Podcast appearances and mentions of colin coyle

Colin Coyle joins me to talk about current events and hot topics. Is cheesecake really a cake or faux. What happens after this life. Can we become like God and not be blasphemous?

Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between! This week, we are joined by Antoine Bandele, author, publisher, and a lot-of-other-stuff-er. He's a busy guy who knew what he wanted out of the fantasy maps for his series world of Esowon, and found help on Fiverr to see it realized. You'll want to start out, if possible, with his page of maps open in a browser: https://www.antoinebandele.com/esowon-maps We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, concerns, and tell us your favorite novel covers! We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Episode 43: The Maps of Esowon, Cartography with Antoine Bandele transcribed by Sara Rose (@saraeleanorrose)   [0:00] K: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of We Make Books, a show about writing, publishing, and everything in between. My name’s Kaelyn Considine and I am the acquisition editor for Parvus Press.   R: And I’m Rekka, I write science fiction and fantasy as R.J. Theodore and today we have a very, very awesome guest. This is Antoine Bandele. He happened to write a book that I happened to read recently and when Kaelyn suggested that we do a whole series on artwork, I said,” Ooh! We should talk about cartography, and I have the book and the author for this episode.”   K: Yeah, we said Artwork August, it became more “Artwork Series.” But cartography is a really important and, I think frequently underappreciated, certainly, part of a book. You know, as Antoine mentions in the episode, fantasy books especially, it’s almost expected that you have some kind of a map or something in there.    R: It might be overlooked as far as the work that goes into it, but if it’s not there, it will not be overlooked.   K: Yeah.   R: Your fans will be talking to you about, “Excuse me?! You invented a world?!”   K: Visual representation of this world.   R: Yeah. So this was a series of maps at the beginning of the book that I read, which was By Sea and Sky, an Esowon story, and there were a series of maps at the beginning, including a diagram of one of the vessels in, as the title kind of gives it away by sea and sky, so there’s an airship and there’s a great, even just a layout of the airship. Almost plan-like, ship...plans.   K: A schematic.   R: Schematic! That works. I took interior design for a year, I don’t know what to call the drawings. Hey! Drawings! That’s what we called them.   K: Pictures. Pictures of boats.   R: Yes. So, almost like a draftperson’s drawing of an airship concept. So those are all in the beginning of the book and, when I opened them, I was just like—I don’t know if they loaded. Because you know an eBook will load to a certain page when you open it and, like, you have to go back to see the preceding pages.   I always go back to the cover because I always wanna see how the cover looks on an eReader because this is just a minor point of mine. And I happened to see the artwork, the cartography. Whether it was loaded after the automatic page one , or before. I was like, “Oh! These are nice! These are really nice,” because Kaelyn and I have talked about maps before for books. Colin and I have talked about maps before for books. I did my map for my books and that was a whole heck of a project and I wish I had somebody else to do the work for me because it’s not easy.   K: I think we think, like, “Oh, whatever. You just sit down and you draw some borders, some boundaries, some oceans. Throw some mountains in there, I guess, and you’re done. It’s not that. It’s not easy at all. It’s certainly not that easy. There’s a lot of considerations that go into building a world and then putting it on a piece of paper. You can be an excellent artist, are you that good a cartographer, though?   R: Cartographer’s a big word and it’s a big responsibility.   K: So, anyway, we had an absolutely fantastic time talking to Antoine. Hopefully we’ll have him back at another date because oh my god does that guy do a lot of stuff.   R: Yep, yep.   K: So, anyway, take a listen and we hope you enjoy.   [intro music plays]   R: I just wanted to double check the pronunciation. A: Bandele. Kind of like ándale, with a B.   R: Okay.   A: It’s actually a mistranslation. [laughs] It really should be Bamidele, but I guess somewhere, the naming coming over to America, it got—   R: A syllable fell off?   A: Yeah. So now it’s Bandele.    K: So, Antoine, do you wanna take a moment and introduce yourself to our listeners?   A: Yeah, so my name’s Antoine. I do many-a-things but the thing that’s most relevant to today is that I am a publisher and writer and I do fantasy works, particularly fantasy works that are inspired by pre-colonial African myth and folklore, anything of that nature.   K: And we brought you on today, specifically to talk about a certain special kind of artwork that pops up in especially fantasy books sometimes.   A: Yeah,especially fantasy.   K: Yeah! Maps and cartography. Rekka and I wanted to do a series on artwork in books. We’ve been threatening to do an episode about cover art for a long time. And as we were working through this, we were kind of like, “You know, there’s so much art that goes into a book that you don’t think about or that we take for granted and I think one of those, definitely, are the maps that you find in the books. Because they add so much to the stories and they give the reader a great sense of the world that they’re about to explore and just helps set the stage.   I think that they’re—well, everything’s relative in terms of difficulty, but designing a map is very different than designing cover art.    R: Yeah.   A: I would suspect. I don’t even know. I just hire people to do it, so I dunno.   R: Well that’s one of the smart things, right? Is making sure that you stick to the areas that your expertise is heavier in, and don’t try to be Master of Everything. So when we were talking about this Artwork August, I had just finished reading your book By Sea and Sky. So, I just served up these maps into my face and enjoyed them and then we started talking about doing artwork.   I instantly said, “Oh! You know what great maps I’ve seen? And they’re not like in an old, 60-year-old Lord of the Rings edition. Let’s talk about some current stuff.”   A: Mhm.   R: These are really great maps and I didn’t even know at the time, and it blew me away, but you found these on Fiverr?   A: Yes, so a woman named Maria Gondolfo, who actually is from Italy, which is awesome about working remote or online, is that you can work with people all across the world. Like, my first book, I think my editor was from Texas and then one of my beta readers was from the East Coast. I think York was one of them. And my cover artist is from Bangkok and then I have my cartographer, she’s from Italy. So it’s a lot of people all over the world who get to work with me.   She is renflowergrapx on Fiverr. And I got really lucky because I think she was maybe the first person I found on Fiverr.   K: Oh, wow. Okay.   A: Just by searching up “fantasy maps.” I think my brother had directed me there because he usually goes there for Dungeons and Dragons maps, and that’s what she usually does. She does Dungeons and Dragons campaign maps for people.   K: Very cool. Yeah.   A: And I was like, “Oh! Do you also do it for books? Or have you done it?” She’s like, “Yeah, I’ve done a few books before. Just give me what—” Oh! I should show you guys this! I actually have drawings. So, I usually would do a sketch-up of the map itself and then she goes and does her amazing work. I should find that.   K: Getting a map together—as you’re grabbing these sketching that you did—it’s no small thing. It’s a commitment. It’s a very difficult—I think a lot of people underestimate how difficult it is, even as the writer, to sit down and plan out the map in your head. What made you decide, “Yes, this is the book that I wanna take this on.”       A: So the reason I need maps is that, yes, it’s a fantasy fable. It’s actually expected from the fantasy reader to have a map and it helps, as you were saying before, contextualize the world. Especially when people start talking about locations in the world. It’s like, “What? What are you referring to? I don’t know this world.” But you can refer to the map and be like, “Oh! He’s talking about that little corner in the north!”    So the way I do my maps, is I really just take from real world landscapes and basically just do copy-pasting. So I’ll take a sheet of clean paper and then I’ll have a section, like, I think some of the islands are based on some SOutheast Asian islands. Not the big ones you would recognize, but the little ones that are off to the size. And then I just blow them up to be bigger. I’m like, alright cool, and then I do that. And the benefit of that is that you’re getting a natural land formation versus it just being completely out of your mind, in which case sometimes that can come out with mistakes and that sort of a thing. So I just do that, mostly as a way to help the reader figure out what this world is and what it’s about.   K: And so you’re starting—rather than starting from scratch, you’re drawing inspiration from existing geography—   A: Correct.   K: But this is a fantasy world, things are gonna exist there that don’t quite exist in South Asian islands.    A: Right, exactly. Well, ‘cause I don’t have a full world map right now because I’m building out the world section by section and then connecting it later.   K: I was gonna ask, did you sit down and figure this out all at once or are you kind of adding a new land as you need to?   A: Yeah, I add new land until the world map is filled out. So, for looking at the Esowon Esterlands map. If you turn it clockwise, you might notice that landscape, possibly. It’s a little scrunched up, but if you look at it, it is basically Panama.   R: Okay. Yeah.   K: Yep, yep.   A: The space between South America and Central America.   K: Alright, yes, I can see it.   A: But flipped the other way so it looks a little more reminiscent of Northeast Africa and Arabia.   R: Yeah.   A: And then, also, the middle islands are based on the Carribean, so it’s inserting the West Indies in the Red Sea, basically. But, again, making a fantasy of it because that stuff doesn’t necessarily exist. Even that, you know, the indication of Octa, that’s supposed to be Egypt and the Delta Nile, that’s supposed to look like the Nile, but it’s obviously not.    Victoria Falls is kind of in that bottom section. So it’s very much inspired, and this one in particular I did that because I, specifically was going the Song of Ice and Fire route—And that’s actually what George R. R. Martin did. Westeros is basically just the UK turned upside down.   K: Yep, and stacked on top of each other a little bit.   A: Exactly, and there are some differences to meet the standards of Westeros, but that’s essentially the basis for what I did for this, you know, making it somewhat familiar but then still being its own thing in a fantasy realm.   K: Yeah, and for reference, if you’re wondering what we’re talking about, we’re on Antoine’s website where he has all of the maps from the books displayed on there. And a link to find the cartographer who did them. They’re very impressive.   R: And that link to this page will be in the show notes. We should’ve said that at the top so that people could bring him up while they listen, if they’re not driving. Because who commutes anymore?   [A and K laugh]   A: Right.   R: Yeah. So you went to Fiverr. Was that your first stop looking for a cartographer?   A: Yeah, that was definitely my first. I think I was first flirting with the idea of doing it myself and then I was like, “Nah, I’m not gonna do it myself.” Because I realized very quickly, as you were saying, it’s actually more complex than you would actually expect.   R: Oh yeah.   A: And there’s actually a lot of rules to cartography that people don’t think of. Like, the way the rivers flow, they have to come off mountains. Stuff like that. The way port cities usually are. There’s a lot of little nuances that people don’t really recognize. I definitely just went to Fiverr and I just got really lucky. I honestly, my first search—I might’ve looked at a few people, but then Renflower was a standout for me, for sure. She had an option for standard black and white and she had a full color and and I saw her examples and I was like, “I don’t think I have to look anymore! Lemme just, like, reach out to her and see if she’ll do it.”   K: This is it!   [11:44]    R: Nailed it. A: And then what’s really awesome, and she surprised me on this because By Sea and Sky, it features airships. And I was looking and I was like, “Aww, I’m probably gonna have to find a new person, because she only does maps,” right? But that’s my thinking. I was like, “Well, hey, I need like an airship. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that before…” and she’s like, “Yeah! I love doing them!” She says it gets kind of old to just do her maps, you know, week in and week out. And she was really excited. She, actually I think uses it as an example or whatever now.    K: Oh, awesome.   A: I needed that in particular because I was writing the third act of By Sea and Sky which takes place, there’s like a battle sequence at the end. I was like, “Oh, man. I need to know, solidly, what the landscape of the—” Basically I had to know which level everybody’s on, how are they getting trapped—   R: What room’s above them and under them, yeah.   A: Yeah! Exactly! So I got her to do that and, again, I got references, something like that. I was like, “Is this kinda like the—” I describe it as looking like a ship, but it flies and has like the sails on the sides so it can fly and that kinda stuff. And the different rooms and where the captain’s quarters is and the mess hall and all that kinda stuff. So that was a lot of fun for her and for me.   R: So this sort of comes from her experience doing D&D maps, I assume—   A: Right, exactly.   R: This was kind of laid out where, you actually could, if you printed it out big enough you could do a campaign through the ship, reenacting the battle from the third act.   A: You definitely could.   R: Yeah. Yeah, and it’s great. There’s a kind of isometric view of the ship, where you get the wow factor of what the ship looks like with the lateral sails and the more traditional sails, and then you get the deck structure. And then you get the breakdown, floor by floor, almost like architectural drawings.   A: Right. And that’s because she wanted to feel like it was in the world, so some of the names you see on the bottom right are actually characters in the world, the engineers who built out—    K: Ohh!   R: Oh, yes!   A: Very, very small in the bottom right corner—   K: Very cool!   R: I didn’t even try reading it because it was so small.   A: Janaan Malouf, Ismad al-Kindi, who some of them actually show up in the book, like Ismad al-Kindi is the engineer that we know in the story itself. Janaan is someone we meet in book two. But these are actual, in the year of The Viper, the year of 3582. So she made it feel like it was in-universe, except for the typeface with the navigation and whatever that looks very much like it’s us typing that in, versus it being written.   But, otherwise, it’s supposed to be like an in-universe kind of blueprint.    R: And there’s something to be said for legibility, too, if you want someone to read that.   A: Exactly. You gotta be able to read it, though.   R: I mean, we all assume it’s translated into English and maybe it’s also translated into a serif font—   A: Exactly!!   R: So. Yeah.   A: Right.   K: So, you got on Fiverr, you found Maria. What is this first conversation like, while you’re trying to explain and describe this.   A: Oh my god. Well, she—so most Fiverr professionals do this, where they’ll ask you to provide an explanation, for what you want, so there’ll be boxes of, “Do you have fantasy examples that you want your maps to look like?” Because she does several different kinds of styles. “Please tell me a little bit about your story, what is it about? What’s the landscape like? What’s some of the history behind the landscape.” So you explain all this, you fill out the boxes and then you have a conversation.    Well, first, she has to accept it. So when you send it off, you’d be like, “Okay, well, is it cool? Would you wanna work with me?” She says yes or no. Yes. Then you continue forward and then she takes, however long, I’m not sure how long her thing is on her website right now, but I think when I did it, it was like five to ten days, or something like that? I’m not sure. She’s like really popular now. I think she even has a Level 2 badge or something like that.   K: OH, great!   A: Or something to that. I can’t remember, but… So we do that and we talk together, and she’ll send me a rough and I’ll maybe have adjustments. We’ll go back and forth until we both are happy with our final product, and it just goes on like that.   K: Yeah, and actually, as a call back to the previous episode we did with Colin Coyle, who does most of the art direction for Parvus Press, you guys have to have a contract or an agreement in place. When you say you’re talking to Maria, you have to check all of these boxes, there’s gotta be something set up.  You don’t just, you know, hand someone something and say, “Hey, I want it to vaguely look like this,” and then you send them some money and you get back you—   A, laughing: Yeah, no.   R: And Fiverr’s got that kinda built in, don’t they?   K: Yeah.   A: Yes, they do. Fiverr, Upwork, any of those other freelancer websites, that’s kinda the benefit of it because you don’t have to do all the legal stuff because it’s already all done in the background for you. That’s the reason why it costs an extra fee to use those platforms because they’re basically managing all of that paperwork, kind of a thing.   R: Mhm.   K: But worth it, if that’s something you don’t want to worry about.   A: Right.   K: Because we—there’s a lot of really talented, awesome artists on Fiverr, obviously, but they’re—you don’t always know you’re running into and what their work ethic’s gonna be like. Sometimes more so than the work that they’re producing. So if you’re looking to have something like this done, and you’re considering, “Do I go out in the world and find someone, or do I go to somewhere like Fiverr?” There is that, at least to consider as the built-in protection that comes with Fiverr. They have all these policies in place already, so you don’t have to think or worry about that.   R: And there’s some motivation for the artists to maintain their reputation on the side, too.   K: Absolutely.   A: Right, exactly.   R: So these are color maps. What made you choose color? I mean, they’re very colorful, too. So, obviously, digital Kindles and eReaders and on your website, they look fantastic. But, traditionally in books, you’d have like a black and white interior print—   A: Just black and white, yeah.   R: Yeah, exactly. On the ink-readers you won’t see color. So was it a price difference and you just decided you wanted to see that color? Or, what was the decision as you’re art directing her? Even though she’s applying her know-how and all her experience creating these things, but at a certain point certain aesthetics are up to you. So, what were the decisions you made as you went through this?   A: So, that was just her having that option available. Because I was just expecting to go into it black and white, like it was. I mean, that’s just how it is. But then she had like a premium version that wasn’t that much more expensive and I saw her examples and I was like, “Oh, yeah! If color’s an option then let’s do color! Why not?”   R: Mhm.   A: But, of course, you can only see it if you’re looking at it on the Kindle app or if you’re looking at it on an eReader that has full color available to it. If you’re looking on a Paperwhite or anything like that, or on a printed page, you’re not gonna have that. But that’s all a thing, too, that she factors in is that she makes sure that the greyscale, once you put it in greyscale, does it still function? So when we do our passes between each other, she actually factors that in. Every time she sends me a color, it also shows up in black and white as well, to make sure that it functions in both formats.   R: Oh, excellent.   K: Very nice, yeah. More like lineart, kind of.   A: Yeah, ‘cause a lot of times amateur cartographers or amateur artists don’t consider that you can’t just flip a switch, necessarily—   R: Yup.   A: It’s a separate skillset to have black and white versus color.   R: That’s like all the Mad Max and Logan and other movies. They’re starting to release editions that are in black and white. And it’s not just that they desaturate the film, they actually go through and adjust it, just like they were producing a whole new movie, to really play with the tone and the volume and the color and stuff like that. It does take a lot of work to remove all that color and still have something that’s lovely to look at.     [19:26]   K: This is a far more complicated project that requires a different skillset than just: Well, I’m going to draw some mountains on a nebulous looking piece of land. Right? And, you mentioned before, there are rules. You can’t just have a river that just starts in the middle of a continent and also ends in the middle of a continent.   A: Right.   K: It’s gotta be, you know, flowing from somewhere. Presumably, even in your fantasy world, some laws of physics and geography do still apply.   A: Yep.   K: But Maria obviously has a lot of experience dealing with this and designing things. Was there anything that, you know, you said, “Okay, I want it to look like this,” and she went, “Oh no, that’s not how this works. It’s gotta look like this instead,”?   A, chuckles: Um, I don’t know if we ever had those conversations because I think we both came in, both knowing what had to go into it. I’m sure she—because she actually liked me as a client, I guess, because I communicate well or whatever. Because I guess who she usually deals with are people who don’t know that kind of thing? And for me to come in and already have all that set up—Like I said, I do my sketches before she does anything. I’m sure that’s a benefit to her. It’s just easier.   R: Yeah, I can tell you, as a graphic designer, most of the clients you get are, “Oh, I’ll know it’s right when I see it!” And then seventy iterations later, they still don’t like anything.   A, sympathetically: Yeah…   R: And you just want to walk away from the situation. But, yeah, if you know what you want to begin with and you have sketches, I mean that must be so much easier for her. And then she can apply what she knows, to take those sketches. So, your sketches were land shapes and continents, islands, and that sort of thing? Coastlines that you already had an idea of? Or was it mostly an orientation of: these cities are kind of grouped over here and they’re on a continent and this one’s on an island, and this one’s on a straight.   What level of understanding the actual geography of your world did you bring to begin with? Or was it mostly like, “I need a map. I only know that these two things are separated by water and are seventy miles apart.”   A: I was very specific on the land masses and how they looked. The main thing I didn’t really know was the in-between stuff like the mountain placement and forest placement and stuff like that. I knew I would say, like, I would have a drawing of this is greenish, this should be forest-y, this should be desert-y, but then she would go in with the details. So I was very, very—my notes were very specific about shapes and also what was forest, what was desert, and even the spacing.    Like, the spacing, in particular, was important for By Sea and Sky because the main island, Kidogom and Al Anim were a specific, plot-wise, not so much in book one, but in book three, there was a specific plot on the distance between the two, because there’s some travelling that goes on. So I was very, very specific about it. I think, at some point, she had it really close and I was like, “Oh no! They’re not that close together.” And that’s the reason, actually, we made the second version of it, the one that’s called Al Anim and Kidogo map, which shows a little bit better the distance between the two, versus the wider shot. So you can understand when that particular plot happens how much time and distance happens between those two.   R: I’m observing that you know things about book three that have to have bearing—   K: That’s exactly what I was gonna say! How do you deal with this with potential spoilers, because what you’re putting on a map are things that are significant to the story. Did you have any concerns with that, where you’re like, “I’ve gotta put this on here because it exists in the world, but I am then—”   A: Ohh, I see what you’re saying!   K: Yeah.   A: So, yes. Specifically, there are—The map that I have on the website now, those locations are only locations that are spoken in that particular book.    K: Gotcha.   A: So, in oncoming books, like in the second book I mention a newer location, the map gets updated with that little point of interest. So the particular thing with the whole distance between Kidogo and Al Anim, not really a spoiler so much. It just gives context for when that plot point comes up because it’s really just about how long it takes to get back to Kidogo because there’s a plotline of, “Hey, we gotta get back there! And how long is it gonna take for them to catch up to us?” kinda thing, that’s why that was very specific, those two locations in particular.   R: Yeah, and those two are mentioned throughout the book. It’s not like a—   A: Correct, correct. There are places on the map that should be mentioned, but aren’t specifically for that reason that you guys mentioned about it being spoilery. So each map is different.   K: So you just go the method where, “I’m leaving this stuff off and when I need you to know about it, I’ll let you know about it.”   A: Yes. And that’s exactly the same way I write, too. I don’t present every piece of worldbuilding. I was just talking to another author because I work with a lot of authors within the same space of this world that I’m building out, and they’re like, “Whoa! You know so much about this, this, and that!” And I’m like, “Yeah, there’s just no point of putting it in that story because it wasn’t relevant to the story.” But there’s all these pieces of worldbuilding.   I think George R. R. Martin said your worldbuilding should just be like a tip of an iceberg and then, you know, the reader should see the impressions of the iceberg underneath, but that’s not part of the story. So you don’t need to see the entire iceberg, you just need to see the little tip of it.   R: I think Kaelyn would appreciate that, as an editor.   K: It’s funny because Rekka and I talk about this all the time, that I’m a planner.    A: Me too.   K: I want to—and this comes from being an editor is that, especially if I’m working with somebody who’s working on a series, I need to know where this ends up. I need to know how it ends, but also geographically where it ends because I need to make sure that there isn’t something coming completely out of left field here. And what I was gonna ask is if you, along the George R. R. Martin lines, like to pepper little people and name places into your book for you to go back and reference and make relevant later—   A: Yep.   K: —I’ve used that trick with authors where it’s like, “Okay, listen, if you’re not sure how you’re getting yourself out of this hole yet, that’s fine. But you gotta lay some groundwork along the way. So if you wanna make it a throwaway line that could or could not mean anything, that’s fine. But you have to do something.” So that it’s not like: oh! It turns out there’s this entire lost continent that nobody knew about and it’s super-secret and special. That’s how you annoy people.   A: Mhm, yeah.   R: You wanna create a Chekov’s Island and you can put it in the map, but not in the book.   K: Yes, yes exactly.   R: So, it was that planning ahead which was more my question for you. You have a series that is in the works.   A: Right.   R: You already have how many of them written?   A: Yeah, there’s a few. Demons...1984… I think at least six right now, across the entire series.   K: Well, yeah, because you have some prequels and things like that.   A: Yeah! There’s prequels, there’s novellas, there’s a graphic novel as well. There’s a lot of—audiobooks as well. But yeah.   R: And they all share this map.   A: And they all share… portions of the map. Like, I said before. So the portion that we’re looking at now is the northeast version of it, the other one that I have which is for my first book, The Kishi, which is called the Southern Reaches of the Golah Empire, that’s like the southwest portion of it, and then this one here, Southern Eshiya, that’s like far east. So these are, like, pieces of it and I haven’t puzzled them all together yet because I am building out the world bit by bit.Oh! Perfect! You guys already know about Game of Thrones. So basically what I’m doing right now is I’m writing about Robert’s Rebellion before A Game of Thrones happens. So basically, I”m writing all that stuff leading up to the saga, the big epic books.      R: So, planning ahead this much, is it just because you’re going section by section that you have the confidence to say, “Okay, yes, this is where all the cities are, I don’t need to move them because I’m not gonna run myself into any trouble later.” You could get to book eight and say, “Oh shoot! It would really help if Kidogo was actually a little bit further north because then I could squeeze in another island that isn’t here right now!” Like, do you worry about that or are you just like, “Okay, I can commit to this and I can figure it out later.” Or are you really, really planned out to the point of, you have outlines for enough to pretty much flesh out the entire world. And you know what you need.   A: A bit of both. I actually know how the big saga books end. I know how those began. I know where the locations of all these stories will be. So I know what to keep not spoken about.   R: Mhm.   A: That’s why I have only a few points of interest. Like, I don’t go and like, “I’m gonna go and name every single piece of land here!” That would just put me into a corner if I do that. So that’s why my rule is, whatever I’m talking about in the story is what will be mentioned on the map, and nothing more. Because yeah, if I wanna add something in there, what? Never was mentioned before! It’s not canon, so it’s okay. I can insert that in there. But if you do, do that, if you do over explain it too much then, yeah. You can run yourself into a corner of being like, “Whoops! I kind of established that that place is like this and I can’t, you know, add that in there so.”   R: And I put the picture on my site, people are gonna point at it and say I was wrong!   A: Yeah, exactly.   K: And, conversely, though, this is getting more into the actual creating the maps. As you said, you only, if you’re not talking about it, do you keep a list as you’re going through the book of kind of like, “Okay, I need to like—”   A: Oh, yes! I have a story bible. I have a huge story bible.   K: Okay, so like, “We went here, we went here, we went here. These are the places we need to talk about. Or this is mentioned.”   A: Mhm, yeah. There’s timelines, locations, like terms and language phrases. Yeah, that’s very important, too, for creators out there. Writers, make sure you’re having a story bible. For, especially, epic fantasy.   K: Oh, yeah.   A: You really should have it for anything. Like, even The Office, which is just a sitcom, has  a story bible.    K: Yep.   A: Fantasy, it’s a must. It’s not even like an optional thing. You must have a story bible.    K: Yeah, otherwise you’re gonna run into some bizarre continuity errors. But, there are certainly some famous ones out there. But I have actually read a book, I can’t remember which one it was, where they had a map in there and there were two places just missing off of it. And they weren’t particularly relevant to the story or anything, but they were mentioned and there were characters from there and I’m a hundred percent sure they were meant to be on the map. And they just left them off it. But, yeah, you know if you’ve got a lot of cities and places and stuff, I’m sure it can happen.   [29:52]   A: And the benefit of me being indie published is that I can rectify that very easily. ‘Cause I’m like, “Oh, that’s not on there? Alright, photoshop, put it in there, reupload,” and then that e-file gets updated so that person is like, “Alright cool. Sweet. Never happened. What.”   K: What are you—what are you talking about? That was always like that. You’re imagining things. Stop hallucinating cities that weren’t there.   A: Right.   R: So, I’m noticing that as we run through these maps and you’re talking about them in different ways, and you’re mentioning that they’re different regions of the planet, I am noticing that they—or the worlds, planet is for sci-fi—that these maps are kind of in different styles. Is that intentional, that they would be a regional style for each story?   A: Yes! Yeah, so they’re slightly different depending on which region we’re in. And it’s supposed to kind of be like a—what Maria always wanted to do was make sure that, as much as she could, make it like it was an in-world map and not so much a map made by 21st Century people—   R: A digital file, yeah.   A: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, yeah that’s the reason for the differences. That’s why we have the airship layout looking like it’s like a blueprint and then you have Kidogo and stuff looking, as it does.   R: And creases! Creases in your maps and discolored areas and…   A: Yes, yes! Oh, and she—which is funny because when I first started, I use a program called Vellum which is a formatter, and it didn’t—at first, it didn’t support full-page leaved images, so when I had showed her the book the first time, she’s like, “Oh… I designed it to be full page…”    I was like, “I know, but it doesn’t support it! I had to make it a little tiny thing on one page. And then I showed her, “THEY DO IT NOW! THEY DO FULL PAGE IMAGES!!!!!” So the crease that she does there actually creases with the spine of the book, like it actually exists. Like “OOOH!”   And she’s so happy that it has that now, and I was like, “Yeah, I know you wanted that,” because they only put that in seven months ago or something like that.   R: Yeah, it was not that long ago. When I went in and I found it, I was equally happy.   A: I use it all the time. My title pages look so awesome now!   K: That is, that’s very cool.   R: And I noticed it also, like you said, lay a single image across two pages, if you have your print layout done through them, too. So yeah. Very good update. Vellum is constantly improving. I’m a huge fan.   A: Yeah, they’re awesome.   K: You work on these books with an editor. Do you include the editor in the designing process of these maps at all? Do you get any input or run anything by the editor, or do you just handle all of this yourself?   A: More or less. I mean, it depends on how important that location is to the story. I definitely have an editor—I have one of my editors, she’s more developmental, she’s more about the characters, and then I have one who’s more into the worldbuilding aspect of it? Fiona’s the one I’m mentioning who is like, more the character-based one and then Callan, Callan Brown, is the more worldbuildy.    So, with Callan, I moreso do that kind of stuff with, where I’m like, hey this location—or, when we get to Al-Anim, because Al-Anim’s the main thing of book two, we were talking about the design of that city, the idea of the spine that goes through the entire city where everybody congregates and stuff like that. Or the idea, like I came up with a tavern, I’m like, “Okay, this tavern, what’s the history of this tavern? Why is it central? Why is it so important for everybody? Like, why is it popular? Why does it do so well?” We have those kinds of conversations, for sure, with an editor.          K: Gotcha. ‘Cause we spend a lot of time talking about how, especially in self- and indie publishing, there’s this drive to just want to do everything yourself. I can take this, I can handle this, I don’t want people coming in and messing up my thing, but an outside voice, an outside set of eyes, is certainly, I think, helpful, even when it is something as microcosmic as building a map.   A: I think it’s a complete necessity, actually. I don’t think it should ever be a one-mind person. Like, it’s very similar to filmmaking, where it’s a really collaborative effort when you really look at what goes into a book. Like, there’s not too many people out there who are gonna be doing everything on their book. From audiobook production or your cover design or your cartographers or your editors. Like, it’s definitely a collaborative thing.    And I’m very huge about that. Like, I use the heck out of beta readers. I really, really—several iterations I’ll have a draft go, have the beta readers say something, send the other one out, have the beta readers say something. Alright, now my editor’s going through it, now my critique partner’s going through it. I’m very, very into the feedback and that feedback loop of making sure that everything makes sense and things track. I think that’s super important.    K: Yeah, I completely agree. So, along those lines, we always ask when we have guests on, advice,s suggestions, red flags, things you would pass along to somebody who’s thinking, “Hey, you know, I’m gonna include a map in my book.” What would you tell them? To either watch out for or to make sure you do.   A: I would send them to Brandon Sanderson’s, he has a bunch of YouTube videos. It’s his classes, literally his classes for free. One of those episodes that he has on YouTube is about him talking about maps. Literally, the whole session of that class was about maps. And he really, really goes into—Also him, and there’s also other people on YouTube who talk about it. D&D people, I would say look up D&D channels.   K: Okay.   