[00:00:01.510] - Sunyi
Hi, I'm Sunyi Dean.

[00:00:03.610] - Scott
And I'm Scott Drakeford.

[00:00:05.830] - 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.

[00:00:21.890] - Scott
That pattern repeats itself throughout the industry over, over and over. Why do some books succeed while others seem to be dead on arrival?

[00:00:30.570] - Sunyi
In this podcast, we aim to answer those questions and many more, along with how to build and maintain an author career.

[00:00:38.410] - Scott
Everyone signing a contract deserves to know what they're really signing up for. In an industry that loves its secrets, we'll be sharing real details from real people. We'll cover the gamut of life as a Big Five published author, from agents to publishing contracts, finances and more.

[00:00:59.490] - Sunyi
Welcome to this week's publishing rodeo. The Podcast will remake Scott Drakeford cry every week. And with us today is Nadia AFI, who is the author of the Cosmic Trips trilogy, which is a series of Sci-Fi novels. Her writing also focuses on travel, pop culture, Arab, feminism, science fiction and anything else on her mind. I actually know Nadia because we have the same agent in common, and long ago, Naomi sent me your contact details to get a referral. I remember that the show. Yeah. And we are hoping, I guess, to talk to you about the kind of small press experience, because this is something we get a lot of questions about and which we have kind of no experience of. So feel free to talk about your publishing journey and how that went and how you got to where you are.

[00:01:45.970] - Nadia
Great. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Where do I begin? So I think my writing journey began like a lot of authors, where I finished my first book, The Sentience, and I decided I was ready to go find my literary agent and become a publishing superstar. And, of course, my first draught of the book was terrible and I didn't know it. I was a typical inexperienced writer and I queried with a very under edited manuscript. It needed a lot of work, so I started off with a lot of form rejections, eventually went back to the drawing board, got some critique partners, started taking writing workshops and learning what wasn't working in my novel. And then I went back and queried again, this time with more luck. And I eventually signed with Naomi Davis, as somebody mentioned. Then the next process was going on submission. I guess if you listen to this podcast, you're probably familiar, but yeah, when you go out to editors and look for that agent, sends out your manuscript looking for a book deal. So we started off with kind of the typical all the Big Five imprints. I was on submission for over a year, got some no responses, I got some rejections, many of them kind of polite but not quite the story for me.

[00:03:06.490] - Nadia
And then eventually my agent shifted to smaller presses and that's where the book deal with Lane Tree Press happened for the Sentient that came out during the pandemic and turned into a trilogy.

[00:03:18.490] - Sunyi
I was going to ask if you and Naomi discussed submitting to small presses at all for part of your submission strategy, because I think we skipped that conversation. But if I'd actually got on an offer, I think there are a couple of them, like nine star, I would have been like, I don't know. But Flame True is one of the kind of ones that was on my list for the book that died on submission the first time. I don't know how much you discussed with Naomi. Were you looking to Big Five or were you open the whole time to smaller as well?

[00:03:47.370] - Nadia
The discussion really didn't happen in a lot of detail up front. I think the initial goal, naomi was just trying to get a book deal with editors that they thought would go for it. Generally the target was a bigger publisher just because more visibility, more sales, all that good stuff. And then the smaller presses kind of came in after getting passes from the Big Five. But it is an interesting point because I think the default usually tends to be up going with the Big Five when a small press may be a good fit for a particular book, or there may be an editor who can really work well with an author.

[00:04:22.950] - Sunyi
So when Flame Tree took you on, I mean, what was that experience like? And if you don't have to say anything, you don't want to, but feel free to go into any detail you feel like.

