#trad publishing

Cosplaying as a full-time author 👄✍🏽📓

Yesterday, I finished my first ever complete draft on a novel. It's certainly not perfect, with line editing issues and many developmental edits to be made, but I'm proud.

this week's video is about the author interviews I am offering! what the requirements are, a bit more detail on how the process works, and why you should contact me !!

Pitching your manuscript to literary agents is a length process that requires lots of dedication, and a great deal of research. To get the most out of your querying, you definitely need to go in prepared.

We've put together this walk through for how to pitch your novel to literary agents, including some helpful do's and don'ts at the link below!

What I mean: 

People do judge a book by it’s cover, unless you’re talented and have done your research it will negatively impact you not to pay a professional.

Marketing a book isn’t about how good your book is. It’s an entirely different skillset you’ll need to pick up whether you get indie published or traditionally published. 

If you’re writing something niche you can’t expect the marketing advice of people writing and selling something with wide scale appeal to work for you. You’ll need to find a way to advertise directly to the communities that surround your niche. 

Bigots read and buy books.

Publishing a book is fucking expensive but cutting corners is quickly noticeable. 

Publishers don’t take as many risks as they should, they’re increasingly letting indie authors take risks and prove that certain types of story can make it. You might have to wait for someone else to prove your kind of story works in the indie space to get any traction in the trad space.

I doubt any of these really surprise anyone. But anytime something is unfair or wrong in publishing whether indie or trad I see a lot of writers say something like ‘well people shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover so I’m making my own anyway’ as if saying that somehow changes reality. Let’s be realistic but hopeful and defiant as we head into 2023. Like the pragmatic side character who’s with the hero till the bitter end.

I've been watching for 15 years as 'zon becomes a vortex in publishing. It owns Kindle, it owns Audible, it owns Goodreads. I have no issue with the individual services, in fact I still use Audible (although as little as possible). But the goal has always been "screw over the author for profits" and with Audible it is truly gone to extremes.

I had my books on Kindle Unlimited (which means they had to stay exclusively on KU, I could not sell them on Kobo or B&N or even on my own website), and yes, you make good money that way. I pulled them in 2022 and went "wide" (meaning, they are now available on a wide variety of sites/sellers) and yes, I took a financial hit. That's how 'zon traps authors in their ecosystem.

Please be aware that authors work on small margins, and while the worst offenders remain the Big Trad Publishers (who screw over 90% of their authors because they can), 'zon is right there with them.