Transcript is available here.

[0:00]

Welcome back. I am Rekka, writing science fiction and fantasy as R.J. Theodore, and you, my audience, are coming to me one of two ways. You are either watching this video as my R.J. Theodore YouTube monthly shop-talk or you are listening as a subscriber, hopefully, to Hybrid Author Podcast. The podcast is audio only and, of course, you have audio and visual on YouTube. Consume how you like! Please interact, though, and share it with a friend, subscribe, et cetera. Leave a review. Those would all be great, wonderful things.

If you want to support this podcast or me, you can do so at patreon.com/rjtheodore as a vote for me on YouTube. You can support on patreon.com/hybridauthorpodcast as a vote for the podcast content. It’s not that I want you to vote with your dollars, or anything like that, but I am thinking about things. So if you are willing to support the transcription, the audio production, stuff like that, then please do. That would be wonderful. Okay, moving on from there, those are the only commercials I ever have, are for myself.

So, the topic for this month, May 2019, is the orderly?—perhaps. Panicked? —definitely—process of scheduling out a hybrid author’s publication calendar. So I, myself, am a hybrid author. Conveniently, since that is the name of the podcast, anyway. I have a trilogy of books coming out through Parvus Press. Flotsam came out in March of 2018, Salvage comes out this September of 2019, and Cast Off should be coming out in 2020 at some point, I do not have a date yet. And so those are my traditionally published books.

I am at the mercy of the publisher’s calendar, of course, that’s part of the deal. As a result of that, I don’t know, necessarily, when things are going to happen, when they are scheduled to have copy edits, etc. These things tend to pop up, so what I really need to get in the habit of doing, I’ve realized, is not be crunched for time when I’m trying to meet my own publishing schedule. I have several various stream of publishing. I have my Patreon, at patreon.com/rjtheodore where I publish monthly episodes of Phantom Traveler and those episodes are paired— sometimes, I might be a little bit behind— with an illustration. That content comes out monthly.

Now, I started off 2019 by writing a bunch of those episodes. I wanted to do the drawings monthly just to keep up my illustration skills, so when I fell behind, I didn’t have a back-up because I didn’t batch those. But I did batch the writing. Now, the end of this month is the last batched episode of Phantom Traveler. So I need to be moving ahead on writing the rest of those for this year. That’s June through November. I do take December “off” from the Patreon content, but I will probably be using December to catch up on illustrations— the way things are going.

So, yes. I have content going out through Patreon. From last year’s Patreon—and I will hold this up for the viewers on YouTube— I have a collected book of the 24 episodes that I did in 2018. In 2019, as I said, I’m only doing them monthly. I decided that 24 was a lot. I’m writing the same amount of words but—am I writing the same amount of words? No, I don’t think I am. I used the illustration to take the place of the other episode each month.

Rekka: 00:01 Welcome back. Today I want to talk about Finishing Energy versus Starting Energy in the sense that they are two energies out of myriad energies. But I have heard people talk about Finishing Energy before as though there’s Finishing Energy and then there’s Everything Else. I don’t hold to that, but I am going to focus on shifting from that to the polar opposite, which is Starting Energy. If you followed along at all. You know that I have been working on the second book in my Peridot Shift trilogy, and that book recently, hopefully, was completed and handed into Parvus for entry into the production process. It still need its copy edits, but I hope we are done making story revisions and editorial changes. So, I wrote Salvage two years and four months ago. I drafted it entirely, from a tight outline, but it was drafted in 25 days during NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, of 2016. In 25 days, I wrote 88,000 words.

Rekka: 01:16 So, I actually have a theory that Salvage was never anything but Finishing Energy. I planned to finish it in the month of November, which took the, “Oh, let’s sit down and draft and right through the story” process and really condensed it to the point where I knew exactly when I wanted to be done, and I had a checklist of things that I needed to do to get there. And for me, Finishing Energy can best be expressed in to-do lists and checklists. And so when I had an exact word count, I had to hit every day, and I had an outline, which effectively became a checklist of scenes that I had to write. Writing 88,000 words was not Starting Energy, it was “follow the checklist and get it done” energy, which is Finishing Energy. So I don’t know that Salvage was ever really in a creation process phase other than the fact that I had to create it from a blank page.