[00:04:33.260] - Nadia
It's hard to compare it against anything because my only publishing experience is with an independent press. But I've had a really good experience with Flametree overall. And when I first got the book deal, I actually heard on April Fool's Day. So I thought it was a joke at first, but then once the joy and excitement settled down, I quickly got introduced to the editor at Flametree and mainly worked with Don Doria, who's the primary editor at Flametree, but also with folks from marketing and other areas. And they kind of do an onboarding give you an author questionnaire have you fill out your bio and other information? There were some things I didn't know up front, like if you go to the main bio for the Sentient on Amazon, that was something I filled out, just assuming that they wanted every bit of information about me potentially put into interviews. So it's not the fun zippy bio I would have put there. It was just an information dump here's where I got my degree and wish I'd kind of known little things like that. But yeah, a lot of the communication was kind of through email.

[00:05:36.620] - Nadia
I didn't have a lot of meetings, direct conversations, with Flametree, it was just sort of jumping into getting ready for the marketing and then working on the edits for the book. And that's generally been how I've operated.

[00:05:48.970] - Scott
So you've mentioned marketing a couple of times and just from looking up Flame Tree Press, I don't know a lot about them but looks like they're an independent press but they at least now have distribution through Simon and Schuster. So I'm interested to hear what marketing looked like for your book and how involved you were, what you know about Flametree's distribution and how that compared to your expectations, especially since you went on sub to Big Five.

[00:06:25.680] - Nadia
At first I think I kind of knew off the bat that because I was with a smaller press there was going to be the expectation that they would help out as much as their resources allowed. But I would also have responsibility as an author to do my own marketing and to take initiative where I could get the word out on the book. But I was pleasantly surprised when the first book came out and that was during the pandemic how much marketing folks from Flametree reached out to set up podcast interviews. They have a good network of reviewers and blogs that they work with. So getting reviews of the sentient out and about everywhere. I did a couple of live interviews and podcast interviews so things that I probably wouldn't have even known how to have done on my own, just being an introvert and a non marketing person. So there was a lot of that. The distribution, again, you know that it's not going to be competitive with Big Five. But I was pleasantly surprised to find my book at my local library at bookstores. And then the Simon and Schuster change happened after I'd already had the first book published, which was exciting.

[00:07:35.290] - Nadia
I don't know if I've noticed any big difference on my end as an author in terms of sales and where my book is getting published. It's kind of a little bit of a black box as an author. People always ask, well, where can I find your book? And I'm like, well, I don't know. You could sit with a bookstore, you could not. We don't really have that superpower to know where it'll be.

[00:07:56.780] - Sunyi
I'll quickly pause and say for the benefit of listeners who don't know distribution, which some might not do if you're just querying or on sub. Distribution is basically the core of what trade publishing is built around. And I know were you ever on absolute right, Nadia? Was that no forums? No.

[00:08:12.100] - Nadia
Okay.

[00:08:12.930] - Sunyi
I used to hang out there and they used to get very antsy and kind of anal about the term trade publishing versus traditional. Basically a trade publisher is one that can produce like trade paperbacks or hardbacks and give them mass market distribution, which means getting books into stores and libraries and so on. And for me that's kind of a dividing line. Like, does a small press are they print on demand? Are they ebook only? Or do they have distribution like Flametree does? Sorry, just explain it. I know you probably know that, but some people won't. So bigger presses do their own distribution. Smaller presses need to sort of piggyback. So doll used to piggyback onto ping one and I guess flame tree piggybacks into Simon and Schuster.

[00:08:52.830] - Nadia
Yes, that's my understanding as well. So they do get distribution, like at bigger bookstores and chains, barnes and Noble, I suspect. The reality is they have to compete for the same shelf space as the Big Five. So while I've seen maybe a copy or two of my book on the Sci-Fi shelf, it's never going to be on the prominent front part of the store. Kind of highlighted the way a book with more marketing dollars behind it would probably get.

[00:09:22.450] - Sunyi
Do I remember right? You got a star review, though, from Publishers Weekly, so they were submitting you to the big trade reviews and you were getting reads.

