[00:00:01.610] - Sunyi
Hi, I'm Sunyi Dean.

[00:00:03.690] - Scott
And I'm Scott Drakeford, and this is.

[00:00:06.630] - Sunyi
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.

[00:01:00.850] - Andrea
I think there's like a little plus sign on here. Maybe that'll oh, yeah, wait, I think that does something. Is that doing something? I'm not sure if it's doing oh.

[00:01:09.800] - Scott
That'S much, much better. Okay, I just put in my other airpod. I am not diagnosed, I guess, but I am a little bit deaf, at least according to my wife from my years working with heavy machinery.

[00:01:23.930] - Sunyi
I think that might just be being a man, but anyway. (laughing)

[00:01:28.810] - Scott
No. Maybe. I'm going to plead the Fifth on that one. But I legitimately did work in a heavy machinery lab for quite a few years and so sometimes it it is hard to hear. But no, you're you're perfectly fine.

[00:01:43.700] - Andrea
Okay, great.

[00:01:44.420] - Sunyi
Right, I'll start with a quick intro. And welcome to The Publishing Rodeo, where we say the quiet part out loud to Boris. Scott's, excellent summary. We have with us today Andrea Stewart, who wrote the hugely buzzy Boneshard Daughter, which, if I remember correctly, debuted in September 2020 and is therefore one of the few books I know about that actually kind of took off despite the ravages of COVID and has continued to have a lively readership. And we're interested kind of in your journey and what it was like to publish in COVID and your thoughts on that, but also just to talk about the finances of writing, what it's like to actually get advances, live off them, divide them up. And some other things that I'd written down income, year by year, taxes, budgeting around, royalties, really practical stuff that you never hear about in crafts or other sources.

[00:02:34.760] - Andrea
Yeah, I'm happy to get down to the nitty gritty. I talked to my husband and wrote down a bunch of notes about how we handle this stuff because he's a little bit more definitely more nerdy about the retirement aspect of things. But yeah, if we were going to talk about my debut experience, it was funny because I sold my book in 2019, late 2019, and I was so excited. I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to go and travel and do all these things and do all these events, and then literally just a couple of months later, we had COVID hit. Especially because it was like a really long journey for me to get to that point. That was my 7th manuscript that I had written. I queried a few before I got representation, and then I had to go out on Submission and die on Submission before the Boneshard Daughter. So it was kind of like a long journey. It was I think let me see, I think I'd started I got representation in 2013 and then sold Boneshard Daughter in 2019, and then before that, yeah. So it had been twelve years in total.

[00:03:48.400] - Andrea
So I queried for six years and I had books go out in submission for six years.

[00:03:56.090] - Sunyi
That's brutal.

[00:03:58.170] - Scott
That is dedication, for sure.

[00:04:00.540] - Andrea
Well, I mean, it was one of those things where I was like at that point, it was a little bit of a sunk cost thing, right, where you're like, well, what else am I going to do with my life?

[00:04:09.390] - Sunyi
Right?

[00:04:15.570] - Andrea
Not that I didn't have a little bit of a crisis over that because yeah, I did, because I was like, oh, man, I went and got this job that I felt like, okay, well, I don't have to bring my work home so I can focus on my writing when I'm at home. And I could have gone into a more intense field, but I didn't because I wanted to write. I think after my second book died on Submission, I had a little breakdown. I called my parents crying, and they're like, oh, don't cry, it's okay. And I'm like, no, I have to cry for a little bit. That's part of the process. Right? Yeah.

[00:04:57.140] - Sunyi
Can I ask really quickly how they felt about it? Because I'm only half Chinese, but basically I didn't tell my parents I was writing until after I got an agent. And then I just didn't mention it until I sold something because they were not impressed at any point until it actually sold. And then they were like, oh, we looked up your publisher on Wikipedia and it seems like it might be a good publisher, so we're okay with this. It's like, well, thanks for that.

[00:05:24.230] - Andrea
It was a struggle. It was a big struggle when I was growing up. They encouraged it as a hobby, right? But then it was like, well, what are the things that you should actually go to school for? And my mom, even when I was in my 30s, was like, oh, you should be a lawyer. And I'm like, I'm not going back to school, I'm not doing it, so so, yeah, we had like, a lot of I would say definitely, like, I fought with my mom about that kind of thing a lot. It wasn't until I started selling stories and making money at it, right, that my parents became a little bit more encouraging. And then also, I think it helped that I had a job, that I was supporting myself. Not as prestigious as perhaps they wanted for me, but yeah, it's funny because both of my siblings are, like, in tech, right. My sister is like a designer, but she's also working for YouTube. And then my brother was in the tech industry for a long time. So here I am, over here, like. I'm going to write books.

