-book rights and things like that, and audiobook. So it's a really good situation all around. I do hope to share more details because I think it is cool and something that should be publicised.

[00:16:04.970] - Sunyi
I have to say that Reddit stuff actually really, really got under my skin. Well, it just came at the wrong time. I think, when I was really in post-con slump and feeling like I'd run out of things to say and feeling simultaneously like I was better known for my podcast than my writing, but also that the podcast was winding down and I was... But yeah, it It bugged me because it reminded me there was a TikTokeer who talked about how books go through these cycles, and I can't remember their name, but I'm pretty sure they use they/then pronouns them. But they were talking about how when books come out, there's an initial burst of hype and buzz, and people are excited and they're interested. And then at some point, there's a second wave of feedback, which comes from all the people who didn't like the book, and it just feels like a wall of negative reviews. And then the next group of people the book, and that starts over again, albeit usually smaller, so you get these waves of discovery, followed by waves of pushback. I think we had a very big wave of discovery, people going, Oh, my God, someone's talking about anything at all related to publishing.

[00:17:13.800] - Sunyi
And then all the criticism and feedback started to come in, and that we are probably fairly unpopular with certain sections of the internet. It just frustrated me because I feel like people have lost the ability to talk about nuance, where if I When you say, these are factors which contribute to success, but nothing's a given, blah, blah, blah, and everyone's heart take from that is, If you don't have these magic three tricks, you will die in a fire spin. I always fall for this. I always think if I can just explain enough, someone will understand the gradiation of nuance there, and people don't.

[00:17:56.300] - Scott
There was somebody that was saying that I, in I like to look at things in a pretty black and white manner. And another person said something about me being borderline allergic to facts. It's like, look, man, when you don't have industry-wide data to look at, and you don't have every author out there telling you what their deal looks like, what their experience in the industry looks like, all you can operate off of is the stories that you do hear and the anecdotal data that you do gather through a podcast like this, through talking to published authors. And whatever. And the experience is going to vary, right? Because you've got people... I know we've had comments from people saying, Oh, in my Discord, I'm in a Discord full of published authors, and they haven't had an experience anything like this. And come to find out, it's this Discord full of people who got enormous deals and were lead titles for their publisher and whatever else, right? Or they're in a completely different sector, romanticy, YA, whatever that's booming. So it's always possible to have a very different experience from somebody else in the exact same industry.

[00:19:25.790] - Scott
But we're doing the best we can with the info we've got. You don't have to listen. We're not getting paid for this. We just show up. We just show up. We're trying to help anybody we can as we work through our own mental health issues on the show.

[00:19:43.240] - Sunyi
I also think that I don't really feel like I've seen anything which has changed my mind significantly. I feel like I keep meeting authors who are in the middle of going through what I will call the meat grinder, which is the midless meat grinder, where they don't yet know that they're about to become paced, and you can see all the warning signs. I can look at it just on my assessment and be like, I'm looking at their good reads interactions or Edo-wise, the publicity or lack of it. You can read the writing on the wall sometimes, and it still happens, and there are still people unaware of it. I think people are allergic to discussing it. In a lot of ways, we like to think that our lives are stories, that we have an arc, that things work out if we try hard enough. The only thing I've changed my mind slightly on is I do feel like I've come round a bit to Ed Wilson's point of view about when he's saying that some, not that authors shouldn't accept big advances, but some publishers shouldn't be giving unachievable ones. I do actually think that's probably true now because I think there have been some books lately that have received fucking stupid advances.

[00:21:01.970] - Sunyi
And I don't think the books are going to do as well. They cannot do as well as they were just a victim of the hype, vicious cycle. And yes, the author will walk away with a lot of money, but they probably won't have a career left and the publisher will be worse off and then maybe less likely to spend money on other things.

[00:21:20.690] - Scott
My only counter to that, say a book takes a midlist deal or even just a minor lead deal, right? Instead of a a mega lead deal. How does that help? I don't understand how that improves that.

[00:21:35.100] - Sunyi
No, it doesn't. I think my flip side to it is that there is a minimum amount that just doesn't work. I wish that a debut author wasn't getting 2 million, and I wish a debut author wasn't getting too grand.