[00:09:30.370] - Nadia
Exactly. Yeah. That was fantastic. And got a review as well in a couple of magazines. So I had a Locust interview as well. So definitely I think it's a myth that with a smaller press, you can't get visibility and exposure. There's maybe a bit more of an uphill battle and you're dealing with a smaller team. But I think that can also be a positive because I don't know about your experience, but I've heard with a bigger Big Five publisher, if you're a new up and coming author, you're kind of competing for time and attention and resources with a lot of other authors, including probably more established ones. Where not to say that doesn't happen as well in a smaller press, but the atmosphere always felt a little bit more egalitarian working with flametree. Like, I felt like as a new author, I wasn't being pushed to the sidelines. I wasn't being kind of given, like, second rate attention. Every time I had a question, I got a quick response. I think you have a better chance, maybe, of getting a little bit more support and attention, if you're like, in a smaller pond.

[00:10:36.230] - Sunyi
Yeah, because I think there's probably less of that. One of the focuses of our podcast is the big gap, basically, between lead and mid list and essentially how that looks between me and Scott. And there's not that possibility. They can't do the big size advances, I suppose, at some of the smaller mid size presses, but that in a way means everyone is more on the same level and also monetarily. They're maybe more invested in your book because it's a bigger deal to them if one of their authors doesn't succeed than it is if like a random midlist debut doesn't succeed. They can just write that off, I'm guessing.

[00:11:11.840] - Nadia
Yeah, I experienced that as well. My starting advance as a new author was not high and that kind of continued for Book two and Book Three, but I was good with that because you end up earning out your advance. And, yeah, I think there's a bit less pressure than you'd have with a higher advance and you still feel like you're going to get that support and that marketing because there is that invested interest in all of their books doing well and finding a readership.

[00:11:39.570] - Scott
Yeah, this is an interesting, I guess, similarity and at the same time a bit of a contrast with what you get at maybe the mid list or even low midlist debut level at Big Five. Right. Because a lot of the things you're talking about marketing wise sound pretty similar to what Tor did for me, at least, and what I think I've seen from Tor and others at the mid list and low midlist level. Right. To be fair, we've talked about a lot of bad stuff, but we've also talked about a baseline good, which is a good amount of effort trying to get the book however they can, to magazines, to reviewers, get some visibility on it. So it sounds like that's not terribly different from what all but the highest dollar type Big Five debuts are getting. The main difference might be, or might have been, I suppose before the Simon and Schuster distribution deal might be how much a bigger house is willing to put into a print run and then how much they're willing to put into getting a certain number of copies on shelves. Because I do have to mention that Tor did a really good job getting my books onto a lot of shelves.

[00:13:05.140] - Scott
I was really surprised at just how many Barnes and Nobles and various places had my book, and I did zero things with that. I didn't even see that happening until it had already happened. I wanted to talk about the whole royalties thing and how that decision process looked for you, nadia, going from, okay, Big Five is a bust for this one. What are my options? Yeah, so here's the context. I have several friends who have reached out, some agented and some not, but since we started this podcast, they've reached out and said, hey, I've had a few books go on sub and they haven't been picked up. And I just feel like I'm at the end of my options. Do I self publish? And they're very hesitant to self publish because they don't feel like they have the right personality, which I completely understand. So did you have any thought of, like, okay, maybe I go self published with this since I have it ready and it's obviously a book you believed in to get higher royalties, or what did your decision process look like there?

[00:14:19.480] - Nadia
Got you? Yeah, that's an interesting question. Self publishing didn't really cross my mind. I think I have another book that died on sub completely. I thought about potentially self publishing that one when I got more of a readership from the trilogy, but I've still held off on that, on the hope that maybe someday it can be revised or I'll just let it go. But for me, the Big Five was definitely kind of the first choice. But once I realised it was probably going to be with a smaller press, if anything, I still see a lot of value in the traditional publishing route. And I think just for that kind of more kind of mainstream kind of exposure, like getting the Review and Publishers Weekly getting those options as well. And in terms of royalties and all of that, I've talked to other authors and other agents, get writers conferences. My deal sounds pretty much the same as a contract for five publisher in terms of percentage royalties you get for like a paperback, hardback audiobook rights, translation rights, all of that, there isn't really that much of a difference. So, yeah, you're not getting kind of the pure royalties that you would get with self publishing, but you're also still getting a bit more institutional visibility, more of a chance of getting your book on the shelves, getting more sales.

