[00:00:01.580] - 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. So Sunyi and I had written down a whole bunch of questions we wanted to ask before this, and as you both were running through your story, I wrote down more. Is everybody okay? If we launch into kind of a Q and A style, go back and dig into the story? [00:01:18.490] - Michael Is it a buzzer? [00:01:20.010] - Scott Sunyi do you want to start or do you want me to go into the list? How do you want to roll with this? [00:01:38.350] - Sunyi We can start the non compete because actually, I think that's top of our list. We were interested in the changes that you made to the Orbit contract, which, Scott's written, defanged the non compete to the point that you still had flexibility. Because I won't go into it very much, but I do chafe a little bit under my non competes. Just interested in any wisdom on that. [00:02:00.110] - Robin Right, so how much time do we have? Nothing gets me angrier than the non compete clause. When we've got our first contract and we saw the first contract, we were like, this is a joke, right? Joke, like life of copyright. Like non compete clause. And my agent is like, no, this is the way all contracts are. I'm like, Nobody signed nobody would sign this. And they said, yeah, they do, because that's all they are. And she actually put me in contact with an IP attorney. And the IP attorney literally pulled contracts from all the houses. Here's a Penguin Random House contract and read their non compete clause. And here's one from McMillan. And here's their non compete clause. And here's one from Hachette. And here's their non compete clause. They said they're all there. Everyone signs them. It's how you do business. Our non compete clause said, the author shall not, nor allow others on his behalf to write any book that may compete monetarily with this book during the term of this contract. [00:03:17.630] - Robin So Michael cannot write any book that might injure the sales of this book for the rest of his life. And then 70 years after he's dead. [00:03:26.470] - Michael Which is when I was really going to come out and do it. [00:03:28.530] - Robin Yeah. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Any book is going to compete? This is fiction. Are you saying we can't do prequels? We can't do sequels, we can't do fantasy, we can't do fiction? What do you mean? I don't understand. And I talked to my agent, my agent's like, that's the standard. That's the way it is. Everyone signs it. [00:03:51.720] - Michael She said, well, they never exercise it there. [00:03:54.190] - Robin Well, and that's what she said. [00:03:55.230] - Scott It gives them the option too, right? [00:03:57.320] - Robin She said, it's in every contract. Nobody ever calls anyone on it, but it's in there. I'm like, I cannot have that dagger. [00:04:06.930] - Michael Well, if no one ever uses this, let's just get rid of it. [00:04:12.910] - Robin For six months, I fought this, and my agent said, you must sign the contract. And I'm like, I will not sign the contract. And then I was on forums and I was talking to people on forums about the non compete clause. I'm like, how do you traditionally published authors do this? How do you sign these contracts? And this person wrote back to me and they said, are you telling me that your husband is going to walk away from a six figure contract because of the non compete clause? And I'm like, absolutely. And they said, you're an idiot. What if the publisher sees this? I said, Will you please write the publisher and show them this? Because this is not a negotiating ploy. This is a fact. We will not sign the contract. Now, Orbit had already done the copy editing. They had already done the covers. They had already had the books in pre release. There was no contract signed. They had already spent tens of thousands of dollars and there was no contract signed. Right? So, long story short, I finally said, okay, we have to get this defanged. And so what I told them was, I will not put out any self published book within a window of time. [00:05:22.730] - Robin Three months before your books and three months after your books. That's number one, okay? Because I understand you're going to be doing marketing, and that seems fair to me, that I'm not jumping on your marketing dollars and usurping it. I'm fine with that. So that's the first clause I put in. But then I said, we have to define what this non compete is. Now, in a nonfiction world, I understand what non compete would mean, right? Because, like, if I was a cybersecurity person and I wrote McMillan a book on cybersecurity, they would be very upset if I then went over to Penguin Random House and wrote another cybersecurity book that had basically the same type of information in there, because those books compete in fiction. They should have no place. I'm sorry, they should not exist. So we had them define that a competing work was any work that had 90% of the words in this book in the same order, which I'm like, you got that in clause one when you bought the book, you got that. So that's how we defanged the non compete. Now, here's the really funny thing about the non compete. [00:06:28.870] - Robin Years later, Orbit bought the nondramatic audio rights. And the dramatic audio rights, by my reading the contract, were good, and they belonged to us. And we had started doing some books with a company called Graphic Audio, and they had us in the studio doing some promotional stuff. And this was for the Legends of the First Empire series. I said, I'm really surprised that you've never approached us about the Ryer revelations, because it's a very popular series and it's what Michael's most known for. And they said, oh, we approached you, but your agent said those rights are not available. And I'm like, Well, I don't know where my agent's smoking, but those rights are totally available. I said, Send me a contract and I'll sign it tomorrow, or I'll have Michael sign it. That would be good. I called my agent. I'm like, Agent, what are you smoking? Look at the contract. It says, clearly they own non dramatic audio rights. They said, well, yeah, but that's not the problem. I said, what's the problem? They said, well, it's the non compete. And I thought about it. I was like, oh, you know what? You're right. [00:07:40.360] - Robin That would be about 90% you know, about 90% of the words in the same order, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was so excited because I was like, I dare them. I dare them to try and tell me that I don't have these rights. Because subsequent to that, like, years later, I started studying certain things about non compete. So all the contracts are written. New York new York is a right to work state. In a right to work state, you can have a non compete clause, but it has to be limited in scope and limited in distance. [00:08:18.600] - Michael Duration. [00:08:19.330] - Robin