[00:00:01.590] - Sunyi Hi, I'm Sunyi Dean. [00:00:03.690] - Scott And I'm Scott Drakeford. [00:00:05.910] - Sunyi And this is the publishing Rodeo 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. [00:00:21.970] - Scott That pattern repeats itself throughout the industry over and over. Why do some books succeed while others seem to be dead on arrival? [00:00:30.650] - Sunyi In this podcast, we aim to answer those questions and many more, along with how to build and maintain an author career. [00:00:38.490] - 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. [00:01:38.030] - Scott Alright, Sunyi, do you want to do the little lead in, or do you like me to the intro? [00:02:05.690] - Sunyi You feel free. [00:02:06.680] - Scott Oh, God, I suck at scripted stuff. Okay, welcome to Publishing Rodeo, where we say the quiet part out loud. We've got Michael j And Robin Sullivan with us today for a very, very highly anticipated episode, at least on our part. We're going to be asking them a boatload of questions, but first we're going to kind of give them the floor while Sony has a question she wants to get in. [00:02:36.020] - Sunyi Yes, I was going to lead in with this first question. I have read The Rearview Chronicles, and we generally scott and I have heard of Robin and her work and her advocacy for authors. So my first question is, how does it feel to be legends? [00:02:54.310] - Robin (laughing) you watch the movie Gandhi, and he says, thankfully, news like that comes very slowly to where we live. So that's kind of the thing. We live in the middle of nowhere. We don't hear anything about this. [00:03:06.250] - Michael It's interesting because this coincides with the blog post I was just putting up today in which I was explaining how everyone who sees me, I think, gets the impression that I'm famous or that we're not, or that I'm a big author, but I'm really not. And I know this because I will see things on the Internet that say, oh, you're a big author. And I start to think, well, maybe I am. And then the next thing I go to, I'm like, oh, no, I'm not. [00:03:31.860] - Robin Because that's how the Internet works. [00:03:33.720] - Michael But I haven't been to a con since 2015, so, I mean, the real world I don't know about. She actually got out. So she has some experience with seeing a little change, I guess. [00:03:43.580] - Robin Yeah, I've seen a little bit of change. Yeah. And the fact that anyone even knows who I am. So I'll tell you a really quick story, which is I was on my way to a con, and I heard some people cross the aisle talking, and I said, oh, you're going to the writers con? They said, yeah. And we just started chatting, and I. [00:04:03.100] - Michael Was she was on a plane at the time. [00:04:04.540] - Robin I was on a plane, and I was explaining a contractual situation with Michael and some problems we were having with our editor. And they said and how he wouldn't let his editor change a certain portion of his book. He says, well, if you don't mind me asking, what was it that he objected to? I said, well, unless you knew his series, you really wouldn't know. And I started to explain some things in very vague way. And the person says, that's the Ryera revelations. I said it is. And he says you are Robin Sullivan. And the person starts banging on the seat in front of us. Robin Sullivan is sitting across the aisle from me back here. The person like, no way. No way. And it was like a whole big thing. We, like, rode together from the airport to the hotel, and we had lunch, and it was like, my coolest thing ever. [00:04:57.870] - Michael But no, that doesn't usually happen. [00:04:59.390] - Robin But that happened once. [00:05:01.550] – Sunyi On that note, I'm sorry I said your series wrong. I've never heard anyone say it out loud. I've only seen it written down. [00:05:09.170] - Michael I thought of correcting you, and I went, no. [00:05:13.250] - Robin So three syllables. [00:05:17.410] - Scott I definitely thought it was Reer-ee-ya. Yeah, I've been saying that for years. [00:05:23.350] - Robin So it's three syllables. Rye, like the bread ear, like what you hear with and ah, like ah, a sigh of relief. So rye, ear, ah. But nobody knows and nobody says it right, so don't worry about it. [00:05:36.010] - Michael So I create words, and sometimes I'll look at how I wrote them and say, that doesn't even make sense to how I say it. But I was with Tim Gerard Reynolds, who does the recordings, and he's looking at them because, well, how do you say this? And I'm like, going, I don't know. I don't pronounce words as well as you do. How would you say it goes, oh, that doesn't matter. Have you seen the words in America because how they spell has nothing to do with how you want to pronounce them. [00:05:57.880] - Robin Yeah. So, yeah, don't worry about it. It happens all the time. [00:06:02.130] - Scott That's really funny. I mean, you may have had few instances of being famous in real life, but at least for me, you're famous for your reddit arguments that I've seen over the years. I have really enjoyed those. [00:06:21.770] - Robin We have taken publishers to tasks on time to time over various contract issues and behavior and so forth. [00:06:31.670] - Michael Well, it's strange, because most people, if I were to try to, say my publishing history or say, this is the path I took, it doesn't really apply to most authors, from what I know, because I took such a weird path. I started off in self publishing. And because of that well, technically technically. [00:06:49.450] - Robin We started off with a small press. [00:06:51.300] - Michael Technically. Technically, we started off in self publishing. No, our very first book. [00:06:55.960] - Robin Your very first book we printed I don't even know what you're talking about. [00:06:59.590] - Michael Bloody crown. We printed 300 copies. [00:07:02.300] - Robin Yes, but it never was sold. [00:07:03.500] - Michael No, it wasn't sold, but I'm just saying we tried! okay, let me explain. [00:07:09.480] - Scott (laughing) That sounds like self publishing for most of us. [00:07:11.920] - Michael Yeah. When I got done with the books, we tried shopping around. Didn't get anywhere. [00:07:18.090] - Robin No, he tried shopping it around and didn't get anywhere. And then I took over, and I got him an agent. [00:07:23.360] - Michael You got me an agent. [00:07:24.350] - Robin And the agent shopped it to all the big houses, and no one was interested. And so