[00:06:38.900] - Andrea
I'm going to write fantasy books. Right? Yeah. So it was definitely a struggle, most particularly with my mom. But too, I understand now, being older and looking back, it's different when you're an immigrant and you're coming to this country and you're like, well, I want better opportunities for my kids. My grandfather on my dad's side was a coal miner, right. And then my dad was a lawyer. So it's like, well, what am I going to be now? Right. Because it can only go up from there. Yeah. So looking back, I think about that, and I'm like, my parents just really wanted the best for me and yeah, we conflicted over what that meant, but I know that they had my best interests at heart. They just didn't want me to be, in their words, a starving artist, which I got thrown at me a lot when I was an adolescent. But although back then it was a huge point of conflict, I kind of understand a little bit more now that it was coming from a good place.

[00:07:51.990] - Sunyi
Yeah, same. I think just my mother came from extreme poverty and my grandmother as well, so they're always looking out for the future for your own kids and the next generation.

[00:08:01.000] - Scott
in fairness to them, if you're looking for not even wealth, but just financial security, publishing is not like, a great place to find it. Right. Even in the success case, which yeah, we'll get into, but the odds are not great, so I definitely understand. I'm sitting here sympathising with your parents, like, yes, you're right.

[00:08:30.770] - Andrea
Yeah. And now especially, like, I have my own kids, I'm like, how would I react if that's what they wanted to do? It's hard because you don't want to crush people's dreams, but at the same time, you want them to have a realistic idea of what life is like. Right.

[00:08:50.350] - Scott
Yes.

[00:08:51.310] - Andrea
In a capitalist society, and at the.

[00:08:55.070] - Scott
Very least, a realistic view of what it looks like to succeed financially in publishing is very important because understanding that the odds are stacked against you and that there's very little financial security, that changes the way at least in my opinion right. It changes the way I operate and have operated.

[00:09:15.910] - Andrea
Yeah. I mean, there's a very different view from the outside looking in as far as what life is like as an author. I think part of it is you see these depictions in Hollywood where I'm like, every time my husband and I sit down and we watch a movie or a television show and there is some aspect of publishing in there. I'm like, these are the things I have to posit. And I'm like, these are the things that are wrong. These are the things that would never happen. And this is like, extremely unrealistic. They're like riding in limos and being sent on fully cruise. Yeah. Or cruises. Right. I think there's that GIF that people like to pass around on Twitter from what I think is Murder She Wrote, where she gets, like, a cruise because she handed in her script early. I'm like, yeah, right, okay. So, yeah, I think that people on the outside looking in have a very unrealistic idea of what it means to make a living as an author. I think they only see a few examples and they kind of take that as the whole. Right. Every single time I'm like, oh, I'm getting a book published, and they're like, oh, you're going to be the next JK.

[00:10:21.120] - Andrea
Rowling. Which obviously now too is like extra terrible. But yeah, that's what people think it's like. But there are only a very few people that actually reach that level.

[00:10:38.010] - Sunyi
Yeah. I think in the UK, the average author income dropped from it was about twelve grand a year in British pounds in 2007. It's currently about 7k a year that professional authors make in income off their writing. It's unlivable. And even in the context, like, when we're talking about bigger advances, the size of advance you have to get to actually make that livable across a period of years is so, like, you're talking in the top one or 2%, basically.

[00:11:07.510] - Andrea
Yeah. No, it's ridiculous. For mine was in the realm of, like the where they say the significant advance. Right. It's like 250 and up. So mine was, I think, similar to yours, Sony, where it was like 300,000 with the exchange rates at the time, like about 300,000 USD for free books. So it's like about 100K each. And that is unusual. You don't generally see that if you look at taxes and everything. I'm not making a tech salary. Right. But yeah, for me it's like, great, it's wonderful, and yes, I can live off of it, and I can live off of it well. But the vast majority of people are having, like they're getting lower, much lower deals. The most common, I think, is in the nice deal range, or very nice. I'm like trying to remember, what are those? Publishers? Marketplace. Yeah.

[00:12:15.150] - Sunyi
I think Courtney Maum says that you generally, I think for our genre, it's like 7-25k per book is probably a ballpark, and that's big five. It's less if you're outside big five.

[00:12:26.670] - Andrea
Right. And you split that out over a period of time just due to the way that contract payments are paid out. And then you look at taxes and everything. I did a little video on TikTok where I broke out, like, okay, well, 100K sounds like a lot, but this is what it would break out year by year. If you're doing this for three books and it's maybe 33K a year about and that's not a lot to live on in the US.

[00:12:55.460] - Scott
It's like half of median income in the US.