A: They also have really good insights about map design. Because yeah, it’s not as simple as putting a mountain, and like you were saying, having a river in the middle of a continent, sort of situation. Even port cities. Port cities are done incorrectly because they aren’t typically right on the coast, they’re usually a little bit more inland, whether it’s a bay or on a river, deeper in. Whatever it might be. So, I would say, I usually suggest Brandon Sanderson’s works, his lectures that are free on YouTube.    You don’t have to take a college course about geography or geology or anything like that, but it does help to have some knowledge about what tectonic plates are, how they work, how they form continents, why continents look the way they do. Why those mountain ranges look different from a different kind of mountain range. A little bit, just a little bit, if you’re gonna be making maps, to know that.    K: Yeah, I would even take it a step further and say, you know, think about the terrain that you’re putting in here and how it fits into your story. Will this kill the characters, based on the length of time it’s supposed to take them to cross it?   A: Right.   K: I’ve seen a lot of traditionally published books where you look at the maps and you’re like, “That’s not how long it should have taken them to get from that place to the other, compared to these two cities which are much closer together and somehow took a longer amount of time.” But I’m sure that’s a factor you have to consider as well. If I say these two cities are this far apart and it took these two characters six days to get between them, and these two are twice as far apart, in theory it should take at least twelve.   R: And one’s in an airship and another one’s sailing on the water.   A: That is literally the reason why I was talking about the whole book three thing between the Kidogo and Al-Anim thing because it was very important ‘cause both of those things factor in. It was like, “Okay, how long will the sea ship take to get there? How long will the airship take to get there?” So I had to factor it and I’m like measuring it out. I’m like, “Okay, so, if I’m taking this or something like that, I’m gonna measure out each piece of it. Okay, this little prong is probably gonna be a quarter of a day, so if I do four of these, this distance takes a day— Yeah, I totally had to do all of that and adjust things based on plot reasons.   K: Plot reasons. Yes. No, we could do an entire episode on geography versus plot. And how they work for and against each other.   A: Uh-huh.   K: The airship, you know, what if it’s crossing mountains that frequently have storms over it. What if the sea ship is going through a channel that’s known to be very rocky, so you really have to slow down and navigate through there.   A: And sometimes you add that, specifically, because you’re like, “I need them to slow down! Lemme put a typhoon here!”   R, laughing: Excellent.   K: These people are gonna get there two days before they left the last…   A: Yup, yup, yup.   R: I did see that there’s a sea serpent on the map. Occasionally it might just pop up and grab the airship or something, right?   K: Here there be monsters.   R: You do so much else.   K: Like, a lot.   R: A lot, a lot. What do you want our listeners to know about you before we let you go and, definitely include where they can find you. Talk about your publishing your house, talk about your various business—   A: Ventures and endeavours. Yeah.   R: You just keep switching hats! And go, “Today, I am an audio producer. Tomorrow, I’m editing video.” I’ll let you do it.   A: You can find everything about me, if you just wanna see every single thing that I’m doing, on my website. That is antoinebandele.com [spells it], so I do a bunch of stuff. So I do, primarily right now, the main income generator for me is my YouTube channel. I am a YouTuber. Right now, I’m focused mostly on Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra because those have come back to Netflix and my channel is like, “Hey! Lots of people are watching those videos! You should make more of those videos!” And I’m like, “Oh my god, yes I will!” And so I… that’s the main focus right now.   K: Fine, I’ll talk about Avatar: The Last Airbender more.   A: Oh, fine. Jeez, Louise! So I’ve been doing that, as of late. But I do other things, too. I’ve covered Harry Potter, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, as we’ve been talking about. Samurai Champloo, some anime, stuff like that.   R: Nice.   A: So I have my YouTube, and that’s my main thing. I also work freelance for other YouTube channels. I used to work for a company called JustKidding films, where they do a news channel, they have a party channel for board games. I also work for a blog channel, their name is Tip and Kace. Basically it’s just a family blog, just their day-to-day and stuff like that. So I have those services, and I also do services for indie authors who are trying to produce audiobooks.   So I have a bunch of—I live in L.A., I think as I mentioned already in the podcast, so I have a lot of friends who are actors, or up and coming actors, who would love to have work. I was doing audio just for myself, right? Just for my own books, because I’m already an editor I’m like, “I’ll just do it myself.” And then one of my friends, after we had collaborated on the prequel to By Sea and Sky, Stoneskin, and when we did that prequel and I did the audiobook, he’s like, “Dude, this is like really good. You should be doing this as a service.”   I was like, “I don’t know about that, that sounds like a lot of work.” He’s like, “It’s not! You obviously know how to do it.” And I was like, “Fine,” and I did it and I have a bunch of clients now who work with me on their audiobooks, whether it’s urban fantasy or sci-fi and all these other genres—romance, I’ve never done romance before. That was interesting to experience.   [40:13]   K: Oh! How was that?   A: It’s definitely a different genre. It’s definitely different from what I’m used to.   R: In audiobooks, no one can see you blush.   [K laughs]   A, laughing: Exactly, exactly! So I started doing that. So I have that going on as well. But then, you know, my main thing, the thing I’m wanting to be my main thing, is my own publishing. Of my books and other works. So, of course, I write these Esowon books, as we’ve been talking about. That’s the sky pirate stuff, the African fantasy inspired stuff, but I’ve also produced a children’s book for another friend of mine, who had a children’s book that he published, I think, in 2012, and he’s like, “Hey, I’ve seen that you have really good quality of your books. Could you re-do my old book?” And I was like, “Yeah, sure! Why not?” And then he actually profited within the first two months, before I even profited on my own works.    K: Oh, wow. Great.   A: I was like, “Oh my god! Children’s books is where it’s at, apparently!” So  I do that, as well. I’ve published… five authors, at this point? Besides myself. Underneath my imprint of Bandele Books. So, yeah, I think that’s everything that I do. My YouTube channel, my editing, publishing, audiobook production, writing. Think that’s everything.   K: Jeez, that is an incredibly… full and talented.   R: Full plate.   K: Full plate, and incredible brand of talents. That’s really, really awesome. Thank you so, so much for taking the time to talk with us about this. This is, you know, like we said, a really cool thing in books that I think are taken for granted by both, well, especially readers, but even sometimes by authors, with how much work and effort and time goes into this.   A: Mhm.   R: Excellent! Well make sure you go and follow Antoine, check out his work on his website. Check out the books, they’re really great! I happen to be biased toward airships. But everyone should be.   K: A little bit.   R: And I’m looking forward to reading the next one and seeing what you add to these maps! Now I’ve got this little piece of candy that I can follow. What’s new? What’s new on the map? I’m gonna be looking at them real closely. Thank you so much, Antoine, and maybe we’ll have to have you back someday to talk about audio production.   A: For sure, yeah! That’d be fun. R: Awesome, thank you so much.   [outro swish]   R: Thanks, everyone, for joining us for another episode of We Make Books. If you have any questions that you want answered in future episodes, or just have questions in general, remember you can find us on Twitter @wmbcast, same for Instagram, or wmbcast.com. If you find value in the content that we provide, we would really appreciate your support at Patreon.com/wmbcast.    If you can’t provide financial support, we totally understand, and what you could really do to help us is spread the word about this podcast. You can do that by sharing a particular episode with a friend who can find it useful, or if you leave a rating and review at iTunes, it will feed that algorithm and help other people find out podcast, too. Of course, you can always retweet our episodes on Twitter.    Thank you so much for listening, and we will talk to you soon!   [outro music plays]   The team Antoine gathered to work on his Esowon books:Cartography - RenFlowerGrapx (Maria Gondolfo): https://www.fiverr.com/renflowergrapxFiona McLaren - DevelopmentalCallan Brown - ContinuityJosiah Davis - Line/CopyeditSutthiwat Dekachamphu - Cover ArtSarayu Ruangvesh - Character ArtOther resources:Brandon Sanderson Creative Writing Lessons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6HOdHEeosc&list=PLSH_xM-KC3Zv-79sVZTTj-YA6IAqh8qeQ

Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between! This week we are talking pen names!  What is a pen name and why would you want to use one?  We know what you're thinking, practically every episode we've mentioned your website, your social media, your brand - wouldn't a pen name just make it harder to for people to find you and check out your work?  The truth is there are lots perfectly good reasons to want to use a pen name instead of your own and in this episode we get into those reason plus some of the fact and fiction of pen names (there is some really weird misinformation out there about what a pen name can do for a writer).   We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, concerns, and the best pen name you've ever come up with! We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Episode 38: An Author Called By Any Other Name Will Still Write Amazing Things transcribed by Sara Rose (@saraeleanorrose)   [0:00]   R: Welcome back to We Make Books, a podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between. I’m Rekka, I write science fiction and fantasy as R.J. Theodore.   K: And I’m Kaelyn Considine, I am the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press and—   R: But is that your real name?   K, sighing: Well, um. The acquisitions editor for Parvus Press is a suffix that I use to—   R< laughing: I was gonna say, don’t you get tired of saying the whole thing every time?   K: It is a bit of a mouthful. Sometimes I do just introduce myself as Kaelyn. So, yeah, we’re talking about pen names today in this episode. What are they? Why do people use them? Why are they beneficial? How do you pick one? All of these important aspects.   R: And what not to expect from your pen name.   K: Yeah, things that a pen name will not do for you. There’s some frightening stuff on the internet.   R: There’s some bad advice out there, did you know that?   K: Yeah, who woulda thought? Just because it’s on the internet, doesn’t mean it’s always true.   R: Yeah. Yeah, imagine that.   K: Pen names can be an important and valuable tool, so that’s what we spend some time talking about in this episode. You know, if you’re going to use one, getting the most bang for your buck, so to speak.   R: If you’re early enough in your career that you might wanna choose a pen name, I hope this is something that gives you stuff to think about. If you’re mid-career, you know, you might still decide that you’re gonna launch a new career in a different genre or something. But it’s also, you know, maybe it’ll help reinforce the decision you did make. So take a listen and enjoy!   K: Enjoy, everyone!   [intro music plays]   K: My bluejay nemesis.   R: Is back?   K: Well, here’s the thing, it turns out it was never gone! Because I found out that bluejays are actually excellent mimics, so—   R:Ohhh, yeah.   K: I saw it and it was like… it was very jarring because it was not making the normal bluejay noise. And I was like, “Oh my god!” And it… it can imitate other birds. I hate this thing so much! It’s… it’s terrible. I mean, thankfully it’s not sitting outside my window every morning screaming and waking me up like it has been in previous years. But I feel like it is tormenting me now. It is absolutely, now, pretending to be other birds.   R: Maybe that’s a courtesy to you. Like, it knows that you don’t like the jay. So you might better enjoy a chickadee.   K: Okay. I live in New York City. There’s no chickadees here.    R: Which is why I could never live in New York City. Chickadees are my favorite birds.   K: No, but apparently it can imitate hawks?   R: Hm.   K: So it’s been doing that, a little bit. And then, now I’m like thinking, “There have been other weird bird noises I’ve been hearing. Is that also this damn bluejay?”   R: Probably.   K: Oh, god I hate this thing.   R: It’s putting on a performance for you! It’s dedicated its life’s work to this portfolio of bird calls and it knows that you, alone, in the world can appreciate them.   K: I would just appreciate it if it went away.   R: Well, yes. You, alone, would also appreciate that.   K: But hey! Speaking of pretending to be other things!   [R and K laugh]   K: You see what I did there?   R: I see what you did there.   K: Today we’re talking about pen names.   R: Nom de plume!   K: And pen names are not necessarily pretending to be another person all the time. There’s a lot of reasons you could have a pen name.   R: Yeah. It’s funny because the first thing I ever remember about encountering the concept of pen names was when I learned that Charles de Lint wrote horror under another name. And I thought that was the most bizarre thing in the universe, that someone would change their name and hide their books from their fans!   Because to me, I liked Charles de Lint so much as a teenager, I read everything I could get my hands on and then I was out of books—Well, I say I was out of books, the other books I couldn’t find were out of print. And so to find out that there were more books I could have been reading! I was very upset, even though I wasn’t a horror reader. I would have gotten into reading horror because this author that I liked so much wrote it. And that was my first encounter with the concept of an author name.    K: I think we all have that jarring moment, somewhere in late elementary school when we were told that Mark Twain was not Mark Twain’s actual name.   R: Oh! Yeah, okay. So, yeah, I did know that but for some reason that didn’t count. Maybe because he was a historical figure.   K: Yeah, and also because I think we only knew him as Mark Twain. When you find out that his real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, you’re kinda like: “Oh, you know what I see why he went with Mark Twain.”   R: See, I always thought, because I knew Mark Twain and the name is so familiar, Samuel Clemens sounded like the more intriguing name, when I heard that. But the—Yeah, I guess Mark Twain wasn’t something that I read a lot of. And it wasn’t like Samuel Clemens had another collection of books that I could’ve been reading.   K: Exactly, that’s the thing is that he only wrote under Mark Twain, I think even with his newspaper writings.    R: Mhm.   K: I’m pretty sure he only wrote as Mark Twain, as well.   R: That sounds right, yeah.   K: I don’t think he ever really published much under Samuel L. Clemens. But there’s a long history of people using pen names. There’s a lot of pen names out there that people do not realize were pen names. For instance, George Orwell is a pen name. His actual name: Eric Arthur Blair. It’s not even close!   R: No, not even. And how do you come up with Orwell?   K: I… there’s a lot of things I wonder how that man came up with.   R: That—Fair enough. Okay, we’ll give you that one.   K: Jack Kirby, a famous early comic book writer and artist: Jacob Kurtzberg   R: Okay, so—but that’s gonna bring us into the whys of some of these, right? Because when he was working, there was a certain amount of prejudice against someone whose name would have been Kurtzberg.   K: Yeah. Yeah that—   R: Professionally, he would have had an easier time being Kirby.   K: Yes, definitely.   R: And that’s a shame. And that’s, unfortunately, still going on with pen names. I mean, we’ll get into some of that. But that is definitely still rampant is that there are preconceived notions of who belongs in what genre and who is worthy of respect. And people might choose a name that corresponds with people’s expectations of Greatness or Classics or anything like that. I mean, I will say I write under a pen name. You all know that.    K: We say at the top of every episode!   R: At the top of every episode, yeah! And I chose my pen name as an homage to someone who encouraged me a lot, but I also picked it, wrote it out and said, “Aww yeah that sounds like a author name!” And what does it sound like? It sounds masculine. It sounds like a white man’s name! And I’m half of that, but it was not really my intention to broadcast a masculine name that might fit better next to other masculine names on the shelf that get all the attention and draw. But to me, socially conditioned by the other names on the bookshelves in the store, I said, “Yeah! R.J. Theodore! That sounds like a real author’s name!   [K laughs]   R: I mean, honestly, if I could go back I’d pick something else. But I’m committed at this point. So.   K: So why do some people choose to write under pen names? Well, there’s a lot of reasons, obviously. Rekka just enumerated one for us. Would you call it branding, what you did?   R: Oh, definitely! Definitely. I mean, if you start a company, you name your company. And when you become a writer, if you intend to make a living at it, or at least make a career—whether or not the money is the point. But if you wanna do this for the long haul, you’re thinking about your presentation. Not just of your books and your stories, but yourself. So it is not unreasonable to sit down and come up with an author name and then because we DO NOT USE our legal signatures. Please, people. We practice the autograph of that author name and maybe even do that as part of feeling out whether you like the name and wanna stick with it. You know?   K: Branding is certainly a consideration when figuring out if you’re gonna use a pen name. Let’s be clear, right at the top, if your name is John Smith and you just feel like that’s your name and that’s what you want to write under, there’s absolutely no problem with that. You do not need to use a pen name. You do, however, need to be really good at marketing and maintaining your website and your internet presence, so that people can find you easily. Search engine optimization is going to be a key component to being successful here.   R: For John Smith, you are going to have to compete with police records, white pages, direct relistings—   K: Pocahontas.   R: That, too. You know, Florida Man. Everything is going to be a competition for you. So, you know, the elements of my pen name are not particularly unique but when you string them together and search for that, then that narrows down the field quite a lot.    K: Now, conversely, my name is very unique. I, as best I can tell, am one of the only two Kaelyn Considines in the world that spell their name this way. The other one is very clearly not me, if you punch it into Google. I will say that I have done different things, out in the world, under pen names. I am not going to say what they are or what that pen name is, explicitly because of privacy reasons.   R: Yes.   [10:50]   K: Because I have a professional life in publishing and a professional life outside of publishing. And, believe it or not, there are some things that I just don’t want intermingled all together with that. For the record, I am not doing anything nefarious or illegal. It’s just a matter of—   R: For the record, wink wink. If anyone asks...   K, laughing: Wanting to maintain some separation with different projects in my life.   R: Right. It’s privacy, but it’s specifically because you have aspects of your life that don’t need to mix. It’s not because you are trying to hide from anybody in a—it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if somebody found out the other name. But it would be annoying.   K: Well, I’ll be honest with you. When I started getting into publishing and when I came on at Parvus, I had a very frank conversation with Colin, who’s the publisher at Parvus Press, that I may need to do all of this under a fake name. Because my job at the time—I didn’t want it coming out that I was also running a side business, for a lot of reasons. And then, eventually, I decided, “Ugh, this isn’t worth it. I don’t have the energy to maintain this alternate presence!”    But the uniqueness of my name makes it so that, if you punch “Kaelyn publishing” into Google. I come up. I am the first result. If you punch “Considine” and anything vaguely associated with my name into Google, you will also find me very easily. When I started my previous job, when I was 26 and just out of grad school, years ago, I—the people that I worked with very quickly were able to punch me into Google and find all of these academic papers that I had published. That’s not a big deal, but they definitely had a lot of comments about how nerdy I was, as a result.   R: See, in the circles I run, that would be incredibly cool. So, don’t worry about it.   K: Oh, yeah, no it was kind of cool. But it was like, “Wow, you really are a huge history nerd, huh?” I’m like, “Yeah, I am. It’s you know.”   R: Mhm.   K: So, uniqueness or non-uniqueness are two factors here. In some cases, maybe your name is John Smith and you want to have something more akin to Kaelyn Considine where it’s easier to find you. Or, if you’re a Kaelyn Considine, maybe you—   R: Need a little more John Smith in your life.   K: Yeah, maybe you don’t always want to be found that easily. As we say on this show a lot, I am a pretty private person. I’m not super into social media, I don’t like to put a lot of myself out there. So I don’t like the idea of people being able to find me really easily.   R: But we should mention that just writing under a different name is not going to be enough to protect you from someone who wants to dig and find out who you are and how to find you.    K: Oh, yeah, no. It’s uh…   R: This is a very light coat of disguise. This is covering the Volkswagen bug that you’re racing with a grey cloth to make it look like a boulder. It only works because it’s a very low-fi film.   [14:21] K, laughing: Yeah, exactly. I will say—So another reason you might wanna use a pen name is maybe what you’re writing, you don’t necessarily want everyone to know that you’re writing it.   R: Right, that is definitely a possibility. Or, you know, maybe you have a family that you’re separated from and you don’t want them to know that you are writing at all.   K: Well, I will use an example from my real life. We have family friends that I grew up with and they have a daughter who’s a little older than me. Her mom started noticing that her and her husband seem to have some extra money. Not like a ton, not like a life-changing amount. They weren’t buying lamborghinis and moving into mansions, but they were—   R: Not stressing over small purchases.    K: Yeah, they put a lot of money into upgrading the house and took a really nice vacation. And her mom finally asked her, “Hey, did one of you get a raise or something?” and she said,” Oh, well you know how I wrote this book?” and she was like, “Oh! Did it start selling really well?” She’s like, “Well, no. But I kind of transitioned into writing some other things…”   Anyway, after some back-and-forth it came out that this person became one of the top ten selling erotica novelists in England for a long time. And she was doing this under a pen name. I think she kind of really nudged her way in right when Kindle unlimited was really taking off with this.   R: That’s the time, there you go.   K: Yeah. And she will not tell—we still have no idea—   R: What the pen name is.   K: Who she is, or what the pen name is! But she made a pretty decent amount of money off of it. Which, you know, good for her. But maybe you’re writing erotica and you don’t want everyone to know that you’re writing erotica.   R: Yeah, or just anything that you think you’d professionally or socially be shunned for, but it brings you joy. You know, just change the name and write under that. Again, if someone suspected it was you, it would probably be easy for them to figure out that it was. But if they’re looking for your name, this other name should not come up. As long as you’re just slightly careful about things.    K: That’s a good point, too, is when you’re deciding if you’re gonna use a pen name, one of the things you have to decide is how open you’re gonna be about this. Rekka is, for instance, very open about it.   R: Yep.   K: “I write science fiction and fantasy as R.J. Theodore.” Some people don’t ever really want you to see the person behind the pen name. Now, in the age of the internet this is very difficult to do.   R: Mhm.   K: There have been very famous writers that went their entire lives under a pen name that nobody ever—Like, Anne Rice’s name is not Anne Rice.   R: Right.   K: Her first name’s actually Howard.   R: Which is interesting. That’s a whole other conversation.   K, laughing: That’s a whole other conversation.   R: I mean, you know, again. Uniqueness. But also expectation of your genre. If Howard was a name that she chose to write with, why wouldn’t she use it? It’s because it doesn’t sound like a female-presenting name that is going to write bodice-clutching, tense semi-romantic vampire stories. There’s an expectation from readers that, you know, vampire authors are going to be female. There’s an expectation of readers that thriller authors—or at least the “good” ones—are going to be men. And then that ignores the non-binary spectrum entirely and then, what are the expectations there?   There are very cool names out there for some non-binary authors and I just think, “Wow! If I could go back and understand that gender was a spectrum not a binary, I might’ve picked a very different pen name.”     [18:43]    K: Yeah, and so that’s actually a good point. So you’re getting ready, you decided you’re gonna use a pen name. You’re getting ready to choose one. We talked a little bit before about branding and it is something to consider. Look, if you’re gonna be writing hard military science fiction, Florence Lilac deForest is probably not the best name to start writing that under. Now—   R: Although it would stand out in the field of military sci-fi, but…   K: That will certainly stand out, but emulating that is marketing at that point. Working on a pen name that you think is going to appeal to your readership. There’s nothing wrong with that.   R: If you think about it like the packaging on a box, you know, if you’re going to buy a microwave, you expect the microwave brand name is going to be of a certain ilk. You expect that the—just like there are cover expectations in genre—you expect that there’s gonna be  a photo of a microwave on the box. There are expectations and those expectations are because human brains are designed to put things into categories very quickly. So you wanna help other brains put you into the correct category. And that’s why you choose a name that matches a category, rather than going with it and hoping for the best.   K: Yeah, exactly. It’s unfortunate, but as Rekka mentioned there are some inherent biases in our brains and, you know, one of the most famous ones, J.K. Rowling. She does not actually have a middle name. Her name is Joanne Rowling and they told her, “Listen, we don’t want people to know you’re a woman.” And she said, “Okay, I can’t just be J. Rowling,” so she took K for Katherine, from her mom’s name and made it J.K. Rowling as, you know, things like George R.R. Martin. And J.R.R. Tolkein. And I think that’s a holdover from how letters in authorship used to be addressed. Used to cite off your first initial and your last name. Like, “Your Obedient Servant ___”.   So, is that a shitty, unfortunate thing about society? Yes. Absolutely. But would J.K. Rowling have been as successful as she ended up being if everyone knew she was a woman from the offset? Who knows! You know, Harry Potter came out before the advent of the internet. That said, there’s a giant fricken About the Author in the back, so.   R: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the story—I know when Oprah picked it up for the book club, the story of J.K. Rowling writing these things on deli napkins and reading it to her kids every night because they wanted a story, and then turning it into a book eventually, became part of the romance of why people flocked to J.K. Rowling as a personality and not just to the books. That’s part of the brand, though, is this rags-to-riches story.   K: That said, there are also cases of famous authors writing under pen names because they maybe want to try something new. So, like, J.K. Rowling—   R: Hey! Yeah, I was gonna say a J.K. Rowling story again.   K: J.K. Rowling published under Robert Galbraith, was the author name they used for the murder mystery novel she put out. Stephen King has written under a couple pen names. One of the more famous ones is Richard Bachman.   R: Mhm.   K: I do not know what the significance of that name is. Isaac Asimov wrote under Paul French. These were—I don’t wanna call them side projects, but they were different from things that they were known for writing, and wanted them to stand on their own merit.   R: Right. Michael Crichton also had a couple of pseudonyms.    K: Yes, yep. What does that mean, in terms of legality with an author? Now, again, in the age of the internet this is a little different because if you start digging around, looking for Richard Bachman, and this book. Through the availability of information, you’re probably gonna be able to figure out that it’s Stephen King.   R: But you have to be interested in Richard Bachman enough in the first place.    K: Yes! Yeah.   R: It’s not like you’re gonna search for Richard Bachman and the first site that pops up is gonna be Stephen King’s. I mean, that was the whole point was to not show up as Stephen King. So Stephen King’s not gonna make it easy for you to figure it out, unless he decides to debut. Like, “Oh, by the way, pulling back the curtain, that was me.”   K: Yeah, you’d really have to dig in with that. So, Rekka, how about copywriting pen names?   R: Well, so. You can’t—there’s a whole bunch of issues over trademarking names, anyway, but J.K. Rowling is bound to have that name trademarked. If not by her, then by her publisher.    K: Well also because it’s a fake name that is not her real name.   R: Right, so there may be a J.K. Rowling out there, though. That doesn’t automatically mean that person is going to be sued for signing their bank checks.   K: Or if they write, writing under that name.   R: Right, you cannot stop them from using their legal name. But—   K: Now, if your name is John Smith and you decide you’re gonna start publishing books under J.K. Rowling, you’re gonna have an issue.   R: Now you’ve got a problem.   K: Yeah. Because what you’re doing there is using a trademark to attempt to deceive people into thinking that this was written by J.K. Rowling.   R: That is something that J.K. Rowling and her lawyers are going to have to come after you for. And when I  say ‘going to have to’ what I mean is, if you register a trademark you have to defend it in order to maintain it. We’ve talked about this before. So, she’s going to have to come after you and find out, is that really your name? And if it is, how much money do I have to pay you to write under a different name, please?   K: By the way, it probably won’t even be J.K. Rowling that comes after you—   R: Oh, yeah, it’ll be lawyers.   K: Her publisher’s gonna get to you before she personally—   R: They’re gonna find you first, yeah.   K: —gets involved in this because it’s branding. That name is a commodity at this point.   R: Yes. That name has value to it that is separate, sort of, from the IP that she has created.   K: Now, that said, let’s go back to our other example, Stephen King. Stephen King is a much more common name. I know a Stephen King! I know Stephen Kings, a father and son, who are Stephen King!   So if they decided: hey I’m gonna write a book and publish it. There really isn’t anything that actual author Stephen King can do about it because you can’t stop someone from using your name. Now, as Rekka said, maybe you’re offered some incentive to publish under a pen name.   R: In which case, hey, not a bad deal! Maybe consider it.   K: Now, here’s the thing. I imagine Stephen King does not care that much. Stephen King’s publishers are going to care a lot.   R: Right, right.   K: So, now… how about just some other random person’s name. Let’s say I wanted to start publishing books under Rekka Jay.   R: I mean, I—Well, I can’t say I don’t publish books under Rekka Jay. There is one book out there with my name on the cover, of Rekka Jay. So I might ask you to not. But I don’t think I have a strong enough case to stop you.   K: Yeah, so there’s some weird legal issues that come into play here. So let’s say I wanted to start writing books and I’m gonna publish them under… I don’t know, Colin’s fair game. Let’s say I’m write books under Colin Coyle. Colin would have real, legal reason and recourse to stop me from doing that. He would have an interest in saying, “Kaelyn, we own a business together. We work together. We publish books together. I don’t want people thinking that this is me writing these books.”   That’s where all of this gets a little gray. But, as a general rule, using the names of people that you actually know is probably something to avoid.   R: I mean, the same can be said for using them for character names in your books. You just don’t wanna! This is just muddy water that you are gonna find yourself lost in.   K: Right, hold on, I gotta email an author real quick because I told him to change the names of two of his characters to Rekka. Both of them.   R, laughing: Both of them in the same book? Are they love interests, I hope?   K, laughing: Both of them are—Well, they are now.   R: But, yeah. You don’t wanna—just don’t mess with people you know. Because we don’t know how relationships are going to evolve over the years. This might be something—even if the person doesn’t care, you may just end up regretting someday. This person may end up making you grind your teeth in annoyance—   K: Now, forever.   R: —and then you’ve gotta go back to your books and those characters are named for this person, or you’ve used that pen name for your professional work. And you’re like, “Now I’m reminded of this person that I no longer want anything to do with.” To that point, some people choose pen names if they are married, just in case the marriage ever doesn’t end well. Or there’s another reason to change the legal name. If you separate your pen name from your legal name, you can detach yourself from some of these relationship issues.   K: Now, that said, here’s another really good reason to not use a pen name. If you are writing negative things about people.   R: Oh, yeah.   K: Here’s the thing, a pen name does not protect you from defaming someone.   R: No, there’s no legal protection from any laws that you break.   K: So, if you’re going, “Well, I’m gonna write a bunch of nasty things about this person, so I’m gonna write it under a fake name.”  First of all, you suck.    [R laughs]   Look, if you don’t have the guts to say negative things in public under your own name, then you probably have no business saying them. Whistleblowers are obviously a different story, but we’re not talking about that here. We’re talking about published stories.    R: We’re talking about trolls.   K: Well, we’re talking about reasons you’d wanna use it professionally for—   R: Well, okay, but to be mean to other people is not a professional reason.   K: Yes, exactly. Writing under a pen name will not protect you from defamation and slander charges. Slander is very hard to prove in the U.S., in the U.K. it’s not as hard, for instance. And there have been some pretty famous cases of internationals being taken to court in the U.K. for slander and defamation charges. A pen name does not protect you from that.   A pen name, and I can’t believe I have to say this, but this is something that I kept coming across when doing some research for this. A pen name does not protect you from having to pay taxes!   R: Oh, yes, please don’t think that there’s any reason to not behave like a normal citizen, when you have a pen name.   K: There is, in some corners of the internet—and I did find this mostly in bizarre, fringe-libertarian groups, that would come into discussions and say this—some people, for some reason, think that if you write under a pen name that means that, that person does not legally exist and therefore cannot be taxed.    R, exasperate: That’s… a theory.   K: Yeah, so this is wrong for a few reasons. One of which is, when you write a book under a pen name, you still have to sign a contract when you get it published. And you have to sign your legal name to that contract.   R: And if you’re self-publishing, the same is true for when you register the copyright.   K: Exactly, yeah.   R: And also for setting up your payment account through the various distributors, et cetera. People are gonna know your real name, so as soon as you have to write that out, it has to match your bank account. Like, have a care that this is gonna come back to you.   