[00:15:41.460] - Nadia
Yeah, not the work and labour that goes into being a self published author and having to kind of compete in that world for space and attention. And I do think having an agent, though, is an important component of that. Like, I know there are some unagented authors who go with smaller presses. I think you can go that route, but I think having an agent to negotiate the contract for stepping in if there were any issues is really important with any publisher.

[00:16:11.930] - Sunyi
And I would just throw in as well that sometimes for people who don't have agents and are looking at small presses, you will see a bunch of them, because I've got a lot of friends in the poetry scene. In poetry, you only do small press or soft pub. You do get a lot of these smaller presses that will offer things like 50% royalties that are a lot higher than what Flametree is going to offer, because Flametree is offering standard royalties, but in those cases, that's because those publishers don't have distribution. And the big cost, the big thing that takes chunk out of trade publishing royalties is distribution. So it's like, yeah, you're going to get more royalties, but you won't be in shops, is the stark. Whereas, yeah, Flametree is clearly getting you into stores and it is getting you to libraries and stuff. So it's sort of earning that money in a way. Well, actually, a good chunk of that money is not even going to them, it's going to be going to Simon and Schuster's distribution team.

[00:17:00.620] - Nadia
Right, exactly.

[00:17:01.660] - Sunyi
Just I guess for authors looking to make that decision, it's like the first point I would always tell people to consider is, do you want distribution or not? Because if you're not getting distribution of the press, then I'm not sure it's that different from self publishing, but getting that distribution is so big, even with like a smaller mid size press, it makes the difference, I think, for me.

[00:17:22.030] - Nadia
And I know authors who've gone both routes and there isn't really a right or wrong route, obviously it's sort of what the author's goal is and what works best for you. But I do know some authors who have done some self publishing and then one of them got a deal with Flametree. There are, I think, pros and cons of either approaches, but they were really excited about the Flametree book deal because again, that distribution and getting more of a readership that then may translate into higher sales for your self published books.

[00:17:52.110] - Scott
So being that distribution is the primary thing that you're giving up royalty percentage for. And this is a question for both of you, because I genuinely don't know, other than the big five, who I think are pretty safe bets in terms of being able to get your book and being incentivized to get your book on as many shelves as possible. How do you analyse or how do you find out what the distribution capability of any given press is like? Is your agent even going to know that? Is that something you can ask the press up front and say, what's my print run going to be? And how many stores do you send to? What are some questions people should be asking and to whom?

[00:18:36.550] - Nadia
I wish I could say I was really sharp and on it and asked all those questions up front, but honestly, I didn't really know who to ask or how to ask that question. I do recall Naomi saying that they looked into Flametree's distribution and had a good assessment of it, smaller press, but it wasn't something I really dug into or pursued. I was just honestly happy to have a book deal because after a year on submission I thought for sure that book had died on the vine and getting a deal in traditional publishing was already such a huge milestone for me. That obviously better distribution, that's what every author wants. But I was kind of prepared to kind of go with what was available.

[00:19:19.000] - Sunyi
I know a bit from the vanity press side, weirdly, because I spent far too much time on the internet trying to convince people to not jump off the vanity press cliff. Usually futilely, but so a good press, just as a general rule of thumb, if you go on their website online, that's the first place to cheque. If their website is geared towards readers, that's where they make their money. And geared towards readers means they have a store, they're advertising their books, they're advertising their authors, they should say what their experience is, what their distribution is. If you look at Flametree, it says right on the side, simon and Schuster distribution. It's sort of there up front because they know that it matters to the people who care about those things. A bad press is one which is all about getting authors to submit to them because that's where they're making their money from, is authors submitting to them in one form or another. And on the distribution side, I think, I mean, there are so big indie presses like Scholastic Kensington are not Big Five, but they're massive. Probably have their own distribution, I don't know.