[00:12:57.010] - Sunyi
Yeah, right. When I took that 300K, when you remove about 45% for taxes and agent fees and do the conversion to British pounds, it worked out about at 120K British pounds across four years, which is about 30 K a year for me. For me that's very livable. It was a lot better than what I was doing. And we have free health care. And not to sneeze it not to say that I'm ungrateful and I'm not, but it's like you need to know what you are living off if that money is given to you. And factually, this is just how it breaks down. That's what it is. I'm glad to have it, but the fact that it's like you have to be in the top two or 3% to even be in livable category is wow.

[00:13:39.510] - Andrea
Yeah, it's wild. I don't know that there's a lot of other industries that work like that where you have to be in the top two to 3% of your industry in order to actually live, have a middle class life off of your salary. Yeah, it's a little bit wild when you think about that. If I hadn't been married to somebody who makes more money than me and also has health care that I can get, I would have probably moved back to Canada, just tried to make it work like that because at least I could have gotten health care there. Because health care in the US is very expensive if you don't have an employer who's paying for a decent health care plan. Yeah. And even like the decent health care plans here are like, anyways, I'm not going to get into that. But it's not great here. It's not great.

[00:14:33.580] - Scott
It is not great.

[00:14:34.760] - Sunyi
There's a weird thing as well with the bigger advances where it's like if you want to make it into a full time career at that point you then have to put a huge amount of energy into it, if that makes sense. It's like a vicious cycle. I had this discussion with another author, I think in 2020, because she had also gotten a big advance and we basically came to conclusion, like, when you get a big advance, that's your best chance to build a like to build a sustainable income out the gate. And you really need to put a lot of effort into that to keep that momentum going, to keep the books out at a good rate, to do the events, to do all the stuff that's required of you. So you feel this pressure to try basically and make it full time. And if you don't, then you've run the risk that it doesn't work and you've blown your best chance if that makes sense.

[00:15:20.170] - Andrea
It makes complete sense. I think before I started getting offers on Boneshard daughter, I knew pretty early on that something was going to happen with it because we were getting a lot of interest. So I sat down with my husband and we talked about what is our threshold for when I would quit my job. We just went over our finances and everything, and I would recommend everyone who has a book going out to kind of sit down and do that as, like, a mental exercise. Just figure out what is the number for you that you can quit and go full time. For us, it was like, okay, well, if I hit that threshold of six figures, then I can quit my job and try to make that work. And like I said, I'm very privileged in the sense that I am married to somebody that can support us if something goes wrong. Especially like, I have kids, so if I was trying to do this on my own or if he didn't make as much money and we had the two kids, it's like, I don't know that it would be realistic to try to quit my job at that amount, but yeah.

[00:16:31.630] - Andrea
So I think that it's a good thought exercise to go through to figure out what you need to live off of and what makes sense for you to quit your job at what amount. It was wonderful that it came through more than what I expected. So I think that I got really lucky in a lot of sense, because I think where people really got hit hard was in that spring, early summer debut period where everyone was scrambling. Nobody knew what the heck was going on with the pandemic. People were wearing cloth masks. We didn't know that, oh, hey, n 95s are better. Everybody was just kind of panicking a little bit. Nobody was thinking about books, right? Because everybody was thinking about, how do I stop myself from getting this? And I think we were all kind of focused on that. So I think that the debuts that hit, like March, April, May, like, those kind of at that time period was really, really bad. I feel like that put you at a serious disadvantage. No matter how much money your publisher had put into it, the attention was just not there. Like, all the art was gone from the room.

[00:17:41.810] - Andrea
Right. By the time that September rolled around, I feel like we had kind of reached a little bit more of an equilibrium. Like everyone had kind of dug in and understood, hey, this is like a longer term thing. I personally, at that point, didn't think that it was going to be this long term, but at least I think people had kind of settled into the idea and had started to look at, like, well, what am I going to do? During this time, people were doing the bread baking. I think we're starting to read books again. There were those statistics that showed that publisher sales went up during the pandemic. So I think that I fortunately hit right in that time where we were past the panicking phase.

[00:18:28.130] - Sunyi
No, that's really good, and I hope this doesn't come across wrong to any listeners, but I guess something that I think about a lot in terms of finances is that a lot of writers do rely on a spouse one way or another. And I think looking to the future and planning your finances is a really good idea. I did some of that before I went on sub because there was a bracket of money where it's like this just replaces the Social Security that I'm on and wouldn't help me, and then there's a bracket of money where it was helpful. And I think it's worth looking at finances in terms of what happens if your partner dies or you separate. Because basically without getting into it too much, because I always find the story really embarrassing. In about 2012, when I was moving between work visas, something went very wrong at the immigration office here, and I basically became an illegal alien for four years. And after that was eventually sorted out, well, it's embarrassing because it's how this country feels about immigrants and there's no legal support for it. Anyway, at the end of that time, my son had been born and it became increasingly apparent that he had needs which were additional.