K: Yeah, so there’s no such thing as a pen name that just exists in a vacuum where there is no possible way to trace this back to you. The only circumstances under which I can imagine that happening are if you create a manuscript, mail it to a publisher, or I don’t know, an article getting published in a newspaper, and want nothing back in return for it. You want no money, you want no attention—   R: Or if you write the thing, sign a different name, bury it in a time capsule, and never admit. And then in 500 years someone finds it, thinks you’re genius, but doesn’t know who you were. But that’s not the kind of career most of us are aiming for.   K: Yeah, if you wanna get paid for your work, you’re going to have to associate—   R: Admit who you are so they can pay you.    K, laughing: That’s exactly… that’s my life. Just having to admit to people who I am.   R: Kaelyn it’s time to admit who you are.   K: I’m gonna have to figure that out and then I’ll get back to you. So, one last thing and, again, I can’t believe I need to say this, but apparently I do. Writing under a pen name also does not help you avoid breach of contract.   R: Noo.   K: This one’s a little less… less.. Maybe there’s a little bit—   R: It depends on how the contract’s written!   K: ...Yes. Then the taxes one. You have to pay taxes no matter what, okay? There’s no escaping taxes. But writing under a pen name does not absolve you of contractual obligations to other books. Now, there can be things written into your contract that say, “You will provide to us three science fiction books.” And let’s say you suddenly really wanna write a nonfiction military history of the Civil War.   R: You can write that!   K: You can write that.   R: The publisher doesn’t want it! They put it in their contract, they want the science fiction books.   K: Yeah, and all contracts are structured differently. Maybe you have a time frame, maybe it’s, “We get to publish the next three books of whatever you generate.”  So, you know, if you switch from military sci-fi to Civil War military history, it doesn’t matter if you’re writing that under a pen name now. They still get that.   R: Yeah.   [33:56] K: So this isn’t, again, you’re not creating a new person here. There is not now—   R: This is not your Get out of Jail Free Card to change your name.    K: Yeah, there is not now a legal entity that exists under this separate name that you created for yourself. There is no person there. It’s just another version of you.   R, laughing: Just like there’s not, not a person, there’s also not a person. Just to be clear.   K: It’s all very existential. There’s a lot of layers here.   R: So, I mean, don’t try to get out of trouble or get out of a contract you don’t like, or anything like that by changing your pen name. That’s not going to work. There are better reasons to have a pen name or not. And some people might start writing under their real name, or might start writing under a pen name and then switch to their real name. There’s also the possibility that later in life you change your mind and then all your books, again this is like Michael Crichton, get rereleased under the more popular name, either posthumously or not, because there’s a better chance that they’ll reach the audience that you’d like. I mean, he wrote in college under a pen name because he didn’t want his professors to think he had too much free time and give him more work.   K: Yeah.   R: Later in life, they changed, they re-released those books under his Michael Crichton name and that was so that people who had already read Jurassic Park and Congo and Andromeda Strain would be like, “Oh my gosh! I thought I’d never get another story from Michael Crichton, but even though he’s dead, there are ten more books I’ve never read of his!” Turns out, you can’t really go back. They were his first books and they read like them. They were not great. But, boy was I excited to think that there were more of them.   So, there’s no final answer in your writing career. You can change it at any time. And some people do choose to rebrand if the, you know, first trilogy they released just kinda didn’t make the splash that they hoped it did. Then, maybe, their publisher drops them. They get picked up by a new publisher. That new publisher may be like, “Hey! Would you consider a new pen name so we can launch you as a debut?” Because there’s a certain amount of excitement, especially in YA, the debut break-through novel is a big deal and that’s what everybody wants, is to discover the next new voice. That next new voice may have already been writing for ten or twenty years. I mean, they keep saying every overnight success is an author who’s been working at this for at least ten years.    K: Yeah. Again, just remember when you’re doing this. You’re not creating a new person. So, yes, you may be creating a new debut author personality. But this is not one of your characters, this is still you, the writer, the person.   R: Oh right, yes. So don’t cosplay as your writer.   K: Yeah, and—   R: Okay, I should actually retract that because Gail Carriger kind of does cosplay as her author self. Which is just to say that she has a visual brand, and when she goes out to conventions she’s going to dress the way that you would expect to see her at conventions. That’s different from writing a backstory for your pen name and then play-acting and half of these things are actually lies about you. If you try to convince someone—    K: Yeah, and—   R: The idea being that you want to be authentic so your readers can connect with you.   K: Do not create a character for yourself to make yourself seem more legitimate. If you’re writing a book in which the main character is a doctor and there’s a lot of medical science and medical science fiction things in there, do not pretend you’re a doctor so that people look and go, “Oh! This person came from a place of real experience!” You’re not creating, again, you’re not creating a fictitious person here.   R: Right. And don’t use it to misrepresent any part of yourself, except for your name.   K: Yeah, exactly. And, look, names are powerful things. There’s a lot of cultures around the world and through history where you maybe didn’t tell people your real name all the time because then they could use it against you.   R: Right. A name has power.   K: Yeah, a name does have power.    R: And for that reason, you may want to change the name that you were born with—not for escaping magical curses and stuff, but you may just—   K: Maybe escaping your family.   R: Yeah. But you may also just not really be totally in love with your name. And so that is a perfectly legitimate reason to just pick a different name. It might be unique, it might be all the things you want. It might be easy to remember, easy to spell, unique enough to come up in search results the way you want. It might even match your genre. But maybe you just don’t like the name. You could change it.    K: Well, I mean, I’ll use me as an example again. In publishing, I think Kaelyn’s a great first name to have. It works. In my professional life, sometimes, it feels a little immature.    R: Right.   K: I wouldn’t change it, it’s my name. I do like my first name.   R: It hasn’t held you back. Or do you feel like it might have?   K: Well, sometimes—and that’s the thing, sometimes I wonder. Now, one of the things I will say about my name is people look at it and frequently read ‘Katelyn’.    R: Right.   K: Very quickly. I—We always had a joke at my job when we’d go out, if we were going out to pick up lunch and you’d tell the people your name, I’d always give them my middle name which is Elizabeth. Because if I gave them Kaelyn, there was no way they were gonna write it down correctly—   R: Or say it correctly in that context, yeah.     K: And then whoever was reading it later was gonna then further butcher whatever they wrote down. So I’d be standing there and the guy would be standing with my sandwich going, “Uh, Carol? Kaylete? Colin?”   R: A-ha! So you are Colin, after all.   K: Oh, what was more of a “KA-lyn.”   R: Oh, okay.   K: So, I do wonder sometimes if that, it does—Now, as I’m solidly in my mid-thirties, I do wonder if it sounds like a younger person’s name. Because I do know some other Kaelyns, they’re all a lot younger than me.    R: Okay. Well there is the generational thing, where every generation has its popular name. I feel like when I was growing up, everyone was named Melissa or Amanda. And so, two years later, if you had that name it was a ‘mature’ name because that was the previous ones. But a couple years past that and it’s like a weird, old, funky name. And then it comes around again.   But, you know, these things—especially when you’re choosing a name, because you get to choose one. All of a sudden you go down rabbit holes of things to think about, all this kind of stuff.   K: Oh, god yeah. You could.   R: You can just close your eyes and be like, “What sounds good? What are letters I like? How do I string them together? Who cares if it’s actually a name?” Although, if you do make up a word, make sure you Google it to make sure it doesn’t mean something awful or sacred to a culture somewhere that you didn’t even consider.   K: So, I will say pen names I’ve made up. I have gone on Wikipedia or This Day in History and found famous people that were born or died or did something significant on my birthday.    R: Okay. Or you can pick the first day of your endeavor or something, the day you finished your draft. Stuff like that.   K: Yeah, and come up with some names that way. I’ve also taken my name and what it translates to in Gaelic, in Irish, and then picked other names—   R: With the same meaning.   K: —from other, yeah, other languages with the same meaning. That were kind of… you know what’s funny is they all kind of sound similar to Kaelyn!   R: I was gonna say. You could also do the Tom Riddle thing and just go for an anagram.   K: I have one of those. It was not easy to come up with.   R: Yeah, it depends on the selection of letters you start with.   K: Yeah, yeah. So, look, there’s lots of different ways to pick one, especially if you want it to be significant or meaningful to you. But if you’re doing it, as we said at the beginning of the episode, from an author perspective, keep in mind that you are going to be using this to sell your book.   R: Right.   [42:25]   K: And it may not be what you want to hear, but branding and planning accordingly is only going to help you sell the book.   R: Yep, yep. Meeting reader expectations. I gotta say. If you’re gonna write sci-fi, you don’t want a name that sounds like you’re a romance author.    K: Yeah. So maybe you loved your grandmother to death and she was just this beautiful, wonderful woman who encouraged you and helped you to get your start writing and so you want to honor her and make your pen name [in a v. French accent] Eleanor de Fleur.   R: Mhm.   K: That’s probably not the best name to write science fiction under.   R: Right, right. You don’t want anything that sounds too cursive. Like, it needs to be written in some sort of cursive calligraphy. Just think of the fonts faces and think of how cool the name will look written in those font faces, as opposed to what the name’s screaming out for.   K: If you’re mentally pronouncing anything with a French accent like I just did, that’s maybe not the direction—   R: Hey! There are decent French science fiction authors out there.   K: Oh, absolutely! But, you know—   R: But they all use pen names!   K, laughing: That’s because French is a very confusing language. You get words with like ten letters in them and you only pronounce four.   R: Yeah. And speaking of confusing, there’s also the pen name for joint-author endeavours.    K: Oh, yeah! That’s another good reason to use a pen name is collaboration.   R: Yeah, so maybe you don’t want both names on the cover. You’d rather just silo it and write, especially if you plan to continue this together, write with one new pen name that you pick together.   K: Yeah.   R: Then, be prepared if you are entering into a contract with a traditional publisher, that they might actually push back on your pen name. For the reasons that we’ve talked about, they may say, “This doesn’t really fit the genre. Can we fiddle with it?” or “Hey, let’s just use your real name.” I have a friend who had a pen name and when she got picked up, the publisher was just like, “Nah, we just wanna use your real name, it’s way more unique.” So…   K: And they might push back for the opposite of the reason I stated earlier. Maybe you’re writing military science fiction and you were a pilot in the Air Force for a long time. They’re gonna say, “No, we want people to look this up and see that you’re writing about stuff you know.” Like, your credentials lend themselves to your success at that point.   R: Mhm.   K: So, yeah, I mean publishers always have an opinion about everything. So, don’t think your name was gonna be—they even will have an opinion about your name.   R: They absolutely will. Although, you may be able to make a case for it. Colin did ask, like, “Are you sure you don’t wanna write as Rekka Jay?” I was like, “Well, no? I have a pen name, thank you.” I had a reason. And, you know, he was fine with it. It wasn’t like it doesn’t sound like a science fiction author’s name. But he was like, “Rekka Jay’s a cool name, so…”   K: Rekka Jay is a cool name. That’s the thing.   R: But it was a matter of, like, I would rather keep it separate from when people are searching, that they’re gonna find something other than the Rekka Jay. That was my decision, but obviously I’m not using it to hide. It is literally SEO purposes. It’s like key words. I’m choosing the keywords that people are going to find me for.    K: Yup. Yeah, so, that’s pen names. If you’re gonna use one, make sure you use one that’s gonna be to your advantage.   R: Yup.   K: Whatever reason you have for using it, there’s no reason it can’t work for you.   R: And take the time and play around with a couple different ones. This is something that you’re going to have to live with for a while. It’s not choosing a box of cereal, it’s choosing the paint for your den wall. You know? So you want to really be okay with it, before you move ahead and commit to it.   K: Yep. Hey, if you, uh—Everyone Tweet at us what your favorite, weird pen name is that you’ve come across. Or the thing that you were most surprised by, to learn was not somebody’s actual name. I think mine was Anne Rice, mostly because then I found out her first name is actually Howard.    R: Yeah, that one’s just got, like. That’s gotta be a two-parter, as opposed to just, “Oh, that’s not your name? Oh, that’s a shame.”   K: Yeah. Or you can be like Ben Franklin and all you did was write to newspapers and pamphlets and stuff under different names. Let’s see, he had Richard Saunders for a certain personality. There was Constance Dogood, yeah, clearly fake names but the point was that he was writing to newspapers exalting revolutionary American ideas, and writing trying to appeal to a certain group of people.    R: Right. Saying the things that would make that group agree with him and to sway their opinion.   K: He was saying things that he wanted everyone to hear, but knew that they would hear it better, if you will, coming from Constance Dogood versus Benjamin Franklin.   R: Right.   K: Which was very smart and insightful, especially for the time. Although that was fairly commonplace back then, to uh…   R: Which is so bizarre to me because we think of our common news production situation as being less honest these days. But you go back and like, everybody’s always been writing in under fake names and all this kind of stuff. So I say it was a matter of ego, but it was more like, “You must listen to me! And I will make you listen to me by faking who I’m speaking as!”   K: Well, it’s the same way. He’s trying to appeal to a certain group of readership.   R: Yep. So, that’s what we’re telling you. Go out and make people listen to you by appealing to a certain group of readers that can connect with the name.    And, you know, it is ultimately up to you. There are pros and cons to both. Eventually, you know, your contracts might get more intricate and having a pen name might make them slightly more difficult, but you’re probably not writing them, so that probably isn’t going to, at least, create more work for you. Just, you know, you’ll have to be more careful about reading them. But I hope you’re careful about reading your contracts anyway!   K: Yes! READ YOUR CONTRACT. I’m going to make a mug.   R, laughing: How did we come back around to that?   K: We always come back around to it, because given the option I will always state: Read Your Contract.   R: Yeah. And so, yeah, thing to remember is that just writing under a pen name is not going to hide you from the world. It’s not going to protect you from legal issues. And it’s not going to make you impossible to find, it’s just a thing that you do. It puts up  a certain measure of distance from your legal name and day-to-day personality. But it doesn’t… I mean, eventually you probably are at least going to hint that it’s not your real name. It doesn’t mean that you, say, I’m coming out as my real name. It just means, you know, eventually it’s going to get awkward to keep pretending that that’s your real name.   But if you have the right person, or the wrong person, decide that they’re gonna come after you, it’s probably not going to be enough. Because they’re gonna know where to look.   K: Yeah, look, in this day and age of the internet, there’s—Unfortunately, there’s no hiding forever. If somebody wants to find you badly enough, they’re going to. But it’s okay! Because, as Rekka said, the point of your pen name should not be to hide. If it is, maybe consider publishing.   R: Yeah, becoming a public figure. Yeah, it’s sad to say that you just can’t be an anonymous writer and collect your writing check because in this day and age, people feel like they’re paying for access to you as well.   K: Yeah, yeah. You are your writing. You are your brand. It’s, you know, go back and listen to our social media episode. We talk quite a lot about that. But pen names, they’re fun. Grab one, if you feel like it.   R: Yeah! And you don’t have to commit to it. You can still play around with just coming up with names. You might find one and be like, “I’m gonna save that. I’m gonna use that someday.” But you can relaunch your career at any point with a pen name, so if you’re happy or you’ve already started writing under one name, you don’t have to switch it if you come up with another good one. I mean, it can just be a character name. So, it’s up to you. If you come up with too many good names, maybe just use your real name and leave the good name creations to the characters in your books.   But if you find one of these reasons we’ve mentioned resonates with you, then that might be a good reason to try it. And if you aren’t published yet, it’s pretty simple to change your name at this point.   K: Yep.   R: Just change the name that you put on the byline in your next submission and you’re on your way.   K: Yup. Yeah, so, that’s pen names.   R: That’s, I think, everything we have to say about them.    K: So, um, as always. Thank you for listening. We hope, I guess, by the time this comes out… I don’t know, maybe quarantining, social distancing may start being lifted?   R: As we record this, more Starbucks stores have opened.   K: Okay.   R: I’m not sure that’s wise, but that’s what’s happening.   K: Well, we’ll go by the Starbucks metric, certainly.   R: I did hear that Disney Springs will start, I think, opening some stores. So Disney’s coming back. That’s a very telling metric.   K: Well, yeah. But the parks are not gonna open till next year, I understand.   R: So that’s… that they are even thinking about opening Disney Springs which can also be as crowded as a park sometimes. That’s pretty telling.   K: Well, we’ll go by the Starbucks metric. Society is measured based on what Starbucks is doing.   R, skeptical: Yeah… I don’t know how I feel about that.   K, laughing: Look, there’s a sad and uncomfortable truth in life that we need to face, Rekka, and that is that many people are entirely dependent on coffee in order to function as human beings.    R: I know you’re aiming that at me, but I’ll have you know that with my radiation treatment, I haven’t really been wanting coffee lately. So, uh, I don’t even know who I am anymore.   K: Oh, I can see. You’ve got a tea bag in that mug. Wow. Welcome to—   R: It’s also a throat coat because I’m gonna start having a sore throat with the radiation as well. There’s my little update, so if you were wondering how the cancer treatment’s going. I’m in good spirits, but I am ready to be done with radiation and on the other side of it and back to drinking coffee, hopefully. Although I don’t know if I will ever taste it the same again, based on the nerves they’re killing.   K: I have a feeling you and coffee will find your way back to each other.   R: One hopes. Actually, you know, if I had to choose between tasting coffee and tasting rib-eye, I think I would probably go for the rib-eye.   K: Well I knew that, yeah. I mean, yeah.   R: There’s more nutrition in rib-eye than coffee. And, you know, coffee only gets you so far. [long pause] I can’t believe I just said that. Who am I?    K, laughing: Well, you’re R.J. Theodore.   R: Oh, right! That person can drink tea and not eat steak every night and be perfectly happy.   K: Yeah, yeah. That’s what’s going on there. So, thanks everyone for listening! As always, you can find us on the socials.   R: That’s @wmbcast on Twitter and Instagram, and we are also at Patreon.com/wmbcast, where we would absolutely love your support if you’re able to. If you aren’t able to, what really helps us is to share our episodes with a friend who might find the content interesting, or just leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts. That would be super helpful.   K, robotic: Feed the algorithm, people!   R: That is the one that really, really warms our dark hearts on a cold night. So, if you could do that, we’d really appreciate it. And we will talk to you on social, or we will talk to you in two weeks!   K: Stay safe, everyone!   [outro music plays]

How do you solve a murdur in the city of the dead. Here is Parvus Press’s website: https://parvuspress.com NECROPOLIS PD enter this world in necropolis pd by Nathan Sumsion https://parvuspress.com/npd/ Jacob Green is the only living person trapped in a city where everyone is already dead; a city concealed from the modern world, made up […]

Here is Parvus Press’s website: https://parvuspress.com Here is IF THIS GOES ON: https://parvuspress.com/itgo/ IF THIS GOES ON, edited by Kat Rambo http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/and cover art by Bernard Lee http://www.bernardleeart.com, contains stories from the following authors: 1 Green Glass: A Love Story by E. Lily Yu 2 Twelve Histories Scrawled in the Sky by Aimee Ogden 3 […]

Here is Parvus Press’s website: https://parvuspress.com Here is Parvus Press on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ParvusPress

Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between! In this episode we are talking about a book we hope everyone writes one day: Your second book, the one you are going to work on under contract and with an editor. Writing while working with an editor is very different from when you were off on your own, they have things like opinions and deadlines and they’re going to want to hear what your plans are.  But fear not, this isn’t scary, it’s awesome!  And we’re going to talk about all the reasons it’s great to have someone to work with as well as what to expect from the process. We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writer and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, concerns, and let us know if you took part in NaNoWriMo and how it went! We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast     Rekka: 00:00   Welcome back to another episode of We Make Books, a podcast about writing, publishing and everything in between. I'm Rekka, I write science fiction and fantasy as RJ Theodore. Kaelyn:           00:09   And I'm Kaelyn. I'm the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. Rekka: 00:12   This one is a Kaelyn episode mostly because Kaelyn is getting very excited about some work that she's going to be doing with her authors very soon. Kaelyn:           00:22   Yeah. Rekka: 00:22   And she's smiling so big right now because she's just just tickled and loves her author so much. Kaelyn:           00:28   I do love my authors. They're all wonderful people. Um, but we're talking today about your second book and we don't mean your second standalone book. We mean what's coming in your series. Um, it's a very different process and a circumstance to write your second book under the direction of someone than it is your first one by yourself. And, um, I think this goes for both debut authors and people who are then just selling a new trilogy that have just been working something. Um, we keep um, you know, we mentioned at the end of the episode, uh, we'll qualify it here. We say trilogy a lot in this. Really it's any kind of a series. Rekka: 01:13   Right, right. And when we say under the direction of someone else, you've obviously already revised something under the direction of one or two other people. But we're talking about ground up. You know there is, you are starting from scratch. You are starting from the blank page. Kaelyn:           01:27   And there is somebody whose opinion now you have to take into account. Rekka: 01:31   See you keep saying, I hope it didn't sound too scary. That's why it sounds so scary. Kaelyn:           01:36   Because it's an intimidating thing, but we get into all that in this episode. Rekka: 01:40   Um, yeah. So when she says your contract contractually obligated to take their opinion into account, she's like, yes, that's true. Kaelyn:           01:49   Hey, I'm here for the truth. I'm telling it how it is. Rekka: 01:52   But that's kind of why you got into publishing your book with a traditional publisher. You wanted a team behind your book. And so this is, this episode is all about writing your book after you've already sold, possibly published the first book in a series of indetermined length and doing it with a team of enthusiastic book people behind you. Kaelyn:           02:17   Which is fun and exciting. But definitely very different from the first time you did this. New Speaker: 02:21   So we'll get into that in this episode. So take a listen and here it comes. Speaker 2:       02:40   [inaudible]. Rekka: 02:41   You notice I bought two of them. Kaelyn:           02:43   Oh yeah. I thought this was the same one that was inside. Rekka: 02:45   Yeah. Kaelyn:           02:46   It's um, very uh, warm and soft. Rekka: 02:50   And soft. Kaelyn:           02:51   So soft and fuzzy. Rekka: 02:52   Yes. Kaelyn:           02:53   Cause you won't let me have one of the cats in here to keep me company. Rekka: 02:56   I mean the blanket sheds less than the cats do. Kaelyn:           02:59   Fair. So anyway, we're talking today about books and stuff about books, same as always. But, uh, actually we're talking about a specific book at this point. Rekka: 03:10   Oh. Kaelyn:           03:11   Not a specific book as in a specific title, but it is a specific book that hopefully you're going to write one day, Rekka: 03:20   Hey, you know, maybe you might write a book someday and then maybe somebody wants to buy it and then they're like, Hey, is it a trilogy? And you go, of course it's a trilogy. Kaelyn:           03:26   Of course. Rekka: 03:27   Totally. It's totally, totally, totally a trilogy. Kaelyn:           03:30   And uh, so then you have to write the second book Rekka: 03:33   Now, okay. But backup, cause we actually already discussed outside of the recording that sometimes you've already got the second book written. Kaelyn:           03:41   Sometimes you've already got the second book written. So we should back up to once upon a time a little bit here. Once upon a time there was an author who loved an idea so much that they wanted to keep writing about it. So they wrote a book and they sold that book. And then the person they sold the book to said you got any more of these? And they said, sure, do let me just figure out what's going to happen. Rekka: 04:07   And um, in our, in our conversation, we did say that a lot of times by the time the first book has sold, if it's really intended to be a trilogy or more, the, the author has probably begun work in some form or another on the second book. Kaelyn:           04:23   Yeah. So, um, you know, as we mentioned in the intro today, we're talking about writing your second book and we, this is different from our, what's coming next - Rekka: 04:33   Right, cause what's coming next is the, that episode was about like, you being surprised by the question of what, what happens in a book that's not related to your trilogy. This is going back to the trilogy. Kaelyn:           04:46   This is, there's a difference between what are you working on next and what's coming next. So we already did what are you working on next? But this is about, um, the difference between writing the first book of your trilogy and writing the second. Rekka: 04:58   Yeah. Kaelyn:           05:00   So now as Rekka said, um, there's a chance you may have already written it, you may not have, you may have a rough draft, you may have a pretty detailed outline there, any infinite number of versions that this book could exist in. Um, for our purposes here, we're starting by assuming that you sold a trilogy or maybe you even sold the first book and it's a potential trilogy contingent on sales and sales are good. So now they want the other two books. Rekka: 05:29   Um, actually just to clarify that, if they're going to want the next book, they may have decided this before the book comes out and it's actually enthusiasm or excitement is high when they decide that they want the second book. So you may not actually have anyone who's gotten real eyes on the book other than some, um, advanced review copies. Yeah. Kaelyn:           05:47   Um, and we're also assuming that when you sold the first book, it was already written, um, you gotta you gotta be at a special place in your career - Rekka: 05:57   To sell a book on an outline - Kaelyn:           05:58   To sell the first, Rekka: 05:59   ... for your debut. Kaelyn:           06:00   Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's kind of our baseline where you're starting from and writing the second book is going to be very different than writing the first book because the first book you were functionally kind of doing on, on your own. Um, now of course you're probably involved in some writing groups. You had some beta readers, you had, people you talked to about this. Maybe you even had an editor you hired to, uh, to take a look at it. The thing is that when you're doing the second one, now you have a second party who is contractually obligated to be very interested in reading your book. Rekka: 06:34   Yes. Not just whether it's good or not, but where the entire plot is going. Kaelyn:           06:40   Yes. And you're not going to have an editor that doesn't care about the book period, but now you've got an editor that is very, very interested in this because you've got a story to tell that is not yet written. Rekka: 06:57   And to be fair, if you've been picked up for a partially written trilogy, chances are you've already talked to your editor. Kaelyn:           07:05   There is a very, there is a very good chance. And again, debut authors are not generally at a point in their career where publishing houses and editors are willing to just let them go. Yeah, sure. Let's see how it goes. So they're probably gonna want to talk to you beforehand, find out, um, you know, so I love these characters. I love the setting. I love when this story is going, what's going to happen? Rekka: 07:24   Yeah. Kaelyn:           07:25   Um, with the understanding that that could change as you work through things. Rekka: 07:30   Absolutely. Kaelyn:           07:31   Um, but you will probably have had that conversation. So how is this time going to be different? Rekka: 07:39   One, you're on a deadline. Kaelyn:           07:41   And that's a new and exciting thing and we talked about that in what you're working on next. Rekka: 07:46   What are you working on next. But um, this one is a deadline in your contract, um, specifically. Kaelyn:           07:52   Yeah, this one's like a deadline deadline. Rekka: 07:54   You probably know when you sign your contract, when you need to have this one handed in by. Kaelyn:           07:59   Yeah. Um, so you're going to be working on deadline and you're going to be working with someone who is giving you professional feedback. And I will just say this, that you're required to work with. Um, I don't mean like at most authors I know love their editors and look forward to working with them, but this is somebody that like, you can't just leave an opinion out in the writing group. You have to listen to this person's opinion and they're going to have opinions. Rekka: 08:28   You might be able to debate them a little bit. Kaelyn:           08:30   Definitely debate them. When I say listen to, I mean you have to take it into consideration. You may be able to debate them, you can discuss things, you can come to an understanding. Rekka: 08:37   You can figure out like, okay, I was going this way and you want me to go way over here. What else can we do that we'll both like. Kaelyn:           08:43   You can't ignore this person. Rekka: 08:45   Yeah. Kaelyn:           08:46   Um, and again, I can't really think of any authors off the top of my head who don't like wha - Rekka: 08:55   I'm making faces at her. I do. I do know, because professionally speaking you are, you are on team editor so you probably not going to hear as many stories about authors who don't like their editors. Kaelyn:           09:08   First of all, I'm on Team Author. That's my job as an editor, but - Rekka: 09:12   Well played. No, but you know what I'm saying? Like socially, within the industry, you talk to other editors a lot. Kaelyn:           09:22   That's true. The other thing is that, um, authors, I think because they know I'm an editor, are reticent to say anything about our breed in general/ Rekka: 09:27   Or because you aren't a close friend, they're not going to spill their emotional baggage on you about how their editor's running them through a pepper grinder on this, you know, their second book. Kaelyn:           09:39   It's only because we want to enhance the flavor. Rekka: 09:43   So fun fact pepper makes everything taste good because it opens up your pores and your taste more of it. Anyway, back to what we were saying. Um, your editor wants to open up people's tongues, uh, pores. Uh, yeah. Okay. No, but what I am trying to say is that I do personally know authors who are having a grueling time working on their second book with the editor of their publishing house. Kaelyn:           10:06   Out of curiosity, is it a grueling time because it's a lot, or is it because they don't like their editor? Rekka: 10:12   It's a grueling time because the editor keeps checking their outlines back at them and saying, no, not that do something else. Kaelyn:           10:18   So here you go. Somebody who's going to have opinions. Now, it's interesting what you said outline. Every editor works differently, but a lot of times when you're working on subsequent books in, uh, the tr, you know, a trilogy or a series, what have you, you're going to start with an outline, agree on that and how detailed it is will depend on the editor of the book, the, you know, how intricate the things are that you need to pay attention to. Um, and then you're just going to kind of be sent along on your way, you know. Okay, go write that. Um, you know, like we said at Parvus, I'm a little more involved in the actual day to day writing portions of this, but the whole point is you're going to have to take someone else's opinion into account before you sit down to write what it is you're going to be writing. Rekka: 11:11   I think that is a lot more enticing for many authors than you might imagine. Kaelyn:           11:17   Well, it sounds nice until you're actually doing it. Rekka: 11:20   I'll let this one slide, we'll bring it back later. Kaelyn:           11:24   Okay, look your editor is your partner in this. They're going to want to help you make this the best book it can possibly be. So every relationship, every dynamic is different. But um, you know, maybe you're excited about having another opinion to bounce things off of. I do know some people that just want to be left alone to write their book as they want to write it. And it's a little bit of a rude awakening going like, no, here's this person that you have to talk to about all of this now. Rekka: 11:56   So I break the mold in this sense because I had an entire first draft of my second book before I signed with um, Parvus on book one because as we've covered before, I plan to self publish this. And so what I was planning to do was write all three before I even released the first one so that I could release them close together, get some, you know, dopamine rush from Amazon's algorithm playing into all that. So I, I had gotten a lot further in this then I think is being proposed here as the typical experience. Kaelyn:           12:28   Yeah, and it's interesting because at Parvus we have a few standalone books, some that are turning into trilogies and then some things that we bought at trilogies. So uh Scott Warren's the Union Earth Privateers trilogy, which was the first book we ever got, Vick's Vultures, fantastic book. Definitely check it out. And then he was signed up for trilogy. Now I will say that I did not, I have not really done any work on Scott's books. Um, but he had a plan of where this was going. That was discussed when we said, okay, trilogy. But that was really the only one that we kind of worked on where the author didn't really have much on paper beforehand. Rekka as you just said, uh, you know, had a draft of her second book and knew where the third book was going. Um, you know, things have changed roughly. Rekka: 13:25   Very roughly. Kaelyn:           13:35   But you did know some people like I, I am surprised sometimes when I talk to people and they're like, I don't know, I'll figure it out. And we were joking about this before we started recording because I'm such a planner and a plotter. So like the idea of not knowing how your