[00:20:17.260] - Sunyi
But yeah, smaller ones will list it. Vanity presses or inexperienced small presses will say things like, oh, we've got worldwide distribution and then if you actually push them, they might say something, oh, we're on Ingram, which is not useful because self pub authors can be on Ingram. So they're not doing anything for you that you can't do yourself. They're using Ingram in its wholesaler capacity, not its distribution capacity, basically. Meaning your book is technically orderable on a massive catalogue of thousands of other books, but no one is actually selling it to stores and that's the difference between wholesaling and distribution. So those are things to look out for, I guess, when you're assessing a good press and just also how long they've been around, because the majority of small presses fold in two years. And I've had quite a few friends whose books went down with their small presses who did not have good quality contracts or rights reversion clauses. So one friend of mine, his poetry book was put out by, I can't remember who it was now a small poetry press. The press folded, didn't have a rights reversion clause in his contract.

[00:21:16.590] - Sunyi
He cannot ever publish those poems again. It's gone. Just things to look out for, I guess. But having an agent really will help it with that so much.

[00:21:27.130] - Nadia
Yeah, that is the agent's job ultimately is to do some of that vetting with you and also to negotiate on your behalf to make sure you've got things like that in the contract that an author may not necessarily know to factor in.

[00:21:39.890] - Scott
So one of the other things that we've talked to various guests, whether they're Big Five or mid size or whatever, is about formats, and that's obviously a big deal in self pub as well. Was your publisher able to do all formats? So obviously ebook and physical, but did you have an audio book made and how did that go?

[00:22:04.970] - Nadia
I did not have an audiobook made. The original contract that was included to have audiobook rights, but Flametree never moved on it for whatever internal reason. I know they were doing it looked like they were doing a lot of audiobooks for the initial releases that they had and then it kind of slowed down a little bit. So I would guess it would be kind of a selective decision whether or not whether it was the juices worth of squeeze because audiobooks are more expensive to make but they're advantageous for authors because of just the higher price of an audiobook and the percentages that is something that I'm still hoping happens, but if not may get rights reverted back to see if another publisher would want to move in on the audiobook.

[00:22:46.150] - Sunyi
Do I remember right that you earned out your advance fairly early with Flametree, even in the middle of COVID and they were quite hopefully happy with that?

[00:22:55.060] - Nadia
Yes, that was a huge relief when that came through. And, yeah, when I got that first statement and I had earned out the advance, that was awesome. And, yeah, it led to the trilogy getting published, which was my ultimate goal, getting the full story told. Congratulations. Thank you. Definitely a perk of having a lower advance as well, I guess. I don't mind saying it. It was $1,000, which is, I think, not unheard of for a new author and with a smaller press.

[00:23:23.100] - Sunyi
Yeah, I think like Angry Robot does kind of 1500 to 3000. So they're kind of similar level.

[00:23:29.040] - Nadia
And then the advance got a little bit higher with book two and book three. But, you know, because they're running out, right?

[00:23:35.640] - Sunyi
Yeah.

[00:23:36.400] - Nadia
But yeah, it's it's not, you know, job quitting advances by any means.

[00:23:41.350] - Sunyi
So when you go on sub again, if you do, you may not be able to say because I know maybe your publisher listened. Do you think that you would look for other publishers again just to see what you can get in the future? I don't know if that's possible or if you feel like it's possible to do.

[00:23:56.910] - Nadia
Yeah.

[00:23:57.290] - Sunyi
Just keep moving up that money trail.

[00:23:59.440] - Nadia
Yeah. If I kind of stay where I am right now, I think I'll be happy. But I am trying to go bigger and go with Big Five. So actually, with my latest book, I'm currently kind of free, contractually, to have it sent out anywhere. So I have a book that's about to go out on sub and yeah, we'll see what happens. Fingers crossed. Yeah.