then the agent said, well, why don't you try some of the small presses? And I said, okay. And she said, well, you don't need us for small presses. Just do it on your own. And so I started doing some query letters. But while I was doing that, I also was learning about self publishing. And this was long before there was a Kindle. This was when you literally sold stuff on the trunk of your car. So I learned all about self publishing, and I had printed up, like, 200 arcs of his first book. And then I checked my email, which I hadn't checked for months. And this very small publisher in Minnesota said, hey, I would like to publish your book. And I was like, Damn, I just figured all this self publishing stuff out. But we did sign with that self publisher sorry, with that small publisher made how much money did we make with them? [00:08:16.210] - Michael None. [00:08:16.660] - Robin None. How much money did we pay them? [00:08:19.140] - Michael They kind of broke even. [00:08:20.430] - Robin So they were well intentioned, but not the best of businessmen. And we saw Michael's books go out of stock on Amazon. And the way I had the contract written, when the books went out of print, the rights reverted. So I was very anxious. I was like, oh, contract is over. We get to get the rights back. Long story short, he wasn't paying his warehousing fees. So the warehouse was holding all the books hostage. They weren't letting them out. So in the dead of winter, we went and got a U Haul, and we bought from the warehouse at rock bottom prices, something like 1300 of his books to free up the warehousing fees. Because we paid his warehousing fees. We did it in trade for books, and then the rest of his books got printed. [00:09:12.980] - Michael This is part of the movie where you see the music montage and us driving this rickety U-Haul in the winter. [00:09:19.390] - Robin Going to Ohio, snowing. It was in Ohio. And those books did eventually sell out, and that's when we started self publishing after we got the rights back for that. [00:09:30.740] - Scott So you sold those 1300 yourselves? [00:09:34.470] - Robin Yes. [00:09:35.750] - Scott That you went and liberated from a warehouse. Okay, just making sure I got those details straight. [00:09:43.220] - Michael There's also a side tangent I should get into is the fact that our publisher did not want to do ebooks. [00:09:47.840] - Robin Yeah, they did not want to do. [00:09:49.020] - Michael Because it was brand new and they figured it was going to cut into the sales of their print books. So they were just totally against it. So Robin, being Robin, said, okay, we will absolutely do that and just tell you about it later. And she did. And so what did you do? [00:10:02.300] - Robin Well, so I did the ebooks, and I said, I will share with you the ebook royalties, but you got to first pay us the print royalties, which they never had. So it kind of broke even because we kind of got the ebook money and they got the print money, and then we paid for their warehousing fee. [00:10:18.730] - Michael But now to get back to what I actually was planning to say was that because we had been self publishing, and because we had done pretty well self publishing, in fact, we're doing rather well when I went to the big. [00:10:32.010] - Robin Oh, suddenly everybody wants to talk to us. Right? [00:10:36.110] - Michael But not only that, I didn't have the same experience that your average startup, aspiring writer would have, going in and saying, please buy my book. Mine was like, I don't know. I'm not really sure I want to sell you my book. And that was a completely different dynamic, specifically back in 2010 when this was going on, because no author would ever refuse a six figure deal for their first trilogy. I mean, it wasn't a trilogy. It wasn't going to happen. They didn't realize that because they didn't realize who I am. And I'm just not that kind of person. [00:11:09.030] - Robin Yeah, what was really interesting was so we knew some traditional publishing people, and we were at some conventions, and we're saying, yeah, well, we got this deal from Orbit. It was a pre-empt deal, okay, 130,000 for three books. And everyone's like, well, you take that. You take that. You take that. Absolutely, you're going to take that? I said, yeah, I don't know, because we're doing pretty well with self publishing and this and that. And they're like, well, how many books are you selling a month? And I'm like, about 8000 books a month. And they're like, eight to 10,000 books? do not sign that contract!because they were selling at 4.99 and 6.99 apiece. So we were making, like, really good money. And when I did the calculations, I kind of ran the numbers. I said, Michael, I think if we sign this contract, we'll probably lose about a quarter of a million dollars. And Michael said, no, we're going to sign the contract. I don't care about the money. I said, Well, I kind of care about the money. And he's like, no, because he says, okay, well, show me the store I can go to and pay $250,000 and get the stamp of approval that traditional publishing will give me. [00:12:21.500] - Robin And I said, okay, basically, you're right. [00:12:23.540] - Michael You can't spend that money and get the kind of advertising that you get going through traditional. It's really weird because many of the things that we've done, like Kickstarters or getting traditionally published, has nothing to do with running a Kickstarter or getting traditionally published. It has to do with basically advertising. [00:12:39.870] - Robin Yeah. [00:12:40.770] - Michael When I went through a publisher, a traditional publisher, I probably tripled my reader base. And when I went to Kickstarter, I opened up a whole new realm. And most people say, oh, you went to Kickstarter for that? But no, actually, we had no idea that when you go to Kickstarter, you get a whole new readership. Because most of the people who bought my books were not my readers. [00:13:01.190] - Robin Yeah. They were new to Michael's. [00:13:03.430] - Michael And the same is true with traditional publishing, because when you look on the also bought, it would switch because I had already been selling at a higher price point. So therefore, I was being picked up with the other people at the same price point, but also traditionally published. Put me on that market again, even higher. [00:13:18.860] - Robin Yeah. And it turned out we didn't lose that money because we got a lot of foreign