Duration, yes, sorry. Scope and duration. So if you were selling golf course memberships in Newark, New Jersey, a non compete clause could say, for a period of six months after leaving our establishment, you cannot sell any golf course memberships within 15 miles of our golf course. That's a perfectly legal non compete. Short term, six months, small scope, 15. Our non competes for life of copyright and for the entire world do not qualify under either one of those. So the bottom line is, folks, your non compete clauses are 100% illegal. There's also this little part in the contract that says if any version of this contract should be deemed unlawful, that portion of the contract will be stricken but the rest of the contract remains enforced. [00:09:08.410] - Michael Almost as if they knew what was-- [00:09:09.620] - Robin Almost as if they knew that they completely are doing something illegal, right? So now I have the chance to go up against them and take to court non compete. And I'm going to strike down non compete for fiction writers around the world. And I'm so happy. And if I don't have enough money to do it, I will do a GoFundMe and I will get the best lawyer minds and I will go to court and I will feel like my life had meaning. But before I did that, I knew it. Mike says, well, before you start getting all riled up, you really need to write Orbit and ask them. Because the agent asked Orbit and Orbit said, no, you do not have those rights. And my statement to the agent was they don't get to determine who has those rights. A court of law determines who has those rights, right? And the agent's like, well, we don't want to get involved in this. We will not get involved in this. And that's why we said no, that they couldn't have the rights. I said, well, I'll get involved. And so just like when we got a movie offer, one of the things you have to do is you have to write your publisher and say, publisher, I need a piece of paper that comes from you that says you have the legal right to exercise this particular right even though it says so in the contract. [00:10:27.950] - Robin That's not good enough. You need the piece of paper that says, yes, I, the publisher, agree that you have those rights. So I asked for the piece of paper just hoping for them to say, well, I'm sorry, due to your non compete clause, you don't have that right. Unfortunately, they came back and said, oh sure, you have those rights, go ahead and sell them wherever you want. And I was very upset. Non compete clause, I despise. And I know you guys probably have them in your contracts and I'm sorry you do, but if any of you have any cajones, make them take you to court. [00:11:10.000] - Michael I've always seen publishers as being my employees. Probably not how most people see them, but that's how I see it. I tell them what I want them to do. If they don't do it, I go to someone else. It's very simple. [00:11:20.860] - Robin So the other funny thing about this, okay, so it took me nine months to fight for this change in our thing. And I talk on forums all the time and there was another Orbit author and I was talking about non competes and how terrible they were and he's like, oh my non compete is not so bad. And my agent had no trouble at all, had no problem like defanging it. And I said, and what did they defend it to? And he read me like his thing and I says, do you know why your contract says that? I says, because I spent nine months that's exactly my wording, and I set a precedence. And because I set a president's. Now, yes, your agent can come back underneath me and get the same thing I got. I said, but here's the question. Is that what your non compete looked like when it was sent to you? And he's like, no. So they're still doing it, bad publishers. Bad. [00:12:15.050] - Michael So if we're going to do this for every question, I certainly hope you have a very long time. [00:12:19.330] - Robin No, that's really the longest one. Non competes are my longest one. I hate non competes, but they're very scary. They're very scary. They were too scary for us. [00:12:33.200] - Scott That's okay. I think we're here asking for the information, right? And you are both doing a great job of educating us and illuminating. So I did have one comment there, and that is... Sunyi, I'm not actually sure what your non compete looks like. I'm not sure whether we've compared, but at least mine, while not great that it exists, and it is a little scary to have one at all, it is not nearly as bad as what you're describing with that original wording. According to my reading of mine, it seems fairly harmless. They could threaten a lawsuit over it, but I don't know if it's just my agency or if it's pretty boilerplate now with Tor and publishers generally, but it is fairly specific to author can't write anything that competes with this, but they can write the same characters in sequels and prequels, just not around the exact same time. [00:13:39.210] - Robin But what does compete mean? Define compete. Doesn't Riyria compete with legends of the First Empire? Compete with the Rise and Fall Series? I mean, they do. [00:13:54.990] - Scott In my mind, it's gotten to the point where, at least as far as I can tell, right. It's so vague and contradictory just with it. I mean, the terms that are within that clause that they asked me to sign are themselves contradictory to the point that it probably wouldn't hold up even if it wasn't, as you said, not permissible, 100% illegal. [00:14:20.450] - Michael Besides, that's not the point. They don't sue authors. They don't have to. [00:14:27.190] - Robin Because authors won't do stuff. [00:14:29.780] - Michael No, because they're afraid of it. If you it's an intimidation. They intimidate you. They say, Listen, you have to stop this because it's in your contract. And 99% of all authors will do that. [00:14:39.610] - Robin Here's a great one. So--sorry. I'm going to segue. One day, Mike's agent called me up and said, orbit would like you to shut up online. And I said, would they now? What made you think that you would ever transfer that information to me? Because you work for me. You don't work for Orbit. And in particular, what Orbit was upset about is I was exposing stupid things in their contract. I said, if they don't want to be taken to task, stop putting stupid things in your contract, right? If you don't behave badly, I've got nothing to complain about. Oh, man, I was like I was mad at Mike's agent for you. Don't ever tell me to be quiet about the injustices that someone in my contract. And then she went on to say, she says, well, in your contract, you have a nondisclosure agreement and you're not allowed to talk about what's in your contract. I'm like, really? Because I've read every inch of my contract and there is no nondisclosure agreement. So they're telling you I have a nondisclosure agreement. You have the goddamn contract in front of