[00:24:21.510] - Sunyi
And I guess I would also ask if you have kind of general pitfalls or things that you would warn authors about for that experience or things that they could look out for when they're considering going through that process.

[00:24:32.820] - Nadia
You mean being on submission?

[00:24:35.830] - Sunyi
Well, I guess looking at small presses or at signing the contract or, for example, your audio rights didn't get used. Maybe you might recommend people try and hang on to those. I don't know if that's possible. Whatever springs to mind, really.

[00:24:50.020] - Nadia
Yeah, I'm thinking through that. Yeah. I think having a good upfront conversation with your agent, if you have one, to talk about submission strategy, what the goals are, what is realistic, maybe considering smaller presses in the initial round of submission if you're kind of more agnostic about where you want to go with publishing. The audiobook thing was definitely something I didn't really think about when I first kind of signed the contract. I was just excited and I assumed that if it was in there, it was going to get made. And then, yeah, people kept asking, when is the audiobook coming out? It's like, I don't know. And it's still an open question. Asking questions, not being afraid to ask questions, getting clarification on the contract. Obviously, if you're unagent, that's even more important, right? To have those frank discussions with the publisher.

[00:25:39.910] - Scott
That's exactly what I went through. Right. If it's in the contract and the publisher is angling to get the rights for it, you assume it's going to be made. But I do once again encourage everyone, regardless of who you're selling your rights to, to have reversion clauses for all formats and all separate territories or geographies or however they name those in the contract. That's a big thing I would watch out for.

[00:26:07.570] - Sunyi
That brings up a couple of smaller questions I was thinking of. So this is a bit random, but so one of them is like, did you get any say on cover? And the other question is, what happens to translation rights and world rights and things like that. I don't know if they try and shop them.

[00:26:21.130] - Nadia
Honestly, I'd have to go back and look at my contract. There's been no translation rights currently. It's just been in English so far. I've dealt with translation rights for short stories and that was more just getting approached by international magazines asking if they can translate and reprint a short story. But yeah, I'm not sure how things really work on the Flame tree side there and then sorry, what was the other part of your question? It's been a long day.

[00:26:45.150] - Sunyi
I was just if you had any involvement same here. If you had any involvement in cover and outside of it.

[00:26:51.670] - Nadia
Yeah, I did have an input on the COVID The way it worked with Flametree part of the author questionnaire, you're welcome to pitch ideas about the COVID like just anything you think might make for a good cover. So I threw in just a couple of lines, potential different ideas, and then I got an initial preview of the COVID And I'll be honest, I didn't love the initial version that they sent over and reached out to my agent and said, hey, how should we handle this? I was kind of in that new author stage of wanting to pick my battles very strategically and not cause drama or cause a fuss with anything. But there are battles that are definitely worth picking. And the COVID is really a critical thing for your reader's first impression of the book and can cause someone to pick it up or walk by it. So it was an important one. And so I came back with some feedback on what I thought worked, what didn't work, and then we went through a couple of back and forth and then they nailed the COVID and it was perfect. So give the thumbs up on that.

[00:27:56.650] - Nadia
Flame three were great about. Working with me. They wanted a good cover and they wanted me to be happy as well. And we got there and then for books two and three, kind of right off the bat, the covers were great. I just gave a thumbs up and we were good to go. But it was definitely a collaborative process. But unlike self publishing, you do have to kind of work with the publisher because ultimately they know what works and they want to sell the book. And definitely, I think if we just didn't come to an impasse, there's a possibility that they would just say, look, tough luck, but we know what we're doing and this is going to be the COVID of your book. So, good input but not full creative control is kind of the reality of traditional publishing.

[00:28:36.630] - Sunyi
In fairness, Scott's not got any translated editions either and got no say in his cover. So you're one uping him there. Sorry, Scott.