Rekka: 02:20 But my mindset on the book was probably always in: get the book done. And I don’t know if that’s the pressure of knowing that it was the second book in at least a trilogy because at the time, when I wrote it, I was not on the track of saying this is a trilogy of books. I was on a track of: this is a series of books. And so having Flotsam, I was looking for another adventure, like Flotsam that could pick up where Flotsam left off and then move the story along. And how far the story would go was going to depend on how much my readers, you know, were engaged through a certain number of books. Ironically, I wrote cliffhangers, so it would always probably end up being one more book to wrap it up than my readers seem to be picking up. This was my plan when it was going to be self-published.

Rekka: 03:17 So 2017, I had already reread the draft one time. I put it down for most of December, and then picked it up again and reread it. And then I worked with my contracted editor to revise it. In the process of working on this revision, I was also tightening up, finishing up, Flotsam and then ended up submitting Flotsam to Parvus Press in February of 2017. At the same time, I was revising Salvage, along with my editors. So, when Flotsam was submitted to Parvus– I’m just trying to think of all the details exactly. It probably doesn’t matter as much, but you know, in your mind you’re trying to get the history correct. I signed with Parvus for a three book deal in April of 2017, and was able to give them a revised, probably doubly revised draft of Salvage, December 29th of 2017.

Rekka: 04:28 So I handed into books and one year to Parvus, and then, in 2018, we finished up Flotsam and there were enough details changing, and I sort of felt the idea that the story was going to shift enough that I wanted to wait until Salvage was done before I started book three. And in 2018, Parvus decided to proceed with a long-term goal they had of entering into...

Rekka: 00:41 Welcome back to the Hybrid Author Podcast. If you are a regular listener, you may notice that my voice is a little bit huskier than usual. This is not a new affectation that I have intentionally taken on. I have a very good reason for it and, for the same reason, today’s episode will be a little bit more brief than usual. So, Parvus asked me to submit whatever version– this is a quote– of Salvage that I would be happy going out as an ARC and the deadline for that was April 15th, in order to avoid rush costs on printing those ARCs in time for the Nebulas, and I was very motivated to hit this deadline. And, of course, when you tell me that this is the copy going out for reviews, and that this is the year that Parvus has access to more reviewers than they did last year, and that some people are going to be reading Salvage without, probably, the benefit of reading Flotsam first, I was slightly staggered under the responsibility of what it meant to send out the copy that I would be happy if it went out as the ARC.

Rekka: 02:06  So I probably, well, I hopefully gave them the final draft sans copy-edits this time. So all my commas are probably in the wrong place because that is a thing that I do now. And I have had my commas corrected to the point where I no longer trust myself. So now my commas are not even in consistently incorrect spaces. I now question every comma. So I tried, as I made this review copy, to just ignore where my commas were. But I did, I did move like two or three, but every time I caught myself looking at commas as I read over the last version, I said, “Nope, you’re going to get it wrong anyway. Just ignore the commas. Put them where they feel good or leave them, and don’t think about it.” So the reason that I am super-husky is because I sent the rewritten intro and the– rippled revision.

Rekka: 02:45 In other words, I changed some details in the intro based on Parvus’ comments the last time, and needed to smooth out the wrinkles throughout the rest of the text. And I did that and finished it last week on Friday morning and sent that copy to Staples and had them print it for me. And then I stuck it in an enormous binder, which you may have seen on my Instagram if you follow bittybittyzap, and took this enormous binder and began reading out loud on Friday afternoon, and all day Saturday, and all day Sunday, and straight through to the beginning of my workday Monday and caught as many strange phrasings or repeated words or accidental words or just other errada that are the kinds of things that only turn up when you read your work out loud. So, I really do recommend that everybody read their work out loud.