you. Once you read it, there is no nondisclosure agreement. [00:15:59.950] - Robin I can say whatever the hell I want to as long as I'm not lying. But see, here's the thing, right? I already knew. I mean, I was already being treated poorly by Orbit, right? We were not going to be together long. Most authors won't say anything bad about their publishers, even when their publishers treat them badly because they're really afraid of not getting that next contract. Well, yeah, you have to I am not afraid of not getting that next contract. [00:16:34.770] - Michael But you have to understand, there's only at the time, there was only six publishers that were five. No, there were only six. [00:16:40.400] - Robin No, it was a big five then. [00:16:41.470] - Michael It was a big six when we first started. Then I went to big five. And now I don't know if it's. [00:16:44.630] - Robin A four or not, it's back to five, working on it. [00:16:47.090] - Michael But when there's that few places to go, you start thinking, well, you don't want to rock the boat. The same is true for agents. They don't want to say anything either, because otherwise that's one fifth of their potential income. [00:17:02.000] - Robin Well, yeah, and here's the thing, right? When my agent said I had to sign that non compete clause, right? Who are you working for? They say they're working for you, right? And they're getting their money from your money. But the reality is, at least in my mind, agents know, like, this is a very small band. They can operate in with the publishers, right? And as long as we're within that small band, we're okay. But we can't go outside that band. That's why everyone's getting the really crappy royalty rates. They just kind of operate within this thing and they know that they can't go out with it. They might be able to get you, like, non joint accounting, but try and get the limit raised for what is determined in print and out of print, right? Like, that level is so low, mike's books will never go out of print. They just never will. Because as long as they're making $9 a week, they're in print, right? And if they ever get close to not making $9 a week, they'll buy $9 worth of books just to keep the contract in place, right. [00:18:14.270] - Scott Sunyi, I I could see you wanting to jump in. Do you have something? [00:18:17.700] - Sunyi I was just going to say that my my non compete is different from yours, but it's very specific to my situation and the fact that I'm on contract for three standalones and basically Tore tied up the rights. So I cannot write a sequel or a prequel or anything affiliated with Book Eaters and submit it to them, and I cannot take it anywhere else. And I understand why they made but [00:18:38.530] - Robin doesn't that suck? [00:18:41.190] - Sunyi I mean, that sucks for me. Yeah, effectively it does, because if I could write a sequel, like, if the first book did well, you could write a sequel and say, well, give me money for it, I'll take it elsewhere. But at the moment, I wouldn't be able to do that. But I depend entirely on my publisher for the whole of my income, so I don't feel like I have leverage to argue at this stage. And I'm happy to write other things for now. For now. [00:19:05.840] - Robin Remember when I told you how my later books in the series made more money in self publishing than the earlier books in my series that were traditionally published? I just want to mention that here's. [00:19:16.620] - Michael An interesting tidbit which he would want to tell you about. When we went over to Del Rey. Oh, God. There was going to be a shift was it Del Rey? And we were going to have to not publish anything during the time in which they were producing my books. [00:19:35.510] - Robin Hold on. All right. I established this precedent with my non gad. By this time, we have a different agent made it very clear to this agent, this is our non compete, right? This is what if you're negotiating for us, this is the non compete. You got to make sure the publisher knows this is the non compete. This is the way it works. And then we got the offer letter, and in the offer letter, there was some language in there that made me think that the publisher isn't thinking about the same non compete that I'm thinking about. Right. And the agent said, oh, no, that's just a problem in the offer letter, trust me, we're all on the same page because Mike self publishes, and outside of that little window, he should be free to self publish. Because think about this, right? Now, here's the other thing about these contracts, right? So you got a certain amount of time to turn in a book, and legally, they have a certain period of time, like two years, in which they have to get the book on the market. And if they don't, you can ask for the right three version, right? [00:20:42.430] - Robin Well, for us, for Mike not to have any books published in two years, that's a lot of downtime for him. Right. So I will give you this window, but outside of that window, we can do what we want. So anyways, long story, short the contract came in and Del Rey's idea of the non compete was much different than ours. And basically what they thought they were getting was that Michael would not write anything in the universe of Elon while their books were being published until after all their books were released. And I'm like, no, that is not the way this works. The agent just particularly when you understand. [00:21:24.400] - Michael That I was writing a six book series total that would have been like a decade, right? [00:21:30.810] - Robin I don't know how long it's going to take them to put out a book. What if they take two years for every book and it was a four book series originally? That's eight years that he can't do a book. No, that ain't going to cut it. So the agent completely screwed up the thing. And so the agent's like, well, what do we do now? I said, Step out of the way. I'm going to go to Del Rey and I'm going to fix this. So I said to Del Rey, I said, If Michael I said, okay, so your first book is coming out June of next year. Would Michael be okay if he publishes something by December of this year? And they said, yes, that would be. [00:22:05.770] - Michael Okay because that's before a contract. [00:22:07.170] - Robin And I'm like before a contract. I'm like fine. Okay. So that will get us this next book in the series, so that will happen. And I said, well and can you commit because these books are already written that they will come out once a year, every year in June, July? Yes, we will commit to that. I did a whole bunch of other finangling around and so forth pulled this dumpster fire from the thing. So I called the agent, okay, it's all right. Got it fixed. We're not happy about it, but we can live with it. [00:22:42.130] - Michael I couldn't live with it because she came to me, she says, okay, you've got 68 days to come up with an book to write up