[00:21:48.720] - Scott
Oh, I mean, as a system, as an ecosystem, I absolutely agree. I think it's a very flawed system, right? And that That failed book getting 2 million for no good reason, in my opinion, right? And it keeps happening. Books getting huge amounts and then flopping absolutely hurts the system, hurts the other people in the system, especially the person getting two grand or 10 grand or whatever for their book, I just don't think it hurts that book. If I had an option to take $500,000 for a book versus $100,000, there is no scenario in which I think it makes sense for me to take $100,000 versus $500,000 unless I have huge contractual guarantees from a very, very good company. I I can see taking 100 grand if I'm getting insane royalties and I have guarantees for 10,000 ARCs going out to all these specific people and places. And I have boxes, and they have contractual obligations to get me certain audio and foreign rights deals or else those rights revert almost immediately. I can see scenarios in which contractual obligations make sense, but just money to money, I see no scenario in which I think it is appropriate or at least beneficial to that author and even that book to take less money.

[00:23:26.660] - Scott
The book that gets more money is always going to get- No, I generally agree.

[00:23:31.230] - Sunyi
If someone came to me and said, oh, we're going to give you a two million advance, I'd be like, well, fine, I'll sign it. It might be the end of my career, but I will still sign it because there might never be any more. And that's just how hybrid and self-publishing is a thing, small press is a thing. If there's no career beyond that, fine. But I do think it is irresponsible for a publisher to do stuff like that.

[00:23:50.990] - Scott
I think that's- For sure. It's irresponsible of the publisher, but it's irresponsible of the agent to not have their client sign Because if you sign for 200 grand in the book flops, your career is still dead. If you sign for 20 grand in your flop, your career is still dead.

[00:24:07.400] - Sunyi
But even when they do well, I feel like... I mean, this comes back to momentum. I feel like I've seen a lot of authors recently. In fact, when I pre-use editors who now is with a different publisher, sent me a book to blur recently. And I thought, All right, I know this author. They had a quite splashy debut back in the day. I think they're a good author, so I sat to the book to read. And I went and looked them up on Goodreads and I was like, Okay, this person has been writing for almost a decade more than. It's quite a few books out. And every single book has less ratings than the previous one on Goodread, even with a decent advance and a fairly splashy release. And their career is still... Are they still making money? Probably because they have enough of a backlog to do it. But I feel like I see a lot of that. Even when you do everything right and you have a degree of longevity, because a decade plus is frankly a long time to be in publishing as an author, it's still really hard, and it still it frightens me how often that's the case.

[00:25:13.300] - Sunyi
And I think about that a lot in terms of, actually, I think it does matter how my next book performs. And I know we've talked to Richard about this where he talks about how your next book contract, it feels like, I think he called it more like a stay of execution. It's not you're climbing one wrong in the ladder. It's more like you just bailed out another bucket of water, but the ship is still sinking. The ship is always sinking. You will eventually be sunk. And in that context, that's why I would always sign a massive deal, even though I thought it was fucking irresponsible and it was just going to torch my career because the house is always on fire, and it's just a question how quickly it burns and what you get out of it before it goes down. Exactly.

[00:25:55.630] - Scott
And so I think we are actually on this page. I can say more or less the same thing. I think maybe the one pitfall there is if you sign a big deal, you may psychologically trap yourself, then your publisher might actually trap you in that then failing trajectory, I guess. So maybe you do well on the first book because you got paid upfront anyway. But even though you're getting maybe a smaller deal, you're still getting a deal on the next deal, probably because your book sold. Never mind that it flopped financially, it still sold. So you're probably still getting a deal, which is better than even a semi-successful midlist debut would be getting. Most of them are not getting deals, even if they earn out whatever. They're not getting second deals. But I could see how it could track you psychologically. However, you can still choose after that big deal that flopped. You can still choose to do what a midlist failure would end doing, which is either not publish books anymore or publish different books or change your brand and your genre, all that thing.

[00:27:12.030] - Sunyi
No, that's fair enough. But if people disagree, there's certainly a whole community on Reddit who will back them up.

[00:27:19.660] - Scott
Yeah. So come at me, Ed. Yeah. No, I really liked Ed. You can cut this if you want, but I liked him on a personal level, and he seemed on a professional level to really know what he's talking about, be really invested in his author. So I am totally just kidding when I say, Come at me, because I do think he's a very fine agent. Were I in need of the services he has to offer? I would not hesitate to query.

[00:27:54.570] - Sunyi
No, I would agree with that. He's a good guy. I have left Reddit, though, because I just thought, actually, I'm just going to walk away from this community forever.

[00:28:03.870] - Scott
Because- That's fine.

[00:28:06.900] - Sunyi
I think I reach the... As it calls it the Keanu Reeve's Protocol, I reach a certain point where I've just decided, if people don't agree, it's their funeral. Everyone has different experiences in publishing. It's fine. Live your truth. Just take care of yourself and make smart choices. So what is the hill you're willing to die on if you have one?