sales. [00:13:24.430] - Scott Yeah. [00:13:24.770] - Michael There were a few things we didn't know, which is another good reason to go traditional, because we learned a whole lot of stuff by doing that. [00:13:30.240] - Robin We learned a lot of stuff by doing it. [00:13:32.580] - Scott So this book that you first sold to Orbit, I know that's the Rye-ah Revelations, right? [00:13:39.670] - Robin Yeah. [00:13:39.990] - Scott But that's not the same book. Rai-ear-ah. Nailed it. [00:13:49.670] - Robin Right! [00:13:50.010] - Michael Now there's a bunch of people watching this saying, that's not how I say it. I say, Ryuria, there's a bunch of. [00:13:55.470] - Robin People right now watching this going, who is this guy? [00:13:58.060] - Scott Yeah, well, if they're saying that about you, they're definitely saying that about me. But just so I'm clear on that, that's not the same book, or is the same book that you had with a small publisher and had to liberate from a warehouse sold them on your own. [00:14:16.190] - Robin So those books were picked up by Orbit. Orbit's plan for them was to put them out very quickly, which they did. They put them out in November, December and January, which at the time I thought, oh, this is showing, like, how cool they are and how savvy they are. And then I realized this just means they don't have to advertise. They didn't have to spend advertising money for us every year. They only had to do it once. In listening to your podcast, the impression I get is that publishing can be very capricious. It's kind of like the flip of the coin of, like, who gets the good stuff and who gets the bad stuff. Well, we got the bad stuff. One of the biggest problems about traditional publishing is when you go in and when you sign the contract, you never know what your experience is going to be like. Sunyi, obviously they had you on the fast track for Big Splash. Right? That is very hard to get. Most people aren't going to get that. So hoping for that is like, that's a little bit of a pipe dream, but like, what most of us mere mortals get, we did get a good advance, but we got nothing else. [00:15:23.050] - Robin I mean, the covers were not spectacular in any way. [00:15:28.280] - Michael It was interesting because we know this now, because we also then went over to Del Rey. And there's a huge difference between publishers. You wouldn't necessarily know this if you had never been published or if you've only been published through one group, but they would not. I'm actually surprised they allowed me to rename the books when they combined them into on the Buses. I actually was able to be the person who titled those, which was good. [00:15:52.290] - Robin That was like, the only thing we got. [00:15:54.080] - Michael But we made a lot of suggestions that the cover art, and none of that was actually listened to. So the good news is for those aspiring writers who might be listening, when you go to a publisher and they say and there's always these nightmares, stories that I was told was like, oh my God, they made me cut 30,000 words, and they made me take this character out or change this character. And that happened. They came to me with a terrible list of all these changes. And I contacted my agent and I said, am I supposed to be expected to make these changes? And she said, no, this is suggestions. And I went, yeah, there's like suggestions as in do it or else, but this is okay because we hadn't actually signed the contract yet, which is why I was asking. And they said, no, they're really just suggestions. They said, oh, good, because I'm not making any of them except for four, which mirrored the changes that 70,000 readers had fed back to me over the course of two years. They had read it, they all had these same problems. So I made those changes. [00:16:53.840] - Michael But the ones that Orbit wanted me to change this large list, I didn't. And as a result of that, at least in my case again, I don't know if this is atypical or not, but in my case, I didn't have to basically make any changes to the novel to get it published. Because I was told by my editor that when they buy books, for the most part, they buy them in a way that they expect that they could be published as is. They will try to improve it, but if you refuse, that's okay, they're just going to publish it anyway. So they generally don't make deals for their books that are like, well, if we can fix this, we'll sell it, because that makes no business sense. So they buy it with the idea that, yes, this is good enough to print. Maybe we can convince the author to change it a little. [00:17:35.490] - Robin Well, but that's the other thing that I don't know for sure, because Michael got virtually no editorial changes. What he was talking about was like copy edits, right? They weren't like, you needed to change story. And we always heard, well, one of the reasons why you go to a traditional publisher is they'll make your book so much better because they'll take it and they'll work with you on it, and they'll work through it, and it'll be much better. We never got any of that. But there's another author that we know traditionally published, and he makes comments to us all the time, like, oh, I turned in my manuscript to my editor, and it is such a mess, but I'm not worried because she'll make it wonderful, and it'll be good when she gets done with it. And I'm like, you get your editor to like, we don't get that kind of help. And I never know if it's because a Michael is so prickly that they know any suggestions they suggest he won't do b they just don't have time and they have bigger fish to fry, so they spend their activity on that person, or C, they just don't care. [00:18:40.710] - Robin Or D, the books are absolutely perfect and they absolutely need no changes, which I suppose that is probably what it is. [00:18:48.070] - Sunyi I think there's a ton of factors. But something that was explained to me by basically a podcast I was listening to run by agents is that editors are either good at a lot of editors either good at marketing, which is like, you get the editors. Who are good at actually getting the book out there, and then their editors are good at editing. And the golden one is the one who can do both, I guess. [00:19:06.420] - Robin Well, we got neither! [00:19:08.990] - Sunyi Yeah. My editor is very editorial, but I would say that's her kind of her mo. Just looking at the other books she bought, I know that she's