the door. I was like, really? [00:22:50.200] - Robin Good. Okay. So I said, here's the deal, right? And the legwork I put in before this happened with the agent, like, I made up this whole bio on Michael and all this thing on his sales and everything for when she shopped it around. I mean, I handed her this packet that all she had to do was hand it to the publishers on Michael, right? I said, okay, so here's the deal. I fixed this. But now, because I had to do all this stuff beforehand and because I did all this stuff afterhand, I want you to change your commission from 15% to 10% because I'm going to take 5% for all this work I did. And she's like, no, I get 15%. I said, okay, then we're going to deal with door number two. Door number two is you will get 15% up to the advance of this and you will not get another cent past that. And you will never have another book of Michael's, ever. And you'll never do any more business with us. So what do you want? Do you want door number 110 percent of everything or do you want 15% up to the advance and never see us again? [00:23:55.930] - Robin And she says, I'll take door number two. I said fine. And that was great because now that's earned out and she's lost probably another-- [00:24:03.490] - Michael Considering that the very next $100,000 was-- [00:24:06.130] - Robin --The seven figure deal. [00:24:07.630] - Scott Yeah, that was unfortunate; rough. [00:24:09.640] - Michael I don't know how you guys can talk now. It's your show, for God's sake. (laughing) [00:24:16.360] - Sunyi No, don't worry. Don't be sorry. We let people kind of say their piece and we learn as much as anything else. [00:24:27.830] - Michael It's like the old people are talking again. My God, they're so lonely. Just make them stop. (laughing) [00:24:33.510] - Scott (laughing) If we want to talk, we just do our own episode with just us, too. We're here to talk to you and learn from your many years of expertise and going through all these things that we're just now trying to navigate, stumble through, because a lot of these things that you've talked about, there's not much. [00:24:58.320] - Robin Roadmaps out there, right? I mean, you're just all kind of like we're all fumbling in the dark trying to figure out and it's not. [00:25:03.670] - Michael Like the industry changes at all. [00:25:05.160] - Robin No. [00:25:08.690] - Scott That's a big part of why. [00:25:10.200] - Michael It's pretty much the same as there are so many differences that keep altering the fact that there's kindle unlimited there's people who will do book covers for you now. [00:25:18.300] - Robin Yeah, but those contracts oh, the contracts. Contracts look the same as they have. [00:25:22.010] - Michael For well, when you're dealing with traditional publishers, nothing changes except maybe the inclusion of audio. [00:25:28.370] - Scott Yeah, the model is the same. Despite the changes in technology and whatever else. They certainly try to smoosh all of this expanding world and expanding possibilities into the same box. And I think one of my primary takeaways from going through it myself and getting involved with other writers and learning what they're going through that applies to your story is that whole discussion we had early on about editors and what editors do and going with editors suggestions. And the experience really does even within a publishing house, it really does depend greatly on the editor you get. But you don't know necessarily, right? You don't know that person. There is no vetting procedure. Often, if your agent is really good and has been around a long time, they can kind of give you a high level view of maybe what that editor has done and their limited interactions with an editor. But most of the time you go into these things blind. And so knowing what other people have gone through is hugely valuable. And you talking about pushing back on what your editor comes to you with in terms of edits, in terms of contracts, in terms of really anything marketing. [00:27:01.590] - Scott I've been burned by going with the flow. I know a lot of other people that have been burned by going with the flow. So it's good to hear about people who didn't do that and stood up for themselves and made it work. Hearing that that didn't immediately tank your career is incredibly valuable. [00:27:24.570] - Michael And when it comes to marketing, well, if you had a background like Robin did in guerrilla marketing from self publishing when we went in to talk at board meetings for advertising, she was actually educating them on how to do all kinds of stuff because they are still functioning in 1970. [00:27:43.810] - Robin Well, they were at the time. [00:27:45.670] - Michael Hopefully they've improved by now. [00:27:48.710] - Robin In 2010, Orbit's marketing department was looking to me to educate them on how to sell to consumers because they were just used to selling to bookstores booksellers. [00:27:58.730] - Scott Yeah. (pause.) (laughter) [00:28:02.330] - Michael I don't know how much-- [00:28:03.660] - Robin Maybe that's still the case. I don't know. Maybe it's still the case. [00:28:07.210] - Sunyi The UK side are a bit better selling to consumers, but I think the USA side, they're still bookseller. Market is what it feels like. [00:28:14.130] - Scott Yeah. Bookseller and libraries a lot. At least from what I've seen. Okay, so the next is a question. It's kind of a two part question, so it might be another long one, but go for it with whatever you've got on top of mind. So you said that going with Orbit and then Del Rey, despite the obvious negatives that we've gone into, you've said that that was probably worth it because it expanded your reader base quite a bit. So what I'm curious about is what things you saw Orbit and or Del Rey do that worked in terms of getting you out there and maybe what we who are early in our careers with traditional publishers could do to amplify our success or our current situations with our publishers, I suppose. What kinds of things did you do on top of what your publishers were doing for that traditionally published work that worked? [00:29:19.270] - Michael So I'm sorry, but you're going to have to give us, like, a novel that we can write to you because this is going to take forever (laughing). [00:29:26.750] - Robin No, it really is. [00:29:27.620] - Scott I'm okay with that. [00:29:28.660] - Robin It won't take a long time. No, it's going to take no time at all. Okay. [00:29:34.310] - Michael It'll take me a long time, and it's going to take you a ridiculously long time. [00:29:37.180] - Robin Here's the thing, right? Yes, we were traditionally published. Okay. But we did not. And I do a lot of classes on on people who want to go traditionally publishing. And a lot of people will tell me, robin, the reason why I'm going traditionally publishing is because I'm not good at marketing and I don't want to market. So I'm going