[00:28:33.900] - Scott
I mean, everything we talk about is that. We just did that.

[00:28:39.870] - Sunyi
Oh, okay.

[00:28:41.710] - Scott
The hill? I don't know. Do you have one? Do you want to go first? And then I'll try to think of what controversial thing I'll say next.

[00:28:50.100] - Sunyi
I do have one. We never got to do ours because we're always asking guests this. I do have one. Actually, I had so many, and I had to whittle them down because I'm very petty bitch. Everything from people who don't use turn signals on roundabouts to how you make lasagna and all this shit. But in the end, I think there could only be one. Petty still I would die on. Is that whenever someone mentions the allegedly inspirational story of J. K. Rowling and her twelve aesthetic projections, it should be legal for me to hunt them with a double crossbow. Everything about that story bugs me because everything that's endemic in publishing is in the story.

[00:29:42.340] - Scott
I have so many of these, Sonja. Oh, my God.

[00:29:44.800] - Sunyi
First Honestly, there's so much misinformation, right? Everyone tells the story, Oh, she got rejected twelve times. That's a lot or something. The first problem with this is everyone is always talking about her rejections, not understanding that those rejections are publisher ones. And I think that JK Rowling fuels this. Obviously, your average person doesn't know the difference between an agent and a publisher. Twelve is not a lot, but she gets online and she tells people, Oh, yes, I had loads. I had so many rejections. And she carefully structures it. So when people talk about rejections, she mentions the one she got as that weird man, Robert Galbraith, her pin name that she read under. And she mentions the publisher one she got, and she mentions the first agent rejection she got. The thing she never talks about is her agent rejections. That's because there just aren't very many. And you have to go back really, really far to 1997, the first Guardian interview with JK Rowling. With the book finished, she approached an agent. I didn't know anything about agents, but I went to the library and looked up some addresses. Christopher Little was only the second one I wrote to.

[00:30:49.560] - Scott
Sounds like Richard.

[00:30:51.880] - Sunyi
Yes. She went to the library. She looked up agents at random. She got one fucking agent rejection. One. The second An agent she wrote to at random said, Oh, yes, I'll have that manuscript. She went on submission once, got picked up by Bloomsbury, who's always touted as a small press, which I don't think is really fair. I was saying, Scholastic is a small press because they're not Big Five. But anyway, she got picked up by Bloomsbury, who were smaller, I suppose. And the thing with this article, right, is this article is written in 1997, which is the year Harry Potter came out. And it's titled, Debut author in single mother sells children's book for $100,000. So the year that Harry Potter came out, she then got a six-figure deal in the States, in no small part because Bloomsbury pushed her book, generated hype, and was doing things for her. And so if you retell the story with the facts, the facts are that, yeah, like Richard, she picked agents at random. She signed with one almost immediately, went on submission once, sold really well, rocketed to Fame. It's like this is nothing like the story that she tells, but she's I'm not fucking honest about it.

[00:32:01.210] - Sunyi
I don't mind that you succeed instantly. I mind that it's like she's built herself into this myth of hard graft, and she's fucking not like... She doesn't know what lots of rejections look like. A lot of people ask me, Why does it matter? When I point out the story. And it's like, Well, firstly, it matters because I've met people in Facebook groups. I remember talking to this lady who was basically in bits because she was like, Oh, I have 14 query rejections. Jk Rowling sent 12, and I have more than JK Rowling and I'm still not published. It's like, yeah, because J. K. Rowling hardly got any. You're fine. 14 is nothing. Come back and you got 300. But the other part is that people don't care. When you correct them on it, they don't care because they want to believe the myth, the myth that they, too, can do all the right things, get some rejections, be sad for five minutes, and then become a fucking billionaire. I think her story and the myth behind her, which, firstly, is all part of the marketing. Bloomsbury milk the hell out of her story. The idea that you have to be a billionaire to be a success really grates on me, and that that's the only success that people see as success.

[00:33:13.870] - Sunyi
I think if your goal is to be the next JK Rowling, you should probably give the fuck up and go home because you've already failed and you will never be her and you are not her and none of us are. She's a once in a generation commercial success, and we're not. Anyway, that's the hill I would die on. Give me a crossbow. I will come for people who tell this inspirational story because it's not inspirational.

[00:33:37.930] - Scott
It's just- Look out, Richard.

[00:33:42.120] - Sunyi
Do you remember Potter Mania from when we were kids? Because you're the same age as me.