bought books that were just like hollowed out and rebuilt. [00:19:22.430] - Robin Here's the funny thing. I think your editor is our editor. Is it Devi? [00:19:32.470] - Sunyi Devi is my boss now, but I've got Lindsay. [00:19:34.990] - Robin Oh, okay. Well, Devi was our editor. [00:19:38.370] - Sunyi Oh, okay! [00:19:38.970] - Robin Yeah. [00:19:39.590] - Sunyi I don't know Devi at all. [00:19:41.080] - Michael Well, it's interesting because it wasn't just that, because Del Rey kind of had the same thing when we went over to Del Rey. See, when I was at Orbit, I think they picked me up as a self published author who they were picking up. But when I went over to Del Rey, del Rey were fans of mine. They had read my stuff and liked it. So my editor was a fan of mine. So I think that they may have been a little bit more hesitant to make changes. They did offer a few structural changes, but not much. I think it was three. [00:20:07.640] - Sunyi I don't know how other editors work, really, because I've only got experience in mine. But basically Tor and Harper collude kind of like parents behind the doors, and they come back to me with an edit letter and it's just a list of things that work and don't work, and they leave the solutions up to me, but they are long. Like, the first edit letter I got from Tor was eleven single space pages. It was massive. [00:20:30.490] - Michael Yeah, we had literally three pages from Del Rey. [00:20:34.890] - Scott That's crazy. But on the subject of editors, Sonya, you mentioned marketing and editing. I think there's a third category that editors hold down at least today, and at least from what I've been able to see, and that's project management. [00:20:54.130] - Robin Actually, they spent a lot of time on project management. My experience has been-- [00:21:01.650] - Scott From what I can tell, they're primarily project managers. [00:21:05.830] - Robin Exactly. [00:21:06.490] - Scott The other two are kind of side jobs. And if you get that aspect from them, then great. And Sunyi is being modest. She actually knows quite a few authors, and I think has heard a lot about different editors. And I've been in that world a little bit as well, hearing from different authors about how their experience with their editors has gone. And I do think that's a little bit atypical to not get any feedback or very little feedback. [00:21:42.030] - Robin But I think part of it was, though. Okay. And this is the thing I was talking about how when you sign, you really don't know what you're going to get. I think they looked at Michael, and this was when self publishing was kind of like fresh and stuff, and some people were kind of making it in self publishing and they thought of it. This is just easy money, right? Like, we're just going to take it. We're going to spend very little money on it. We're going to spend very little money editing it. We're going to spend very little time on the covers, and we're just going to put it out there, and we're going to see if it flies, which I can understand from a business perspective and I can be okay with. The problem I have is when it sticks, which it did, we earned out our six figure advance in nine months, right? A lot of people would be very happy with that. So when it came time for the next contract, you would expect, okay, let's see a little more Levin coming our way. And they came in with an offer that was lower than the first, and I was more than peeked, I would say. [00:22:54.150] - Robin And I told my agent, I said, well, you know, you can tell them to take that contract. And she said, well, let me work on them a little bit. And I really kind of regret that I allowed her to work on a little bit. So I made them pay a premium for spitting in my face, essentially. [00:23:13.550] - Scott And did it work? [00:23:14.850] - Robin It did. [00:23:16.270] - Michael It worked in a way. It worked in a sense that, yes, she got the more money, but in retrospect, she would have preferred to have not had a deal at all. [00:23:24.760] - Robin Absolutely. And the reason why we did the deal was you're always kind of thinking about how the author branding and how you're perceived. And we thought, well, we had one contract, and then we went directly back to self publishing. Then the story would be, oh, Michael Sullivan couldn't cut it in traditional publishing, and he had to slink back to self publishing, right. So I took that second contract because it was only two books. And here's the really interesting thing. I mean, you guys all know the way series work, right? Like the first book gets the most money because it has the most readers and a lot of people will file to book two, but it's going to be a little bit less than book one, and there's going to be a little fall off between book two, book three, and a little bit of fallout between book three and book four. And they were the big publisher, right, with all the power, with all the distribution, with all the libraries and everything, right? So first two books, they're going to make the most money, right? Well, on books three and four, books one and two have made about 200,000 apiece, approximately. [00:24:38.570] - Robin Books three and four have made, like 450,000 apiece. So I've made more than double on books three and four than I did on books one and two. [00:24:51.550] - Scott Is that because of a different royalty structure? [00:24:53.960] - Robin Yes sir. It's because you make a lot more pro book when you're self publishing. And there are a couple of things, right? So Orbit, in their ultimate wisdom, thought the trade paperback was the only thing that Michael could do well in, right? That's just he is a trade paperback author. In fact, when it came time, because there was an option clause when his third series came up. Orbit says, well, what are you looking for for this third series? I says, I'm looking for one thing and one thing only. I want hardcovers followed by a trade paperback release. And they said, well, we will not do that. He is a paperback author. He will continue to be a paperback author. That's all we will offer. And I will like, well, then we have satisfied the option clause. Goodbye. So when Michael wrote this next series, I was done with traditional publishing. But then Del Rey came in and backed up a big truck of money and they said, of course we're going to do it in hardcover. And I did my calculations. I'm never going to earn out this advance. I'm never going to earn out this