story ends is like has me like clutching my pearls and gasping and um, but then Christopher Ruz, who's uh Century of Sand Rrilogy, the first book, The Ragged Blade also did an episode and interview episode on this go back. That was episode six, I believe. Um, let me go back and check it out. Really cool about traditionally publishing something that was previously self-published. So that meant that he had books one and two completed already and three like a pretty finished draft. Ruz now in a position, and you were as well, I'm sure where the trickle down changes from the stuff in the first book now have to be addressed in the second book if it's written. Rekka: 14:24   You're referring to the editorial changes that came back from the publisher. Kaelyn:           14:27   Exactly. Rekka: 14:27   Yeah. So I had the advantage of, uh, Colin Coyle kind of gave me some feedback. Uh, Parvus's publisher, uh, kind of gave me some feedback at the beginning of the process that wasn't officially from my editor, but it was something that he brought in and, and those were actually the biggest changes of the, of the process. And, um, he said something that made me realize that he'd misread a scene like the way I intended. It was not the way I came across, which is a good bit of feedback to have. And so by going into fix what he saw, I fixed it for one. Yay. Um, but also I gave myself a little bit of something that has come in extremely, extremely plot devices for the following books and I don't know what book to would have looked like if I hadn't put that in there just to fix a scene so that it was read correctly and now all of a sudden it became a major element. And so that was beneficial to me because it actually tightened things up for me going forward. On the other hand - Kaelyn:           15:39   Yeah, we've been slowly unraveling, um, everything that, uh, that he's been doing. Um, again, I, this is, you know, Episode Six is about traditionally publishing a previously self published book, but there is a lot of talk in it about the changes that we made him go in there and make. And that was just the first book. Um, so the ripple effect out through the second and third is massive. I shouldn't say ripple. We're dealing with small tsunami type things at this point. And he's, don't get me wrong, he's handling it like a champ. But like, it's not that the changes are bad or even difficult, it's that it's a lot to go back and make sure you catch everything. Rekka: 16:26   In the continuity of something that you already know Kaelyn:           16:29   And account for everything. And this is why, um, going into our next point here, I very much like when I'm starting with an author to know where the book is going. You know, I had said like, I am, I am a plotter, I am a planner. Um, I have a rule with the authors I work with. You have to tell me how it ends. Rekka: 16:50   Wheras just for contrast. Um, Ryan Kelly is my editor at Parvus at the moment. And, uh, I asked him if he wanted to see the outline for book three because we had not talked about where it was going. And he's like, yeah, you could send it over. Where's Caitlin would have been like, what? It exists. Why don't I have it? Kaelyn:           17:02   Why don't I have this right now? No, I mean, you wouldn't even send me an outline. I'd be on the phone with you going like, okay, but just tell me what happens. Part of that is because, you know, we buy stories that we love and I am very impatient. Um, I really always just need to know how something ends. Um, so part of it is just a personal, like, I need to know what happens here! Rekka: 17:25   Kaelyn loves spoilers. Kaelyn:           17:26   I don't actually stay far away from spoilers. Rekka: 17:29   Well, as you've said, you didn't want to know how my trilogy ends because you want to experience it as the reader. Kaelyn:           17:35   Exactly. Um, but as an editor, as an editor, I know certain books are going to need things seeded in the beginning of it. So I kind of want to know how everything's going to make sure that it fly off the rails at the end or we're dropping in something that came out of nowhere that readers are going to go, well hang on a second. Rekka: 17:56   So you bring up a really good point because these are the kinds of things that your editor can point out, um, about structure, about. Like you need to Chekov this rifle. You know, like you need to make sure that people feel satisfied by this even if they weren't expecting it, that it's grounded in the reality of your world building or your plot or whatever, or things you've introduced,. Kaelyn:           18:29   A, a twist ending or a big reveal as only as good as you've set it up to be. Rekka: 18:29   Right. Kaelyn:           18:29   Like it needs to feel surprising, yet inevitable readers should be able to go back - Rekka: 18:36   And see all the clues, Kaelyn:           18:37   And find points where they're like, Oh, okay, I got it. Rekka: 18:40   So like for example, the movie Memento. Kaelyn:           18:42   Yes. Rekka: 18:43   That is one where you watch it the second time you're like, damn, this was all in here. Kaelyn:           18:48   If you want to take it even further Fight Club that is, you know, the weirdness of that movie aside despite the groups that have co-opted it's uh =. Rekka: 18:57   Okay. So yeah. Kaelyn:           18:59   It's still a great movie. Um, but the book even too, and you know, obviously they had to do things very different in the book in the movie, but you go back and watch that and you're like, yeah, no, okay, I see it now. Um, so depending on the nature of your book and depending on where it's going, that's something your editor is going to be very interested in. Rekka: 19:18   But not only that, but as I was starting to say, as an author, you really should want someone who's, who's got that second pair of, you know, critical eyes, um, figureative eyes to put it on your story and say like, Oh, that's what you're doing with this. Well here's what I suggest before we put out book too. Cause like book one's already, you know, pretty much signed, sealed and delivered to this man. If you haven't got it seeded book two before it gets published while you're in revisions for that is a great place to seed those elements that are going to make it more satisfying when you bring it in for the landing on number three. So your editor's going to say, Oh, that's where you're going. Well what if we do this? You don't want someone who isn't paying attention to where the story's going because they might guide you into a corner that you can't get to that ending anymore. Kaelyn:           20:05   Yeah, and this is one of those, uh, you know, writers I think a lot of times fall into the problem, which is a totally understandable problem of can't see the forest through the trees. Having an outside perspective where sometimes editors are picking out parts of the book that are more important than the writer realizes they are. Um, you know, I always say like your favorite part of the book might not be the best part of the book. Rekka: 20:35   Your favorite part of the book is probably a turn of phrase or a certain scene and emotional feelings. Kaelyn:           20:40   I am, I thought, I always ask authors, especially like, you know, when they're, the books published or something or you know, okay, we've got the final draft, you're done. What's your favorite part of the book? Every single time I've been surprised. Rekka: 20:53   Really. Kaelyn:           20:53   Um, just because it's a personal thing and there maybe, you know, it might even have something to do with what was going on with you when you were writing it, but the whole point is that you're, you know, a detailed outline that you're providing to an editor is going to allow them to look at this with a bigger perspective of what is happening in this, what is happening in the characters, what the growing themes in the book are and where the setting and the plot is headed. And that is something that a lot of times now trilogies are being bought in such a way that the first book is sold and then the second and third, not always, but you know, they may buy all three at once or they could say second and thirds contingent upon, you know, what's going on with the first. So listeners, I'm sure you'll notice that with a lot of trilogies, and by the way, YA especially does this a lot. The first book kind of wraps up to a point. There are definitely lingering things. There's plots to build off of stories, problems to resolve, but the first book kind of wraps up and then two and three seems to completely take on a new life of its own. Um, again, very, very common in YA. Rekka: 22:11   And that's because you don't know if that's going to be it. Kaelyn:           22:14   Yeah, exactly. Um, so getting an outline with this stuff, um, things could change very much after, after book one, but the outline and the perspective that it's going to give the editor is really important to help the writer get through this process and get to the, I don't want to say satisfying because that implies a happy ending. Rekka: 22:38   There's a difference between like, inevitable conclusion, you know, like not feeling like you spent all your credit in the first book. Kaelyn:           22:49   Exactly. Yeah. Um, one of the examples I always give with this is, um, Cassandra Claire, do you know who she is? Rekka: 22:59   The Mortal Instruments? Kaelyn:           23:00   Yeah. Um, which that must of, that first book must have been published coming up on 20 years ago, which is so strange to think it's that old it is. But she was kind of one of the pioneers of what we now call urban fantasy. Um, like I remember being a teenager and picking up that book as someone gave it to me and was like, you have to read this. And I actually remember looking at this going, this is set in a city that's boring. That's not how this kind of stuff should go. And so anyway, you know, this was saying this to qualify that like this was kind of a new thing they were trying to figure out. But, um, then reading an interview with her that she did, um, explaining that she had to give them an incredibly detailed outline of where all of these books were going. And this is, you know, I don't know if anyone listening has read these, but the last book is full of twists, turns, reveals, shocking identities, you know, and so they wanted to see, okay, where's the groundwork that you're laying for this to get to this ending? Rekka: 24:13   And especially for the publisher, if this book is supposed to put that genre on the map, they need to make sure that this is the standard that people are going to hold it. Kaelyn:           24:21   Yeah, there were, if I'd be very interested to see if anyone kind of like has ever sat down and figured this out. I'm sure someone has. But there were a bunch of urban fantasy things that all came out around that same time. And I would argue that of that initial like group of releases, hers was far too, she's still writing these, um, they just keep giving her contracts to write trilogies in, in this world. And like now she is to the point where she can just go, I don't know, I guess one about this character? Excellent here, have some money. Rekka: 24:52   Um, life goals. Kaelyn:           24:54   Yeah. Yeah. But um, well, I mean she had like a movie, a television series, you know, they were not great. Rekka: 25:02   Well, I have often said that my dream film result for anything I write would be that the film is optioned, the option is renewed and renewed and renewed. It never happened and it's tied up in options and I keep getting paid for it and nobody ever touches it and makes people mad about it. Kaelyn:           25:23   I always joke that like, you know, if I ever wrote a book or like even if they were like going to, you know, some part of this book got a option for a movie and they'd be like, we want to do this. My answer would be cool. Uh, I'm going to go to film school, I'll come back, I'll come back to you in three or four years because I'm in charge of this. I don't trust you. Rekka: 25:45   I've had conversations with Kaelyn, um, outside of recording these podcasts and this is so 100% true. Kaelyn:           25:53   I don't trust you to do this the right way. Rekka: 25:56   And look, the thing is you're not wrong. Kaelyn:           25:58   That's the thing. Rekka: 25:59   Track record is more 90% likely that this series is not going to be handled carefully or correct. Kaelyn:           26:05   Well, I will say, and just a funny little side story, um, Necropolis PD, I gave my cousins and my aunt copies of this book and they were like, I could see this as, you know, this movie. And they're already casting it and listening to them cast it is infuriating me because they're casting all of these young, very handsome, you know, debonair men for the character of Jacob Green. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, go read Necropolis PD it's a fantastic book. Rekka: 26:34   Do go read it. Kaelyn:           26:35   Um, and I'm already fighting with them going, no, it's not. No, that's not what he's supposed to look like. That's not, he's supposed to act. So yes. Um, no one touches these books except us. Anyway, so your editor is going to be far more involved in the structure of the book then they were the first time around when you were working on this by yourself. Rekka: 27:03   Because I promise you this is a very good thing. Kaelyn:           27:03   Yeah, Rekka: 27:07   I really think it is. I mean like yes, you're going to have your outlying cases where like this is not the, the system that works best for you. But I think many authors I can speak for are always wondering if they're doing the right thing for their series. Are they taking it in the right direction? And this is a checks and balance. Kaelyn:           27:24   This person is legally obligated to talk to you about this. Rekka: 27:27   And it matters to me so much that my trilogy stick the landing. Kaelyn:           27:33   Yeah. Rekka: 27:33   Cause I mean my experience with so many books series is, well one you of course have the ones that get canceled before they're finished, which is horrible. Um, but two you have the ones that it feels like the author just kind of ran out of ideas or didn't have a clear plan and they kept setting up fantastic, wonderful world-building and situations and politics but didn't know how to resolve the situation. Kaelyn:           27:55   *cough* Game of Thrones. Rekka: 27:58   Yeah, sorry. Something in our throats. But it matters to me so much and I want somebody else's opinion on this. Kaelyn:           28:08   Yeah and I mean this is generally, you know, we've talked before about like working with an editor. You can go back and listen to our episode Will My Editor Tells Me It's Shit? And um. Rekka: 28:18   You guys love your books and you just want to talk to people about them, but you also want to be sure that you're handling them well. Kaelyn:           28:24   Am I doing it right? Rekka: 28:25   Am I doing this right? Kaelyn:           28:27   Here's the thing. Rekka: 28:28   Yeah. I mean, go ahead. Kaelyn:           28:30   There's no right. Rekka: 28:31   Yup. Kaelyn:           28:31   Because you've got to be the one to decide what's right for your book. Rekka: 28:34   Okay. So this is not me saying, dear editor, how do I finish this? Kaelyn:           28:39   Yes. Rekka: 28:39   This is like, okay, here's what I'm seeing. Kaelyn:           28:41   Yep. Rekka: 28:42   Does this satisfy the arc that's been set up across the series so far? Kaelyn:           28:46   Do you feel like as a reader of this rather than a creator of it, that you think this came to a good, satisfying, logical ending and they're going to point to spots and say, well this feels like it might be a little thin here or this feels like a jump or this doesn't seem in keeping with the character, that's what they're supposed to do. Rekka: 29:05   And you get those things before this. And this is the point of this whole episode. You get these things before you've invested two years in polishing a manuscript. Kaelyn:           29:13   From, you know, the editor side of things. Um, I try to be sensitive and aware of the fact that this person who was working on this before had pretty free reign to do what they wanted with it. Now granted, I probably did take it and make them - Rekka: 29:31   Right. And that's. Kaelyn:           29:31   And make them do some stuff and that's the baby step into, into the end of the pool. Um, but I personally, and I think most editors will do this, you know, is the, the check in, how are you doing? How are you feeling about this? Anything bothering you? Is there parts that you want us to work on or pay attention to more? Are there any parts that you don't feel great? Are there parts that you really feel great about? And then those are the ones I make them go change. Rekka: 29:59   Yeah. Well, and that's the thing. It's like every conversation when you get revisions back from your editor, you're like, yeah, I knew that part wasn't quite right. Kaelyn:           30:09   Very rarely do I get, um, you know, Rekka: 30:11   Shock and surprise. Kaelyn:           30:14   Of like no, that was perfect. Rekka: 30:14   That's exactly how I pictured it. Kaelyn:           30:16   Yeah. Um, very rarely. Um, writers I think don't give themselves enough credit a lot of times for how aware of the strengths and weaknesses of their own books they are. Rekka: 30:26   Well, so often I go to my editor because I've gotten to the point where I know something's funky about it, but I don't know where the smell is coming from. Kaelyn:           30:34   Every time I get a draft back from Ruz, the note in the draft is something like that. Just take it. Rekka: 30:39   I never want to look at this again. Kaelyn:           30:42   Um, yeah, exactly. Rekka: 30:44   Sorry. I thought it was talking about myself. Um, Kaelyn:           30:47   Oh, so that's not just him. That's all of you. Rekka: 30:49   All of us. Well that's what I'm saying. You know, like, yes, we, we know something is wrong, but the, when the relief we feel when the editor pinpoints, the thing that we couldn't see is amazing. The editor's job is to wipe the petroleum off the lens so you can see in sharper detail like where the work needs to happen. Kaelyn:           31:11   Yeah. And bringing it back around is that okay when you're doing a second, third X number book, especially within the same, um, you know, at the same trilogy or just in the set, in the same world with maybe the same characters. Um, the editor is going to be involved a lot more from the beginning. Now, you know, as Rekka says a lot of times that's exciting and that's a good thing to have. Um, but I would like to point out that this is somebody now who, I was joking before, you're legally obligated to take their opinions into account, but you're legally obligated to take their opinions into account. Because here's the thing, if I guarantee you in your contract, there is a clause that says we're not publishing this if we're not happy with it. Rekka: 31:58   Right. I mean, okay - Kaelyn:           31:59   Acceptance of the manuscript is, is a big, it's a short clause that it's got big implications. Rekka: 32:09   Yeah. Kaelyn:           32:09   And you know, I'm not trying to say this to scare anyone, like, well, if I don't do exactly what they say, they're going to cancel my contract. It's not that. And if you're working with somebody who would do that, you probably don't want to be publishing with them, but you have to take into account that yes, your editor is your editor and they're on the creative side rather than the business side of this. But at the end of the day, there's probably a sales and marketing team behind them that is saying, look, for the sake of argument, let's pretend that you know, the book has already come out your first book. And they're saying it's sold to really well in this demographic. Um, the feedback we're getting, people really like this part. Rekka: 32:55   All of our five stars come from this genre reader. Kaelyn:           32:58   Exactly. They're not going to make you rewrite everything based upon that. But that is absolutely something that will be taken into account. So if they're saying, look your books - Rekka: 33:10   If you lean away from that group of readers. Kaelyn:           33:13   Maybe your book was borderline YA and the YA community just pounced all over it and this became, you know, a runaway success within that group. But then book two is taking a really hard left. Rekka: 33:27   Or it takes place 20 years later and they're no longer any youths to be. Kaelyn:           33:32   Yeah, actually that's interesting. You'd probably get around that. Say this is the thing, if you pose these things to me, I'm going to try and come up with solutions for them. Um, but it's taking a really hard left into something that is not going to appeal At all to the large readership of the first book. That's going to be a conversation. Rekka: 33:48   Right. I mean, so I always read that clause more as you phone in the manuscript. We are not going to print it, which is - Kaelyn:           33:59   Yes, that's an obvious implication. But there is that second layer of - Rekka: 34:02   Where you saw this going is not where - Kaelyn:           34:04   We're not sure we can get anyone to read this. Um, you know, if you are writing a book about, this is the thing, anything I say here, I'm going to put ideas in Rekka's head. Rekka: 34:17   Either that or you're looking around to my studio and you're going to get ideas and you're just going to end up describing one of my stories that I've already written. Kaelyn:           34:26   There's a lot of figurines around here I can. So if we, you know, if you're writing a book about like super powered, uh, teenagers, you know, trying living in their secret hideaway and trying to find out, you know, trying to gain contact with the aliens who made them this way or what have you. And uh, you know, we end on a, we've made contact with them. Let's see what happens. And then in the second book it turns out it's not aliens, it's Godzilla, but like actually Godzilla and like no aliens and it's, your editor is going to look at that and go, this is not what your first story was about and this is a trilogy. Rekka: 35:08   And this is not what your first story was setting up because each story is like, you know, your first sentence or into your first paragraph, your first book is going to earn you the readers for the second book. In fact, those are going to be, you know, the readers who care the most about what happens in book two because they've already read book one. Kaelyn:           35:24   And I think we kind of, you know, we want to give writer,s creators for that matter as much autonomy to, create the way that they see things going. Um, you know, you'll see on Twitter all the time like, and it's correct that authors are not obligated to readers. They are not there to write what you want them to write. Rekka: 35:53   It's not fan service. Kaelyn:           35:54   Exactly. I agree with all of that. But I will say that people who have invested time, money and emotional mental energy in your book deserve to not then be kicked in the ass. Rekka: 36:11   So like if you're having an idea that's so far off the board from what you set up in your first book, just save that for the next series, you know? Kaelyn:           36:20   Or you know, I'm going to talk to you, your editor about it. I guess if there's like, if it's, if you planned that all along and you've, you know - Rekka: 36:25   And this is another thing, it's like if you know where that was going, if you planned it all along, make sure they know that before book one revisions are done because maybe they can help you set that up so it won't surprise and ass kick anybody. Kaelyn:           36:37   But again, you've probably already talked to your editor about this. And so again, this is where the accepted manuscript clause comes into play. Depending on how detailed you got and depending on you know, what their plan was for you and your book and your marketing and stuff. There may actually be specific things written into the contract about the book, which I know sounds like such a crazy micromanaging type thing to do Rekka: 37:02   But it's, it shows the more detail that you know about the series when you're signing the contract, the more detail will appear in the contract. You know, like if you don't know what, if you don't know that it's going to be a trilogy for sure, but they want your second book, they're going to say in an unnamed science fiction novel of no less than a hundred thousand words or whatever. But if they know that it's going to be the sequel, then it's a sequel set in the same world. Kaelyn:           37:28   Or yeah, they will put in their set in the same, you know, whatever legal words they're going to use. But world of the first book of this with the same characters with the same, you know, basically what they're doing is they're telling you we want more of this, Rekka: 37:41   We want more of exactly this. Um, don't pull a fast one on us. Kaelyn:           37:46   So if you come back with something that is completely not that they will, they're probably won't accept the manuscript. Rekka: 37:52   Well, they can just point to the contract and look, look, that's not what we bought. Kaelyn:           37:56   Yeah. It's not meant to be scary. I'm not trying to like freak anyone out by, uh, by saying this, you know, it's just something to keep in mind. Rekka: 38:01   And in fact, she really doesn't mean for this to be scary because the whole point of this episode is, Hey, you get to work with a buddy, you have a safety system. Kaelyn:           38:10   Exactly. Rekka: 38:10   And this, and somebody that you can just go, okay, I wrote this chapter. I can't tell if I'm hitting it, you know, and just like you can get a response back within a reasonable timeframe and it says, yeah, no, this is great. Keep going. And like who gives a thumbs up every now and then, like on demand is really awesome. Kaelyn:           38:28   Good job. Rekka: 38:29   And also correction, you know, like path correction. If you aren't really, you know, if if feel weak about it, is it nerves or is it really bad and your editor can tell you. Kaelyn:           38:40   Yup. So, um, Rekka: 38:42   Okay, but that okay, but here's the one thing that's weird about this whole process. Your editor before has seen you at your best. You're polishing the script now. Now you are, you are going to show them the piles of dirty laundry on the floor of your bedroom. Kaelyn:           38:55   No, no one is surprised by the curtain being pulled back. Rekka: 38:59   But it's different. Kaelyn:           38:59   It's different. Yes. Um, Rekka: 39:01   I definitely know that. I don't make my sentences, you know, they're not the final sentences in the first draft. Kaelyn:           39:08   Yeah. Um, no one is surprised by the current being pulled back here. That's not, you know, anything that is going to shock and horrify your editors. Anytime you get a draft back, there's going to be an understanding of how rough it is. You know, like if it's like, look, there are sentence fragments in here. There are parts where I trailed off and started drawing in pictures of the pizza I was going to eat after this. Rekka: 39:29   There's pizza inside. Kaelyn:           39:31   So there's expectations there. There's realistically adjusted perceptions Rekka: 39:37   But it is weird too, to feel like you were on your best behavior and now suddenly like this is, this is you with it all hanging out. And not only that, but like you're coming to them with a little bit of like, Oh, I don't know, like I need help with this. Like not only like did you pretend to have it all together and know where the series was going when you sign the contract. Um, now like they're seeing it at its scrappiest and, and you are asking for like, what should I do next with this? Kaelyn:           40:05   Yeah, yeah. Rekka: 40:06   But conversations you have are going to be so exciting and ideas thrown back and forth and all that kind of like, they want this to be the best. Kaelyn:           40:14   I mean, my favorite part of editing books is, is the plot. Um, you know, Rekka: 40:19   So that's good for people who need help with the plot. Kaelyn:           40:22   Yeah. Yeah. That's, um, my absolute favorite thing is I'll ask Ruz if maybe it's okay if I put a picture online of like one of the things that I sent him, but um, it's like I love just getting a piece of paper sitting down, writing out this happens, this happens drawing arrows and circles and dots and you know, paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence in court against us. But I love doing that and I end up with some truly bonkers looking pieces of paper but it's, it's so much fun. Rekka is far more organized. She has post-its and, Rekka: 40:57   Thumbtacks and index cards. Kaelyn:           40:57   Spreadsheets, and color-coded index cards. Rekka: 41:02   So this does make me feel like we should add the caveat of you are working directly with a lot of unagented authors. Kaelyn:           41:13   Yes, yes we are. Parvus has a lot of unagented authors. If you have an agent, however you're going to be working with them a lot. Rekka: 41:22   Yeah. This, this might be a process while you are on submission with the first book, which again, same, same issue where the editor at the publisher may cause some the catastrophic ripples. But you can still work with a buddy and you might even get the buddy system in a little bit earlier in the process. Kaelyn:           41:42   Yeah, agents over the last few years, I would say probably, especially within the last decade, but before that as well have really taken on much more of an editorial role. Rekka: 41:53   And not all of them still not like there are plenty that are pretty hands off once you've sold the property. Kaelyn:           41:58   But um, you know, it's very normal before, you know, when an agent takes you on as a client and you decide what they're going to try and sell for you, it's very normal for them to give editorial suggestions and direction. Rekka: 42:11   When we talk to Caitlin McDonald, she said that she will probably go over a story at least twice. Kaelyn:           42:16   Yeah, exactly. And um, you know, depending on the agent, how polished it's going to be when, you know, they try to sell. It probably depends partially on who they're trying to sell it to and um, what editors, they know, how they work and what they're going to be looking for. But for your other books, again, it depends, varies agent to agent. Rekka: 42:36   I know authors whose agents will definitely be editorial for the book that goes on submission. But after that they don't want to steer the, uh, the author and the incorrect direction when the editor might come back and, and - Kaelyn:           42:49   Yeah, they'll kind of go, well that's you and your editor. That's, you know, what your - Rekka: 42:52   You can copy me on big conversations. Kaelyn:           42:54   Exactly. Yeah. You know, again, it depends so much of this, this industry is so subjective depending on how the person works. Rekka: 43:00   Because there's every person in the mix as a different ingredients and you don't come up with the same, I mean, no book is, you know, direct copy of another. Kaelyn:           43:09   From my perspective, every author is different. Rekka: 43:12   Right. Well that's what I'm trying to say is that each author, each editor, each agent are different personalities with different preferences. And by combining those things, you get a chemical reaction that results in a different kind of book than it would with different ingredients and different people. Kaelyn:           43:26   Yeah. No, and I've mentioned this in previous episodes where we've talked about editorial kind of stuff. And I will say, as I said before, this is me, I can be pretty flexible with how I work. So I try to work with how things work best for the author. If they want to talk to me a lot about this kind of stuff, I am thrilled and over the moon to talk to them. If they really just kind of want to go off into their corner, work on it and come back to me when they have something, that's fine too. Um, you know, I will, they do have to tell me how it is. Rekka: 43:59   Well, yeah. So suppose you, Before they start writing this draft, they've probably already talked to you about the outline. Kaelyn:           44:04   Well that what I mena, and even with the outline, if they want to go into the, you know, go off into their corner, figure out how they do and then come back to me with it. Um, or if they want to talk once every couple of weeks or you know, text me about, that's fine too. I as the editor try to be a little more flexible. I know not everyone does that. I think they try to, if they can, they'll make any reasonable accommodations. Um, Rekka: 44:28   Reasonable accommodations. Like we said, this is, you know, professional situations, still would, it shouldn't devolve into unprofessional like demands on the either side. Kaelyn:           44:32   Oh yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, but anyway, the whole point is that, you know, everyone works differently. If I can help accommodate someone to, so that I can get the best possible book out of them. Of course I'm going to do that. Rekka: 44:53   Yeah. New Speaker: 44:54   On that note, uh, one of the things a good editor knows how to do is cut things off when they're taking too long. So, uh, we've been talking for a bit and I think we've said, I think we covered everything we need to. Rekka: 45:04   A couple of chapters that are coming out. Kaelyn:           45:05   Yeah. Yeah. We'll, we'll do some editing of our own. Rekka: 45:08   We'll blend that, that information into the rest of it. Kaelyn:           45:11   Yeah. So, um, you know, that was a kind of just talking about the difference between writing your second book in a trilogy first your first and we just, we keep saying trilogy just because - Rekka: 45:20   So what we're really referring to is writing a book under the direct supervision of the editor rather than writing a book you hope an editor will buy. Kaelyn:           45:29   Um, we just keep saying trilogy because it's so industry standard at this point. Rekka: 45:33   It is pretty typical. Although, you know, like not always, a lot of really successful stuff become long running series. Kaelyn:           45:39   Yeah and um, I don't know if you've noticed this, but um, again, especially in YA, I'm noticing it's quadrilogies, now we've moved away where, we're upping the stakes here. Rekka: 45:50   Well, I think you see this a lot in um, you know, film and TV also if something's working, give us more of it to sell it to the crowd that already loves it because they're going to show up for it. And it's like, it's very business, salesy minded, but like, hey. Kaelyn:           46:08   Don't you want to sell books? Rekka: 46:09   I mean, think of the, it's not new. Think of the Foreigner Series by CJ Cherry, you know, like this long running series. Nobody says no to them if they're selling, right? So if you've got a built in audience, then you could probably talk your publisher and do a few more series Kaelyn:           46:25   There are series that will go until the author decides time to stop. Rekka: 46:29   Or they die. Kaelyn:           46:30   Or they die. Rekka: 46:30   Then they bring in a second author to work on that series and keep working on it until they say stop. New Speaker: 46:36   es. So, um, anyway, so that was, you know, about working with an editor verse working on your own. Um, hopefully that didn't completely, hopefully that came off not scary. Rekka: 46:50   See, like I said, I see a lot of hope in and um, this is a collaboration now. Kaelyn:           46:56   Yeah, definitely. Rekka: 46:57   You know, so I see a lot of hope in that. It's a very lonely thing to write a book. It's a very lonely thing to write a book. You don't know if anyone will like. So when you can have someone saying, you know, this is working, this is working or you know what, it would be working if we did address this and your editor is not going to write the book for you. So it's not taking away your autonomy. Is it not taking away your creative control, it's just going to steer you towards success both story-wise and hopefully like, you know, sales wise because again, you're both in this because you hope the book will sell in a way that has a return Kaelyn:           47:30   Yeah, exactly. So, um, thank you so much everyone for listening. Um, as always, you can find us online. Rekka: 47:38   Yup. We are @WMBcast on Twitter and Instagram. Send us your questions there. You can post them straight onto our wall if you are happy to have those questions, you know, identified under your name. If you are asking a question anonymously, you can DMS on Twitter. They are wide open. So uh, come on in and ask us your publishing, writing and everything in between questions and we'll address them in future episodes. We'll either, if they're a big topic, we can, um, you know, pick those out and do entire episodes or we can - Kaelyn:           48:09   We are open to suggestions. Rekka: 48:10   Yeah. And we, yeah, definitely. But we can also do like a listener questions episode again. We've done one of those after Submissions September. Kaelyn:           48:16   Maybe we'll wrap up the year with that. Rekka: 48:18   Yeah. Maybe a 2019 listener questions a year end review kind of thing. Yes. Um, yeah. So send us your questions. We need them now that we've announced that player in that and you can find us at patreon.com/WMBcast and your support would be greatly appreciated to help us run this podcast and the quality to which you have become accustomed. We appreciate you listening and we especially appreciate folks who leave reviews on Apple podcasts and they've finally decided it's called Apple podcasts. Kaelyn:           48:48   That was, that took a while to. Rekka: 48:50   That did take a while, well they waited for the Apple like, um, event in September and we were waiting to find out what that was going to be. So thank you again for listening and we will talk to you again in two weeks.    