to traditionally publish because they're going to do that for me. [00:30:04.530] - Michael How did they know you were going to go there? [00:30:05.730] - Robin And I said, wrong answer. Because they really didn't do yes. Del Rey. Sent Mike on to a few conventions, okay? And yes, they did give away a fair number of signed copies at these conventions. Did that move the needle? I don't think so. [00:30:28.070] - Michael Publishers are going to market two types of things people who are making lots of money for them already or people who they've earmarked, who they want to make a splash. If you're not one of those two, then you're doing all the works on everything. If you want anyone to know anything about you, it's going to be from you because you're the only one and you're the best person to sell your books. They're not going to they're going to try and sell your books in a nice catalog to a bookstore, right? And that's it. [00:30:53.780] - Robin And sometimes that nice catalog isn't all that nice either. [00:30:57.460] - Michael And if you're really lucky, they might. [00:30:59.090] - Robin Run some ads, and they might do some arcs, okay? I'm sure that a lot of your listeners look at, like, Suny's treatment and go, wow, I'm really envious of what she got. And I look at Suny's, I look at what she got, and I'm like, I'm really envious of what you got. I went on your website. You have an effing press kit, and there are all these quotes from all these authors, which they obviously I'm going to assume that you did not contact these authors. I'm going to assume somebody else. [00:31:40.180] - Sunyi I have no contacts haha. Yeah, I made the press kit, but they did all that work in it. [00:31:46.530] - Robin Okay? So what I'm saying is I'm like, hey, publisher, why don't we kind of like Brent Weeks, why don't you get Brent Weeks to give us a quote? Why don't you ask? [00:31:58.790] - Michael This is a really fun thing that afterward, after I was an Orbit published author, they came to me to do endorsements of other authors. I'm like, who did you get for me? I remember this. [00:32:11.150] - Robin Well, unless they just all turned you down, and we don't know that. But here's the thing, okay? When we went into this, what we were expecting to get from the publisher is exactly what we got, which is we got them to sign a contract so Mike could say he's a traditionally published author. The only thing I needed from them was to be traditionally published, whether it was he would be in the bookstore. [00:32:39.150] - Michael That's it. [00:32:39.780] - Robin Right. But we did not rely on them to get the book noticed. Get them in the bookstores, yes. Get them noticed, no. So we had to do all of that, okay? Even though we did not know what they were going to do, it didn't matter what they were going to do, because I was already taking care of everything else. Because I knew I had to take care of everything else. [00:33:04.090] - Michael So see, now you talked to them. What I forgot. What was I going to say? Sorry, how it comes to me. [00:33:13.230] - Robin So what we did, and it's going to sound really stupid, but it's what we did. So we use goodreads a lot, and we were very good at goodreads. And literally, I'm not kidding you, every night I would write little message. So Mike's book, if he had a comparable, I would say it's kind of like Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastards, because it's got kind of a bromance thing and it's got humor in it. So I would look for people who did reviews of Scott Lynch's book and liked it, and I would write these little letters. Hello, I'm the wife of an author who's recently written a book, and it's very much like Scott Lynch, and since you like Scott Lynch's book, maybe you would like his. I would like to send you a copy of the ebook to see if you might enjoy it in the hopes of not in exchange for a review. And I sent out 20 of those every night. Every night. I just did those. And Mike had a blog post once about getting a career is like building a beach, one strain of sand at a time. And that's still there. [00:34:19.040] - Michael I saw it today. Yeah. I was doing research for something, I found it again. [00:34:26.310] - Robin Here's the big secret about publishing and becoming a successful author. There's only three steps, really easy. Step one, write a really good book. Number two, get it in front of a few people. Number three, rinse and repeat. Now let's go back. Let's define what a really good book is. Okay? A really good book is defined as any book that somebody reads that they love so much that they tell someone else about it. Okay? People want to jump all over how terrible Twilight is. I'm sorry everyone's recommending that book to everyone else. So by my definition, it is a good book. [00:35:11.030] - Sunyi Mine too. [00:35:12.050] - Scott Absolutely. [00:35:14.130] - Robin And that's all you have to do. Now, as we all know, number one is extremely difficult, right? It is. It's very, very difficult. But if you do write a very good book, you've got to get in the hands of a few people, like some people, and then it will go. Yes. [00:35:36.940] - Michael So the key thing we discovered is that when you put it in front of like, I don't know the actual ratio anymore, but if you have like if you give your book to 100 people to read, of those 100 people, you might get ten who will refer it to other people. All right? And they won't just refer to other people. They'll literally cheerleaders who go around and they're your cheerleaders, as the term goes. You want to have someone who's cheerleading you. Of those ten, you'll get one who's a super cheerleader who literally believes it is now their life's work to make your books be universally read. And if for every hundred readers you get, you will build that up. But it has to be based on the fact that your book is so good that they feel it is necessary. Not just an idea, but absolutely necessary. They have to tell their friends to read this, because if they do and they read it, they're going to look so good, because they referred the really great book now. So that's what you need to do. [00:36:33.500] - Robin So what did they do that they did right? They did the minimum they had to, which is they put it in the catalog and they put it in the bookstores, and everything else was up to us. Well, all I needed was Michael by writing a Good book and me by getting it in front of a few people. [00:36:50.260] - Michael All I needed was to be able to tell people, because at the time, in 2010, there were large swaths of the population who would not read a book if it was produced by a self published author. They just wouldn't read it. So by getting that, I opened a huge door. But on top of that, all they needed was that credibility, and they opened that. So a lot of more people were there. And then we just did the rest, and it worked. [00:37:15.450] - Robin