Rekka: 04:02 I do not recommend that people do what I did, which is read a 170,000 word novel in the span of three days when I am sugar-free and cannot have honey. I choose not to have honey. I could have broken that for this weekend, but that’s a quality of life decision that I made and I stick to. But man, some honey did sound good. Luckily I made oxtail this weekend and, as it turns out, a really nice, fatty broth is fantastic. So after I record this, I will go inside because then I made bone broth from it. I will go inside and have a cup of oxtail bone broth so that I can maybe heal a little bit more. ‘Cause I also have a Patreon video to record today. So yes, read your work out loud. Do not read it out loud in a marathon and worry about deadlines quite as hard as I did this weekend. I just, you know, unless you can’t avoid it, which is why I did it. Because I could not avoid it. I wanted to hit that deadline, and I did, and hurray for me. Now I can hopefully recover.

Rekka: 05:15 So my plan for today’s episode, before I lost most of my ability to speak, was to sort of recap the podcast over the last...

Transcript

When I have a minute, I will correct these time stamps, but know that they are currently 39 sec behind, as I did not account for the intro music. Sorry!

00:03 Okay. For April, I decided that I wanted to talk about my own expectations for myself, and how fair or unfair those might be, but also how life changes and I can’t always, I can’t always do the same thing with the same amount of focus?

00:32 It’s not the right word. I’m not sure what the word I’m looking for is. Anyway, what I’m here to talk about is how, in March, I planned to, to enact a triumphant repeat of November 2016. In November 2016, if you’re not aware, I drafted 88,000 words of the first draft of Salvage, which is the sequel to my book, Flotsam. So, in 2016, I had finished working on Flotsam. As far as I knew, Flotsam was done and was going to be released maybe in January, who knows? Maybe December. I had lots of thoughts. This was going to be self-published.

01:24 In November, I had cleared the deck. I had no other projects on my plate, and I was going to write Salvage. And I was also for the first time my region’s municipal liaison for National Novel Writing Month, which is NaNoWriMo, colloquially. So I was very nervous. I remember ahead of November of 2016 that being the ML for my region was going to prevent me from being able to focus on my draft, and finish it in time. I knew that the draft needed to be longer than 50,000 words in order to create the entire book. I knew from working on Flotsam that a first draft for me is not as long as the final draft. However, the first draft for me was going to be longer than 50,000 words to get the whole story in. So, I was nervous that all this planning and having to be an ML and maybe having to handle people’s issues and other things, it was going to take away from my ability to focus on my book. That it was going to be a distraction.

02:38  I don’t know if then I overcompensated—It’s very possible. I tend to do that—or over-planned, but the thing about NaNoWriMo is it’s a month-long event and, typically, September and October, and this has been the pattern ever since, are spent planning where the write-ins are going to be; reaching out and talking to the libraries; reserving the spaces; posting the schedule for everyone to see; answering questions about the schedule. “Oh, why’d you have to have it in that coffee shop? They were mean to me once.” Things like that.

03:18  So, as it happened, November 2016, I went into NaNoWriMo, and all the work was already done. So all I had to do was drive to the write-ins, which were, for the most part, kind of far away. But they were concentrated write-in time. If there were enough people, I would lead the word sprints. And so things went very, very well. And because I had so much of this concentrated write-in time outside of the home, I don’t know, I was, I was already in the habit that year of getting up every morning at five and writing before work. So, I don’t think that I wouldn’t have concentrated well on it, but there’s definitely something to be said for changing your environment, sitting down in a different spot at a different table and having, you know, quiet focused time to write. So either way, the happy tale is that in 25 days, not 30, I wrote 88,000 words of the first draft of Salvage, and I was quite proud of myself. I’m still proud of myself. So, there’ve been a lot of attempts since then to repeat that success. However, my confidence in having done it once— Again. Did I overcompensate, was I overconfident, or did life just change so much that extenuating circumstances, you know: all the pieces were not in place in the subsequent attempts.

Notes coming soon!

Read Necropolis PD and Connect with Nathan:

* Barnes and Noble* Amazon* The Nathanomicon * Author page on Facebook

Transcript

When I have a minute, I will correct these time stamps, but know they are off by the length of the intro music and pre-interview portion. Sorry!

00:00 Rekka: Okay, everyone I have with me, Nathan R. Sumsion, whose book, Necropolis PD, is coming out this Tuesday, as we’re speaking, from Harvest Press. When you hear this, it will already be out. So, as soon as you get off this interview from your podcast recording, head on— you know what, you can multi-task. Head on over to Amazon right now, or drive yourself to Barnes and Noble, and pick up a copy of Necropolis PD so you get to see what we’re talking about. So hello, Nathan, and thank you for joining us today.