advance. [00:26:06.310] - Robin And the only way you make really good money in traditional publishing is don't earn out your advance, right? Because then the money is kind of equal, right? Because it gets out of whack so quickly. So I was like, okay, so I won't earn out my advance. Great. Let's do this. I earned out that goddamn advance. But I like Del Rey a lot. [00:26:34.990] - Michael It was very fun. [00:26:35.970] - Robin Del Rey treated us well. [00:26:37.440] - Michael What we didn't know was there's a huge difference. I don't know if it's just a cultural difference or the fact that Random House Penguin is Penguin. Random House is a bigger publisher. But I remember when they sent they actually had me go to three different conventions and they called us up and Robin's like, we have a problem because you have us booked at this panel at the convention on such and such time, and we don't know if we can get a taxi from the airport to the convention in time. And they said, but ma'am, we're sending a car. We're sending a car. [00:27:12.170] - Robin Well, of course you're sending a car. Why wouldn't you send a car? And then they're like, Would you like us to send a car to your home to get you to the airport? And we live at the time, we were living in Metro DC. And so we had Metro and we would always take the Metro the airport. Like, of course. Well, normally we would just take the Metro and we're like, well, you know, it might be kind of nice. And the nice big black car shows up with its water in the back and it's paper and it's mints. [00:27:40.270] - Michael Yeah, the morning paper there. [00:27:41.350] - Robin It was fun. [00:27:42.610] - Michael And the driver is telling us about how he just brought in Steven Spielberg. [00:27:47.030] - Michael I'm like, oh, yeah, he was nothing compared to me. You remember. That's really interesting. Someday Sunyi is going to say he's a legendary author and it'll all be worth it. [00:27:59.190] - Robin Del Rey treated us much better than Orbit did. They let us have input into the covers they didn't dink with. They gave us an editor and this copy editor and this copy editor was not in sync. With Michael's writing style. I'm looking at it, I'm like, Michael's going to step that he's going to stet that all those will be stet. No, he's not going to do that. And I went to them and I said, look, I know how the business works, right. You get like one copy of it, you've already paid money to this person. But Michael is just not going to make these changes. And what concerns me is that there are things that are wrong that do need to be made that haven't worked with this. And it's not that this was a bad editor, he just had a different style and he was just it's interesting. [00:28:52.700] - Michael Because when I started writing, robin was my alpha editor from the very beginning, and we had a lot of problems because I was trying to do things that she was having conflict with over the years. She's gotten used to how I write. [00:29:04.270] - Robin She knows what I'm oh, yeah, I knew exactly what he was not going to do. [00:29:07.340] - Michael I had an editor who, again, didn't know what I was wanting. And we trained her over many years. Her name was Linda, and still is, just changed it. [00:29:17.890] - Robin So we asked them, we said, we've been working with Linda for years, can we just have Linda do it? I said, I'll even pay for it because you've already paid for the editor. I'll pay for this. I said, no, we'll pay for it. And they let Linda edit and then they hired her for all the rest of the books. [00:29:32.540] - Michael And when we asked them that we wanted markson that he as a cover artist, they went, Absolutely, yeah. And when we said, this is great, except that we want better topography on it, they said they worked on it and they came back and forth with new things and they would say, how's this? And it was a house, this, and it was, how is this? The family said, yes, that's good. [00:29:48.190] - Robin Yeah. [00:29:48.430] - Michael So it was much better experience. [00:29:53.710] - Robin The publishers all have their idea, and Michael was not the premier release of that quarter or season or whatever it was by any stretch of the imagination, even though so that contract was over half a million dollars and he still wasn't like the top release. [00:30:14.790] - Scott Yeah. For how many books, do you mind me asking? [00:30:17.420] - Robin Well, it was $540,000. $135,000 a book for four books now. [00:30:28.680] - Scott Wow, cool. [00:30:29.770] - Robin When it came time to negotiate the last two books of the series, I said, and the very important thing to know about that was that was only for ebook and print. There were no audio rights on there because I sold the audio rights first, and that was one of the smartest things I ever did, because I could never break the audio rights free. All my publishers required the audio rights, required the audio rights, required the audio rights, but they weren't paying anything for them. So I sold the audio rights first, fully knowing that it may squash any possibility of traditional publishing in the future. And Del Rey picked up those four books without the audio rights. And then it came time to do the negotiating for the last two books. I said, I just want to remind you the audio rights are gone. And they're like rut row. That's a huge problem. They said their corporate has made a decision and they cannot, no matter who, no matter what, no matter where, they cannot offer without audio rights. And I was like, okay, fine, so we'll do the last two. And then we took one step further, which is it was a six book series and I said, these books really break down. [00:31:51.730] - Robin It's almost like two trilogies that are like kind of mushed together and it says breaking it up four and two really isn't going to be good. Can I buy back book four for $135,000? And they said, sure. And so I bought it back for $135,000. Best check I ever wrote. [00:32:14.020] - Scott Was that after it had published book four or before? [00:32:17.630] - Robin No, at that time I think they'd only published book one and two. Got it. And I said, could I buy back Book Four? And they said, yeah. And I was like, okay, now they have the first three books of that series and we have the last three books of the series. [00:32:35.960] - Michael In case anyone's wondering why in world she did this, it's because the audio rights dwarfed the offer that they gave