[00:19:30.910] - Sunyi
I ended up becoming his carer. And fast forward to 2020 when I was separating from my partner and I'd been out of work nine years. I had no bank account in my name because of immigration issues that dragged on so long. I had no bills or details on my name and all this stuff. So I guess what I'm trying to say is if you ever find yourself in a position where you need to leave your relationship but you can't because you are financially dependent on your partner, that is a really shitty place to be. It sucks. And likewise, I would hate for anyone to find themselves in a situation where their writing career is in jeopardy because the person they're relying on is either no longer able to support them, no longer able to work, or that relationship is not panning out. I'm not going to say don't do it, because sometimes that's the only way you can have a writing career is to allow someone else to support you and contribute to that in the early years. And also some people are going to do it anyway because it's better than not having that chance.

[00:20:38.880] - Sunyi
But do it with your eyes open, I guess, would be my advice there. And be aware that it is a risk. If possible, have some kind of backup plan, have some kind of fallout plan. Spend some time thinking about what your life would look like if that financial support was removed because it happens more often than you think. And as much as you can protect yourself and your future, I think it's a good idea to do that. For me, I never want to be financially dependent on someone else again, but that's my choice and that's a different choice for every person. A lot of people do rely on a partner for part of that time and it works really well. So Scott seems happy. Blink by distress. Scott yeah.

[00:21:22.090] - Scott
I'm definitely in that category, right? There are a few things I'd like to say, so yeah, I'm definitely in that category where I left my job, my career, for more personal reasons than because I thought publishing was going to be a reliable income. Right. I only got 30 grand for three books and I'm not a fast writer, so there were some personal things in there. I just burned out on what I was doing and it was a really good opportunity. With my wife moving to a new, even better job in Boston, a whole bunch of things came together and I thought I was going to take six months off and then get back into a real job. So I guess where I'm going with that is, well, I stayed doing what I'm doing mostly because of COVID and our choices to continue to avoid it and we're still homeschooling and doing all those kinds of things. I'm still homeschooling, but I think the broader point is that publishing as an industry treats us, in my opinion, like gig workers, right? And I've said this a lot in private and maybe before on the pod, but even when you get a good deal like you two did, or even a better deal, whether it's debut or not, there's still no job security beyond whatever you've got a contract for, right.

[00:22:56.010] - Scott
And there's some security in your brand and whatever, but there are no guarantees in publishing and the opportunity cost of leaving whatever other things you could be doing with your skills, talents, time. Publishing can be a big trap, right. And there are very few for whom it is not an opportunity cost trap. And you have to go into it understanding that for sure. You have to understand that you're giving up whatever else you could be doing and you're going into a world of instability and probably not that much money.

[00:23:30.980] - Andrea
Yeah, I mean, I feel like if I were to try to return to the workforce, it would be a lot more difficult at this point. Been out for like three years.

[00:23:38.950] - Scott
Me too. Yes, me too. And right now is probably the worst time in at least ten years to look for a job, so yeah, there is some stress that comes with that, right? Like, I'm super happy doing what I'm doing and with my wife and I situation, thank God she makes a tech salary and everything's good there, but there always is that uncertainty of if something happened, I know I would be fucked. I would be scrambling to find something and my life would beyond the obvious tragedy, my life would change very significantly.

[00:24:23.910] - Andrea
Yeah, I talked to my husband about that kind of thing a lot too. I'm like, oh my God, publishing is just such a fickle industry. What happens if my career just crashes? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? And he's like, you just keep writing. And I'm like, well, yeah, but I'd have to find something else to do too, because otherwise I feel like that would be not very fulfilling to be continuing to do something, not be the only thing that I'm doing. And I'm extremely unsuccessful at it, you know what I'm saying? You have to have something else going on too, so you can at least have a little something to make you feel better.

[00:25:07.060] - Sunyi
There's actually very little guidance. There's not that much guidance about midlist and stuff, but there's some on there, and I found it sometimes on the internet, but there is nothing for what happens if you get an amount of money where you need to actually start managing it. And I actually reached out to people after I got my deal, like I was reaching out to people who ran podcasts and industry experts of like, what do I do? How do I know that this is going to succeed or fail? And almost every single one of them, the ones that bothered to reply just said, oh, you don't have to do anything. Books of that size don't fail, which is untrue. Careers can go off track at any point. So unless you've got a further question, Scott, I was going to kind of spring from that, actually, into some of the things that you've taken notes for, Andrea. I don't actually know exactly what they are.