[00:28:45.330] - Scott
Yeah, I was involved in early discussions, but by the time sketches and things came back around, they definitely took my feedback into account. But it was more or less locked in as what it was, plus or minus some few adjustments. So those questions brought up something I'm curious about with the smaller press experience as well, and that's relative to editing. So a brief overview of what I went through and what I think most have gone through in Big Five is you go through an editing process with your editor, basically up until your editor is willing to say, yes, I accept this as your manuscript, and it's more or less done. And then it goes into copy edits, and then there are some other things with production and proof readers going through it. So proof edits, is that more or less the same process or what do they do at that level?

[00:29:45.280] - Nadia
Yeah, pretty much the same process. I basically had the three levels of edits, ones with the chief editor, then copy edits after that that were a little bit more granular and then final proofreading. And that process obviously took place over several months and had a deadline tied to it. I was able to get some deadline extensions when my day job was just completely crazy without pushing the actual deadline of the book. But yeah, I'd say the only difference I've heard from talking to other authors is editors at other publishers having larger scale edits. So kind of changing structure a little bit more to the story, doing bigger rewrites, changing characters. And my experience with Flametree was that the first round of edits were a lot more kind of like line by line, like looking for consistency and logic and changing some details. But I never underwent major edits for the book. Once I signed the book deal, I did them with my agent. I actually removed an entire character from my first book. But yeah, the editing process was pretty hands off and pretty focused on line by line edits from the very beginning.

[00:30:55.740] - Sunyi
Sorry, I was just looking at Adelaide. So I saw you had a hardcover release, which is really cool.

[00:31:00.500] - Nadia
No? Yeah, hardcover and paperback both came out at the same time, which again, I'm not sure is really typical because I know a lot of times you see a hardback before you see a paperback. But mine came out with both at the same time and surprisingly sold quite a bit of both types. Like there were quite a few people who bought the Hardback. Yeah, even though there was a paperback option, which I guess some people just like holding the hardback version.

[00:31:24.850] - Scott
That is really interesting.

[00:31:26.000] - Nadia
Well, I was going to say yeah, and there was also the Kindle version which obviously sold a lot more and then they did the kind of typical like 99 cent sale on Amazon which gave me a little orange tag, put me in like the top 100 briefly, which was very exciting. So you're not really making any money off of it, but you are getting more readers and more exposure. I'm guessing. That's probably typical for bigger publishers as well. Like putting your book on sale after it's been out for a while just to kind of boost visibility.

[00:31:57.550] - Sunyi
Thank you for being so concise on that. I found it really fascinating because we talked to Clay a bit about his kind of mid size press experience and other than that I've only seen small presses in the poetry side. Do you think very quickly on writing short stories, do you think that made a difference with editors or in the querying? Because I think that's something people ask a lot and I always felt like everyone always says to write short stories and it's like I did and then no one really cared when I was querying or on submission. I don't know how you found it.

[00:32:32.850] - Nadia
Yeah, I think my view on it is if you're a writer who doesn't like short stories or they don't really appeal to you, don't force yourself to do them. But I think they can have some benefit and some crossover. I think. For me, I kind of started off with the first novel and then I had a short story published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction called The Bahrain Underground Bazaar and I was really excited to be in Fantasy and Science Fiction. It's one of the bigger short fiction magazines out there and I got some visibility from that and I got it reprinted in a lot of anthologies and I noticed a little bit of an uptick in sales after that of my book. So readers see it in one place and then go and try to find other things that you wrote. But it also gives you contacts and connections. I met some additional editors who wanted to publish it in my anthology and just got onto more podcasts and it just provided some good crossover and I think short stories can also have good kind of bang for buck in terms of time taken versus investment.

[00:33:39.120] - Nadia
You've got the initial kind of sale of the short story and then you've got all the reverberating sales if your story gets reprinted and all of that. And it takes a lot less time to write, at least for me. Once I get a good short story idea, I can knock it out in a weekend and then spend a couple of days editing and sitting on it. Whereas a novel is more of an endeavour. A little bit more of an endeavour, yeah. With or without payoff. I think you've had that experience, too, like written books that have died on the vine. And it's always a little soul crushing when something you put over a year of your heart and soul into never sees light of day.