- Tonight we have Colin Coyle, stand up comdian, and a great dude! YOU WILL LAUGH AT THIS EPISODE!

Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between! It’s Week Two of Submissions September and we are talking about query letters!  What are they? What purpose do they serve?  Why are they so freaking hard to write??  Your query letter is an incredibly important part of your submission and Rekka and Kaelyn take a dive into what makes a good QL, so dos and don’ts, and some insight into Rekka’s work on her own query letter. If you missed last week’s episode, this month Submissions September on the We Make Books Podcast!  We’re up to seven (7!) episodes this month all about the process of submitting your novel.  We have a lot of awesome discussions lined up and even some special guests.  Here’s what will be coming your way for the  month: Week 1 (9/3/2019): Is This Ready For Other People to See?- Submitting Your Manuscript Week 2 (9/10/2019): My Entire Novel in Three Hundred Words - The Dreaded Query Letter Week 3 (9/17/2019): Agents of Literature, Part 1: An Interview with Literary Agent Caitlin McDonald               (9/18/2019): Agents of Literature, Part 2: Interviews with Agented Authors               (9/19/2019): Agents of Literature Part 3: Interviews with Agented Authors Week 4 (9/24/2019):What is Going On Over There? - The Other Side of the Submissions Process Week 5 (9/30/2019): Now I’m Even More Confused – Submissions September Q&A Episode We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writer and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, concerns, and has anyone else watched “Carnival Row” yet? Because we have some Thoughts and need someone to talk to about them. We hope you enjoy We Make Books!   Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast       Kaelyn:00:00   Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the, We Make Books Podcast, a show about writing, publishing and everything in between. Rekka:00:06   I'm Rekka, I write science fiction and fantasy as RJ Theodore. Kaelyn:00:09   And I'm Kaelyn. I am the acquisitions editor for purpose press. And this is week two of Submissions September. Rekka:00:15   It's a big month for us. Kaelyn:00:17   It's a busy month for us. Rekka:00:18   Well it was busy month was last month when you were editing all these episodes together. Kaelyn:00:21   Yeah, yeah, that's true. We're going to have a break then. But uh, yeah. So this week we're talking about query letters. Um, what are they, what are their purpose? Rekka:00:31   Why are they so scary? Kaelyn:00:32   Why are they so hard to write? Rekka:00:35   Um, and there's a little bonus in there. Kaelyn:00:37   Oh yes. And ah, we get to hear uh, we get to hear something special from Rekka with her own experience with this. So, you know, make sure you get all the way to the end of the episode for that. Um, this was, you know, when we were kind of sitting down mapping out, okay, um, what we're gonna do for this. Um, I very adamantly wanted to do an episode that was just about query letters because I think they're a frequently, I won't say overlooked but under emphasized tool. Rekka:01:05   Until it's too late. Kaelyn:01:06   Exactly. Rekka:01:07   So suddenly you're panicking about your query letter because you have to include one and what goes in it and how good does it have to be. And, um, you, should I write it from the first person perspective of my main character or short - Kaelyn:01:22   Wait, wait, spoiler alert. Don't do that. Rekka:01:24   Or should I write it in pig Latin or should I, you know, write it backward? Like should I write it as a poem so that it stands out in the inbox? Kaelyn:01:35   I got one of those. Rekka:01:36   I believe you. Yeah. Okay. Kaelyn:01:38   Um, so yeah, we go over, you know, some of the, like the origin story, if you will, of these, the purpose of them and um, what, what yours should have and what you should be planning for and what to do with it. So, um, I think it's a very important thing to take, the appropriate amount of time to work on. So we definitely, you know, we wanted to talk about that and um, oh boy did we [laughs] so, um, that's the episode. Uh, again, you know we're, this is episode two of it's looking to be five and for Submissions September, we're rolling right through them. Rekka:02:13   Yup. Kaelyn:02:14   So we'll be back next week. Rekka:02:16   You're getting one a week through September and then we're going to back off again. Kaelyn:02:19   Then we're going to take a nap for a while. Rekka:02:22   Easily, easily a month. Kaelyn:02:23   And um, you know, maybe around December we'll, we'll poke our heads up out of the sand again. Um, so anyway, uh, enjoy the episode everyone and we'll catch you next week Rekka:02:31   Yeah, enjoy the episode Speaker 2:       02:35   [music] Speaker 3:       02:40   [music] Rekka:02:49   Are you going to be able to have a full conversation? Are you going to just sort of slip into a nap? Kaelyn:02:54   Yeah, no, it's a barbecue coma, specifically mac and cheese coma. That was, you know - Rekka:03:00   Free Mac and cheese coma. Kaelyn:03:01   That's fine. I really want to go look at the order ticket and see like what was on their first verse they actually gave us because I'm convinced we walked away with at least part of someone else's meal. Rekka:03:13   I mean, part of the meal we ordered that they canceled that, then we - Kaelyn:03:16   Yeah, no, I mean they definitely handed it, handed us all of it. It's not like we picked up someone else's stuff and walked away with it. Rekka:03:23   No. And I think the way the bags were spread out, some, like some of all of our order wasn't across two different bags. Kaelyn:03:30   Who knows. Yeah, we're recording already? Rekka:03:33   Yeah, of course. Kaelyn:03:33   Yeah, of course we are. Hey everyone episode or, it's sorry, Submissions September week two. Rekka:03:41   Is it? Kaelyn:03:41   Yeah. Rekka:03:42   So Gosh, time is funny that way. Kaelyn:03:45   Yeah. No, week two. Rekka:03:46   The problem is I was focused on the fact that this was episode 13. So to me, yeah. Kaelyn:03:52   No, those numbers, they're tricky. Rekka:03:53   13 doesn't match because week two is the 10th. I'm like, this doesn't make any sense. Kaelyn:03:58   And you know, episode two, but week thirteen, you know, it's, it's tricky. Uh, so - Rekka:04:05   Week two, episode 13, you just said it backwards. Now I am confused. Kaelyn:04:09   See I was, I was seeing if you'd catch that there. That was good. Good. Looking at Rekka. Rekka:04:14   I pay attention. Kaelyn:04:16   Uh, so what are we talking about today? Rekka:04:18   Query letters. Kaelyn:04:21   Query letters, these - Rekka:04:22   Do it! Kaelyn:04:22   The dreaded query letter. Rekka:04:24   I don't know why they're so dreaded. Kaelyn:04:25   They're hard. Rekka:04:26   But they're the last thing you have to do before you can send it to somebody. Kaelyn:04:29   But they're the last thing you have to do before you can send it to somebody. Rekka:04:32   And if you get it wrong, they'll laugh at you. Kaelyn:04:35   It's, query letters are hard. Um, it's, you're summarizing your entire book plus a little bit about yourself in about 400 words. That's hard. Rekka:04:49   Four hundred sounds a little long. Kaelyn:04:50   Yeah. Probably 300, one page, you know, whatever you can get on that and maybe use a really small font. So, yeah, today we're talking about query letters, which is the next vital component of getting your submission ready. Rekka:05:05   By the way, don't use a really small font. Kaelyn:05:07   Don't use a really small font. Rekka:05:08   That was not good advice because - Kaelyn:05:09   That was not an endorsement to that. Um, yeah. So we're talking about query letters today and what they are, what they're used for, why you need one. Yeah. Um, so Rekka I mean, you've, you've written them. Rekka:05:24   I have um mostly, I have written, uh, one that was submitted, which became Flotsam. Kaelyn:05:31   Yes. Rekka:05:32   And there were nine different versions of the Flotsam query letter of which I chose one. Kaelyn:05:36   And you don't understand why this is so scary to people? Rekka:05:40   What do you mean? You think I wrote nine cause I was nervous? Kaelyn:05:43   No, but because it's hard because you wrote nine different. Rekka:05:46   Yeah, no, no. I approached them in different ways. Like this one was character forward. This one was fine and that's great. Yeah. It was just like when I wrote them, I was not planning to submit. We've talked the past about how Flotsam was supposed to be self published. So at this point I was doing this for the practice of writing a query letter so that someday I would be able to write good marketing copy. Kaelyn:06:08   Okay. Rekka:06:08   And if you think about it in that terms, that's kind of what it is. Well, it's like you're marketing it to a very specific audience. Kaelyn:06:14   I always joke that like the turnabout here is for the editors when they have to do cover copies. Rekka:06:19   Yes. And that's where we get in our revenge. Kaelyn:06:22   Yeah. That's, that's the revenge Rekka:06:24   Karma. All right. You sell it, you're so good at this. Kaelyn:06:27   Fine. You think, can you do it? Um, yeah. So query letters, uh, let's talk about why you need one and what they're used for. Rekka:06:36   You need one because they're telling you to, but like more specifically, you need to stand out in inbox. Kaelyn:06:45   So even going back a step farther than that, um, the purpose of a query letter as the name implies is you're asking a question. That question is, I either have written or I am planning to write this thing. Are you interested in it? It's a little misleading because what it's actually saying is here is why you should be interested in this. You are selling yourself and your book there. Um, originally, and I can't remember we talked about on this or on hybrid author, um, but when originally part of the purpose of query letters was you'd send them to agents in publishing houses because you couldn't send a whole manuscript. Rekka:07:28   Right. Kaelyn:07:29   Because you used to have to physically mail these things. Rekka:07:31   Yes. Kaelyn:07:32   Way Back in the dark ages. Rekka:07:33   Chonky books. Kaelyn:07:34   Yes. And, um, even more than that, you know, like if you've ever seen like typewritten pages, you don't get as many of them on there as you do using a word processor right today. So, um, that you used to send these letters saying like, Hey, I wrote this book, are you interested in it? And you'd start a correspondence based on that if you got a reply back, yes, I'm interested. Then you sent the manuscript along, um, in this day and age where digital files are uploaded really fast, really fast, and they're small little things that you can keep a whole database on and peruse at your leisure. Um, now they're kind of introductory and I don't want to say sales pitchy, but they are, Rekka:08:18   They kind of, yeah. And, and what I was saying about like trying to stand out from the inbox kind of is what it is because these days, frequently someone opens a window for querying and income the flood. And so you get hundreds of letters from authors and if it was just a, an author's name in the from field subject line query and then a file attachment, it would get pretty like I would, I mean I would personally probably quit if I didn't even have that sort of like light touch before I had to get into the manuscript. Kaelyn:08:58   Yeah. And actually that's a, that's a good point is that you query agents still. That's still the verb. Even though um really, you're, you are submitting a manuscript as well, but it's still called querying an agent. Rekka:09:09   And this is one of those things like hang up the phone. So nobody's phone hangs on the wall and so charming holdover and we aren't getting acquainted, Kaelyn:09:16   Aren't we adorable? Rekka:09:17   Yes. Kaelyn:09:17   Um, so yeah, that's, you know, that's why you write a query letter. Now it's, we're going to get into what should be in it, but it is sort of your sales pitch for your book. It is not, don't think of it as are you interested in it? Think of it as here's why you should be interested in this. Rekka:09:36   Right. Kaelyn:09:37   So why are these so freaking hard to write? Rekka:09:39   Because imposter syndrome, because nerves, because you're writing to someone you don't know well and you are putting this thing that you've put so much blood, sweat and effort into and you have one shot because you can't query the same manuscript twice. Kaelyn:09:57   It's very hard because you're trying to do two things at once. One is some tell, I won't say summarize because you should not be summarizing your book in this. Rekka:10:06   Right. Kaelyn:10:07   But you should be talking about your story. Rekka:10:09   Yeah. Kaelyn:10:10   Then you should also be talking about what the great selling points of this story are and that especially is very hard to do. Rekka:10:18   For most authors that's not anything that they've given a lot of consideration to. They've just been working on their story and doing the work, doing the work, writing it, revising it, writing it, revising it, and then when it comes time to actually tell people about it, you're unprepared completely. Even though you wrote the thing maybe more than once. Kaelyn:10:36   Yeah. And actually, in the previous episodes, we had talked a lot about your elevator pitch and uh, refining it and perfecting it in the debut authors episode. And this kind of goes along with it. Um, now obviously this will be taking place before you, you work on your elevator pitch for the book. Um, but you have to kind of quickly and effectively tell the reader about your book in a way that is going to intrigue them. And that is very hard to do. Um, you can go online and there are some really good resources and articles and ideas for how to do this in your query letters. Some major do's and don'ts. Um, we'll get into some of those once we break down. But, um, this is one instance where I'm like, hey, go online and read about things because even there are some great articles out there that will just kind of give you definitions and structure and some etiquette and what it should and should not say. Rekka:11:35   Etiquette is very helpful because it gives you the framework around, like it takes away the like, okay, so do I come off like this or should I be saying their first name? Or should I, you know, like, how do I even start this? Because this isn't like necessarily relationship where you will ever call them, you know, Mr their last name or - Kaelyn:11:59   You know, I get responses with that sometimes. It always makes me a little like, oh, I didn't know my mom was reading these [laughs]. Rekka:12:06   And it, and it is, but it's a strange, like it's a formal thing. Like you can't be too polite. Some people might say. Kaelyn:12:13   Well, and I will say one in doubt, default to maybe not overly polite, but definitely professional. Rekka:12:17   Right. And maybe there are some authors that don't even know what the difference between polite and professional is. Kaelyn:12:24   Yeah. And, you know, worst case scenario, you're overly polite and that's not gonna, that's not gonna make anyone think badly of you. Rekka:12:32   Just might chuckle a little. Kaelyn:12:34   Yes. But they're, they're certainly not going to have a bad impression of you if nothing else there is that. Um, so yeah, this is th it's not an easy thing. And like you think, I think a lot of people think like, well I'm just going to sit down and bang one of these out. Rekka:12:48   Yeah. Kaelyn:12:49   Don't do that. If you're, if you've written it in less than an hour, it's probably not something you want to send around unless you're just really, really good at these. Which if this is one of the first times you're doing it, you're probably still working some of them or at least you don't know if you're very good at them yet. Um, I mean cause I can tell you like when I write cover copy, which is kind of doing the same, same idea at least, um, I write it multiple times, walk away from it and look at it again later. Rekka:13:20   Right. Kaelyn:13:20   Cause it's a lot of ideas that you're trying to get down at once. Rekka:13:27   Yeah. You're trying to encapsulate an entire book, not just the plot. Obviously we touched on, you don't, it's not about the plot necessarily, but you're trying to encapsulate both the opening question, the hook of your book and sort of the tone of the entire thing all at once. Kaelyn:13:46   And now here's the other thing, we had talked in the last episode about preparing your submission. Oh No, wait, I'm sorry. Okay. We had talked about in the, uh, the debut author episode about how your favorite thing about the book may not be the most important thing about the book. Rekka:14:02   And that's really key to understand because the thing that you love about this book might be Hogwarts castle. You know, the selling point is the evil wizard war. Kaelyn:14:15   Um, so, you know, obviously having someone else take a look at it, especially someone that's read the book is super helpful because they can tell you if it's like, um, I mean, I liked your book and I feel like you're not saying the things that are gonna make other people want to read it. Rekka:14:33   Right. Kaelyn:14:33   So, so that said, what should be in this? Rekka:14:37   So like without getting too, too over-simplified one way to approach this might be like thinking about the over the voiceover and a movie trailer. Kaelyn:14:48   Oh yeah. Movie trailer voiceover is always a good, 'in a world - Rekka:14:52   Yeah, don't do that. Kaelyn:14:53   No, do it if that's what helps it gets you out of here, like - Rekka:14:56   Okay, for practice, play around with that. But um, don't put that in your query letter. Your final query letter should not start with "in a world where [laughs]' - Kaelyn:15:07   In a world where werewolves have gone into space and returning people they encounter into werewolves and turning aliens into werewolves and now those alien werewolves have come home. Rekka:15:19   So, um- Kaelyn:15:21   Actually can you write that? Rekka:15:22   Yeah, I'll write it. If you give me cover your cover art. Um, so I will, apparently really, really will write that . Kaelyn:15:31   [laughs] Rekka:15:34   So the trailer had 45 seconds to two minutes to completely hook you and apparently did a good job because you saw the movies. So, um, think about it in that terms. Like it might help to watch a couple trailers and not necessarily for how much they represented the movie correctly, but the kind of content that they're, they're showing you and keep in mind of course that they also can have dialogue clips and explosions where you don't necessarily get that, but you'll see sort of what I mean as far as like them actually representing the movie. Kaelyn:16:06   Yeah. So I'll just bullet point kind of four things that your query letters should do. One is introduce yourself briefly very briefly. That should just be I'm such and such. I do this and I'm really interested in this thing that I wrote. Um, I get query letters frequently that the bulk of it is someone's life story or an essay about why they wrote this. And I finished it and I'm like, oh, okay, that was great, but what am I about to read? So if you get through an entire query letter and you haven't really talked about what you're submitting - Rekka:16:45   Keep in mind if you are, if you are submitting to a publisher, this is for one book, this is not for you, the person they are, they are not going to invest in your career and necessarily like they may hope to be a big part of it, but this is not about you walking in and earning the corner office. This is about you have a title, it is a product and you want them to champion it. Kaelyn:17:11   Yeah. And so the other thing is that, you know, like obviously your publisher is at some point going to want to know about you. If they're interested in your book, they will get in touch with you and find out about you. Rekka:17:22   Chances are you've got a bit of a, an Internet trail anyway. They can find out a little bit about it., just scrape the surface. Kaelyn:17:27   If someone is potentially interested in your book, they will call you and find out about you. For now, your main thing is to get them interested in your story. Rekka:17:36   Right. Kaelyn:17:36   Um, don't, introduce yourself. It's, it's always good just to have a little bit of context, but do it very briefly. And there's not really much of a need to include a lot of personal information., Rekka:17:49   No, no. And only the pertinent stuff. Kaelyn:17:51   Yeah. Uh, so second is, um, book stats. Kinda tell us about your story. Tell us how long it is. Tell us. Uh, it's genre and, um, that's, you know, the, just, just the stats. Yeah. If you click on it, what they come up with in terms of charisma and um, defence hit points, you know, that sort of thing. The important stuff, you know. Rekka:18:14   Let the acquiring editor know whether they want to reroll exactly. Kaelyn:18:17   Um, just very, you know, I'm, I wrote, my book is called, uh, The Containment Unit. It's about 120,000 words long, and it's a science fiction novel. Rekka:18:29   Hmm. I'm interested in that. Kaelyn:18:32   That's this podcast. Rekka:18:32   Yes, I know. Kaelyn:18:37   It's, you know, and that can be one sentence that's easy. There's, you know, there's ways to finesse the sentence a little bit. It doesn't just have to be a blatant statement of that. Um, so next is tell us about your story. Depending on what your story is, there's going to be certain parts that you want to emphasize more, but you're basically going for setting main character or characters, you know, if it's a group, kind of introduce a group. If it's main character, just that, and then their problem. So you're setting this stuff up and then you're telling them, but wait, then this happened. Rekka:19:12   Yep. Kaelyn:19:13   Either they start with a problem or it gets worse or they don't have a problem and then they have one. Rekka:19:18   Right. Kaelyn:19:18   You have to explain a little bit of where the plot is going. Um, I get frustrated reading query letters where it's paragraphs about the character and it's kind of like, so what happens to them? Rekka:19:35   Yeah. Cause that's when the stories really starts to get interesting or that's when it hooks people is when that character runs up against something else. Kaelyn:19:43   Exactly. So you're kind of and, this is where I went back to, do not summarize it. You're not telling me the, you're not giving me a synopsis or a summary here. You're giving me the, there was, you know, there is an alien who's stranded alone on earth but has made a decent life for themselves and is happy here. But then all of a sudden his buddies come to get him and they realize they can conquer this planet easily. Can he save earth from his friends? Rekka:20:13   Yeah. His own people. Yeah. Yeah. So one thing you mentioned, um, was the Colin Coyle method where like the first sentence buys you the first paragraph. So your query letter buys the very. Kaelyn:20:25   First sentence? Rekka:20:26   But like the very committal act of opening that documents, you know, like that's, that's a whole extra thing. They know that, you know, as an acquiring editor, they know that when they open that document they will be faced with a wall of text. Kaelyn:20:41   While, so Rekka just brought up point number four, which is hook me. Rekka:20:45   Yeah. Kaelyn:20:45   You want to get me at the end to go, I need to know if the alien can save earth from his friends. So you want to make me open the query, the, excuse me, you want to make me open the manuscript based on the query letter. Rekka:21:01   Right. Kaelyn:21:01   The last thing is you're trying to convince me to read your manuscript. Here is why you should be interested in this. So giving away the whole thing right off the bat is, you know, it's gonna and especially if this is maybe a little bit of a harsh reality, but maybe if you're not writing the synopsis well and then you give me the whole thing and I'm going, well that doesn't sound great. Rekka:21:29   It's like maybe you wrote an amazing twist, but you just laid it all out for me so it doesn't feel that twisty. Kaelyn:21:34   Yeah. And maybe I'm not getting the correct emphasis on the plot and the high points of the. Rekka:21:40   Yeah. And, and that when you write, uh, some, uh, when you write a synopsis, all that tension, all that momentum doesn't necessarily exist the way it does in your story. So all you want to do is give them the trailer that makes them bite and say, buying the movie ticket is opening that word doc. Kaelyn:21:59   Yeah. So the other thing along the hook me line that you should be doing is, okay, you've written a great query letter. I am really, really like, I want to know does the little green alien managed to help save earth from all of his drunk friends? You know, and I opened your manuscript and let's say there's just something in the writing's good, but for instance, it's really slow, like the first few chapters, just, there's not much happening here. But from your query letter, I know what's coming. Rekka:22:31   Right. You know the 25% mark hook. Kaelyn:22:35   Yes. Basically, I know what this is building to. So instead, and this is a good example of why you need one. Because I, we do get a lot of manuscripts that just don't have query letters, which is not great because then if I'm reading, you know, like the first few chapters of your book and I'm like, there's nothing happening here and I have no context for what is going to happen later, that's gonna make me go, well this is, this is too slow. I can't do this. So that's just another argument as to why it's excellent idea to try to hook the reader into it. Um, so now you're probably going, OK, well like, so how do I do this? Rekka:23:13   Yeah. Kaelyn:23:15   There are websites and there are articles that will say like, this is the format you should have. Um, I think they're okay to use as guidelines - Rekka:23:23   If you really don't know where to start. Kaelyn:23:25   The other really good thing to keep in mind is that not every format is going to work for the best way to pitch your book. So if your, um, if yours works better with, you know, getting right into the, here's the stuff about my story and then introducing yourself at the end, do that. If you feel like it's an easier transition to say, hello, Parvus Press, my name is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then go into your story. Um, do that. It's, I won't say there is a definitive correct way to write a query letter because it's the way that you can best present your work. Rekka:23:59   Right. And so while I, you know, maybe you don't have to write nine, but play around with different formats and see which feels natural. Kaelyn:24:06   Absolutely. Actually, you just brought up a very good point of different versions because in the prepping your submissions, uh episode we had done before this, we talked about caveats. If you have a thing that it's like, listen, I know that you said you don't want Werewolf stories, but mine's about werewolves but they're in space and you said you're interested in SciFi, this is a good spot to put that in the query letter. Like I did read your submissions guidelines. Rekka:24:38   It's not that I'm completely defying them, but here's why I'm defying them. Kaelyn:24:43   Yes.And it's um, you know, it gives you a little bit of a chance to explain. Now this is not the space to write a 20 page enpassioned argument. Rekka:24:50   No, but this gives you the intro that you can begin to let her with and actually kind of like kicks open the door just a tiny bit because you're going to be more uncomfortable because you have something to approach them with. Like you already know what they're looking for or more specifically in this case, what they're not. So you are responding to them on a personal level that shows several things. One that you, you know, like you have an interesting twist on something that maybe felt a little tropey to them. Two, that you did read the submission guidelines, which is always a good look. Kaelyn:25:20   I love when people read submissions guidelines. Rekka:25:21   Three, it's like your explanation of like, but wait, hear me out. This is your personality. Kaelyn:25:26   Yeah. Rekka:25:27   So you're, you actually are packing a lot of data for this publisher into this opening volley that you are going to start with. Kaelyn:25:35   Yeah. And you actually kind of then touched on another good point with your query letter and format. The tone of your query letters should kind of match the tone of your book. If you're writing a really dark, you know, fantasy kind of upsetting setting where nothing ever good happens and you start out, this is a journey of friendship and hope, then - Rekka:25:59   There are puppies! Kaelyn:26:00   And it's the tone of your query letter, especially the part where you're pitching your story should match what is going on with the book. Rekka:26:10   Yeah. Kaelyn:26:10   Um, you know, not, it doesn't, not, not, I'm not talking about in prose and style. Rekka:26:15   Yeah, and don't write it from the first person of the main character and - Kaelyn:26:20   Point number two: Now is not the time to be cute. Yeah. Um, I understand that, you know, a lot of writers struggle to do something unique to make themselves stand out. Rekka:26:31   I think there was some bad advice floating around that you should like make your query letter differ from everybody else's query letter. But like it's not going to be, there are so many query letters that it's going to be a lot like someone else's. And if it's a lot like someone else's and it's like wincingly campy, unless your book is campy on purpose, like maybe don't. Kaelyn:26:51   A lot of them, um, a lot of them are the same but good query letters, like, you know, it's not that the query letter stood out necessarily, it's that - Rekka:27:00   It didn't get in its own way. Kaelyn:27:02   It didn't get it sewed away and that it did a good job. Rekka:27:05   Mmmhmm. I like to compare, I mean it's not quite perfect, but I like to compare it to a gallery. You go to a gallery and the walls are painted white and the walls are painted white so that the paintings and the artwork and the sculptures, et Cetera can stand out. And that's what you focus on. So if you get clever or cheeky with your language, if you decide you're going to write it in pig Latin because you think that they'll notice you like that's an extreme case. Please don't do that unless your book is about pig Latin. Um, and even then save it for like one paragraph or a p s or something. But anyway, so like just keep your language simple. The tone can match, but don't get overly emphatic with anything. Don't, don't show desperatation. I don't know what you want to call it, but like be let your language in your corner. Let itbe the gallery wall and let your ideas stand out. Not the way you phrase it. Kaelyn:28:03   Your language should be showcasing your idea. That's, that's it. You should not be having to do, you know, anything too overly clever or crazy to get an acquisition editor or an agent's attention. Rekka:28:19   Right. They'd been reading through a lot of these. If yours is simple and clean and clear and concise, that's gonna stand out on its own. Kaelyn:28:25   Yeah. It's, you know, and there's nothing wrong with writing in a very confident way. There's nothing wrong with, um, I, you know, I get, um, I get some humor novels sometimes that, um, you know, especially like fantasy kind of things. And the query letters are kind of written frequently in the same tone as the book and sometimes it works really well and sometimes it's what I would call overly sarcastic. Rekka:28:57   Ooh, okay. Kaelyn:28:58   And you'd be sup- that's something that was a weird one that I keep that pops up every now and then. I get these very like, sarcastic, almost nihilistic. Rekka:29:06   Mmmm. Kaelyn:29:06   Um, kind of tones in the query letter. Rekka:29:09   And this is coming