Publishing Rodeo: The Good, The Bad, and the Bloody Ugly

After submitting his debut self-pub novel to the annual SPFBO (self published fantasy blog-off) competition and reaching the semi-finals, Alex Darwin landed himself with a "trad deal" and agent. In the months leading up to his trad re-launch, Alex applied his self-pub experience to his upcoming book launch, trying a number of different angles. Reflecting back, he shares what kind of tactics worked best to give his book the best possible chance.

Topics covered:

• Being a hybrid author
• How SPFBO works and can benefit indie authors
• Paying for publicity (via Black Crow) in the UK specifically
• Collaborative efforts with Orbit on marketing/publicity in the USA
• Book Tours (an assessment and reflection)
• Finding an angle for pubs to use
• Thinking about longterm goals
• LitRPGs and why they remain indie
• Theories about the goal of OrbitWorks (digital only imprints)
• Chatter about jujitsu and other nonsense

After years of rejections, Kameron's early book deals ran into problems when her publishers either folded or went bankrupt, Instead of quitting, she kept going. And going. In the decade since, Hurley has signed new deals, built a fanbase, and even won a Hugo.

We sit down with her today to ask hard-hitting questions: Why don't we just quit? Why keep doing it? Why not 'just' self publish? And finally, was it all worth it?

Nota bene: SPECIAL THANKS to Casmer Maliszewski for helping us clean up the audio on this episode! We experienced a lot of distortion and he kindly stepped in to help make it a more comfortable listen.

###

SHOW NOTES:·

• Long career that begin with a slew of rejections, followed by getting picked up by publishers who either went bankrupt, folded, or refused to pay. Kameron now claws a fierce living on the midlist, with a hard-earned fanbased and a chest of publishing war stories / wisdom.·
• Sunyi reads a bit from Kameron Hurley’s essay, ON PERSISTENCE:· "I felt like I'd failed at everything. Life was a ruin. I found myself living in a spare bedroom at a friend's house, unemployed, deep in medical debt, staring at yet another novel three-quarters of the way finished. When I opened my laptop, the sticky note still stared back at me. Persistence, in all things, in writing, in life. I finished the book. I'd reached a point in my life where I didn't know how to do anything else but finish the fucking book."·
• The importance of being ‘easy to work with’ in the industry·
• But also the importance of knowing your worth and fighting for your career·
• Choosing walk away from bad deals, unsupportive agents or editors, and bad film options (yes you can do all of this!)·
• Why did Kameron choose to champion transparency on her blog? Because the skewed publishing perspective that many writers put forward made her feel like a failure.·
• Examples of midlist writers who broke out to find big success·
• The importance of pen names·
• The importance of giving away arcs·
• WHY DON’T YOU JUST SELF PUBLISH? The dreaded question that we swim through repeatedly in conversations.·
• Why do we keep doing it? Why should we persevere?· Defining personal success, and finding joy in the process.·
• Sunyi’s final question: WAS IT WORTH IT?

Today we're joined by Nicholas Eames, author of cult favorite KINGS OF THE WYLD to discuss his publishing experience in a wide-ranging interview. Eames is a debut success story, and we hope you find his conversation as funny, uplifting, and engaging as we did (a welcome change after last week's grim deconstruction!) Other topics addressed: -- the creative process of working with a trad editor-- life as a "slow" writer-- how doing other creative projects can keep the writing passion going (this one was a listener question!)-- and a few bonus questions from our discord, with some hints from Nick about the next and future book.

This week, we sit down with Arab-American author Nadia Afifi, for a concise and chilled-out chat about her experience of publishing a scifi trilogy through Flametree Press. A lot of listeners are curious about life outside the Big 5 / bigger midsize publishers, so we've tried to cover a number of angles! This episode also touches briefly on wholesaling versus distribution, why royalty percentages vary so much for small presses, advance sizes in that category, and short story writing as a form of signal boosting.

In celebration of making it to 10 episodes, Scott & Sunyi answer some of the host-specific and/or personal questions that listeners have submitted. This is not really an official episode, just a fun, rambly, probably-too-opinionated extra for them who are interested.