us for everything. [00:32:44.390] - Robin Yeah, the audio rights, no, okay, yeah, not for that. So the next series of Michael's I did not even... Well, by that time it was pretty well known that which is interesting because I think scott, don't you own your audio rights again? Didn't you get them reverted or something? [00:33:07.850] - Scott Yes, that is correct. I just recently got them reverted and my agent has a submission out to audio companies right now. [00:33:16.640] - Robin Oh, man. [00:33:17.360] - Sunyi The difficulty for Scott is that because the audio wasn't done and nothing else is done for his books, that damages sales, which then makes it harder to sell audio after. So it's just kind of like a double trip up that they've done to his books. [00:33:31.660] - Scott I'm very interested to hear this. [00:33:35.110] - Robin We should talk. [00:33:36.490] - Michael Would you like us to change your life, Scott? (laughing) No, I'm not kidding. I mean, she said she has done this for people. [00:33:45.290] - Robin I've gotten a lot of people some really good audio deals. But anyways, [00:33:51.150] - Scott I'm not going to say no! [00:33:54.970] - Robin Anyways, but by then I was truly done. Like honest to goodness, absolutely done with traditional publishing. Even though Del Rey treated me well and I knew that I would be done anyways because you're kind of an odd liar, Scott. Because usually audio rights, that's where the publishers have really got their claws in. They're like, if we don't get audio rights, we need the audio rights. [00:34:23.670] - Michael You're not an odd liar. You're an outlier. [00:34:27.200] - Scott (laughing) I knew what she meant. [00:34:31.670] - Michael Maybe you're an odd liar. You haven't lied, so we don't know. [00:34:34.900] - Scott Both. I'm going to go with both. Yeah. [00:34:37.690] - Robin So for the next series okay, now we're up to Michael's most recent books, which is the rise and Fall series, which is a trilogy, and of course, we sold the audio rights for that first again. And I love all my audio rights producers. I love them all. I love the people at recorded books. I love the people at Audible Studios. They have treated us so much better than standard traditional publishers do. And I told them both, I said, look, got a three book series coming out. My agent, by the way, doesn't get to do audio rights. That's no hands off. I will handle those. And I said to both of them, I said, like, look, I love you both. I wish I could give you both the rights, but I can't each come back and make me, like, the best offer you think you can do for the audio rights, and we'll take it from there. And Recorded Books came back, and they said, we'll give you $750,000. And I just about went, okay, well, that's very impressive. Thank you very much. [00:35:43.520] - Scott Just for the audio, just for the audio right? [00:35:46.920] - Robin Yeah. And then Recorded Books comes in you had it backward. I'm sorry. And then Audible Studios comes in, and they said, we'll give you $1 million. I was like, well, that's really something. And one of the really hard calls for me is then I had to go back to Recorded Books, and I said, I'm sorry. I mean, I thought your offer was extremely generous. It showed a lot of respect for Michael as an author, but they came in better, and I get a higher royalty rate with them. [00:36:22.650] - Michael And quite frankly, when you think about it, when you can say you made $700,000 or a million dollars, there is a difference, right? [00:36:31.810] - Robin Yeah. Just saying, I have a seven figure contract. That's something to say. And he said, well, let me go back to my people and get you another one. I said, as a business person, I should let you do that. But when I came into this, I told you both, like, make your best offer. And I'm not looking into getting into a bidding war. I'm not trying to squeeze, like, every ounce out of you. I think both of your offers were very generous. I would have been happy with even one of them. I'm not trying to squeeze you. [00:37:01.580] - Michael Yeah. We have actually purposely taken intentionally worse deals in order to either help someone else out or to get something that we think is fair. But when we've been in the position of having the advantage, we generally don't press it because that would just be wrong. And I know that sounds weird, but have you read my book? [00:37:22.350] - Robin There was one time that we took a deal. We had two offers, and from a monetary standpoint, we should have taken deal two, but we took deal one because they were going to pay our narrator a lot more. They basically said, we will go back and we will double the salary of your narrator, not only for these books, but for all the books he's recorded of yours in the past. [00:37:46.870] - Michael And this is a result of that night. We had been explaining that I was and we were both actually very upset that Tim was making so little off of the books that we were unhappy about that. So when they purposely came back and said, we're going to retroactively double his salary, double the salary, I went, wow, okay, these people are listening to me. I feel that they're showing me a great deal of respect. So even though the other person was offering me more money, I felt that they deserved it. [00:38:13.010] - Robin Yeah, they really were showing me that they cared about us and they cared about Tim. No people like us, let's just put it that way. Tim has a very long commute into the city for a recording, and we were coming to town for the recording, and I want to take him out to dinner. So I got Tim a hotel room, because for him to go out to dinner with us would then be a hardship, because then he'd have a long drive back home and then come in early in the studio. And Tim came in the next morning and says, wow, this was great. I had to get up, I walked across the street. This is really good. And I said, Well, Tim, would you prefer to record in your studio at home, or would you prefer to have a hotel near a studio in New York? He said, well, no, I would really prefer to be in a studio in New York, because I like getting to the city from time to time and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I called up Audible Studios and I said, tim really likes having a hotel when he's recording. [00:39:14.550] - Robin And they said, yeah, I'm sure he does, but we kind of don't do that. And I said, oh, no, I I understand. But Tim really likes