Here's the other interesting thing with Goodreads and interacting with Goodreads, because I interacted with people on Goodreads before when Mike was self published, and then afterwards, one of the things that we didn't talk about, which we may or may not, we do a lot of direct selling. Like even our traditionally published books, we do a lot of direct selling, right? Read your contract. You can buy copies of your book at a 50% discount. Buy those books, sign them, sell them directly. You make a huge margin on them. Okay, but now you got me screwed up. So the interactions on Goodreads really change because we have a much closer personal contact with our readership than most authors do, because most authors have the publishers between them, they have the bookstores between them. We're very tight with our readers, and we foster that in all of our books. It says, we'd really love to hear what you think. Send us an email, and Mike answers those emails. All right, I try. Yeah. Well, they get buried a lot of times, but because of this and when I was interacting on Goodreads in the early days, it was like, not often, but every once in a while, I would get an email back like, oh, you crappy self published author. Stop reaching out to me unsolicited. Blah, blah, blah. Crawl away and die. And I would be, oh, I'm so sorry I disturbed you. Thank you very much. And then Mike gets traditionally published, and the messages I would send would be exactly the way they used to be. And suddenly it's like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Do you know what just happened? The wife of my favorite author actually wrote and said they liked my review on Goodreads. They read my review and they liked it. I can't believe that they actually took the time to say thank you for writing a review on Goodreads. This is like my biggest day ever. [00:39:21.170] - Michael And there was a night and day difference. [00:39:24.450] - Robin Big difference. [00:39:25.280] - Scott Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. [00:39:26.840] - Michael Answered the question. I don't even know the question. [00:39:28.230] - Scott No, that did answer the question. No. Yeah, that perfectly answered the question. [00:39:34.120] - Michael Short answer. And you should have asked me (laughter). They did nothing. We did everything. That's how I got to be a legend. (laughing) This is the running gig now. I'm sorry. You started it. [00:39:44.680] - Sunyi No regrets. [00:39:46.840] - Scott I like it. [00:39:48.010] - Robin We sound bitter, but we're really not. I mean, we got out of traditionally publishing what we wanted to get out of traditional publishing, and we've made traditional publishers millions of dollars in the process. [00:40:03.250] - Michael I would do the exact same thing again. There's nothing I would have changed. It's really weird because we knew nothing about publishing even less than any of you people do. [00:40:12.020] - Robin You guys know so much more because-- [00:40:13.660] - Michael Of the fact that we literally didn't research anything and there was no information to get. There was a couple of authors who talked. Nothing much else. There was no books on this. There was nothing about self publishing because it was just starting. So we had none of that information whatsoever to start with. [00:40:33.850] - Robin We also lived in the wilds of Vermont where there was no Internet because the Internet hadn't been invented yet, number one. And number two, the nearest library was like 4 hours away. Something like that. [00:40:48.510] - Michael But we didn't know anything, so it was just really hard for us to figure this out. [00:40:52.660] - Scott Yeah. I think going into it, knowing what it is and what you want out of it is more than most authors do and is more than most authors are equipped to do. Right. Which is why we're doing this. We're trying to do what we can to make sure people don't do what we did. And especially me. Right. I certainly signed my deal. Starry eyed, naive, thinking, okay, yes, maybe it's a long shot. At least I have a shot here. Right? But I certainly didn't understand and didn't know what it meant to be signing the deal that I was. [00:41:33.210] - Michael She put me at a desk at bookstores and said, humiliate yourself for an hour here. [00:41:37.580] - Robin Yeah. [00:41:38.320] - Michael And I would try and sell five books that did not I would try and sell five books, and I would, like, get four of them sold. And I'm like, God, I'm really sorry that I did such a poor job to the owner of the store. And they would say, My God, can you come back next week? You were fantastic. You sold four books. I'm like, wow, this is bar is painted on the floor. [00:41:58.240] - Robin Yeah. The bar is really low. [00:42:00.020] - Scott Yeah. Which is interesting. Right. I think we learned that in our bookseller episode. Just how many books moving, how few represents a succes. [00:42:19.230] - Michael We were at a convention, our first convention, really. And we were at a table of a bunch of authors who were signing books and trying to sell them. And we were selling god, like we were selling like maybe ten a day, which was like, oh my God, this is like a waste of our time. And the person next to us is like, my God, you sold ten books. You are a god. How do you do it? I'm like, oh, you've got to be kidding me. And it was just shocking because that person hadn't sold any and they couldn't figure out how the hell am I selling? I'm like, well, for one thing, your book's $25. [00:42:51.350] - Robin It was a paperback. It was a very expensive paperback. [00:42:53.860] - Michael I mean, it's really weird because it wasn't that hard. But when you have people telling you that if you sell anything, if you sell ten, it's fantastic, I'm like, well, this is just not what I want to be spending my time doing. Because the return on investment is nothing. [00:43:11.040] - Robin When the call came in, when Mike finally decided that he was going to actually publish this book because for years he swore he would not publish-- [00:43:23.670] - Michael I published all of them free online. [00:43:26.450] - Robin There wasn't even really online. [00:43:28.770] - Michael No one even posted a comment, though. [00:43:30.980] - Robin Anyway, I said to Michael when I took over that I was going to try and get him noticed. I said, how many readers will I have to pull in for you to feel like a success? And you said, what did I say now? [00:43:46.220] - Michael When.... I forgot. something about.... I said 50? [00:43:48.600] - Robin Yeah, but the caveat was there got to be people that never 50. [00:43:52.720] - Michael People who are not friends or family or that we know personally. [00:43:55.730] - Robin Yeah. I said, I think I can do that. [00:43:58.510] - Michael I didn't think she could. [00:43:59.450] - Robin I think I can get 50 people to do it. [00:44:04.670] - Scott