[00:25:52.130] - Andrea
Yeah, I just took notes on what we do to kind of mitigate some of the tax stuff. Part of the thing that I think people don't talk about or think about is that when you're working as an author, you are an independent contractor, so you are self employed. So that means that you are paying payroll taxes on the employee and the employer side. So you're paying for both of those, which feels like a little bit honestly, like, unfair, especially because it's not like you're getting a tonne of benefits or anything from being an independent contractor or working as an author. So, yeah, there is that, that you kind of get like double taxed on that. So one of the things that I did after that was like, I mean, after I was getting my pretty big book deal was talking to a CPA and figuring out, well, what's the best way that I can handle this? So for me, because of my situation where my husband has the health care and he's making a decent amount of money, so we don't need as much of the income that I'm making. So we ended up setting up an S Corp.

[00:27:12.390] - Andrea
Which is something in the US. I know this is country dependent, but part of the benefit of that is that you can pay yourself a salary from your corporation. So you're going to be paying payroll taxes from the corporation side. But since the salary that you're paying is less than that full amount that you're getting from the publisher, then you're only paying payroll taxes on that amount. So for me personally, what I ended up doing is paying myself about $30,000 a year as a salary. It does have to be a reasonable salary. You can't pay yourself a dollar because the IRS is going to be like that doesn't seem like the kind of salary that anybody should be making, but $30,000 is like a pretty reasonable salary for a writer. So I'm paying payroll taxes on the corporation side and then just payroll taxes for 30,000 on my side. So payroll taxes is Medicare, Social Security and unemployment. And like I said, that's split between the employee and the employer. So I do pay less payroll tax and then excess money that I have, I can bonus it to myself and that I don't pay payroll tax on.

[00:28:33.010] - Andrea
So that is like a little bit of an advantage. It is one of those things though, where you have to kind of sit down and figure out if it financially makes sense for you, depending on how much money approximately a year that you're getting, because there are setup costs for that. It's like several thousand dollars to set up an S Corp. Mind you, you do only pay that once. However, in our case, we don't do our own taxes at this point. We do pay somebody to do our taxes and they do the taxes like our personal taxes and also our taxes for the corporation. And that ends up being like a couple of year. So you really have to kind of sit down and make sure that that makes sense. Obviously, if you are getting a significant amount of money, I would recommend talking to a CPA and figuring out what makes sense for you. Because what I'm saying is what makes sense for me, but that doesn't necessarily make sense for everyone, even if that is the amount that you're making. Another thing that we do is we max out the 401 so that's like the tax advantaged retirement account.

[00:29:47.640] - Andrea
So in the US. Right now, the limit is 22,500, I think, for that. So I just maxed that out. So I put like a bunch of money into there. And I can do an employer match too, since I have the S Corp. Since I have that corporation set up, so I can do a match from my s-corp and I don't know the exact percentage for that. We talked it over with the accountant and they told us an amount to do and. I'm like, okay, cool, that's your job. I don't know exactly how to deal with all the taxes stuff, but the benefit of the tax advantaged retirement account is you don't pay taxes on it when it goes into the account. You do have to pay taxes on it eventually, but the benefit is that that account is going to continue to grow. And when you retire, presumably you're going to be in a lower tax bracket. So when you pull money out, it's going to be taxed as ordinary income, but you're probably going to be pulling out less money than you were making during your working years, because during your working years, presumably you were setting some aside to save for retirement, so you weren't living off that full amount.

[00:31:03.430] - Andrea
So does that make sense?

[00:31:06.010] - Sunyi
No, it did. I was going to ask you two Americans if an S Corp is the same thing as a limited company, or if you know that it's different.

[00:31:15.190] - Andrea
So there's a limited liability company, which I know some people have set up. I don't know the advantages of that, but I know specifically when we talked to our CPA, he recommended doing an S Corp for my situation, especially because mostly we live mostly off of my husband's income. So that allowed us to really max out that 401K.

[00:31:42.300] - Sunyi
Yeah, I went the other way. As soon as I had that money come in, I had to find a tax specialist who does UK and US. Tax because I have dual citizenship. And God bless America, it is one of the few countries where you pay tax based on citizenship, not location. So I went and found our equivalent of a CPA because if I didn't do that, I would be paying like 30% tax in the states, 30% tax here, and agent fee, I would lose 75% of every cheque, which is not worth the time to write. Yeah. And we set up a limited company, I think, because that basically allowed me to file for exemptions. And I blow 800 pound sorry, 1800 quid every year, telling the US. Government that I shouldn't have to pay tax twice. Yeah, I do live off because there's no other income coming in. So I think maybe that's also why I'm on an LLC, because here I pay myself just under the taxable limit, which is like 11 K a year. And then you claim, like, dividends as a shareholder of the company. It sounds so dodgy, but I don't know.