[00:33:48.460] - Scott
Harry Potter Mania? Yeah, of course. I grew up in it. I grew up reading the books. I grew up going and seeing the films every, I think, Christmas. We'd usually go around Christmas.

[00:34:01.220] - Sunyi
Yeah, it was crazy. We'd see the films.

[00:34:04.030] - Scott
We'd listen to the audiobooks on family road trips. Absolutely.

[00:34:07.440] - Sunyi
Yeah. I didn't because I hate Harry Potter, but that was a crazy cultural thing.

[00:34:16.350] - Scott
But anyway, yeah. Yeah. It's not that it's not reproducible at all because she made a shit tonne of money from in the books, but especially once the movies came out, the same thing-ish happened with the twilight books and twilight movies. I'm sure the Lord of the Rings estate has a shit tonne of money now and a lot much more money after the films than the films. I mean, it's a thing that happens where the films come out and make somebody a huge amount of money. But yeah, the factors that go into that thing happening are just insane. You might as well play the lottery for sure. Yeah, that is a standard of success.

[00:35:08.080] - Sunyi
And this is not even getting into all the other things that people are mad at her for because that's several stops down the line, and I can't get... I'm still stuck at stop number one, which is the bullshit story of her 12 stupid rejections. It just... I don't know. I don't know. It gets under my skin. But yeah, I do I do think she obfuscates it as well because I've read some of her interviews since then, and I think she doesn't want to talk about the fact that she only had one agent rejection, so she is really careful in how she phrases it. And literally, you have to go back to this article that was only in print. And in 2012, they reprinted a screenshot, or a digital upload of it or something. But it's... Oh, it just... Anyway, stop talking about it now.

[00:35:56.830] - Scott
That's really interesting to me. It's almost like The Trump thing where he claims to be a self-made man, and really doesn't like it when his inheritance and loan or whatever he got from his rich dad comes up. I don't understand why people struggle so much to acknowledge the good fortune that they've had. Why is that such a common theme?

[00:36:25.570] - Sunyi
Because people, particularly writers, believe in stories. And I think that comes back to this sense that your life is a story and believing that if you do all the right things, you will get your happy ending, even though most people don't. And I think that's why so many people have a massive fucking breakdown when shit goes badly wrong, because you feel cheated. You feel like the story that you thought your life is going to be just isn't, and it's just random events, and that's very scary. And I think even people who aren't religious, or perhaps even especially people who aren't, when you're religious, you grow up believing that there's a plan, and God a plan, and your life is following it. When you're not religious, you believe that your life has a point when it doesn't, and that your story is unfolding around you when it isn't. Shit's just happening. That's my theory anyway. Yeah.

[00:37:17.230] - Scott
No, it does totally make sense. I mean, as far as my Petty Hills that I'd be willing to die on, that's my whole personality, right?

[00:37:26.930] - Sunyi
Same. This is why I I seriously thought about starting a podcast where you just talk about Petty Hills all the time.

[00:37:34.330] - Scott
It's the petty part that's hard for me because I take everything very seriously.

[00:37:40.580] - Sunyi
No, really?

[00:37:42.180] - Scott
Yeah, I do.

[00:37:53.580] - Sunyi
You're a universal basic income advocate, aren't you? Yeah.

[00:37:56.500] - Scott
I think the thing that I I like more than UBI at this point is, although I am a proponent of UBI, but I like the idea of universal health care because I think it's a more immediate way to help people in desperate need, right? Not that UBI isn't a desperate need for a lot of people, too, but universal health care would help people that are in desperate need, and it is life and death for most people. And in the event that it's not an issue of life and death, it's an issue of quality of life for a huge number of people. And the crazy thing about universal health care and people who oppose universal health care is that they don't want to pay for people who are making poor health care choices. But what they don't... Or poor health decisions, right? That affects their health care costs. What they don't understand is that we are paying that price now as a society, right? Like through health care costs that we, thanks to ACA, Obamacare, we are paying that cost through our health care premiums right now. We pay for people's emergency services if they can't pay.

[00:39:21.660] - Scott
That's paid for anyway by the public right now. And we let things get to the point where it's this super expensive emergency. Instead of providing moral, ethical health care for people up front to prevent those horrible life circumstances and those horrible health outcomes that result in greater expenditures as a society. We're all paying that already. And beyond that, we have levels of parasitic corporations, in particular, insurance, health insurance corporations, and then health care corporations with their enormous layers of admin that they put on top of actual health care. And in the prescription, the pharmaceutical space, we have PBMs that are syphoning off a whole bunch of money. So anyway, we could go in the US. This is targeted straight in the US. We could go to a single payer, which I know Conservatives hate, and I was on that same page for a long time until I actually understood the issue, we could go to a single payer system that killed health insurance companies and still allowed for private practise and still allowed for a public-private partnership in health care. We, as a society, would be saving tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

[00:40:54.630] - Scott
We would be doing the ethical moral thing of taking care of all the people in our society, thereby avoiding even more expenditure on the back-end. And there is no reason to not have universal health care in the United States today. It is all purely political.

