17 - Burnout And Other Bullsh*t, with Premee Mohamed

06/03/23 • 76 min

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

Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist, and speculative fiction author, with a prolific list of titles and publications to her name. Today, she joins us to talk about the realities of burnout in publishing, and the mental health burden that many authors labor under. It's a heavy topic, but hopefully addressed with plenty of humor, and we hope you find some of it helpful (or at least a source of commiseration!)

Previous Episode

16 - Surviving a Series 'Death Spiral' with Peter McLean

Today we're joined by Peter McLean, a fantasy writer who clawed his way to authorhood through an indie publisher slush pile, despite not being agented at the time. Pete talks to us about his publisher imploding, his first series getting canned, and the perseverance that saw him land another book deal--this time with one of the Big 5. Seven books and ten years later, he's still in the game, with a wide range of experiences and insights to share. And a few laughs along the way.

Next Episode

18 - A Song of Contracts And Unions, with Julia Vee

So you've signed a book deal, and the book contract has arrived. What does it mean, what can you ask for or changed, and how involved should you be? What organisations can help, if any? Also, why don't we have a writer's union / writer's guild, and how might we get one in future?

Today, we sit down with Julia Vee, who is an established indie author with a forthcoming trad title, Ebony Gate, via Tor 2023. Julia also happens to be an attorney in her dayjob and we can't wait to discuss those questions and many more with her (including touching on non-competes again.)

Other topics included: Julia and Ken's co-writing partnership / process, what good sales or bad sales look like for debuts in the first year, the Mark Lawrence formula for looking at sales via Goodreads ratings, and a few other things.