[00:32:48.870] - Andrea
It's weird, right? I mean, I'm like setting up a corporation where I'm paying myself a salary. It's a little bit strange. Yeah. Oh, and then we do also have like a defined benefit pension plan so that any other extra money that I have left over, I can put into that. It usually wipes out most of the profit that I would have incurred. It's like a little bit weird, but I think that it's definitely better than what it would have been otherwise, which is, like, paying so much just because you are both sides of that, the employee and the employer. Yeah, because I know it's like, right about the time and I see all the complaints from my friends about the payroll taxes, where you're paying both sides. Like I said, it's not going to work for everybody just depending on where your income falls, but, yeah, it definitely makes it a little bit less painful for me.

[00:33:56.410] - Sunyi
Yeah, I tried to do my US taxes myself one year, and it had me almost in tears. So that now I do have my accountant do that as well, because especially when you start getting, like, foreign royalties and you get like, a cheque here and a cheque there, and there's just like a million things that you're trying to keep track of, and they want 15 details for everything. And it's a first world problem.

[00:34:17.090] - Andrea
No, we pay somebody to do our taxes every year, and my husband still had to take two days off of work to go through and gather everything to give to the accountant to do the taxes. This is like, one of the things where I'm like, oh, that would be great if Chat GPT could just do.

[00:34:36.580] - Scott
It will.

[00:34:39.050] - Sunyi
It’s writing novels instead.

[00:34:40.720] - Andrea
Great. Taking over the creative field. Make it do the stuff that we.

[00:34:47.390] - Scott
Well, for the record, I haven't made enough money with writing to bother with an LLC or Scorp. And I just looked it up because I'm familiar with each entity type. But I didn't know the exact difference between the LLC and the Scorp. And it looks like the big difference, at least in terms of what we're talking about, is that LLCs pay FICA and so payroll taxes on income tax and distributions. So Andrea talked about bonuses. You could also, I would assume, issue dividends or whatever you wanted that to look like. And in an S Corp, those distributions, so bonuses, dividends, whatever, are only subject to income tax and not the payroll taxes. So that makes a lot of sense. And that's potentially a way to get out of I don't know, actually, what payroll taxes look like right now, but if I remember, they were in the ballpark of, like, five to 7%, right?

[00:35:49.420] - Andrea
Yeah, my husband said he thinks it's about six and a half percent.

[00:35:53.380] - Scott
Yeah, that sounds right.

[00:35:54.530] - Andrea
Yeah.

[00:35:54.790] - Sunyi
Yeah, we don't have six and a half percent. Sorry. We don't have a payroll tax. We have something here called national insurance, but I think it's very similar. It's you're paying into the healthcare system and your pension and essentially unemployment benefit if you need it. Yes.

[00:36:13.100] - Scott
Makes a lot of sense. This is not legal or financial advice. Please don't consult your lawyer and or CPA.

[00:36:24.170] - Sunyi
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's just to give people a sense of the things to think about, really, because I can't even tell you exactly what I do with my accountant. It's a lot of me flailing down the phone almost in semi tears while he just tells me what to do and that'll be fine.

[00:36:40.190] - Sunyi
I really hate money and numbers. Sorry. So I find that all that stuff stressful. I personally don't budget around royalties at all because I don't expect or plan around getting them. If I get them, it's an amazing surprise, but otherwise they're so unpredictable. I don't know if you do the same, Andrea, but I just budget around advances.

[00:36:55.270] - Andrea
Yeah, I don't when I get royalties, it's like a pleasant surprise. I just started getting royalties from my French contract and I was like, that's like extra money I was not expecting. Right. I usually just go off of my contracts. It looks like I will probably start to get royalties pretty soon, which, again, I'm like, that's just an exciting bonus, really. But you can't expect that you're going to earn out. I think they say the majority of contracts do not earn out, and that's a good thing.

[00:37:30.000] - Sunyi
Although I'm not sure we'll get into that yet. But that's generally a good thing. And it's funny because I have discussions with indie authors sometime where they'll say stuff like, oh, but the royalty rates are so low in Trad and it's like, I don't care. I'm not in this for the royalties, I'm in it for the advance.

[00:37:44.560] - Andrea
Because you're in it for the big chunk of money. Right?

[00:37:49.030] - Sunyi
Yeah. The chunk of money that comes upfront is guaranteed.

[00:37:53.130] - Andrea
Right. And it's like mostly predictable. I know that things can come up where it gets delayed, so I don't know what it's like for everybody else. Mine is split into, gosh, I don't remember how many payments. I've got three books, so there was like a payment on signing and there was like I think it was about like a third, I can't remember. And then everything else was split up between payment on delivery, payment on hardback publication, and then payment on paperback publication.

