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! Send us your questions, comments, and concerns!

We hope you enjoy We Make Books!

Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap

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"Submissions September" Episodes Referenced:

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

Episode Transcription (all errors are entirely Rekka's fault)

Rekka (00:00):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 RJ Theodore.

Kaelyn (00:09):And I'm Kaelyn. I'm the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press.

Rekka (00:12):And today we apparently just have baking on our mind.

Kaelyn (00:17):Yeah, I don't. It was. I. I'm just really surprised that you watch the Great British Baking Show. I don't know why I'm surprised by that. I shouldn't be.

Rekka (00:26):Well, it starts when we're looking for holiday content, that's feel good and we don't want to worry about like, you know, getting drawn into one of those crappy made-for-streaming movies that everyone's talking about. And it turns out to be like worse than a Lifetime romcom kind of thing. That happened a couple of times this year. So we basically have said, okay—

Kaelyn (00:49):Lookin' at you, Christmas Prince.

Rekka (00:51):We can, we can trust Great British Baking Show. And so we started with the holiday episodes and then this year we were not satiated by the holiday episodes when we ran out of them. So then we just started watching season eight and now we're working our way back.

Kaelyn (01:06):Yeah. But, um, in this episode, you know, we're just—for full disclosure, get ready for a lot of baking metaphor as being shoe-horned—

Rekka (01:14):As many as I was eager to fill in, but I was, you know, like, you know, it was trying to be refined in my application of them.

Kaelyn (01:23):Yeah. Well, so along the lines of refinement, um, you know, today we're talking about, uh, leveling up. What you can do as an author, as a writer, to help improve yourself.

Rekka (01:35):Yeah. Cause you know, you can always be making forward progress even while you're waiting for the success to come to you, you know? Cause it's not going to come *to* you, for one, and for two, there's a lot of waiting involved for going out and getting it.

Kaelyn (01:51):Yeah. So I think a lot of people, especially those who have been trying, you know, sending out a lot of queries, trying to get published for a long time, fall into the trap of passiveness. Of, you know, just waiting for something to happen rather than continuing to work and improve themselves and try to make something happen instead. Um, it is publishing is a weird, I can't even call it balance cause it's pretty lopsided of just like, you know, having to rely on other people to say yes and no to things. But that doesn't mean that you have no agency in this process. There's other things that you can be doing to try to tilt the scales towards a yes more than no.

Rekka (02:36):And even if the scales aren't tilted, you are becoming