Sunyi, do you have a question? [00:44:06.000] - Sunyi It wasn't a question. I was thinking we've discussed it before, but there there is a big attitude difference, I think in Trad and indie that when I used to hang out in indie communities, because I looked in indie a lot before of going Trad. And the indie authors go in with this expectation if we're going to build a career, we're going to make money and we're going to have these goals. And in Trad, a lot of people go in with this sense of hopelessness like, oh, it's just a given that you won't make money, that it won't pay bills, that it's not successful, that you're automatically capped. And obviously it does pan out that way for a lot of people, but I think it doesn't help us to go in with that defeated mindset. I don't know, maybe I sound like a self help guru. [00:44:44.890] - Robin I think for me, if I were to try and quantify to what the difference is, is in Trad, let me do this before I forget in Trad, you're kind of you're putting your hands into the capriciousness of a system that you have no control over. Right? Like, there was a time in traditional publishing where they just would not take urban fantasy, just period. Just everyone knew it. All the agents knew it. Like, if you want to write urban fantasy no, there was a time when if you were writing vampire books and I know I've been listening to Book Eaters, it's very good, and it's not really vampires, but it's kind of vampire adjacent, I guess. Yeah, it is. There was a time where you could not publish a book if you did vampires. I mean, they just didn't want it. So you're kind of like you're putting yourself into other people's hands, whereas self publishing, if you fail, the only one you have to blame is yourself. But in traditional, people fail left and right and upside down, and it has nothing to do with them or their books or what they write or how they write. [00:46:06.220] - Robin It's just they just missed some little small needle threading, and it happens. Right. And I think that's one of the reasons why I'm drawn to self publishing is because if I fail, look, if Mike writes a bad book and it flops, okay? Right? Like, it's our fault. Like, boom, done. But in traditional, it's just really like it just hit the right person on the right day, and they were in the right mood. [00:46:42.350] - Michael Just to qualify what she was talking about earlier about the comparisons apples to apples. It's all too often people will compare books that have been accepted and are going to be published by a traditional publisher versus all self publishing, which is absurd because they're all essentially starting from the same position, which is aspiring writer trying to get published. And the number of people who are rejected from traditional shouldn't have to be accounted for is the number of people who rejected from self by people who just don't read their books. [00:47:10.160] - Robin Yeah, people take that top 1% and compare it to the entire realm of self publishing, and it really has to be all also to get back to. [00:47:22.850] - Michael What she was talking about, going from indie to traditional, I just remember that I ran a blog post. She made me run a blog post on her to advertise myself. And the post that got the most comments in the entire history of my blog was when I finally told my audience that I was going traditional. And I had a ridiculous number of comments all hating me. Yeah, I was told I was a sellout. I was told that I lied to them. I was told that it was just visceral hate throughout the whole thing. And part of it was because I always released a book twice a year. Once in April and once in October. And as a result of that, the final book to the series was coming out that April and when I went traditional, that meant it was going to be a year before that book came out. And I suppose that had a lot to do with it, but a lot of it was oh, you're a traditional or you're an indie published author and now you're going to selling out. I was like selling out, why do you care? What difference does it make you? [00:48:31.640] - Michael But it was mostly, I think, because they had to be delayed in reading the book. But it was just really weird that there is that. So there certainly was a stigma, I don't know if there is anymore between jumping between one side and the other. [00:48:43.450] - Scott So we're coming up on 2 hours and we'll wrap it up with one last question and probably come back for more questions both at least from my perspective, offline and online in terms of the podcast, most likely. But our final question that we wanted to ask was whether you have some sense for where the industry is going, because you've been on both sides of it and what you would recommend for authors in terms of how they structure their career. And I think we have some idea of what you might say. But do you feel capable of wrapping that in a little bow in terms of advice on how to structure a career these days? [00:49:37.320] - Robin So the first thing I would say is, I think publishers, if I were to kind of guess as to where things are going to go, I think they're going to be much more rights-grabby than they have been in the past. First it was just print books and that was print books and ebooks, and now it's print books, ebooks and audiobooks. I would not be surprised at all if in the future they're going to want foreign publication rights as part of the base contract. Okay. I just think they are tending to grab more. Okay. I think everyone talks about the midlist shrinking. I think it's going to continue to shrink. It's never been easy to be a midlist author traditionally. I think it's increasingly harder. I think that there is some positives I think publishing is finally waking up such that they are giving more attention to women writers. I think they're giving more attention to Lbgtq writers. I think they're giving a lot more attention to people of color. I think those highly underserved authors in the past are definitely getting more attention now. And so I think that things look much brighter for them than it probably has any time before. [00:51:03.910] - Robin And I think it goes beyond just what's being acquisitioned. If you look at something like goodreads, goodreads. And I think, Sunyi, you have a Goodreads Choice award nomination. Mike has nine goodreads choice award nominations. It used to be completely 100% based off of popularity. They looked at how many reads a book had and it was kind of reader based and now it's curated and when I look at the curation, I'm seeing a much better diversity in the representation than what we've ever seen in the past. If you look at the past three years, maybe, of goodreads nominations, a lot more diversity that way. So I think those are positive things. I still think that it is a good idea to go traditional. I mean, with all the bad things I say about traditional, I think that