[00:38:26.270] - Scott
Andrea, do you mind if I go back to your debut experience? And I've asked basically everybody who's been on this, at least everybody who's debuted semi recently. You already said that you went a little later in 2020, so maybe you didn't get the full brunt of the COVID panic and everything, but did you notice anything that seemed to work beyond just writing an excellent book? Because it seems like you had a whole lot of interest up front and people obviously love your book, but did you see anything either on Orbit's side or your side that you did that led to success or at least potentially contributed to it?

[00:39:09.150] - Andrea
Oh, gosh, I don't think I did anything, frankly. I mean, for me, it's so hard to know, right? Because you do these things and you don't really have the data to say, well, this is what contributed. Right. All we have are, like, reading the tea leaves, which is not very helpful. You can't go and ask everybody, well, why did you buy my book? Yeah, gosh. I think when the paperback came out and then they had that featured at Barnes and Noble, it's like one of their speculative was a speculative fiction pick where they have it in the front of the store. That was hugely helpful. Obviously, I had nothing to do with that. I think the Orbit put, like, a really good marketing push behind my book. And then as far as what I did for me, I had been wanting this for so long, so I basically just said yes to everything. Like, everything that somebody came by and said, Will you do this interview? Will you do this write up? Will you do this? I just said yes to everything. I don't know if I would recommend that. I'm like one of those people who I just am perpetually energetic and excited about things.

[00:40:19.270] - Andrea
So for me, I'm like, yeah, cool, this is great. I'll talk about my book now. I'm like a little I have pulled back a little bit on that just because I feel my time is so limited. I had two children during the pandemic, so not something I would recommend, but yeah, so that is obviously a little bit more time consuming and makes me have a little bit less energy. But, yeah, I think that it's important to do what you can just so that you don't look back later and think, like, well, what if I'd done this differently? So you have fewer regrets? I think that's, like, the main reason, because whether or not it moves the needle, I think is highly up to debate. I do feel like getting it out there as much as possible so that people keep seeing that title and seeing my name. I think that's helpful because I know there's that whole thing, too, where people have to see something so many times before they'll actually look into it or buy it. So that's what I was thinking about when I was just like, I will say yes to everything, no matter how small your audience.

[00:41:30.310] - Andrea
Right. But yeah, so I think it's like, whether that made a difference, I don't know. I'm absolutely positive that the marketing that Orbit did made a difference.

[00:41:40.400] - Sunyi
Yeah. I think the personal connection can help. I think that when I was sending architects out to people, reaching out to them on social media, sending them, posting them, even if they hate the book, they're less likely to get online and be like, oh, she's a horrible, evil person. They're just going to bury the book and be like, well, the author is nice, but not my thing. Right. And that's still a better response. So it helped for me in that sense.

[00:42:04.260] - Andrea
I think you'd be a nice person there's. That right. Don't misbehave online. Don't be a jerk. Right? Yes.

[00:42:13.480] - Sunyi
I think that was my whole goal for debut years, to not set myself on fire on social media, which seems to happen to a lot of people.

[00:42:20.330] - Andrea
It does. And some of it I have so much sympathy for some of it just because I feel like we're all human, we're all fallible. But you make a mistake online and it's like there's the whole thing, too, where if you apologise online, it only makes things worse. It's terrible. Yeah. It's absolutely wretched. I do have to say I did get a blurb from Sarah J. Moss, which I think was very helpful because I did have people specifically say they picked it up because of that. That was just like a stroke of good luck on my part. I had known her from way back when and when she was on Fiction Press, and I'd done some fan art for her. So I just reached out and was like, I know you're super busy, but we talked about how I was trying to get a book published, and it happened. So if you have time yeah, it was very kind of her to actually find the time and do that, because I know she's got like she had a young kid at that point, and obviously her schedule is very packed, so I think that was helpful.

[00:43:34.690] - Andrea
But again, I think that goes back to like, well, don't be a jerk online. You'll make friends and you don't know where people are going to end up.

[00:43:44.310] - Scott
Yeah. Get involved and be a good person.

[00:43:47.610] - Andrea
Yeah.

[00:43:48.200] - Sunyi
I think that people can tell if you're obviously angling for a connection.

[00:43:53.780] - Andrea
Right.

[00:43:54.240] - Sunyi
It's very transparent.

[00:43:55.700] - Scott
Yes.

[00:43:56.650] - Andrea
Yeah. I think I also know some people tend to think of these things as a hierarchy where it's like, well, you don't have an agent yet, or you don't have a book deal. And it's like, to me, I'm like, it's not about that. Like, everybody starts somewhere and you don't know where people are going to end up and just be kind. I don't hold grudges, but I do remember the people that behaved poorly toward me for I actually got a book deal. Some people can be quite rude, and I don't think that just don't do that. Just don't do that.