[00:34:17.110] - Sunyi
I've just got one final question, which is whether you yourself did any promotion that you felt made a particular difference during debut year? Because that's something we get asked a lot and basically neither Scott nor I have the headspace or ability to self promote. It's completely fine if you say no.

[00:34:33.180] - Nadia
But I don't think so. COVID definitely didn't help with that. I think even without COVID, I'm not the most marketing savvy person. I try to use social media as best as I can and when I get offers to do interviews and get out there, I take them. But yeah, I'm definitely not creative in that way.

[00:34:56.220] - Sunyi
No worries. That's fine. Yeah. We were going to invite you to just plug yourself in your book, if that's okay. And just to thank you generally so much for coming on to talk about that experience.

[00:35:06.130] - Nadia
Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah. This has been a different kind of interview from I'm used to kind of talking about myself in my book and talking about the inspiration. Exactly. Yeah. But talking about the ins and outs of publishing is fun.

[00:35:20.310] - Sunyi
It is often kind of talked about.

[00:35:23.290] - Nadia
Like, on the side with writers when you're at a conference or chaikon. That was fun. But yeah, let's see, how do I talk about myself in a way that sorry, my brain is completely fried from today. I've been on meetings since like 07:00 A.m. So I'm trying to recalibrate myself. But yeah. My trilogy, Cosmic Trilogy, about Cloning cults and consciousness begins with a main character who has escaped a religious cult in future North America. She gets assigned to a controversial Cloning project. He is a neuroscientist whose talent is digging into the memories and subconscious of her subject. So she can go in, dig through your thoughts and memories and display them on a hologram and then in a therapeutic way, kind of help a person navigate their experiences and their memories. And so she gets brought onto this Cloning project because every subject they've tried to clone has died in the third trimester and nobody knows why and head of the project thinks the problem is psychological. So, of course, my main character, Amira, gets brought on and quickly discovers that there's a little bit more going on and somebody is deliberately tampering with these women's memories to try to hide something.

[00:36:40.270] - Nadia
And that turns into a big conspiracy that involves like, a shadowy New Age movement fanatics from these compounds who are basically trying to stop cloning from happening at any cost because of the threat it poses to their ideology. So that's the premise of the trilogy and it goes into twisty places in books two and book three. And definitely, I think, my upbringing. I'm American and also Palestinian. I grew up in the Middle East, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. So I've kind of seen the consequences of religious extremism in societies panic about women's rights and also just political polarisation as our society becomes more fractured. Those were kind of the things that were stewing in my head when I first decided I'm going to take a crack at this author thing and actually write a novel.

[00:37:29.300] - Sunyi
Scott's Nodding because he's used to his own form of kind of evangelical extremism.

[00:37:34.750] - Scott
Escape story, I think, yeah, no, you're totally fine and I'm sold. I love that premise. You do a really good job pitching it.

[00:37:43.720] - Sunyi
Thank you so much. It was actually really informative and I hope listeners will find that informative as well because we do get a lot of lot of questions about kind of what life outside the Big Five, which is honestly reality for a lot of authors. It's a lot more options if you go that route.

[00:38:00.610] - Nadia
Yeah, no, I think I've really learned a lot from when I first started querying and I think a lot of people who aren't really in the publishing space have this kind of fantasy of what being a published author looks like. And people immediately ask me, oh, when are you quitting your job? And you have to kind of explain that that's not the reality for most authors, and for most of us, it's a side job or something we do because we're really passionate about. And so I think my attitude has gotten a lot more realistic since I've been published and I'm enjoying the ride.

[00:38:40.070] - Sunyi
You've been listening to the publishing Radio podcast with Sunyi, Dean and Scott Drakeford. Tune in next time for more in depth discussion on everything publishing industry. See you later.