00:29 Nathan:  Hello. Thanks for talking to me.

00:31 Rekka: So, this is your debut novel.

00:34 Nathan:  It is, yeah. First one.

00:35 Rekka: As it is being recorded right now, we are, we are on Saturday. It’s coming out Tuesday. How do you feel?

Nathan:                                00:42                     I’m really excited.

Rekka:                                  00:44                     It’s a whole thing, right?

Nathan:                                00:44                     This is great. Yeah, this has been something I’ve, you know, I’ve always considered myself an author, but not having an actual book out kind of doesn’t meet the definition of an author. So this is—

Rekka:                                  00:57                     That’s a funny one because you hear people talk on— I see a lot of pep talks from professional writers on Twitter and the, there’s like a definition of writer that like if you write, you’re a writer. So there’s a lot of self-rejection for people calling themselves writers. But the word “author” does tend to feel like, okay, where’s your book? If you’re going to call yourself an author.

Nathan:                                01:20                     Yes.

Rekka:                                  01:20                     I’ve heard arguments against it, but I’m with you. I really feel like the moment you’re published is when you start changing the word writer to author.

Nathan:                                01:28                     Yes.

Rekka:                                  01:29                     So, congratulations.

Nathan:                                01:30                     Thank you.

Rekka:                                  01:31                     Alright, so, tell us a little bit about Necropolis PD.

Nathan:                                01:35                     Well Necropolis PD, you know the tagline, how do you solve a murder in the city of the dead? It’s an urban fantasy horror story about, a kind of a normal, normal young man that gets trapped in a city of the dead and gets recruited to help them solve a crime that’s never happened there before: someone’s been murdered.

Notes coming soon!

Rekka: 00:00:07 Welcome to the hybrid author, a podcast where we gather the raw material to Frankenstein into a writing career you can bring to life. I’m Rekka, writing science fiction is RJ Theodore. Each week, I’ll share information on the different aspects of writing, editing, publishing, and marketing to inspire you to finally pull that lever. This is the hybrid author podcast.

Rekka: 00:00:30 Hey, everybody Rekka’s back here. I’ve got a good one today.

Rekka: 00:00:34 This interview is with Kailyn Considine of Parvus Press. Yes, I am recycling my connections at Parvus Press again. But this is really exciting because Kaelyn is the acquiring editor at Parvus, which means that when somebody sends a submission in, Kaelyn is the first person that it comes into contact with. So query letters, manuscripts, um, inquiries, stuff like that. So I reached out–and some of you already know this because you responded–and collected some questions from the crowd, as it were, to ask Kaelyn while we spoke today. And I got so many great questions and unfortunately we did not get to all of them. So we focused a lot on query letters today. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I know a lot of folks who still don’t know exactly what needs to go into the query letter or how to make the perfect query letter and um, how critical is the query letter.

Rekka: 00:01:34 So Kaelyn and I get into that quite a bit and then we also talk about, um, more of the, uh, day to day or her practice as she goes through the submissions. And um, there really was so much at the end that we did have to just kind of cut it off because she had to go into the Parvus business meeting right after we recorded. So that’s also kind of exciting too. Um, yes, I am going to continue to bring Parvus People on because I really enjoy, uh, working with Parvus, and all their people are so easy and fun to talk to. So, um, one thing I will point out Kaelyn regretted after the fact that she didn’t get to mention that, um, if you go to the Parvus website and you look at the About Us page and the information about everything, they really are interested in putting the authors first.

Rekka: 00:02:26 So you’re going to see through this interview or you’re going to hear rather that Kaelyn is very passionate about making sure that the artist is treated like a human being as part of this process. And that at no point do Parvus, anyone at Parvus, forget that there was somebody put a lot of work into this book. So, um, that also means that this is not exactly going to be the process that you would find anywhere else. So that’s the caveat that Kaelyn wishes, um, that we put at the beginning of the episode because, uh, we do mention it partway through, but it’s already pretty deep into that conversation. And she said she wished she’d just said it at the top. That this is not going to be the answer that you’d get from the acquiring editor at Tor or a Simon and Schuster, um, the big five, or even some of the other small presses out there.