[00:44:38.410] - Sunyi
So I guess I would kind of start to close out by asking if you have any kind of top tips or tricks for writers who are starting to dip their toes into contracts and advances and to look at. Managing their finances or any other things you want to suggest about your writing journey in general, that you think would be good for people to know.

[00:44:57.470] - Andrea
Oh, gosh, I think definitely have a group of people that you can talk to, like on a discord or something. I've had these conversations where my friends and I see something that somebody has put on Twitter and we're like, oh, God, they should have just talked to their little writers group before they decided to go blasting that everywhere. Because I think, first off, publishing is a tough industry and it's good to have people to commiserate with and also to compare notes to. And second off, they'll be the ones that are holding you back from getting into the bar fight.

[00:45:37.610] - Sunyi
Our discord just egged us all and they were like, make that podcast, guys.

[00:45:40.860] - Andrea
Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, I think that in this case, that's like, a good idea, because I do think, especially in publishing, so much of it is opaque. I'm always happy to talk numbers with people because I feel like especially I don't know how it is in the UK culturally, but in the US, everybody's encouraged not to talk about their salaries or not to talk about how much money they make. It's considered uncouth. Right, but I'm like, who started that rumour? Right? Because that really only benefits the employer, because then they can keep whatever differences quiet and just pay people what they think that they'll take, rather than what they think that they're worth. So I think that it's really important to talk about this stuff and to be open about it. But, yeah, if anyone sees me at a convention or wants to talk about this stuff, I'm happy to sit down and talk about it again. I just want to give the caveat that I've been very lucky and I'm very privileged. It's not this way for most writers. So, yeah, I've just been very fortunate. Yeah, I guess that's like winding down here.

[00:46:54.390] - Sunyi
I guess it's nice. I suppose I'm going to restart that. I appreciate and other people acknowledge privilege and I try to acknowledge my own, because I think the alternative is you start to believe your own hype, which is the one thing you can't afford to do in this industry. Hype is for buzz and reviewers, it's not for the author. You've got to stay grounded.

[00:47:17.940] - Andrea
Right. There's definitely a survivorship bias. I don't want to say, well, you all should go out and do this, because this is what worked for me, because that's not the way that it is for everybody. We all have different circumstances.

[00:47:31.650] - Sunyi
Totally. I used to turn off podcasts that like, oh, to get an agent, you must go to conferences, like, no, can't do that.

[00:47:41.970] - Andrea
There is no definitive right way. Which is like, it's good to know. It's unfortunate in some ways, but it's also fortunate. It's also good in some ways.

[00:47:52.550] - Scott
Really, just thank you for being willing to share everything you did, because, as you said, this is a very opaque industry and it really only benefits everybody. But us.

[00:48:09.710] - Andrea
Benefits the big corporations.

[00:48:11.480] - Scott
Yeah, it does. And, I mean, this is the part of every episode where we say we love the individuals at our publishers that we've worked with, but as companies, they really are extremely old fashioned and in the worst ways, right, in terms of their perceived responsibility to provide for the people that they work with. Right. They don't see us and we're not right, but they don't see us as employees in any way, shape or form. And even if they are our best friends, I mean, there are some real huge risks associated with getting into this business, and it's not as glamorous as it looks, even when you are a legitimate success. I also wanted to mention, though, that beyond looking at the negative side, and I do appreciate your feelings of having been lucky and being privileged, et cetera, I do just want to say that both of you have done a fantastic job, both on the writing side and the business side, of being and becoming authors. I mean, Andrea, you said you wrote seven books before you got published. You were agented for six years and died on subs several times. That's a level of dedication that not a lot of people have.

[00:49:42.750] - Scott
Right? And I know, Sunyi, you said that you had at least one book die on sub and you've written at least four books, I think, before book eaters.

[00:49:53.350] - Sunyi
No, three books. Two or three. But if I'd had to go through seven books like Andrea, I think I would have given up long ago. So you get kudos from me!

[00:50:04.000] - Scott
Yeah, I almost feel like it was to my detriment to get my first book published, especially before I had time to learn what the lay of the land looked like in terms of the business of publishing. So, yeah, I mean, kudos to both of you, because I think the opposite side of that survivorship bias is you being willing to write down what it actually took you and took to get you to where you are. So congrats and thank you so much for sharing.

[00:50:35.630] - Andrea
Yeah, I do have to say, on the positive side, it's like the best job in the world. I have flexibility and I can determine what my schedule is like if I have to go and if I want to go and spend some time with my kids, I can go and do that and leave work early. It is, on the positive side, like, the best job in the world. It really is.

[00:50:58.790] - Scott
Yeah, absolutely.

[00:51:00.930] - Sunyi
Totally agree. 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..