we did it. We're not ashamed that we did it. We don't feel bad that we did it. We don't regret that we did it. [00:52:05.190] - Michael I think it's a really good learning experience for any author who is even going to be doing indie. You really should see how the big boys do it, just so you get an understanding of how that's done. Because without that, it's really hard to be able to approach what you're doing in the same kind of way. And that's what you kind of need to do. You need to be able to produce your books as good or even better than traditional publishers. The only way you can do that is if you know how they do it, you know, type of people they're hiring to do editing, the type of people they're going to for covers, how they handle this, what their timelines are, what their marketing ramp ups are. All those things are great. And it's like going and if you're an employee, you just got out of college, right, and you're going to get a job. Well, you don't start your own company. You don't hang out your shingle as a doctor. You go and work as an intern. You learn the process, you learn the business. And once you get done with that, then you hang out your shingle and you're going to be way ahead. [00:52:59.690] - Robin All that said, I think that by and large, traditional publishing is very unfair to authors from a monetary standpoint. If you look at the type of money that they get and you look at the type of money we get, and we spend years writing books, they spend a couple of weeks editing the books, and they're making the vast, vast, vast majority of the profit right. On our audio rights because they were sold as subsidiary rights, we get 3.5%, okay? And those have made tens of millions of dollars, and we get 3.5%. I mean, it's incredibly, incredibly unfair. What people always tell you is like, don't go into writing if you want to make money, because so few people do. On the self publishing side, I think it's a lot better than when we started. When we started, there was no one doing covers. There was no editors, there was no infrastructure, there were no ebooks. [00:54:10.770] - Michael There was a lot more prejudice against it, but there were a lot less of them. [00:54:16.260] - Robin Yeah. And so for self publishing, there's kind of a couple of different camps, right? So there are a lot of self published authors who I think are running themselves to death because they have a tendency to put out many books as quickly as possible. And, yeah, I'm a little bit torn because they're making very good money doing that, like, very good money doing that. I would never recommend doing it that way. I could never survive in that environment. [00:54:52.210] - Michael I'm actually concerned about that, as I was mentioning earlier to her, was that we now have Chat GPT. And if people can write a book using that and submit that, these people who are relying on high volume, I mean, if that takes them a week to write a book, which is ridiculous, imagine how long it takes for Chat GPT to write a book. They would be flooded. And if you think there's a lot of them now, imagine how many there will be if people start using that as a tool. You can literally be submitting multiple novels a day. And if all the readers want is more books to read and they're not concerned about the quality, I'm really concerned because Chat GPT has probably got better quality than some of the traditional or some of the indie authors. So they'd actually be pushing out all of those groups of people who are trying to do high volume sales. [00:55:48.190] - Robin I think self publishing is easier than when we broke into it. I think it's also got some hard aspects because now a lot of people are relying on ads in order to get their remember what I said, write a good book, get it in front of a few people. I think right now, what a lot of the self published authors are doing to get it in front of those few people are buying ads. And the problem I have with that is anything that's taking money out of the author's pockets is a problem for me. The amount of money that traditional publishers take out of my pocket is a problem for me. The amount of money that comes out of a self published author's pockets for ads bothers me, right? Because you're just trading one Master for another, right? You're trading Amazon ads for publishers take and it shouldn't work that way. We don't run ads. We never run ads. We don't have to run ads. What hasn't changed, what will never change is that people love stories. And if you write great stories and you get them in front of a few people and you're not a beep online, you can make good living doing this, right? [00:57:08.960] - Robin I mean, you know, don't don't, don't be a jerk. Be appreciative of the people who who allow you to live your dream because they buy your books and just keep on writing. And the other thing is, like, Scott, look, Scott, you are very early in your career, right? I get the impression that you think your first series didn't go all that well, right? It's early, dude. It's really early. Keep writing something else will catch them. People will go back and pick up those old books and they'll like those books and you know, it's my, my you you have a, you have long you have many, many books in front of you. [00:57:52.440] - Michael Don't put a little positive spin on this. I'm also fascinated by there's always been in the past, people talk about being a writer. [00:58:00.160] - Robin He was 47 when he first published. [00:58:03.210] - Michael People talk about writing. As they always say, well, it's just like any other job. It's not and I'm thinking to myself, I don't think they've ever had any other job. I don't know of any other career in the world in which you get to be your own boss, get to do whatever you want commute from your bedroom to your office, have, like I said, no boss. And you make good money. But on top of all that, people write. People will write you and thank you for your book. I mean, who does that? If you have people pull you from a burning house, you probably are inclined to give them an email and say, who is his name? I mean, people will go out of their way to thank you and send you gifts and say, this is the most wonderful thing. You saved my life with your book. And you know what? I didn't have to have any of that stress that comes from making a mistake and killing someone because I'm just writing a skip a story. But you get the appreciation, you get the money, you don't have to work all that hard. [00:59:03.130] - Michael And if you're like me, it's fun. [00:59:10.370] - Robin We get to be legends. [00:59:11.420] - Michael Yes. I'm going to trade that for I'm not sure what other job, but yeah. [00:59:18.290] - Sunyi You've been listening to the Publishing Radio podcast with Sunny Dean and Scott Drakeford. Tune in next time for more in depth discussion on everything publishing industry. See you later.