having a hotel room near recording, and it would really make me very happy if Tim were happy. And they're like, okay, we'll get him a hotel room for the city. [00:39:36.070] - Michael But this has worked out well for them, too, because she's actually brought them several authors and broker deals that they-- [00:39:41.240] - Robin Were not aware of. [00:39:41.930] - Michael Yes, and they're very happy with it. [00:39:43.230] - Robin Oh, yeah, they do stuff like that for me. And then I tell them, I say, like, this is an author you really need to get. And they make him they haven't offered you a job, they go to make him an offer. And I'm like that offer isn't going to cut it. You're going to have to up it. I've gotten some people, some really good audio-- [00:40:00.850] - Michael They really should offer you a job. I mean, how many other people could they get that are married to a legend? That's true. [00:40:07.440] - Scott There you go. [00:40:10.850] - Robin And part of it is the huge commission I take on all these deals. (Joking) [00:40:14.360] - Michael That's right. [00:40:15.030] - Robin It's massive. [00:40:16.090] - Michael Which is none at all. [00:40:17.100] - Robin None at all. [00:40:18.060] - Michael In case you didn't get this, in case you haven't seen this in every other interview with us, we never take money from anyone, from authors. I teach authors. She helps authors and trains them how to do publishing. But we never ask. We never take money. We refuse. It's so bad that I went to a Writer's Digest seminar where I was teaching classes for them, and it wasn't until I found out that they were actually charging the students that I stopped doing. But I do this for free. I hate the fact that because when I was young and I was trying to get into the business and I got a call from someone saying, oh, I'm an agent, and I just need to know one thing before I represent you, and said, are you comfortable going on the late night shows and promoting your book? And I went like, something's wrong here. So I hung up on that one. And then I looked them up and found out that, yes, I had to pay them $3,000 a month? [00:41:18.200] - Robin Yeah. No, it wasn't a month. I think it's $3,000 every six months. [00:41:21.530] - Michael Or something, but it was a regular, ongoing fee. And I'm like, yeah, okay. So I know what people try to do when they have people who have dreams. They try to sap it any way they can. If we were to write a book on how to write or how to promote yourself, I mean, we'd have to put it on Amazon for free. We would never charge you because it's stupid and we don't need the money. [00:41:44.590] - Sunyi No, we really appreciate that, actually, because one of the things I don't like is that a lot of the information that Scott and I try and talk about does exist, but it's often behind paywalls, and it's often behind substcaks and forums and patreons, and people are forking out for it. And when I was trying to write and had no money, that just infuriated me because it's inaccessible. It's completely inaccessible. [00:42:05.090] - Robin Yeah. [00:42:06.490] - Sunyi You're both legends to me. Just to clarify. [00:42:10.170] - Robin Really not. [00:42:11.200] - Michael Really not and now you've met us, and it's like, oh, that was shocking. [00:42:15.540] - Robin That was disappointing. [00:42:17.550] - Scott No, not at all. Yeah, that was fantastic. Some really amazing stuff in there. And you say you don't have a regular spiel, but you do a very good job of running through your experiences and making it very interesting and cohesive. So thank you for that. So hearing the success case, and in particular your success case is awesome. And inspirational might be a strong word, but I think it is the right word here. Yeah, I got a lot out of it. So I think the last question we have is we're interested at how you even found us, because we started doing. [00:43:05.740] - Michael We'Ve been watching you for years. We have cameras. [00:43:09.790] - Robin There's three episodes right now. [00:43:12.830] - Scott Yeah, I think we've got six out. You'll be number eight. You'll be episode number eight, maybe eight and nine, the rate we're going. [00:43:23.060] - Michael And they had such a great show until that one. Good. [00:43:27.940] - Scott We had a good run. [00:43:29.730] - Sunyi No regrets. [00:43:31.150] - Robin This is really interesting because I know you guys are part of a writers group. I think they're all traditionally published, which I think is good. My experience has been that traditionally publishing people don't really talk a lot. They're very closed about their contracts, they're very closed about their advance, they're very closed about their agents, and they're very close. The indie community is incredibly open. I used to be a part of a forum. It's kind of fizzled out and isn't a big deal anymore, but they just share everything. Like, here's my editor, here's my book designer, here's what I tried doing marketing, here's what I've done. And they just are very, just very open and sharing. And Michael belongs to a small group of people. It's on Slack, and they're always looking for things. And somebody saw your podcast and brought it up in The Slack, and they said one of the channels on this, Slack was specifically towards traditional publishing. And they were very impressed with how open you were with talking about advances and what experiences you had and so forth. We went out and we took a look, and I was like, wow, these people, they're doing good work. [00:45:06.770] - Robin They're doing what needs to be done. [00:45:11.090] - Michael And we were sent by the publishers to shut you down. (laughing) [00:45:18.130] - Robin Yeah. [00:45:18.660] - Scott Waiting for that call. (laughing) Still early. [00:45:22.160] - Robin I don't think there's a lot of people doing what you're doing. Sunyi, you've mentioned a couple of other podcasts, like Print Run, but those are agents. Right? Agents have a very different perspective. Right. But I don't know of any other podcast where writers are really pulling back that cover and letting people know this framework that Scott was talking about, that they have no clue what this framework was about. And by what you're doing, you're starting to show what happens behind the scenes. [00:46:00.570] - Michael We were at a convention once where a brand new author had her debut novel, and we were traditionally published, and they were giving her a good