from someone who claims to be an nihiliist. Kaelyn:29:11   I'm pretty nihilistic. Rekka:29:13   Yeah. Kaelyn:29:14   That's okay. I'm happy about it. Rekka:29:15   Yeah. So be optimistically nihilistic in your query letters. If you're going to go that way. But like, you have one chance to leave a taste in the, in the reader's mouth about what you are promising them and if it comes off as in like this entire thing is going to be like Dwight from the office. I mean Dwight needs a full cast to stand down. Yeah. So your query letters should not just be Dwight. Kaelyn:29:41   Yes, that's very true. One of the things we're going to do before we wrap up here is Rekka has very selflessly and generously agreed to read her query letter that got her signed at Parvus actually for Flotsam. Um, so if you read Flotsom, you, which you should go read Flotsam and Aalvage is now officially out for a week as of this episode launch. Um, so we want to read it because it's interesting to hear it and then you know, if you've read Flotsam compare it to what the book is. I think your query letter was a pretty accurate engaging representation, but it, but then things changed. Rekka:30:21   Right. So, so it was a good representation. Things changed later in the revision process once I was with Parvus, but I had to choose what to focus on for my query letter. So if you've read Flotsam well maybe I'll read the query letter first. So, um, good afternoon. So there's, there's a personal note at the beginning because I thought I knew who it was going to. Ironically that is not who read it. So I'm always, you know, there is a chance that you might address it to the editor and find out that was not actually the person who read it. Obviously we're not just talking about the slush pile, but someone else at Parvus higher up picked it up. Kaelyn:31:03   Yup. So not me. Rekka:31:04   I'll start with good afternoon. And then there was the personal note, um, in which case I'd like to present my first novel Flotsam for purposes consideration Talis, tries to do right by the small crew of her airship wind saver. It's not easy when your work isn't legal. You take the contracts, you can get. Her ledgers drip with expenses that she has no idea how to cover, not with the work they've been getting lately. When an anonymous client offers a small fortune to make a salvage run for some old ring. Talis accepts the contract. No questions asked. Hankirk's skills are wasted. His forefather led a revolt against the domineering gods of Peridot, but the Order of Kindness Rising who carry on that legacy only want Hankirk to symbolize their legitimacy. To prove he is more than a figurehead, he needs an ancient ring that was almost lost a time. When the Kindness council rejects his proposal, Hankirk turns elsewhere to get the ring and who better than his old girlfriend turned criminal Talis to snatch it up for him. Talis puts what little cash she has left into the salvage operation in banks on the big payday, which works until the anonymous client turns out to be Hankirk, her instincts tell her to keep the ring as far away from him as possible. The smart thing to do would be to drop the ring overboard again, but she still needs to get paid. Written under the pen name. RJ. Theodore, Flotsam is an action packed ensambal space pop opera of 104,658 words containing creaking, airships, deadly magic and powerful aliens. There is far more room for additional adventures set in these unique world. Thank you for your consideration. Kaelyn:32:34   Okay, so right off the bat, 104,000 words. Rekka:32:39   Yeah. Kaelyn:32:39   That, how many did this book end up being? Rekka:32:41   118,000. Kaelyn:32:42   Okay. Not as much as I thought you added. Rekka:32:47   Inflation came with Salvage. Kaelyn:32:49   Right. Yes. Yeah. Rekka:32:50   No. That's where the inflation rates really skyrocketed. Kaelyn:32:52   Not as, not as much as I thought you added, but definitely not nothing. Rekka:32:56   Right. So - Kaelyn:32:56   For those who have a read Flotsam, you'll know that that's not an incorrect representation of the book, but - Rekka:33:06   Some names changed. Kaelyn:33:06   Some names changed. Rekka:33:08   The length changed. Kaelyn:33:09   The length changed and some of the focus of what you'd maybe emphasize if you were resubmitting this now would have changed. Rekka:33:19   Well see, hat's the thing is there are very small details and things that came out of like planning the sequel and the, and the third book in the trilogy, um, that, I might want to foreshadow a little bit in this, but this was pretty close to the version that was done. We just expanded certain ideas and there were certain things that I was asked to like, can you go back through and seed some of this or this scene doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Maybe we can cut it and I go, oh no, there's like something really key happening there. Let me work on that scene. And then that scene got a little longer and stuff like that. But the, um, the things that were emphasized in this, you might not emphasize if you were thinking back on the book, like there's almost no mention of the crew. Kaelyn:34:05   Well actually, so that's what I was about to ask you. So if he were querying Flotsam as it ended up being published, what changes would you make to this query letter? Rekka:34:15   But that's what I was trying to say is that this was one of nine and there was a version or two that included stuff about the crew. There was a stuff that included, um, mention of the character Maron who comes in late in the first book. You know, there's, um, more mention of the aliens. You know, there, there were different versions and this one was the most character focused and had the most punch to it. So it was not so much that I needed to when I was writing this broadcast specific details and make the perfect encapsulation of what to expect in this book. It was make this book sound appealing and relatable and get somebody to open this. Kaelyn:34:58   Yes. And I think that query letter did an excellent job of that. Rekka:35:02   Thank you. So yeah, it doesn't - Kaelyn:35:04   Because I mean back cover copy. Rekka:35:06   Yeah. Yes. Um, I'm talking to the easy crowd, but so the back cover copy of the book ended up being far more focused on the overwhelming odds against this crew than it did on Hankirk versus Talis. Kaelyn:35:21   Now something else that's interesting, yhat is not in that query letter at all is Peridot. Rekka:35:28   Right. Kaelyn:35:29   And the setting. Rekka:35:30   So that is, and this goes back to what we were saying, like the thing that like wows you the most about your own story may not be right for the query letter. Kaelyn:35:39   Because one of the things that I love most about Flotsam is the setting of it. Rekka:35:44   I love building it . Kaelyn:35:45   Yeah and Peridot and this idea of these, the cataclysm that broke apart the planet and it's now the chunks are being held together and there's just garbage everywhere. Rekka:35:56   Everywhere underneath. Kaelyn:35:56   Everywhere underneath. Rekka:35:57   And you don't get that from the query letter. But that's hard to explain and still have room to get into characters and plot. Kaelyn:36:06   And this where we're getting to with why these are so hard to write because you may have to sacrifice important elements for more important elements. Rekka:36:14   Or for more relatable elements. I guess like something in order to draw someone in you have to make them care. And in order to make them care, you have to make it understandable what's going on. So for me to say that 75 generations ago, the planet's gods like broke the whole planet in a quest for extra power is neat. But now I've just wasted half of my query letter and I haven't even gotten to what happens in the book. Kaelyn:36:38   And that's the thing with um, a query letters is real estate. Rekka:36:43   Yeah. Kaelyn:36:43   You have to think of it as, I only have so much space. What can I fit in here elegantly? It's anattrition factor. You have to like, you know, I know whenever I cover copy and um, I think a good method for doing query letters, even things like when I do a right announcements, I bullet point, I get a sheet of paper and I actually sit there and write this out in a bullet point. Things that they want the reader to know. And then I go through and I put them in the order of what I think is most important and that's kind of going to give you, you know, and then you'll figure out how to tie them together. Okay. I can move this up. If I bring it to here and get instead of three sentences, I can do that in two and I know it sounds so stupid and so like, Oh, you're just fiddling with sentences. You're going to have to do that. If you think that you're not going to be going, okay, wait, if I change these five words, I can use three instead. Yeah, it's the minuteness. Rekka:37:43   So obviously that's just one example of a query letter and your query letter, it might not sound anything like that. You might lead with your name because you don't have the personal note to put at the top of the letter. You might have more to say about one character and not so many secondary characters to introduce in the query letter and don't. When I say more to say about one character, I don't mean go on at length. I just mean, you know. Instead of me going character one, one paragraph character to a second paragraph, boom, here's how they fell together. It might be, here's what character one wants, here's what character one is against in the world. And the boom is how does that character going to, how do they plan? Because you don't want to give away how they succeed or fail, but you do want to say like, okay, here's what they're after and here's what's going to happen. Here's their big plan. Kaelyn:38:31   Yeah. You gotta you definitely have to figure out like that balance in there. But um actually Rekka again brought up another point. Rekka:38:38   I'm so good at this. Kaelyn:38:39   No, you do because it just, it makes me think of and remember things. Um, you know, the personal note in the beginning - Rekka:38:45   Is optional. Kaelyn:38:47   Well, if you're submitting to someone, like let's say, you know, you ran into me at the nebulas and I gave you my card and said, yeah, you know, you should, you know, I'd love to read that. Putting a little note in the beginning, like reminding me like, Hey, Kaelyn, I'm so, and so we met at the Nebulas, you know, my book is this. That's a, this is a good spot to do that. Rekka:39:04   Yeah. Kaelyn:39:04   Um, you know, if it's an agent that also, you know, invited you to query with them directly. Rekka:39:09   But if no one did, don't put it in. Kaelyn:39:11   Don't put that in. Rekka:39:12   Obviously start this relationship off very professionally with honesty. Kaelyn:39:17   And so I'm going to end this with, with one thing me and Rekka and I were talking about when we were getting barbecue today, um, that I was kind of thinking like, uh, this might've been a good thing to put in the prepping your submissions thing. But I'll start out with the query letters because it's kinda, I don't want to see your fan art of this. Um, I don't, this should be just your query letter in your manuscript. Rekka:39:44   No supplemental materials. Kaelyn:39:46   If you drew some things for it, if you did some, you know, maybe a map, but that should be included with your manuscript, if it's relevant. Rekka:39:57   Not necessarily like here's, here's how I'd suggest handling this. By now I hope you have an author website. So if you have an area that's got your artwork and you have an area that has a map and you say like, this is from my upcoming project, which I have currently titled Blah, it's on submission or it's, I'm querying it right now. Um, and so hopefully, you know, like you don't, you don't want to give away the manuscript on your website, but you can put the artwork because it's probably not going to be the final artwork. Kaelyn:40:28   Yeah. Um, as a good rule of thumb and not including art work, um, you know, especially cover art because we've talked about this a little bit before and we will do a whole episode on this in the future. You don't really get any say in your cover art. So if you're sending me anything, it's just kind of like you, when you talk about like impressions, that's not a good place to start. Rekka:40:50   Yeah. If you're not a professional professional cover artist or illustrator, there's a very good chance that you're actually going to sour the impression of your manuscript with your - and okay. I'm using the word amateur, but I mean it in its literal sense which is - Kaelyn:41:06   You're not professional. Rekka:41:08   You're, people, amateur comes from doing it for the love of it. Kaelyn:41:11   Yeah. Rekka:41:11   That's where the word comes from. That's what I mean. But if this is not something you are trained to do, this is not something you do professionally where the illustrations you create end up on book covers. There's probably a nuance to book covers that you are missing so it does not necessarily help you. I might even hurt you to include materials for a published book that you are not asked for in the submissions guidelines. So submissions guidelines is probably going to ask you for your mind manuscript and it's probably going to ask you for a query letter and it's probably not going to say, and any artwork you've drawn from your story. Kaelyn:41:47   And look ,it's great that like you're very excited and invested in it. Rekka:41:50   Like I said, put it on your website. Kaelyn:41:51   You can put it on your website - Rekka:41:53   The publisher, if they're interested, they'll check out your website. Kaelyn:41:55   Yes. Oh definitely. That's one of the first things. Rekka:41:57   Yeah, Kaelyn:41:58   I always do, but like it's, I'm not saying this to be harsh or to dampen the excitement that you have for your book in your characters. It's just one of those things where like we don't need this and this isn't, this isn't a value add yet and this isn't, this isn't the time to put this in there. I would go so far as to say it's not appropriate to put it in there because that's not what we're asking for. I don't your your ability to draw or depict your characters or the world is not going to have any bearing on the decision I make about your book. That's not making me go, oh, this is better because of this. Rekka:42:39   However, it might make Kaelyn say, oh, they're going to want to use their artwork in the book. Kaelyn:42:45   Well it's gonna make me wonder if this is going to be a fight. Rekka:42:47   Yeah. Right. And that goes back to the whole like how easy is it going to be to work with you that we were talking about in the submissions episode. Kaelyn:42:54   Every little thing you do or don't do in this process is an indicator of what it will be like to work with you. So, Rekka:43:04   Be cool. Kaelyn:43:05   Yeah. Rekka:43:05   Just send in the manuscript, send in a nice query. Kaelyn:43:07   Be cool and follow directions. That's, I mean that's the best advice I can give you if you are concerned or if you're unsure about something default to professional. Rekka:43:17   Right. Always. Kaelyn:43:19   And you know, so that's, that's the guidelines that I have for query letters. I know I'm making it sound scary. I won't say it's not hard, but it's not scary. Rekka:43:31   Right. Kaelyn:43:32   Um, it is difficult. So don't go into it thinking that it's going to be easy, Rekka:43:37   Right. But look at it as a challenge because this is a skill you were going to develop as a result of doing this. So just like, you know, learning how to write better, how to self edit, you know, for an easy pass. There's lots of tips on that online. There are lots of tips on how to write query letters online and you can go and see some examples, see some definite what not to do is out there. And it's a skill that it behooves you, even if for some reason you only have to write one query letter in your life, it's a good thing to practice. Kaelyn:44:11   Oh definitely. Rekka:44:11   So see it as a challenge. You know, like, you know, use me as an example. I wrote nine and I got to pick my favorite one. It's way different than trying to want wrtie one perfect one. Kaelyn:44:22   Yes. Rekka:44:22   And so just like, you know, in your practice overshoot so that then you can like back down and take a look and like this, okay, this is, this one's working and I can tell this one's working versus this one because of this. And then you might end up writing a 10th one. That's the one you actually use. But you, you're building a skillset. Kaelyn:44:41   Yup. So, um, that's the query letters episode. See that wasn't so bad. We got through it. Rekka:44:45   We got through it. You can get through it. Kaelyn:44:46   You can get through it. Um, so next week there's going to be our two parter. Rekka:44:51   Right. Kaelyn:44:52   We're doing a Tuesday and Wednesday release and it's all about agents. Um, we're going to talk to you some authors, about - Rekka:45:00   Who have agents. Kaelyn:45:00   Who have agents, and then we're going to talk to an actual agent, real life, who breathing agents, who has some authors. Rekka:45:07   As it turns out. Kaelyn:45:08   As it turns out. And um, you know, ask them some questions on both ends, about, you know, how you got to your agent or agents, how you pick your authors. Uh, so I'm excited for that one because I think that's, that's a thing a lot, that's a big question a lot of people have, Rekka:45:25   Right, well, it's like who's on the other end of this query letter. Kaelyn:45:28   Who is this mythical creature, this literary agent? Rekka:45:31   Right. And literary agent that sounds very like diplomatic and like maybe. Kaelyn:45:36   They are diplomatic - Rekka:45:38   And they are an ambassador. So, but, um, yeah, so we're going to get a little taste of actual, you know, just like we shared my query letter, we're going to share some personal stories about, you know, not too personal, but like, you know, individual stories of successful agent landings. Y. Kaelyn:45:54   eah. So, um, we're still open to and willing to be taking any additional questions of, for things that were not covered in this, you know, if we, like we said, if we get enough, we'll do a, a, a sixth episode this month. Rekka:46:06   It might be October 1st. Kaelyn:46:09   Yeah. You know, with just things that we talked about that anyone listening might want to hear more about. So you know, as, as usual, if you have questions, you have comments, hit us up on the a, the socials. Rekka:46:20   Socials, @WMBcast almost everywhere where we exist, patreon.com/WMBcast. If you are finding a lot of value in these episodes and especially the submission September, we'd love your support and we can't wait to share some bonus content with you over there. But yes, find us on Twitter and Instagram at WMB cast and you can send us a direct message on Twitter if you have questions that you want to be anonymous. If you don't need an animosity no, that's not the right word. Kaelyn:46:48   Anonymity. Rekka:46:52   Anonymiminy? Kaelyn:46:52   Annonnumititity Rekka:46:52   If you don't care if people read your questions, Kaelyn:46:54   That one! [laughs] Rekka:46:54   You can directly reply to the tweet about the, the episode in question. So come find us and come chat. Kaelyn:47:02   Yeah, if you message us in, you want to be anonymous, just, you know, drop a say like, Hey, I just want to be anonymous. Rekka:47:07   I'm blushing as I ask, but yeah, that's fine. We can honor that. Kaelyn:47:10   No, I mean, we'd like, there's no like wrong questions here. There's nothing that you can send us that we're going to go, they don't even know that. Rekka:47:18   Right. So, um, yeah, we'd love to hear from everyone and we hope you're enjoying this. Kaelyn:47:23   Definitely. Rekka:47:24   So let us know if you're finding a good value in these. And if you are, we'd always appreciate a rating and review on your podcast app. Kaelyn:47:32   Yes. So, uh, we'll be back next week with more, with the agents. Rekka:47:36   See you then guys.  

Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between! This is a big day, not only is it the first week of Submissions September, but we have something much more important happening: Today is the release of next novel, Rekka’s Peridot Shift Trilogy, ‘SALVAGE’! It’s an amazing book and we’d love for you to check it out. On the WMB side of things, this is the first week of Submissions September!  Rekka and Kaelyn are bringing you six, (6!) episodes this month all about the process of submitting your novel.  We have a lot of awesome episodes lined up and even some special guests.  Here’s what will be coming your way for the  month: Week 1 (9/3/2019): Is This Ready For Other People to See?- Submitting Your Manuscript Week 2 (9/10/2019): My Entire Novel in Three Hundred Words - The Dreaded Query Letter Week 3 (9/17/2019): Agents of Literature, Part 1: An Interview with Literary Agent Caitlin McDonald               (9/18/2019): Agents of Literature, Part 2: Interviews with Agented Authors               (9/19/2019): Agents of Literature Part 3: Interviews with Agented Authors Week 4 (9/24/2019):What is Going On Over There? - The Other Side of the Submissions Process We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writer and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, concerns, and any words of encouragement or congratulations you want to send Rekka’s way. We hope you enjoy We Make Books!   Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast     Kaelyn:00:00   Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the, We Make Books Podcast a show about writing, publishing, and everything in between, and also the first week of Submissions September. Rekka:00:09   Yes, yes, and also. Kaelyn:00:11   But wait, there's more, there's more. It is also Book Day for Rekka Jay! Rekka:00:17   Well, RJ, Theodore, Kaelyn:00:19   RJ Theodore. Rekka:00:19   Wherever she is. Kaelyn:00:20   Wherever she is. RJ Theodore, author of Salvage the second book of the Peridot Trilogy from Parvus Press, released today. Um, so yeah, big day for Rekka. Very exciting. How you feeling? Rekka:00:31   I'm feeling oddly calm about, Kaelyn:00:33   Well, that's because we're recording this before it's actually happening. Rekka:00:36   Yeah. That's the truth. Kaelyn:00:37   It's still, it's still, it's still happening. Rekka:00:40   It's still coming up. Yeah. Gosh, yeah. Now, now you're getting me nervous. Kaelyn:00:44   And so, uh, yeah. So today, today's records book day, very exciting. Rekka:00:47   So if you are listening to this live or otherwise, you can go find yourself a copy of Salvage, um, and if you don't have the money to buy a book, you can request it from your local library, which also would be very - Kaelyn:01:00   That would be fantastic. Um, also today, you know, maybe you could show Rekka a little love, tweet her some, uh, some congratulations, some support. Um, you know, if you listened to the previous episode as, you heard that uh book launch days are stressful. Rekka:01:16   Stressful, a little weird. Kaelyn:01:17   Anticlimactic, yeah. Rekka:01:19   A little quiet, I work from home, so it's just like me alone in my office and nobody's blowing birthday noisemakers or anything. Kaelyn:01:27   Well, now, guess what we're going to do. So, yeah. Anyway, we're, we're really excited for Rekka's book launch and um, we're also super excited for Submissions September. I'm real, I'm giddy excited about this. Rekka:01:41   Kaelyn may be slightly more excited than I am. Kaelyn:01:43   Um, yes. So, you know, we've been a teasing slash threatening this for awhile. Um, so we're doing four episodes and actually it's going to be five episodes, it looks like. Yeah. Rekka:01:54   At least. Kaelyn:01:54   In September. Um, so this is our schedule this week, um, you can see from the title of the episode, we're talking about preparing your submission. Um, we're gonna talk a little bit about getting your submission ready and then actually submitting, which is a lot of me ranting. Rekka:02:10   There is a launch sequence. Please adhere to it for everyone's safety. Kaelyn:02:13   Yeah, which is a lot of me ranting about submissions, guidelines. So, you know, just a, just a warning, get ready for that. Um, next week, September 10th, we're going to be talking about query letters, uh, their function, how important they are, how to some tips for writing them and what they should be doing. Rekka:02:31   Yep. And also, you know, we, we talk about getting your stuff ready for submission in this episode. It doesn't mean yeet it. Kaelyn:02:40   Yeah, sure. Rekka:02:40   After this episode, keep listening. Kaelyn:02:42   Keep listening. Rekka:02:42   We've got more good stuff for you, the rest of the month. Kaelyn:02:44   September 17th is agent's week. We're going to be doing two episodes of. Rekka:02:50   Right. And that's, that's the one that's like, oh, okay. So one a week, but also a fifth one. So we've got a lot of great people who volunteered to come on and give us some of their personal experiences, including an agent. Um, maybe, you know, like if we have more than one at that, after we've recorded this, then we'll include more than one. But, um, so we're going to split that up into an episode up from the agent side. And one from the author side. Kaelyn:03:15   Yes. So, um, I know that's something we're, we're really excited for that because that's something that a lot of people, um, are in the dark about. Rekka:03:22   Yeah. And it's the big scary part because that's like quote gatekeeping. Kaelyn:03:26   Yes. Rekka:03:27   So this is the part where people start to get very nervous. This is the judgment before people even read your book thing. Kaelyn:03:33   Yes. So then finally, September 24th, we're going to be doing an episode about what's going on on the other side of things where me, for instance, an acquisitions editor. What I'm doing when I'm getting submissions, what I'm considering, how I'm reading things, how I'm responding to them, et cetera. Um, so we still have some time for if you have a few questions for now. Rekka:03:58   Like if you're listening now we can probably get your question in at the end of the month. Kaelyn:04:02   Yes. So we were talking about, you know, potential six episode of if we have a bunch of questions doing an doing kind of a wrap up episode, um, you know, if there's any topics that people were particularly interested in or things they wanted to engage in more, um, you know - Rekka:04:18   Or if we have, we muddied the waters for some reason. Kaelyn:04:21   Yeah. Or if you're very confused. And, um, so, uh, you know, if we have enough we'll probably maybe do something with that. Rekka:04:30   Yeah. Kaelyn:04:30   In the end of the month. So we're really excited for this. I um- Rekka:04:36   She smiling's it's just like teeth all over the place here. Kaelyn:04:39   Yeah. We were talking about, you know, um, but we do organize shows ahead of time and you know, plan out what we're going to say. And we were kind of mapping out for the next couple of months, um, what we're going to talk about. And there were a lot of topics related to submissions and the more we looked at it, we were like, maybe we should break these instead of breaking these up. We should put them all together. And then it's like, okay, well we've got about three or four episodes of material here, but then doing them every other week is kind of - Rekka:05:10   It's like months and months of just one topic. Kaelyn:05:12   Yeah. And it's also sort of disrupting the flow. So we thought that this would be good, you know, for four topics, four weeks submission, September. And I'm that way it's kinda taking you through a process and hitting different points of things that are going to happen. So, um, we're really excited to do this. We hope it's going to be entertaining and informative as always. And Yeah. Rekka:05:37   And so here we go. Kaelyn:05:38   Uh, hope you enjoy the episode, everyone and, and the rest of Submissions September and we'll see you next week. Rekka:05:45   Yes. Kaelyn:05:57   [inaudible] Kaelyn:05:58   Rekka first episode, Submissions September. Rekka:06:00   Yes. Kaelyn:06:01   This is very exciting. Rekka:06:02   It's, I'm a little distracted again today though. Kaelyn:06:04   Is something happening? Rekka:06:08   She forgot me. Kaelyn:06:09   I never forget you! Guys Rekka's book comes out today. Rekka:06:12   Yes. Kaelyn:06:13   Book Two of the Peridot Shift trilogy. Salvage. Rekka:06:17   Salvage came out today and so it's my book birthday. It's a big day. It's also the first day of Submissions September. Kaelyn:06:24   Yeah. But real quick, let's go back to you. So if you're listening to this tweet Rekka some, uh, some love and encouragement @bittybittyzap. Yeah, she would very much appreciate that. Rekka:06:34   I would not be, um, against the idea of getting some, some call outs on Twitter and stuff like that. Positive call outs. Um, because book days book birthdays are lonely for some reason. Kaelyn:06:47   No, it's not. You're here with me. I. Rekka:06:48   am here. Kaelyn:06:49   Yeah. Um, cause we're recording this exactly on September 3rd. Rekka:06:54   Totally. Kaelyn:06:55   Yeah. Yeah. Um, but it is also, this is the first episode of submission September, which we're, so I'm, I'm really excited to do this and it's because I get to yell about a lot of stuff. Rekka:07:06   Kaelyn's been like building up and building up and building up things to say about this for awhile. Kaelyn:07:11   Oh, the thing is I tricked Rekka into this and because before she, she agreed and then before she knew it, she was like, oh, this is a manifesto as told through five podcast episodes. Yeah. Oh that's right, everyone. Rekka:07:24   Potentially six. Kaelyn:07:25   Potentially six. There's- Rekka:07:26   She's already threatened there might be six. Kaelyn:07:27   There's already, possibly six. There's definitely five. Rekka:07:30   Why not 20? Kaelyn:07:31   We've got, we have some really good stuff coming down the pipeline. Um, um, so yeah, today we're talking about preparing your submission, um, and getting it out into the world and seeing if anyone wants it. Now, um, I'm going to qualify real quick here that I am treating this the same as if you're preparing to submit or query to an agent or if you are submitting directly to a publishing house because these rules apply to both situations. Rekka:07:57   Right. Kaelyn:07:58   And there are rules. Rekka:07:59   So you know how you try to go out to high school wearing your really cool new like accessory or whatever and you try to get out of the house before mom sees you and then like you hear her call you back from the other end of the, she's like in the kitchen and you just like, can I make it in the door? Like, just won't open. This is like Kaelyn is calling you back from submitting whatever you were going to submit. She just wants to check just your ready. Kaelyn:08:24   Look - Rekka:08:26   It's out of love. Kaelyn:08:27   There's a lot of moving pieces here. Um, so we're going to kind of break this down into two parts. One is preparing your submission, which is how do I know this is ready to be put in front of people. And the second is going to be submissions guidelines. And I apologize in advance for how excited I am to talk about submissions, guidelines. Rekka:08:48   Near and dear to Kaelyn's heart. Kaelyn:08:49   Yes. Um, so the first, the big question, how do I know this is ready? How do I know time to send this out to people? Rekka:08:56   As a writer, I've been working on my story forever. I've been revising it a lot. I don't know if it's good enough. I mean that's why I'm sending it out cause I'm asking, please tell me, but this is good enough and you know, at what point do I stop fiddling with it and start finalizing it and send it out. Kaelyn:09:17   So I kind of always think of this as, you know, they say like if you make a journey by halves, half of the distance at a time, you'll never actually get there. It's kind of the same thing. You're down to a millimeter. And if you keep dividing