[00:41:15.000] - Sunyi
Oh, yeah. And I mean, just off the... We're talking about JK Rowling. She's English, well, Scottish, British. She's British. One of the reasons she was able to write is because she was unemployed. When she was writing a book, she could get on benefits, she could get health care while she on benefits, and she could continue to exist, not very happily, but exist on those safety nets. And that applies to me. I can continue to live full-time off writing for now. Harper drags us out another year. Please don't do that to me, Harper. Because I don't have to worry about health care. I've got two special needs kids. They're not cheap children. So I'm all in favour of it. But I guess the other thing I would say is I feel like, at the risk of sounding horrible, a lot of these people making anti universal health care arguments. My American grandparents, they have lots of health issues, diabetes and stuff, which are to a degree self-inflicted. And they will stand there and be like, Oh, no, we don't want to pay for people bad decisions. It's like, you're literally on Medicaid or whatever it's called.

[00:42:20.440] - Sunyi
That's you.

[00:42:22.820] - Scott
Yeah, it's Medicare for old people.

[00:42:26.290] - Sunyi
What's that? There's always this lady on Twitter that's talking about everyone ends up disabled eventually. Yeah.

[00:42:34.480] - Scott
Well, that's the thing is you don't have control over a lot of things like cancer. You don't have a lot of control in our current world over infectious disease, which more infectious diseases than people are aware of and willing to admit can leave people with chronic health issues. I've gone through several years of a post-survival issue myself. It's just ludicrous to campaign against something like that. One thing I will say, because one of the things that people point out in UK is that the NHS is hard to get a And the care can be substantive, whatever. There's a difference between single-payer health care and getting rid of all the layers of admin that are just syphoning off money and standing in the way of something like universal health care could provide for people's needs when they have those needs instead of when it becomes an emergency. And between making public and having the government control all health care services, because that's the way it works in UK.

[00:43:47.570] - Sunyi
No, no, no. I mean, that's one of the things. You can get private health care here if you want. My driving instructor had private health care, but even private health care here, because it's got to compete with the national version, is a lot cheaper. She paid 220 a month and she considered that expensive, which would be very cheap in the States. Un Unbelievable cheap. Yeah. She paid 220 a month, and she could go to the NHS as she wanted, but that covered her for things like, basically, really serious injuries where she needed lots of hospital care and paid her and stuff if she's out of work. So it was, I think, what is it? Some friends of mine that pay 1,500 a month in the States for their health care, and that would buy you a fucking palace here.

[00:44:29.230] - Scott
I mean, That's not even... Yeah, I mean, that's a reasonable plan. And I'm not necessarily against that set up because that does seem very reasonable in the competition between the publics to me. But my point is, you don't even have to put the government in charge of health care. You don't have to set up one single public hospital. Just going to single-payer, just providing the funds for people's health care in the existing health care service system would be an enormous improvement. People say, Well, then you'd have the government in charge of what gets reimbursed and what doesn't. You already fucking do that. All the health insurance companies are already following reimbursements set by Medicare and Medicaid, for the most part, as far as I understand from my friends in the health care industry anyway. So, yeah, there's just honestly, honest to God, there's no excuse, and especially there's no excuse from in the US, the liberal side, the Democrats. If they have the executive branch, and if they have the legislative branch, there is no reason for them not to push through single-payer health care, other than laziness, and I don't know what else, political machinations.

[00:45:56.900] - Scott
There's no reason that we shouldn't have universal health care sooner rather than later. So there you go. There's another hill to die on.

[00:46:05.020] - Sunyi
Yeah. I'm sure people who came here for publishing talk are just like, bowled over, but who cares? I mean, this is the thing. I've reached this point where I don't care because we don't have sponsors. We can do what we like, and it doesn't matter if there's only five people who listen. I just- Sorry, people.

[00:46:20.280] - Scott
We're just doing whatever the fuck we want now, and you're going to have to deal with it.

[00:46:25.420] - Sunyi
And on that note, you've been listening to the Publishing with Sunyi Dean and Scott Drakeford. Tune in next time for more in-depth discussion on everything publishing industry. See you later.