push. [00:46:10.450] - Robin She got a lot more attention. [00:46:11.650] - Michael And we tried robin tried to give her some pointers, and she was just not interested because one of the things she said was to be more active on Goodreads. And unfortunately, it was a situation where she was told by her publisher to stay away from Goodreads. And it was rather humorous because it's one of the best sources for getting readers. But then later on in that same convention, robin was doing a talk on Goodreads, and I came into her talk, and I was sitting in the very back row, and another author who was, I think, bigger than I was, she was a big. And she came in, and she was sitting there, and she's like, I only have a few minutes because I have a panel I have to be on. And she's sitting there, and she's watching, and she goes she goes, you're her husband. I said yeah. And she's watching. She's like, oh, my God. I didn't even know you could do that. And she started taking this, and she's writing down these notes, and every few minutes, she would just look at me and go, oh, my God. And it was just amazing. She goes, I've got to take all this stuff down because this is incredible. But the same exact information that Robin was giving to a debut author, there was just being no, I don't do that kind of thing. I'm traditionally published, and my publisher is going to do everything for me. And this other person who's a New York Times published, authored in the same account, it's like, had they known this, it would have changed everything. [00:47:33.800] - Robin Yeah. [00:47:34.520] - Michael So what you're doing is the same kind of deal. [00:47:37.940] - Robin Yeah. You're getting the information out there. And like I said, I don't know of anyone else that's really doing this, and I think it's good work. [00:47:54.550] - Sunyi The stigma runs both ways. That's the problem. I know that in my debut groups, people started splitting off early on to the people who had the six figure deals and the people who didn't, and it was very much you can see those clique divides there and then. I think people just don't realize what it's like on the other side because the treatment level is so different, and people don't want to talk about it when the books aren't succeeding, and they don't want to talk about it when they are, because it's embarrassing in two different ways. [00:48:24.520] - Robin Yeah. I think part of the problem is not knowing what to expect. And I think part of the problem is there is a huge disparity in power between author and publisher. And whenever you're involved in a business where the disparity in power is so great, it can't help not be not equitable. Right. You have people who their dream is to be published. Like, that's my that's my dream. And in such an environment where you're where you're dealing in people's dreams, it's just really easy for them to accept any crappy contract that comes by to take whatever crappy treatment you get, because, on the other hand, they gave you your dream, you know? So yeah, you know, and and I and all I can say is whether you're traditional or when you're or whether you're self published, just you are the only one who's going to be responsible for your success, and you are the only one who's going to be responsible for your failure. Right. You can fail by quitting and giving up and slinking off. And if you get in there, if. [00:49:56.770] - Michael You write good stuff, there's also that other small portion of people who slink off and give up and then come back and become successful. [00:50:05.570] - Robin Who would do such a thing? No one would do such a thing. [00:50:09.490] - Michael That's just saying it happens. [00:50:11.810] - Robin Yeah. It's crazy. [00:50:14.310] - Scott Never too late, right? Never too late. [00:50:16.810] - Robin Never too late. [00:50:18.390] - Scott Well, that's fantastic. We're glad you did find us, because this was an awesome conversation. We're glad just to have met you generally. This is fantastic. Should we wrap it there for now? Sunyi. [00:50:38.350] - Sunyi Yeah, my daughter is asking for a snack. [00:50:42.190] - Scott Sounds good. Well, Michael and Robin, thanks so much and thanks for the kind words. Thanks for everything you bring to the not just to the podcast, but to the industry. It's a big deal. [00:50:57.650] - Michael Well, thanks for making us feel as if we hadn't completely wasted our lives. [00:51:02.130] - Robin Scott, here's the very important thing you need to know, right? When Michael was where you are now, I e with the number of books out and whatever, you are miles further than he was. Miles and miles and miles further than he was. So keep that in mind, right? Yeah, keep that in mind. [00:51:26.600] - Scott Well, I appreciate that he doesn't think. [00:51:28.270] - Michael I'm doing that well, so that doesn't. [00:51:30.180] - Robin Help. [00:51:34.190] - Michael Online so he can get interviews. That's what they're doing. [00:51:41.330] - Scott I'd have to do a lot of math to get from the money I've made to the money you've made in this industry. So, yeah, I'd trade if you want. [00:51:52.520] - Robin Okay. But Michael just finished his 20th novel. [00:51:57.520] - Scott 20Th for sure. [00:51:58.760] - Robin 21St novel. Okay. It doesn't happen overnight, let me tell you. Overnight. [00:52:06.290] - Michael When you talk to your niece or your sister in law whose niece wants to be an author, and you say to them, well, if you'd like some advice, I'd be happy to help you, and they said, no, this is a true story. They said, no, she wants to be a real author. [00:52:22.430] - Robin My sister's daughter now wants to be a writer. I said, well, when she gets something ready that she wants that she thinks is good, we'll send it to Michael and he can help her out, and he can give her some pointers. It's like, oh, no, that's not necessary. No, Ireland wants to be a real writer. [00:52:40.290] - Michael So now you understand why I'm not actually a legendary, famous author. [00:52:46.150] - Robin Sister in law doesn't think you're good enough to coach their daughter, then you're not a legend. [00:52:53.330] - Michael So imagine what the Internet does. [00:52:57.530] - Scott We're even getting family secrets out here now. [00:53:03.210] - Sunyi You've been listening to the Publishing Radio podcast with Sunyi Dean and Scott Drakeford. Tune in next time for more in depth discussion on everything publishing industry. See you later.