it, you're just, you never going to get there to a certain point, you do take a step back and say, okay, this is done. So when do you submit it? The answer that I know everyone's going to love is when it is the best possible version it can be. Rekka:09:48   Another way I've heard this phrased is that when you can invest more time in it and the return on that investment of time is not significant. Like if you could make another revision pass, but if you were just like - Kaelyn:10:04   If it's not going to help, that's when you know the half journey. You're not, you're not getting any farther at this point. Rekka:10:10   Yeah. Kaelyn:10:11   Um, so we have talked about, you know, this, uh, episode two we talked a lot about, you know, pre-acceptance of your work and, um, then also working with an editor. Um, so hopefully we won't go too much into that. Again, probably people have already read it. If you're working with a freelance editor, if you've gotten notes, if you've had some Beta readers, um, you - Rekka:10:34   Hopefully, it's not just you at this point. Y. Kaelyn:10:36   eah. Yeah, I mean, you know - Rekka:10:38   It might be, but like, you know, if you haven't found anyone who's interested in it, it might be that you need to work on your pitch and maybe you're telling them too much before they open it up. But, um, you can hire people to read it if you are really not sure. Kaelyn:10:53   Yeah. Rekka:10:53   But chances are you're pretty confident in this thing. You're proud of it. You, you want to send it out. Kaelyn:10:57   I hope so. Rekka:10:58   Yeah, you should be. Kaelyn:10:59   So that's the story state of things. When you're ready, when it is the best possible version it can be and you can't do much more to it right now. The other side of things from besides story is mechanics and style and grammar. When is that ready? Now I will say acquisitions editor. I do not expect to get submissions that are perfectly copy edited. There's a reason we have copy editors. It's because those that's hard to do. Rekka:11:30   Yeah. Kaelyn:11:31   So that said, please use periods please capitalize. Please have a basic understanding of how commas work. Rekka:11:44   Um, if you run this through like grammar check in word or you get Grammarly and you run through and you disagree with every suggestion, every suggestion, you probably need to reconsider your stylistic choices. Kaelyn:11:59   Yes, definitely. So with knowing when your submission is ready in that regard, do basic writing checks, make sure that your grammar, punctuation, spelling is correct to the extent that you can get it. Like I said, no one is expecting a professional copy edit here, but watch for egregious errors. And I'm going to say something a little, I won't say controversial, the beginning of this is the most important part. If you can't, if you don't have time to comb through every single page of your manuscript, please for the love of God, at least do the first 20%. Um, because me the acquisitions editor, that's what I'm going to read first. And insider secret, I know people are doing that and I appreciate that. Now that said, if I get through your first 20% of your book and it devolves into, you know, misspelled words and abstract punctuation and you know, some really interesting uses of commas, I'm, that's gonna be a major red flag for me. So, but please pay extra special attention to the beginning of your book. Please, please proofread and closely check the first page of your book. Rekka:13:22   And I'll say it again. If you haven't read your entire book out loud yet, do that. Like, that's, Kaelyn:13:26   Yeah. Rekka:13:26   That's a good step to um, to making it more legible and definitely catching things that you haven't seen because you've looked at it too much. I think it's always important at least once in your books, you know, existence, um, to read it aloud. And if major changes happen, then it's always good to read new sections. Kaelyn:13:45   Absolutely. Rekka:13:45   So here's a really good place where you're going to catch stuff where you went, oh, I didn't even realize I did that. And it'll make your editor a little less mad at you. Kaelyn:13:52   Yeah. Um, one of the, you know, I think I've mentioned this on, on this podcast before, but I use what I call the Colin Coyle method. Colin's, the publisher at Parvus Press. And he always says, your first sentence is buying me your first paragraph, first paragraphs, buying me your first page. First page is buying me your first 10, first 10 buying me your first chapter. You are trying to get me to keep reading. Now part of that is story which, you know, I, I can't help you or offer advice on that in this context, but I can tell you that your grammar, punctuation and spelling is something that I'm going to be paying close attention to there. So - Rekka:14:31   Yeah. Kaelyn:14:32   Just please make sure, check the beginning of your book. That's very important. It's important throughout, but especially the beginning because that's the first impression you're making on me. Um, that's, you know, and you're going, well why is that such a big deal if you're going to get a copy editor? Because a couple things. One, it's setting the tone of your book. And I don't mean that in terms of story or style. I mean that in terms of what kind of a writer are you? Um, it's showing me that you're paying attention, that there's attention to detail and that's giving me a sense of what it's going to be like to work with you. Because if I'm getting a book through submissions and it's a mess in the first chapter, I'm going, well, this person doesn't care that much. I have other people here who put a lot of time and effort into getting this to a point that they want me to read it and this person just slapped some stuff together and sent it to me. That's, and it's wasting my time to now. So that's just gonna start off with leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Rekka:15:37   Right. But then plus every strange choice or, um, you know, uncaught mistake is a potential like tripping point where an editor might get, it, might be enjoying the story, but then they get popped out because like the sentence doesn't actually finish and, you know, go straight to the next paragraph, um, without, you know, the second half of the last sentence or something like that where you go, oh wait, and then you're out of the book, you're back in your room and you're wondering if you want to keep going. Kaelyn:16:06   I've had submissions where, um, I've had repeated paragraphs one right after on the first page, first page, repeated paragraphs. I've gotten ones that have really bad spelling errors in the first sentence. And it's not like they fat fingered a keyboard here, you know, like I've seen that and it's kinda like, alright, they were obviously just, you know, doing one last check through, accidentally leaned on the x. You know, it's, that's, that's fine. Um, but like first sentence spelling error is not, you know, that's not, it's not a good look for you to start with. Um, so please, you know, check, spend some time and do this. I know it can be boring. I know it can be a lot and I know it can be mind numbing, Rekka:16:54   But if you don't want a publishing deal bad enough to put this effort into exactly. Because you're going to be doing this a lot. Like there are more edit versions to come. Kaelyn:17:05   And that's what I mean when I say this is showing me what you're going to be like to look at. Because if I'm your editor and most any editor, I would hope you're not getting away with anything. Rekka:17:16   Right. Kaelyn:17:17   Um, if I put a note in your manuscript and you ignore it, that's going to be a problem. So it is a, it is a first impression. Your first page is trying to hook the, the editor, but it's also making a first impression. Um, so please pay attention to these things. Um, again, especially the beginning of the book, especially your first sentence. Um, because it does, you know, it's not like, oh well, whatever. It's just one little thing. No, it is showing so much about and what you would be like to work with. Rekka:17:51   Right. Kaelyn:17:52   It's very important please, I get hundreds of submissions every time we open for submission. So if it's a matter of the first person who couldn't be bothered to spellcheck their document Rekka:18:05   And spellcheck is on by default in most cases, if it's giving you a red squiggly line, consider you spelled it wrong. Kaelyn:18:11   Yes. Well assuming you know it's actually a word and not something - Rekka:18:15   Right, yeah, I know we're talking genre fiction. So you know, the spelling of your characters name may always get a red squiggle, but that doesn't mean like turn off your perception of red squiggles. Like scan the documents, see what else is, you know, coming up as an error. Kaelyn:18:29   Yeah. So if it's a choice between someone who couldn't be bothered to spell check the document and someone who clearly put a lot of time, work and effort into being careful about this, guess who I'm going to be more interested in working with? Rekka:18:39   Right. Kaelyn:18:39   Um, I will say, you know, and a big thing at Parvus is we're very into getting good stories. But if it's a good story from someone, that's going to be a nightmare, we don't want. Rekka:18:51   Right. Kaelyn:18:51   Um, a big part of this is figuring out can we work with this author? Do we want to work with this author because this is my time and my hours out of my life. So I'm not going to put that into something with someone that I don't want to work with. Rekka:19:08   And there is a certain percentage of your decision that's going on, gut feeling. And so these kinds of obvious disregard for your time, Kaelyn:19:17   Oh yeah, they're massive red flags. Rekka:19:18   Massive red flags, and they're going to send your gut feeling. Kaelyn:19:23   Exactly. Um, so your book is in the best possible state it can be You've spelled checked it, other people have read it, you're ready to go. So we're going to do more on a querying and how you find these places. Um, but, and again, for the purposes of this, we're lumping publishing houses and agents together. Rekka:19:46   Right. Kaelyn:19:47   Um, you query an agent, you submit to a publishing house, but it's tantamount to the same thing. Rekka:19:53   Right. Kaelyn:19:54   So what you're going to do is look for people that are open for considerations. For agents they'll say, I'm open for queries for publishing houses, they'll say, we're open for submissions. The first thing you want to do is do some research on this house or person. Rekka:20:09   Right. Kaelyn:20:10   Look at what they're interested in and where you will find this right off the bat is in their submissions guidelines, Rekka:20:19   Right. Yes. Most of the time they will tell you exactly what they are not looking for and if it's in that list it means they are sick to death of it. And you are no exception to that rule. Kaelyn:20:28   Yeah. Your book is probably not so special and interesting and unique that it's going to change their mind. Rekka:20:34   Right. So if they say no zombies and no werewolves, no, vampire romances is just - Kaelyn:20:39   Just don't. Rekka:20:40   - don't, and you've written that, don't, don't go for that. Kaelyn:20:43   Um, the other thing you should be doing though is looking at either, you know, other authors that the agent represents and the kind of stuff they write or in the case of the publishing house, the other things they've published. And just kind of see like where you would fit into this. Rekka:20:58   Yeah. Kaelyn:20:58   Do your research on these things. It's really important. Especially I would say, especially with publishing houses, you know, check them out, make sure that you know, this isn't some kind of predatory vanity press. Um, and with agents, um, good agents by the way, if you know they're interested in working with you, if you ask them, you know, can I talk to some of your other clients? They'll have no problem with that whatsoever. Rekka:21:22   Because they don't want you to talk to other clients, you probably don't want that agent. Kaelyn:21:26   That's a big red flag right there. Um, so, but submissions guidelines, what this is going to be is kind of two parts. One is what I'm looking for and what I'm not looking for, like the kinds of things that we're publishing. And then the other is, here's how I want you to get your submission together in order to present it to me. Rekka:21:45   Yep. Kaelyn:21:46   I think people do not take these seriously enough. Rekka:21:52   Or it looks like a big overwhelming bit of text. So they just do the best they can. And they have a manuscript that they um, they have made sure is in a standard manuscript format and they just throw it on over. Kaelyn:22:04   And why do they like what's so special about them? Why do they want it in this format? Because they're the one who's doing this and they get to say so, right? Rekka:22:10   They get to say so and they probably have a good reason. Like this is worked out for them in the past. It makes their job a little bit easier and makes them less cranky when they approach the submissions, which is exactly what you want. Kaelyn:22:21   But I will say their reasons for it are none of your business. If that's how they want this, then - Rekka:22:26   It's not up for debate. Kaelyn:22:27   It's not up for debate. And if you want to submit to them, that's how they do it. Um, I have had people write to me and say, well, I really don't want to do this because, and my answer is I don't care. Rekka:22:40   Yeah. Kaelyn:22:40   You know, like I write them back and go, well listen, you can submit however you want, but if you don't follow this submissions guidelines, there's a very good chance that this isn't getting looked at. Rekka:22:48   Right. Kaelyn:22:48   Um, so the other part of the submission guidelines are going to be do this, do this, don't do this. I want it in this format. Um, for publishing houses, I know for us we ask for a query letter and then your entire manuscript. Rekka:23:05   Which is not 100% of the time common. Kaelyn:23:09   Um, it depends. Yeah. You know, some, uh, I know a lot of agents now are that used to be a thing. Agents wanted your first a few chapters and a lot of them now are saying, I want your entire manuscript. Um, and this is kind of going into how it's easier to transfer digital files. Before agents didn't want your entire manuscript. They didn't want a hundred pages. They wanted the first few chapters. Rekka:23:31   Right, because these were arriving in a mail room. Kaelyn:23:32   Exactly. Now it's, you know, there's um, you know, you have like a submissions manager and it's really easy to go into. Um, we ask for, you know, your entire manuscript. I think a lot of publishing houses that do open submissions, we'll ask for your entire manuscript. A lot of agents are asking for entire manuscripts now, so if somebody asks for your entire manuscript, send the entire manuscript. One of the reasons that we do this is I want to know is this done? Rekka:23:57   Yeah and does it end okay? Kaelyn:24:01   Yeah, that's another - Rekka:24:01   I mean, you may not make it that far. Kaelyn:24:03   But well, if it's something I'm strongly considering, then I - Rekka:24:06   You jumped to the end. Kaelyn:24:08   I want to read it and you know, at least get an idea of where it's going, make sure it doesn't completely go off the rails. Um, but that's a question. You know, like when I, every time we open for submissions, I get at least a dozen or so that are like, here are the first five chapters of my book. And it's like, well, yup, out the door. But also the big thing is I'm wondering is, is this finished? Is this all you've written of the book? I'm not going to wait a year for you to finish writing this. Um, there will. So that's one thing, you know, they're gonna say, I want to these things, I want to query letter, I want the entire manuscript, I want a little bit of a bio from you. Maybe you know, that kind of stuff. Then there will be other guidelines with say a word count. Um, Parvus we have a 60,000 minimum for novels. Rekka:24:59   Yup. Kaelyn:24:59   And again, I constantly get emails going, mine's at 45. Is that okay? No, it's not. Rekka:25:06   It's not 60. Kaelyn:25:07   And is that less than 60? Rekka:25:10   There's your answer then. Kaelyn:25:10   No, it's not. Okay. Please don't go into this thinking I'm special. Rekka:25:19   Truly, I am the exception to this unnecessary rule. Kaelyn:25:23   Yeah. Mine's 45,000 words, but it's a really solid book and I think you guys should definitely take a look at that. And what that's saying to me is I do not want to take a look at this and I don't really want to work with this person. Yeah. Um, pay attention to the submissions guidelines. If they say they want anonymous submissions, make sure you have that. Rekka:25:45   Yeah. Kaelyn:25:46   You should have a version of your manuscript with all of your personal information scrubbed from it. Well how do they know how to get in touch with me then? Rekka:25:54   Their system is set up. Kaelyn:25:55   Don't worry about that. That's when you, you know, for us, for instance, our submissions manager, you have to register your new username. It's um, so we'll find all your information in there if we need to. We'll go look it up by manuscript ID and be like, okay, this is how I get in touch with this person. Don't worry, they'll figure out how to get in touch with you. They've done this before. Um, read the submissions guidelines, follow them. This is the easiest, silly thing you can do to immediately get yourself knocked out of consideration is not following the submissions guidelines. Why is that, Rekka? Rekka:26:33   Because if you want to have a professional relationship with a publisher, you need to show them that you are professional. And the easiest way to do that right from the start is to follow the submissions guidelines and give them exactly what they're looking for and nothing they aren't. And also, you know, just not proving that you're going to be difficult at every stage of the process. Kaelyn:26:57   Exactly. It's. Rekka:26:58   Speaking of being difficult. Hey, as a publisher, will you sign an NDA before I send you my, my manuscript? Kaelyn:27:06   Oh God. Yeah. Um, here's this is, I am not sure, [laughs] Rekka's watching me like make like very exasperated facial expressions and like - Rekka:27:18   I can't see past your hands what youre expression. Kaelyn:27:20   Like that are just like covering my face. Like, I don't know where this paranoia comes from. And in some cases that's the only way I can. Rekka:27:33   Somewhere there's an urban myth or it's probably happened. But somebody sent a manuscript off to somebody, they said, no thank you. And then a book came out that was awfully similar. So that author of course assumes that it was stolen and maybe, you know, like I said, there's probably cases where it did happen that way, but an NDA isn't going to stop the publishing house from doing that anyway. This is why you research a publishing house before you submit. Kaelyn:27:54   Yeah. I mean if, if that happens to you, then you've got amazing legal recourse because in this day and age, everything is digitally tracked. Rekka:28:03   So that it's not like you're sending off sheets of paper, they just tear your name off the top. Kaelyn:28:10   Um, don't make ridiculous, outlandish requests. If anyone emails me and says, can you sign this NDA? I'm not even going to respond to them. Rekka:28:20   Right. Kaelyn:28:20   That's like, and that's telling you how difficult they're going to be right off the bat. And plus that aparent level of paranoia is going to pervade through the entire process. Rekka:28:28   But also it's showing me I don't trust you. Kaelyn:28:30   Yeah. Rekka:28:31   Why? Like hold on, why do you want to work with me? Kaelyn:28:33   Right. Um, and there's a lot of trust that goes into what's gonna come next. Yes. And it's setting, well, I can't say it's setting a bad tone for a relationship because there isn't going to be your relationship at that point, but you really need to reevaluate what you're doing., if you think that everyone you need to send your book to your manuscript to, it needs to sign an NDA. Rekka:29:02   A publisher sees so many books and if they have an open call for submission, they're looking to buy books. So if you have a great book, they're going to buy it from you. They're not going to steal it from you. Kaelyn:29:13   Yeah. Because I mean alternatively we're just going to publish it as from this publisher? Who's going to be the author. So do I take it and do I take it and give it to another author? What would be the point of that? It's so don't, don't be obnoxious. I like, that's the only way I can come up with to describe that is that's borderline obnoxious. I'm sending these sort of things, making demands of the publisher and look, the power dynamic here is definitely a little weird. And if you're a writer, not great because the truth is you don't have much if you're doing an open submissions call. So don't send NDAs to people. Um, but yeah, and back to Rekka's point. This is showing me what it's going to be like to work with you. If you can't follow a set of directions that doesn't bode well for the time, money and investment we're going to put into you. For agentss it's the same thing. They're going to spend a lot of time trying to shop you around, talk you up, get you the best deal possible. And if you're going to make their lives miserable, you're maybe not someone when they want to be having as a client either. So the submission guidelines are there to make my life easier, but they're also there to show me a little about you and show me how you function. Show me if you can follow directions. Rekka:30:35   And one thing I, I feel I need to say is like we make it sound like, you know, don't be difficult, don't whatever. It doesn't mean you're going to set up an expectation that this publisher can walk all over you. What you're showing them is your competence. So if you are competent enough to follow submissions guidelines in the first place and you're competent enough to write a good story that they want to buy, they will also expect that you are competent enough to stand up for your rights when it comes to negotiating contracts, et Cetera, et cetera. So don't feel that by not asserting yourself with, you know, various, um, you know, like standing your ground sort of mentalities at the beginning of this that you are going to end up like being the doormat for this publisher. That is not, that is not what we're trying to set up here. We're trying to set up a great working relationship Kaelyn:31:22   And I will take this a step further and say, I'm not saying don't be afraid to ask questions if you have a question, um, you know, email them and just say, Hey, I'm, you know, what's best for me to do with this sort of thing. Um, now that said, before you do this, you should try to figure out if your answers in the submissions guidelines. Rekka:31:43   Cause it's probably in the submissions guidelines. Kaelyn:31:46   Um, one thing that I'm a little bit of a gray area about is like, well I read in your submissions guidelines that you're not taking things with werewolves in them, but my werewolves are in space and it's Scifi. Rekka:32:00   Right. Kaelyn:32:02   So, Rekka:32:02   So if you don't understand that, they're like talking specifically say about urban paranormal romance and it's not that clear but like, you know, clarify. But. Kaelyn:32:14   And I would also say, you know, if you want to email them, that's fine. Um, and to be honest with you, there's a good chance, you're not going to get a reply back. Um, but you can also put that in your query letter. Rekka:32:25   Right. Kaelyn:32:25   And you know, Rekka:32:26   Just in a query letter - Kaelyn:32:27   Yeah. We're going to talk about query letters next week and that's a good place to kind of make any sort of conditional kind of stuff that you want everyone aware of. Like, I know this title werewolves in it, but it's werewolves on Mars. That actually might make me go. Huh. All right. I'll take a look at that. Rekka:32:46   Right. So, yeah, maybe not asking the question about like your specific story, but the questions about the submissions guidelines themselves. Kaelyn:32:54   Absolutely. Rekka:32:55   Send an email and say like, um, I'm looking at this email and I think there might be a typo in your like email address or something like that because it doesn't match the domain name, like, yeah, you can write an email about that. Kaelyn:33:08   Just to clarify or you know, just to make sure like this is, um, I'm going to go on a little short tirade here right now, I apologize. When asking questions like this again, keep in mind how many emails and how much stuff is going on. Please take the time to actually compose an email. Um, I don't know if everyone, I think most people probably feel the same way with this with me, and I don't know if this is me being overly fussy, but I hate when I get emails that are just, hey, so like what about this thing? And that's it. Rekka:33:45   Yeah. Like keep in mind that no, this is not your official submission. This is probably talking to somebody who might review your submission as a professional corresponds. Kaelyn:33:53   This is not, you're not sending me a text or a DM. This is, hi Kaelyn. You know, I'm so and so. I'm, I'm interested in submitting to you. I just had this one question because I'm getting ready to submit and I don't want to get disqualified for something silly, Rekka:34:10   Right. I, Kaelyn:34:13   I don't know if it's just a pet peeve of mine if it's just, you know, something that really sets my hackles up is when I get emails that - Rekka:34:23   It's like one line and it's right to the question and it just comes off as rude and demanding. Kaelyn:34:28   Demanding is exactly that, right? Like, hey, tell me about this. Like, no, first of all go read the submissions guidelines second, like take some time and compose an email for me. You know, I'm not saying this has to be, you know, the equivalent of the Queen's invitation. Rekka:34:43   I mean, this isn't a query letter itself. You don't have to worry too much about it, but just be nice, you know, like - Kaelyn:34:48   Like you would any other professional setting, Rekka:34:50   To Whom It May Concern if you don't know who you're writing to, exactly. And say I'm reviewing - like, here's what I'm doing, here's my question. I appreciate your time and answering it. Kaelyn:34:59   Yeah. Rekka:34:59   And sign off professionally. Kaelyn:35:01   It doesn't need to be paragraphs. Please don't make a paragraphs. Um, but think about, you know, if you were interviewing or applying for a job, same thing. This is a professional setting. Rekka:35:09   Let me tell you people still, you know, I've interviewed people and I have still got emails like that. Kaelyn:35:13   No. And I mean, I'm sure you know, there's, it's, it's systemic of, you know, the online, it's symptoms of the culture, unfortunately. Um, but that is, that's another thing that is gonna make me go like, oh my God, this person, why do, why would you send this to me? Um, so just be conscious, be aware of this as a professional interaction. Rekka:35:38   Yeah. Kaelyn:35:38   So that's getting your submission ready. Um, do your research, do your spell checks. Um, talk to people that you know, can maybe point you in the right direction and follow the submissions guidelines. It is the smallest thing you can do to get yourself removed from consideration unnecessarily. Rekka:36:03   It's really surprising what a fight people will put up when it's not that much effort. Kaelyn:36:08   Yeah. And one thing I will say also is, um, when I say research, especially publishing houses agents as well and especially publishing houses is check for context. Yes, maybe what you're writing falls within the submissions guidelines, but make sure it is actually something that you think they'd be interested in publishing. Um, can I tell a story that's slightly inappropriate? Rekka:36:35   I mean we can cut it later or if I, if I go, you know, I don't like this story. Kaelyn:36:39   I got a submission once that was an epic, you know, high epic fantasy and it was, you know, very sword and shield like, um, I have no, I don't remember anything about what it was about because all I remember is within the first two pages I got lengthy graphic description of three different men's penises. Rekka:37:04   Hmm. Kaelyn:37:07   Extolling the virtues of each of them. And, and I'm reading this going, this person is not a bad writer. And this sounded like this was maybe an interesting story. I, but no. Rekka:37:20   However I'm done. Kaelyn:37:21   I'm burning this, I'm going to print it out just so I can burn it. Um, so that's just another thing. Rekka:37:28   So know your audience. Kaelyn:37:29   No, that's exactly. Yeah. Know your audience. And that's a good thing to keep in mind while researching publishing houses, if they don't seem like they're interested in having stories with graphic descriptions of male genitalia crammed into the first 300 words the book, Rekka:37:48   I mean maybe pick up one of their other books and see if that's in there. Kaelyn:37:52   Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you're gonna, if you're going to go for something then like that, I mean one may be don't, but two, you know, make sure - Rekka:37:59   There's an audience for it somewhere, you've just got to look a little harder. Kaelyn:38:01   Exactly. And you know, so be, be aware of that kind of thing. So, um, you know, that's, I think that's a good. Rekka:38:08   We can end on the penises. Kaelyn:38:09   On the penis story. Cause I don't know where else to go from there. Rekka:38:14   There's no where to go from there. Kaelyn:38:15   No where to go from that. Rekka:38:17   Mic dropped, podcast is over. Kaelyn:38:19   We're done. Good luck everyone. Uh, no. So that's um, you know, that's prepping your submissions on next week. We're doing query letters. Rekka:38:26   Yup. Kaelyn:38:27   Um, I'm excited for that one too. Rekka:38:28   Yes. Query letters is a more artistic expression of following the submissions guidelines because - Kaelyn:38:33   Well for you, for me it's, you know, okay, I've got an agenda. Rekka:38:36   Okay, fair. Alright. So up next week there's a tease. Kaelyn:38:42   Next week Kaelynand Rekka duke it out over query letters. Rekka:38:45   And again it is next week because for submission September we are doing weekly episodes, maybe even more depending on how things go. So, um, yeah, look forward to that and let us know if you have any funny penis submission story is or otherwise. Kaelyn:39:00   Yeah. Like, you know, um, so we're recording a lot of these in advance, but you know, we did talk about, we'd mentioned in the previous episode, we did talk about, you know, we got some questions and stuff. We'd be very happy to do a wrap up episode. Yeah. And kind of maybe if there's a few topics, pick those and kind of talk about, flush them out a little more. Rekka:39:18   Yeah. Kaelyn:39:18   Um, yeah, we're, I'm having such a great time with this [laughs] Rekka's giving me a look right now because I must have like Harley Quinn like giant crazy eyes right now. Um, cause I am just giddy over getting to, uh, getting to talk about this stuff. So, um, anyway, uh, thank you you for listening. We'll see you next week. In the meantime, you can hit us up on the socials as usual, Rekka:39:42   Twitter at @WMBcast, patreon.com/WMBcast, Instagram @WMBcast. And of course you can find wmbcast.com and listen to all the old episodes or if you are new, you can go back and find some of your new favorite episodes. Kaelyn:40:02   Thank you everyone for listening. We'll see you next week, which that's exciting to say. Rekka:40:06   Oh my gosh. Like don't get used to this. Kaelyn:40:08   No. Rekka:40:08   I don't think we can sustain this pace, especially with the cost of the train fare over here. So thanks everyone for listening in and next week: Query letters, Kaelyn:40:17   Query letters. We'll see you there. Bye.  

Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between! This week we’re talking about ARCs or Advance Review Copies! What are they?  Why do we print them?  Who gets them?  Why do they smell better than your average book??  Rekka and Kaelyn discuss all of those things, tell a few funny stories, and spend more than a little time getting side tracked talking about ARCs they’ve received.  We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writer and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, concerns, and any particularly good pie recipes you may have – apple is especially appreciated! We hope you enjoy We Make Books!   Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Rekka:00:00   Welcome back to another episode of the we make books podcast. I'm record Jay and I write science fiction and fantasy as RJ Theodore Kaelyn:           00:07   And I'm Kaelyn Considine and I am the acquisition editor for Parvus Press. This is one of my favorite things that happened in the process of publishing a book. And we are of course talking about advanced review copies or ARCs. Rekka:00:19   Because you get to see it and it's a thing and it's real and they haven't been lying to you this whole time and they're really going to publish it. Kaelyn:           00:24   I don't know what it is. I love getting the ARCs it's - Rekka:00:27   Do they smell different? Kaelyn:           00:28   They yes, they smell, this is a trade secret: they smell different than a regular book. Rekka:00:33   They do smell different, Kaelyn:           00:34   Yeah. Rekka:00:35   I'm going to dive in here. Kaelyn:           00:36   No Rekka's right in to the spine. Rekka:00:39   [laughter] Kaelyn:           00:39   Um, so yeah, we're just talking today a little bit about what ARCs are - Rekka:00:43   What it is because as you even mentioned, and I think one of our very intro episodes - Kaelyn:           00:46   It was the intro episode Rekka:00:48   You didn't even know what ARC meant so - Kaelyn:           00:49   That was the example I gave about don't be afraid to ask stupid questions because I knew what an advanced review copy was and I had just never heard it abbreviated to ARC and then I was like, oh, it's that thing I love. Rekka:01:00   Yeah. It's my favorite thing. I know what it is, I just didn't know you called it that. Kaelyn:           01:03   Yeah. You know, we talked a little bit today about what an ARC is, what its function is - Rekka:01:06   Who gets them. Kaelyn:           01:07   Who gets them. Rekka:01:08   And where they go. Kaelyn:           01:09   Where they go. Rekka:01:09   And what their purposes. Kaelyn:           01:11   Exactly. Yeah. So, um, you know, a little interesting bit about the history of them, sort of where they come from and why they are what they are. Rekka:01:20   Mmmhmm. Kaelyn:           01:20   Um, so I think it was a great episode. Rekka:01:22   Yeah Kaelyn:           01:22   I enjoyed doing it. Rekka:01:23   Yes. Well, I always like paying attention to ARCs and, and we get to squeal a little bit about ARCs that are out there in the world. Right this moment as we recorded. Kaelyn:           01:30   Yeah we definitely devolved into - Rekka:01:33   A little bit of squealing. Kaelyn:           01:33   A little bit of squealing. So apologies for that. Rekka:01:36   No apologies. Kaelyn:           01:37   Okay. Nevermind. We're not sorry. Rekka:01:38   Love us as we are - Kaelyn:           01:40   Or not at all. Thanks everyone for listening again and uh, we hope you enjoy the episode. Rekka:01:47   Yeah. Music:02:02   [inaudible] Kaelyn:           02:03   So today what we're talking about our advanced reader copies or ARCs Rekka:02:09   Or advanced review copies, what is the proper nomenclature? Kaelyn:           02:12   Well, that depends who you're sending it to. Okay. Um, I always call them advanced reader copies because that means readers and reviewers. Rekka:02:19   Okay. Kaelyn:           02:19   So, um, but yes, we're talking about advanced copies of your book, which are copies that your publisher will send out to people going like, Hey, we have this book coming out and it's awesome. You should read it. Give us a review or a blurb. And they're awesome. They're, actually ARC's a lot of times are collectors items. Rekka:02:38   Oh dear. Kaelyn:           02:38   Did you know that? Rekka:02:40   I don't want to see them on Ebay though. Kaelyn:           02:42   Not well, I mean, but that's actually, that's a thing. There are a lot of people that collect um, ARCs and uh, because frequently they're uh, you know, labeled as, you know, uncorrected advanced proof. Rekka:02:53   Advanced, mmmhmm. Kaelyn:           02:54   Um, Rekka:02:54   Not for resale. Kaelyn:           02:56   Not for resale. That does not always stop them from popping up. Rekka:02:59   Right. Kaelyn:           02:59   But like, you know, especially if the book really takes off and you have one of the early copies of it, that's a pretty cool thing to have, I think. Rekka:03:07   Yeah. Kaelyn:           03:07   I want to kind of go through some definitions real quick. Mostly between a galley and an ARC. I think galley has really fallen out of use as of late, but you might still hear people throw this term around. Rekka:03:21   Actually I heard it at the Nebulas quite a lot of different contexts. Kaelyn:           03:25   Yes and that was also a group of writing professionals and people who have been doing this for a while and I'm not going like, oh, they're old. Rekka:03:32   [laughs] Eh. Kaelyn:           03:32   But like people that are from, we're writing in an time that galleys were definitely still a thing so. A Galley actually comes from, uh, the middle well, the renaissance era when, uh, typesetting became a thing and you had to put all of the - Rekka:03:50   Letters, Kaelyn:           03:51   Everything in there, print it, and then the pages went into a galley, which was the metal tray that all they all got stacked up in before being bound. Rekka:04:00   Yes. Kaelyn:           04:00   So a galley for a long time was actually just the printed manuscript for corrections. So then you had an uncorrected proof that's, you know, when someone goes through and marks everything up and when oh, my God, we used to have to do this by hand, everyone. Rekka:04:17   Yes. Kaelyn:           04:17   Um, then you have a final proof, which is okay, we're good. The book is in the shape, it's in the, uh, grammar and the punctuation is, uh, mostly correct and in our day and age now that becomes an advanced reader copy. And the main difference between a galleon advanced reader copy now is a galley, is basically a bound manuscript. Um, it probably does not have cover art. It's probably just in a book with big letters on it saying what it is and who it was by. An ARC. On the other hand is going to have cover art. Um, it's going to have cover copy on it. It will say uncorrected advanced proof. Um, or some version of that. It's probably, it might just have a big red band across the top. It might have like a big sticker in the middle of it, Rekka:05:06   Mmmhmm. Kaelyn:           05:06   But it is going to be very clear that this is an ARC. This is not the actual book. Rekka:05:11   Right. Kaelyn:           05:11   So - Rekka:05:12   What is the reason that you would send out a thing that is not the actual book? Kaelyn:           05:16   [lauhgs] That is an excellent question, Rekka. This is actually gets to the heart of a bigger thing, which is why does it take so long to publish a book? Rekka:05:25   What the hell anyway? Kaelyn:           05:26   Well, because your ARCs are going out about six months before the book is released because what your publisher is going to be trying to do is get buzz around it. Get people to say like, Oh yeah, I'll write a review on it. Get a blurb that they can stick on the back cover for when the final release is well released. Rekka:05:43   Mmmhmm. Kaelyn:           05:43   Um, you want people to read this book and the people reading it know, this isn't the final. Rekka:05:50   Okay. Kaelyn:           05:50   They're not getting this and going, oh my God, this ugh - didn't put the commas in the right place. Rekka:05:55   Commas aren't voice. What the hell? Kaelyn:           05:57   Yeah, no, that should be taken care of by the. [laughs] The publishers are sending it to them in hopes of them getting it and going, wow, this is really great, I'm going to write a review on it. There is this book and it's awesome and I loved it and here's all the great stuff I loved about it and you should go buy it. Rekka:06:12   Mmmhmm. Kaelyn:           06:12   We're all trying to generate sales here. We're all trying to make money. Rekka:06:16   So this is a marketing tool, you would say? Kaelyn:           06:18   Yes, I would definitely call it a marketing tool. It is to generate interest in the book. Your ARC is a very precious, very special thing that I think a lot of people underestimate the importance of, you know, we came back from the Nebulas a bit ago and Rekka actually got the unique chance to hand out some of her own ARCs. Rekka:06:40   Yes. And so I got very nervous because, um, Kaelyn said to me as she opened the box, don't just give these to anybody. Kaelyn:           06:51   Yes. Rekka:06:52   So apparently there's an audience for ARC that is more worthy than another. Kaelyn:           06:57   It's not that there is an audience that is more worthy. It's that there is an audience that is going to do more for you and - Rekka:07:05   Right. Kaelyn:           07:05   I know, you know, I'm going to come in and be the coldhearted publisher here, but, and something I keep saying, at the end of the day, we're all here to sell the book. So if you, you know, in this case only have a limited number of these that were shipped to the conference. Rekka:07:19   Right. Kaelyn:           07:21   You have shipped - Rekka:07:22   Hand delivered. Kaelyn:           07:22   Hand delivered, hand delivered to the conference. You have to, you can't just hand them out to your friends at that point. Your ARCs are to get people to pay attention to your book. So you want to get them into the hands of people that are going to take the time, spend the time with these, and hopefully say something nice about them. They're going to put some thought into it. They're not just going to, you know, put it in a pile and go like, oh, I guess I'll read that eventually. Rekka:07:48   Right. And let's just be straightforward. This is a short run of your book. So they are also expensive. Kaelyn:           07:53   They are expensive. Yeah. They're, this is not, you know, obviously if you're at one of the bigger publishing houses, this is, you know, whatever, you just make however many, how many will be printed, depends on the book. I don't have an answer to that. It can be a hundred to 500. It could be, you know, any number of them. But also ARCs are sent out digitally now - Rekka:08:14   Yes. Kaelyn:           08:14   -as well. Rekka:08:15   Some people prefer them digitally Kaelyn:           08:16   Some people prefer them digitally. Rekka:08:17   Which is a shame because if they have the final cover art on them, that sort of loses a little bit of the glamour. Kaelyn:           08:23   Yeah. Rekka:08:23   Because there are people who take a photo of the books that arrive in the mail that day. Kaelyn:           08:28   I always get so excited whenever I see one of our books and like someone's stack and I'm like, Rekka:08:32   It's always a stack. So make sure your spine is pretty too. Kaelyn:           08:34   Yeah. Um, and that's actually the thing. People get a lot of these. Rekka:08:38   Yeah. Kaelyn:           08:38   Yeah and it's a lot of work to read and review those kinds of things. So like most people especially, you know, if you're just like, you have a blog that gets attention or you just, you know, run a website where you do this kind of stuff, sending someone an ARC is not a guarantee that they're going to review it. Rekka:08:52   Right. Kaelyn:           08:52   There's actually a very good chance that they won't - Rekka:08:54   Just because of the quantity of ARCs they receive. Kaelyn:           08:57   I mean, you do it anyway because it's an industry norm. Like, I mean, I think they're fun. I really like them. One of my favorite things is sending out all the Parvus Arcs. I love um, you know, like you get the giant box of them and like it's really cool because I'm usually the first person to see the physical copy of this book. Rekka:09:14   Yeah, mmmhmm. Kaelyn:           09:14   And it's like, it's so pretty, it's everything I imagined it would be. Um, so that's, that's a treat with me because at Parvus, I'm the one who send out the ARCs just cause I like doing it. Rekka:09:28   Yup, yup. and you have a big table that you have access to. Kaelyn:           09:30   I have a big table that I spread out on and you know, put everything in. And um, one of the things I do, because this is the thing is everyone gets bombarded with these is I always try to do something a little special to the books. I tried to wrap them in a way that's thematic to the book. So, um, cause I really, I don't know what it is. I don't know why I just really like dealing with and sending out the ARCs cause they're special. Rekka:09:54   Yeah. They're like, these are the, the new baby announcements. These are the - Kaelyn:           09:59   Yeah it is, it is just the new little baby that has come into the, come into the world. It's like, wow, this really exists now. Rekka:10:05   It's really happening. Kaelyn:           10:06   Yeah. Rekka:10:07   Yeah. So that's as an as an author. Kaelyn:           10:09   Yeah. Rekka:10:10   That's the exciting part for me. It's like, oh my gosh, look, it really exists. As you're really going through with this, like, yeah, we're doing this, we're doing this. And my Gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, and here's my cover and here's what it looks like printed. And there's just something so lovely about seeing the cover, not as a .jpeg. Kaelyn:           10:26   And holding it, and just being like, oh my God, like it's a book Rekka:10:29   It's a real thing. Kaelyn:           10:30   Like for real now, Rekka:10:31   Like I said, all the words in order and everything - Kaelyn:           10:32   And I wrote those words! Rekka:10:34   Yes and oh my gosh, now I have to decide who gets to read those words and oh my gosh, who's was just going to help me because I'm scared. Kaelyn:           10:41   So you know what actually we brought up a good thing is that, did you notice who gets the ARCs here? Rekka:10:47   Sure. Kaelyn:           10:47   It's not sure the author, right? It's the publisher. Rekka:10:50   I happened to be in the building where they arrived. Kaelyn:           10:53   Rekka just happened to be there because we were at this conference. Rekka:10:55   Mmmhmm. Kaelyn:           10:57   Um, but we get the ARCs. Rekka:11:00   Right. Kaelyn:           11:00   Not the author because we're the ones who decide who they go to. Rekka:11:06   Yeah. Kaelyn:           11:07   Now, I mean authors definitely, you know, like if you have someone that's like, Hey, talk to this person, and they said they'd be happy to send a review, absolutely we're going to send them a - Rekka:11:14   Right. Kaelyn:           11:15   - a copy of that. Um, but authors, you guys don't get to decide who the ARCs get sent to because the publishers are the ones with the relationships - Rekka:11:25   The familiarity with the process. Kaelyn:           11:26   Exactly. Yeah. And also, you know, the like I sent handwritten notes with a lot of our ARCs where it's like, hey, you know, you really liked this other thing we sent to you. Maybe you've enjoyed this. Rekka:11:36   Right. Kaelyn:           11:38   Again, authors, you guys don't have as much control over this process as you think you do. Rekka:11:43   Okay, but now having said that, what if somebody is self publishing and decides they want to send physical or even digital arts, how would they decide who should receive them? Kaelyn:           11:53   Well, there's a few ways to do that. And um, it is one of those kind of like trade things of how I get my list of physical addresses to Rekka:12:02   Right. Kaelyn:           12:02   send this to. And that is one of the biggest parts of this, you know, but there are people that do review blogs and different stuff that will just say like, Hey, if you want to send me a review copy, this is where you send it to. Rekka:12:14   Yup. Kaelyn:           12:14   Um, so finding that on your own is just a matter of digging. There's really no good way to do it. I'm sure there's like websites and resources and stuff, but you know, take everything with a grain of salt, Rekka:12:25   Right. Be careful about submitting your advanced copy to a site that you're not that familiar with as a self publisher. You might find yourself on a pirated site as a result of going through these. Instafreebie was a thing for a while that people were using for advanced review copies. And I think that backfired. It might've even, I think they've changed the way instareview works these days. Kaelyn:           12:47   I think so. I will say Netgalley is an excellent resource. Rekka:12:51   Netgalley is pricey, but it's supposedly going to get you the higher quality reviews that you're going to be hoping for. Um, Reedsy now has a book discovery, um, process for the same sort of thing, but you only get one review through that. Um, but it's supposedly a higher quality review and if it's a good review then they feature it. So in theory you're getting exposed to more. Um, but you know, look at the audiences of the people that you're sending it to. Look at the, the quality of their reviews, look at the types of things they tend to say. If you are looking to collect, um, quotes that you can put on your cover, you need them not to be reviews that don't get around to the point until the end of the paragraph and don't really put it in a short pithy phrase that you can lift. Kaelyn:           13:36   Yeah. Anything you pull for like a blurb is going to be a sentence. Rekka:13:40   A tweet length. Kaelyn:           13:41   Yeah, a tweet like as a good is a good marker for them. Aside from sending out the actual physical books. Um, we use Netgalley and a couple other sites. Um, and what that allows us to do is give access to the book to people that maybe aren't on our list - Rekka:13:57   But they're seeking. Kaelyn:           13:57   But they're seeking. Rekka:13:59   Yeah. Kaelyn:           14:00   And they're interested in reading this kind of stuff. So that's, that's a great tool too. But we do still send out the physical books. It's just something that's never going to go away. So that's, you know, that's who is getting, get the ARCs now. What are they going to do with them? Well, there's a very good chance they're going to sit in a stack of books that they will get to eventually. Rekka:14:18   Eventually. Maybe after release date. Kaelyn:           14:20   People that are doing these get, I mean dozens every month and even if you did nothing else but sit there and read them, I don't think you'd finish - Rekka:14:30   Right. Kaelyn:           14:31   - all of these. A lot of times having a personal relationship will help with that. Um, you know, publishers will kind of, you know, talk to someone beforehand or maybe someone through the author that they know to say like, oh, hey, would you be willing to, to give this a read and give us a review? We'd like to use you for a blurb. So I don't want to paint the picture of spamming people - Rekka:14:52   Right. Kaelyn:           14:52   With this in the hopes that one of them pick it up. But you do do some of that because you know, sometimes a book just catches someone's eye, but review copies are also sent up digitally and that one definitely can be more of a like, hey, everyone read this. Rekka:15:06   Yeah. Kaelyn:           15:06   So what are they going to do with that? Let's say they picked it up, they're going to read it. And depending on if they, you know, had talked to the publisher beforehand about like, Hey, would you do this, you know, this specific kind of review or you know, interview about it. Some people will just pick it up and write a review on it and say like, you know, I really liked this. This part was lacking. Those are going to be the honest reviews you get. Rekka:15:30   Yeah. Kaelyn:           15:30   And those are the ones that are a little scary. Rekka:15:31   Yes. Kaelyn:           15:32   Usually if it's going through the publisher and the person will have already kind of had an understanding of what the book is going to be and agree to do it so that they don't have to then be put in the awkward position of writing. I wasn't super into this. Rekka:15:45   Yeah. Sometimes you're going to get people that you don't have that specific agreement with ahead of time that you know, find it through Netgalley and they might - Kaelyn:           15:55   And that's a risk. Rekka:15:56   And that's a risk. Um, Netgalley does allow you to require to approve requests for the ARCs and you could take a look at their profile and say like, you only read erotica. I do not want you to read my space opera. Kaelyn:           16:08   Yeah. Rekka:16:08   You know, um, cause that's a risk that happened to me once with, um, a site that I was using to host my ebooks. I did not realize had added the ebooks to a public list and somebody who was very much into Christian books and Erotica. Kaelyn:           16:24   Oh, interesting. Rekka:16:25   Read the book and left me a review on Amazon that said, it's slow to start, but it gets there and I'm like, it doesn't get where you thought it was going, but all right. Kaelyn:           16:35   [laughs] Rekka:16:35   And it was a three star review and then I'm stuck with it. You know, that's just a funny anecdote aside, but it is, um, if you can, you know, vet the, the service that you're using to gather advanced reviewers, um, and then have one specifically that either makes you or your listing private so that you have, you are sending out the link and that's the only way to get it. Or you send it to specific email addresses and it has to be tied to those email addresses or um, something like Netgalley where you at least have to take a look at the person's profile and say, yeah, I don't really, you have no history of actually publishing reviews once you've read it, so I'm not interested in you. Kaelyn:           17:11   There are ways to control this and um, you know, there's ways you can make it so that people aren't just going to read a free book and there's was around it. And um, you know, there's, you have some degree of control over this. Um, now also though, exercising that degree of control can reduce the amount of reviews and exposure your book gets. Rekka:17:53   So it's a trade off. Kaelyn:           17:54   Yeah. Um, so that's kind of what's going to happen when the ARCs go out into the world. Rekka:18:03   So when you are collecting blurbs from industry professionals or industry readers or you are collecting reviews from other ARC readers, what's the goal? Like when you, when you launched the book, what are you hoping to have? Kaelyn:           18:17   By the end of it, what I'm hoping to have is a solid set of reviews, a solid set of blurbs. And people saying they liked the book. Rekka:18:26   Okay. Kaelyn:           18:26   There isn't a, you must have this many. It depends on the scale of the launch, you know, if it's like, you know, Chuck Wendigs "Wanderers" is coming out soon and like that's already got - Rekka:18:40   There's stuff everywhere for that. Kaelyn:           18:41   There's stuff everywhere for it, it's got dozens of reviews. And if you're working with like a more independent publisher like Parvus yes, we will absolutely target certain things and we will still come in good and strong, but it's not going to be, you know, the scale and scope that something from like Simon and Schuster - Rekka:18:57   Right. Kaelyn:           18:58   Is going to generate. Um, but even, you know, certain things from it depends on how much money they want to put into the marketing. Rekka:19:05   Right. Kaelyn:           19:05   And that's an uncomfortable thing to hear. And ARCs are part of the marketing, but they're not the whole of the market. Rekka:19:11   Right. Kaelyn:           19:12   They're actually a small fraction of it, in terms of marketing. Rekka:19:16   They're a level of social proof that, you know, this isn't an untested book. Someone has read it, enjoyed it. Don't be afraid to check it out. Kaelyn:           19:25   Yeah. So now you might be wondering, well, what's in my ARC? When do I know this book is quote unquote ready for ARCs? A lot of this has to do with publishing calendars. One working on a book takes a while. So right off the bat, that's probably bare minimum six to nine months, probably longer than that, depending on the editor's calendar. So then when the book's done, there's a lot of stuff to do with it afterwards. And all of that considered you need at least six months, maybe even eight or nine to start putting the book out there to generate interest in buzz and send out advanced copies. Right. Six months I think is pretty standard. So that's half a year right there. Right. And then you're figuring out everything in the lead up to that. So if you're going, well, if it's six months beforehand, what happens in those six months after. You finish the book? Rekka:20:24   Right [laughs] Kaelyn:           20:25   Yeah. Um, and I shouldn't say finish it as in finishing writing it, but this is when it's maybe some touches, some line that it's definitely copy, you know, a real true copy edit. You may get feedback from your reviewers that are like this thing, heres not working. Rekka:20:45   Yeah. I would blurb this except for this major thing. Kaelyn:           20:50   And then, hey, guess what? Rekka:20:52   You're going to take that thing out. Kaelyn:           20:53   You're going to go back and work on the book a little more. Rekka:20:54   Yeah. Kaelyn:           20:55   Um, because we're in a digital age, it's so much easier to fix these things and send them out again. You know? So like if a publisher is feeling a little iffy on a book, maybe they'll send it out a little earlier, get some early feedback. Rekka has firsthand experience in a pretty, not significant, but not small changes that were made after ARCs went out Rekka:21:18   They were not line edits, they, they were, uh, we got feedback on the ARCs which, um, caused us to go in and correct a couple of small points that were overcorrections based on earlier feedback. Kaelyn:           21:33   By the way, they were great, you know, great corrections. Your book absolutely is, well, I mean, it was already amazing, but Rekka:21:39   It's improved for having made these corrections - Kaelyn:           21:40   And getting that back is not, uh, this sucks. And sometimes it's like, hey, look, we got this feedback. Rekka:21:46   Yeah. And this feedback is something we want to act on because of the source of the feedback or the nature of the feedback or you know, this was not something we'd thought carefully about at the time when we were, you know, doing structural edits. But now that it's, you know, got a spotlight on it, we're realizing, yeah, taken, taken as it is in this moment. We don't want to publish it this way. Kaelyn:           22:09   Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people listening to this might think, Oh God, like so they can just go back and make me change all of these things after the book is done. Let me be very clear about something that is not a decision any publisher would make lightly. Rekka:22:20   No. Kaelyn:           22:21   Um, Rekka:22:21   But if in that moment you already know that that book should have been put out differently, you still have a chance to change it and in two years you're going to wish that you changed this. Kaelyn:           22:34   And don't think of it as a frustration. Think of it as an opportunity to get a little bit of a do over a little bit of you get to time travel a bit here. You get to go back and fix something. Rekka:22:46   Now, if that feedback came in on a review site, that review may be there forever. But um, that's, you know, eventually it will get buried more or something, you know. But um, it's, it's not like you can pretend it never happened, but it is a chance to show that like, yeah, I'm going to take that feedback and I'm going to do what I can to correct it versus, uh, nope, it's good, it's good, it's fine, you're wrong. And you know, shouting down the reviewer. Kaelyn:           23:16   You know, the other thing here is don't, don't think that your publisher is taking every review and going, oh my God, this thing they didn't like, we need to fix it. Rekka:23:25   I have, I have gone to Colin again, you know, this is my, I have a personal relationship with, with Parvus Press. I've gone to Colin and said, I saw that review that just posted. He's like, don't worry about it. Kaelyn:           23:34   Yeah. Rekka:23:34   That's wrong. Don't worry about it. It's an off the mark. Kaelyn:           23:36   It is and, I will say it can be very frustrating, especially like you know, especially for the writer but like as the editor and I know what people at home were probably screaming into their listening devices at this point is well Kaelyn. You always say if a lot of people are saying it, then it's something you need to take into account. Rekka:23:52   Mmmhmm. Kaelyn:           23:54   Here's the thing you need to understand about reviewers. I won't say they have an agenda because they don't, a lot of times they just enjoy doing these things, but there are definitely people that something maybe they wouldn't read review this book except something bothered them about it so they need to go online and set it right. Rekka:24:12   I mean this is the age of the Internet where we go online to complain about things. Kaelyn:           24:16   We also go online to galvanize things. Rekka:24:18   Yeah. Kaelyn:           24:18   We would go online to, you know like, and I really wish we'd have more of that in the world. Talk about things you love. Rekka:24:24   Oh my gosh right now that what you will hear people screaming about, it's still won't be out when we air this episode is Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and Kaelyn is making a face because Kaelyn has not gotten to read this yet Kaelyn:           24:37   I have not gotten an advanced copy of that and I'm not happy. Rekka:24:40   As soon as mine comes back, I will, I will loan it to you. Um, you will have to let Ryan read it over your shoulder because I've also promised it to him. This book is amazing and it's just a - Kaelyn:           24:50   Ryan Kelley, by the way, is Rekka's editor- Rekka:24:53   I suppose we should introduce him. Kaelyn:           24:55   And she's not sure who you're more tied to here. Rekka:24:58   Well I see you more often. Kaelyn:           25:00   That's true. Rekka:25:00   I haven't met Ryan in person yet and Ryan and I talk when I've done something wrong. Um, Kaelyn:           25:07   [laughter] Rekka:25:07   But um, yeah, so like that's what I mean. Like the gal - , you will go on Twitter - Kaelyn:           25:11   Yes. Rekka:25:11   and you will just see people are screaming their heads off in love with this book for good reason. Kaelyn:           25:16   And I am, I love seeing that kind of stuff. I love when to use the example of Gidion the Ninth and generating buzz. For instance, the way I first heard about this book was our Rekka:25:27   Mutual friend. Kaelyn:           25:28   Mutual friend Alexandra Rowland. Rekka:25:29   Alex was showing our other mutual friend - Kaelyn:           25:33   Yes. Yes, that was it. Rekka:25:33   Jennifer Mace, Macy at the table. I already had read mine or it was halfway through mine or something at that point. And um, I was able to pick it up, show it to Kaelyn and say, you need to read this book at some point, open it up to a random page and find an amazing like line that was just like evidence of why this book was great. And the buzz at that table, there were four people sitting at that table at that point - Kaelyn:           25:58   All talking about this. Rekka:26:00   All talking about this one book two people who haven't read it yet, who now had to read it. And that's the power of, that's the magic review copy Kaelyn:           26:08   That's the magic of ARCs. You know, I don't think anyone actually does this. I'd be curious if people really go through and look for the differences. If you got the ARC and then you get the final copy, I'm sure for certain books that are super fans that will do that Rekka:26:22   Well, for Salvage, they're are going to be some obvious differences. Kaelyn:           26:25   Yes. Rekka:26:28   Um, Salvage - Kaelyn:           26:28   Let's talk about that. What the difference between, you know, how different can you expect an ARC to be from your final copy? Rekka:26:36   We mentioned earlier that an ARC may not be produced in the same print run style that the final would be, which might make it more expensive, but we'll also create differences in the paper and the, the trim and things like that. Kaelyn:           26:52   We'll put a picture of this up on Twitter and Instagram. But, um, we, we were going out to the Nebulas and we were like, you know what, we've got to get Salvage out because Rekka:27:02   I'll be there. Kaelyn:           27:04   Rekka, will be there. But also we're really excited about this and we're like, it would be a wasted opportunity to not just have a bag with, you know, a few of these that we can hand out. Right. Rekka:27:12   And when I say that I'll be there. I didn't mean because they need to give me an ARC to make me feel happy and pretty. Kaelyn:           27:18   No, it's - Rekka:27:18   It's because I will be there making personal connections with people and here's a great chance to hand them the ARC. Kaelyn:           27:25   Yeah. Rekka:27:26   If immediately following or whatever. Kaelyn:           27:28   Yeah. Rekka:27:28   That conversation. Kaelyn:           27:29   Yeah. And if the ARCs handed to you by the author, it's, and it's an extra little special, you know, so we were like, okay, we're going to do this. And we used a different printer than we normally do just because of where we could fit into the printer's schedule. But we did use a local printer so that they were just right there and they use very, very nice paper. Rekka:27:49   It's very nice. Kaelyn:           27:49   It's really nice paper. It made the book about half an inch thicker. Rekka:27:55   Over 576 pages as it turns out, 0.0006 inches of difference in paper thickness adds up to .4 inches. Kaelyn:           28:05   Yeah. Rekka:28:05   In spine width, so we'll put a picture up of the, the Nebula version of the ARCs next to Flotsam and next to the final version of the ARCs that were printed later. Kaelyn:           28:15   Yeah. So, and that is something you also see with ARCs is a lot of times the book looks at, the only way I can describe it is as awkward [laughter] and just you pick it up and you're kind of like, I know this isn't quite right. Yeah. Um, but yeah, this, this was - Rekka:28:32   There's some growing pains and - Kaelyn:           28:33   Yeah this is, uh quite a quite a size. So it's, um, it's cool to have hold to have those. Rekka:28:37   It's a massive chunky book. Kaelyn:           28:40   Yeah. So, but anyway, um, there's going to be differences in Salvage from what the ARC is to a final print run. Rekka:28:51   And some of that is just going to be simple, like the cover is going to look slightly different because the ARC binding has - Kaelyn:           28:59   Was so thick. Rekka:29:00   Well pull that. Well, yeah. Okay. So the spine is going to be very different. Therefore the weight of the book is going to be different. But also there's a red band across the outside of the cover that says on it, um, uncorrected advanced review, um, and the dates that it will be published there. Um, therefore all the, the titling stuff has moved down and adjusted. Um, the back cover copy is not the final back cover copy. This is more like, you know, why you should open this ARC versus the ARC that came the same day to your PO Box. Um, and the artwork on the inside I have supplied because I draw the chapter art for my own books. Um, this is not expected of all authors by the way. Kaelyn:           29:40   That's not even usually tolerated and everything. Rekka:29:43   Right. So I, I do have a professional background in design. Kaelyn:           29:46   So anyway .... Rekka:29:48   So anyway, so Salvage, uh, currently the ARCs have the same chapter art from Flotsam because the chapters themselves have different POV characters. And just on the timeline, I don't think there was a chance to really sit down with the, um, with the layout person who was not me in this case and say like, okay, it's chapters one, seven, 11, 12 and 13. This art, this art, this art. Kaelyn:           30:14   Yeah. Rekka:30:14   So that was just a layer of complexity that wasn't going to happen on the timeline that we had. Um, so there will be different artwork on the inside. I didn't look whether Colin did his typical copyright page malarkey. Kaelyn:           30:30   Do you want to go grab the book and find out? Rekka:30:32   Yeah, I'll find out. Kaelyn:           30:33   I'll tell the story, our publisher, Colin Coyle, who I promise we will have on the show at some point, um, has a fun little thing he likes to do that there is an Easter egg in every Parvus book. Um, they're not always on the, uh, Rekka:30:49   I've seen this in something else. So this is not uh specific to Salvage. He must've lifted it from something else. Kaelyn:           30:54   Oh okay, yeah. Um, we have a little running joke at Parvus that there's an Easter egg in every book. Rekka:31:01   On the copyright page. Kaelyn:           31:02   Not always on the copyright page. Rekka:31:04   Oh dear. Kaelyn:           31:05   A lot of times, not always, Rekka:31:07   Alright, alright. Kaelyn:           31:07   But usually you can find at least one on the copyright page. So, you know, the whole point is that at the end when the final version of Salvage comes out, it's going to be different. It's not going to be majorly different. Rekka:31:19   But if you were selling this on Ebay, please don't, um, you would be able to point to like, yes, this is the version you're looking for because, um, evidenced by these various differences. Kaelyn:           31:31   Yup. So, um, that's, you know, how do you know when your book's ready for an ARC? We were kind of talking about this a little bit with the calendar. Really it kind of falls into your book is scheduled to be released this date. That means we have to start sending out ARCs by this time. Rekka:31:48   And there are also, um, publications that you might send it to in the hopes of like a starred review. Kaelyn:           31:53   Yeah. Rekka:31:53   And they have a very, they're very tight grace period of when they need to receive it by. So I say very long grace period. That's the opposite of what I mean, they have a very short window of opportunity. If you don't have it in by this date, it's not going to even be looked at. Kaelyn:           32:10   They're not going to look at it. So, um, when is your ARC done? Hopefully at least six months beforehand. Even if it's not done. But that's the thing. Your ARC is not your finished book. Rekka:32:22   Right. Kaelyn:           32:22   So when is your book done? That's completely separate issue from when your ARCs are ready to go out. Rekka:32:27   That can be 6:00 PM on the day that it needs to be uploaded to Amazon. Kaelyn:           32:30   If you're self publishing. Rekka:32:31   Self publishing, yeah. Kaelyn:           32:33   But if you're, you know, being, if you're going through a traditional publishing house and if you're distributed they don't need as much run time. Rekka:32:39   But like - Kaelyn:           32:40   They need some cause they have to order a print the books. Rekka:32:42   Yes. Kaelyn:           32:43   Um, and you know, we are living in a day and age where that happens much faster now. Rekka:32:48   But it still physically takes time. Like there's, there's a certain amount of time that it takes for the ink to dry on the page before they can bind it. There's a certain amount of time that it takes for the trimmer to cut through the, the massive, you know, oversized book and cut it down to its final trim size. Like these things just, you know - Kaelyn:           33:06   They just take time. Rekka:33:07   It takes Kaelyn a certain number of seconds to open an email and that limits how many submissions she can go through it. Kaelyn:           33:14   I can go through, yup. Rekka:33:14   Like it is just a physical limitation of the, you know, construct of time. Kaelyn:           33:20   Yup. The construct of time. It is a construct. Rekka:33:23   It's totally a construct because where does it go? Kaelyn:           33:25   Erm, eh yes. Rekka:33:27   So speaking of where does time go? We are out of time for this episode, but I - Kaelyn:           33:31   Already? Rekka:33:32   Yeah. Kaelyn:           33:32   I even got to get back to my roots and give a little history lesson in the beginning. Rekka:33:35   Yeah. Are you happy? Do you feel fulfilled? Kaelyn:           33:37   Um, I don't have any undergraduates, uh, looking at me, very bored. So - Rekka:33:42   So you feel like you did it wrong? Both:   33:45   [laughter] Kaelyn:           33:45   I feel a little better than I normally did. As always. I hope this was, uh, entertaining and educational. Rekka:33:52   Yeah. And if you have any questions that we didn't answer about ARCs, uh, you can shoot us a question at WMBcast on Instagram or Twitter. You can follow us and, or support us at patreon.com/wmbcast or email us at feedback@wmbcast.com. But, um, yeah, so ARCs are extremely cool. I hope everyone gets to look at an ARC someday - Kaelyn:           34:13   Yeah, and check out Netgalley. It's free to sign up for and you get to read and find a lot of really cool stuff on there. Rekka:34:18   Yes. Kaelyn:           34:19   Um, so you know, if you're looking, if you're interested in being involved in that kind of thing, Netgalley is a great place to start. And then you know, you can go on Goodreads, you can go on Amazon and say like, I got an advanced copy of this - Rekka:34:30   And maybe in a future episode we'll talk about like how to structure a review that is going to be useful for a lot. Kaelyn:           34:36   I've got thoughts. Rekka:34:37   Yeah, we've got thoughts I've got, there are definitely thoughts. So maybe that's a future episode or we're thrown on Patrion or something like that if it doesn't end up a full length episode. But I feel like we could rant about that 45 minutes. Kaelyn:           34:46   I'm not sure anyone's going to want to listen to it. Rekka:34:48   Yeah, you know, you know, emoting and commiseration are things that - Kaelyn:           34:52   We'll do a dial in, call us and tell us your, you know, so, um, yes. Rekka:34:57   So the other thing is if you are self publishing and you don't know how you're going to get an ARCs, you can get ARCs through kindle direct publishing. You can also upload your file to lulu.com or other, um, small - Kaelyn:           35:10   Print on demand. Rekka:35:11   Print on demand services and you can see it in person first. And honestly, I really feel like you should before you release it into the world because there's things that you just might not consider when you've only looked at it in a digital space. So that's another good reason to look at an ARC even though that's not really the traditional function of them. They're not the proofs, um, the cover proofs or anything like that. We're talking about, um, use in promoting your book, but order one before you order 20 is all I'm saying, if you haven't seen it in print before. Kaelyn:           35:40   Yeah. So, you know, thanks so much for listening. Everyone and - Rekka:35:42   Send us your questions. If you could rate and review us on iTunes, that would be great. And if you have a friend who is interested in writing or publishing, send them this episode, share it. You can help guide the conversation and sort of be part of it. So, uh, we'll look forward to hearing your comments and your ratings and reviews, and we'll start reading reviews in a future episode. We do have a couple, we just haven't fit that into the episode yet. Kaelyn:           36:03   Yes. Alright. Thanks so much for listening everyone, and we'll see you next time. Rekka:36:07   Take care everyone.  

Dig into dessert with Parvus Press publisher Colin Coyle as we discuss the reason we're glad we got to record the episode rather than spend the night in jail, how the tragic events of Charlottesville inspired him to hire Cat Rambo to assemble the If This Goes On anthology, why he switched over to the Kickstarter model for this book and what surprises he discovered during the process, the reason his company isn't publishing horror even though he'd like to, the surprising shared plot point slush pile writers used to indicate future American culture was failing, what an episode of West Wing taught him about launching Parvus Press, what he isn't seeing enough of in the slush pile, the acting role of which he's proudest from back in his theater days (hint: you've probably seen Danny DeVito do it), the advice he wishes he could have given himself when he started out as a publisher, and much more.

The Ditch Diggers come to you live from Jeff Goldblum's Free-Range Panther Habitat with special guests, Parvus Press co-founder and publisher, Colin Coyle, and FLOTSAM author RJ Theodore, known conversationally as Rekka!

The Ditch Diggers come to you live from Jeff Goldblum's Free-Range Panther Habitat with special guests, Parvus Press co-founder and publisher, Colin Coyle, and FLOTSAM author RJ Theodore, known conversationally as Rekka!