Kaelyn: 00:03:20 Um, one thing that Parvus did, Collin told me when we spoke early in the process of getting plots and published and negotiating that contract in our introductory phone calls was that Parvus is so small that they wanted to be able to say, um, “Yes, that’s the way that publishing has always done it and no, we’re not going to do it that way.” So in some respects, the process that Kaelyn describes is not always going to be the same as you find anywhere else. But Kaelyn is really good about being careful with her advice and not setting up...

No interview today! Rekka will give a status update on the goals she set in January for 2019. They have changed!

What are/were my 2019 SMART Goals?

Original goals: Submit 4 short stories to pubs, finish Salvage, do a new season of Phantom Traveler, work on Peridot anthology short stories (at least four, ideally 100K words’ worth for a volume)
Current goals: Finish Salvage, Submit Cast Off to Parvus, complete Season Two of Phantom Traveler, produce & publish Fringe (PTS1), write Peridot novella (2020?), 100K words of Peridot side stories for Facets anthology (2019?)

Where am I starting today? What were my goals as stated last time?

Last time, I was working on Salvage revs. Those were handed in early Feb. Now it’s with Parvus, though I’ve re-read and made notes and come up with a few other thoughts as I draft Cast Off.
Making notes for Salvage final revs, waiting for Parvus feedback. Drafting Cast Off (MarNoWriMo). Fringe waiting on Murderboard. Phantom Traveler Season Two written and scheduled through May episode.

What steps can I take to move forward toward those goals before I record our next episode?

Just keep at it. 5010 words/day to hit 100K for March. I’m way behind. I already adjusted my goal word count from 150 to 100K, but haven’t been able to hit the quotas for that, either. I would be behind if this were a 50K month, too. Quota by Saturday the 23rd is 74,194 at /31 pace (or 59,914 at /16 pace). Currently at 19,834.

What kinds of things are within my control? What kinds of things are beyond my control?

Waiting on Parvus feels like a loss of control, though I’m very fortunate to be able to check in frequently. They are comfortable sending book ARCs as-is if necessary (I am less-so), and accepting the final on May 1.
Having sleep issues. Feels like it’s out of my control, but I know better. Taking measures to be better about this. DST and travel and illness set me back, which is frustrating. I look exHAUSTED, no lie.
Getting better about blocking and managing my time since Wednesday and it feels really good, but it hasn’t resulted in me waking up any earlier at the moment.
Bit of family stress going on right now, and I can’t pretend that doesn’t affect my focus. Meditating and journaling to mitigate those effects.

Future Episode Topics:

Mar 28: Editorial Revisions for Salvage

April 4: The MarNoWriMo Push to Draft Cast Off

Other episodes mentioned in today’s recording:

* Episode 64: S.M.A.R.T. Goals* Episode 66: New Year, Who Dis?* Episode 69: Shifting Goals

If you enjoy this podcast, please consider supporting us with a pledge on Patreon, leaving a review and/or subscribe on iTunes, or sharing the episode with a writing friend!

Almost a year to the day, Ricardo Fayet of Reedsy returns to HAP (previous appearance: Episode 22 – Reedsy Belongs in Your Author Toolbox) to tell us about Reedsy Discovery, a new book discovery platform designed to help readers find great new releases.

The discovery platform is like a mash up of Net Galley’s review platform and BookBub’s book alerts. Each week, Reedsy’s mailing list (currently ~10,000 readers, mostly fiction) receives notifications on the latest books reviewed on ReedsyDiscovery, with extra visibility given to books that have been upvoted, well-reviewed, and produced through the Reedsy marketplace.

Here’s how it works:

* Authors submit new releases (weeks or months before launch date). There is a one-time $50 submission fee. The author chooses a Reedsy Discovery launch date (can be before, on, or after the actual launch date, depending on your marketing plan).* The book submission should have strong cover art, a great blurb, and a well-formatted sample chapter – same as putting your book up for release. Reedsy has already noted that books with poor formatting or low quality covers do not attract reviewers.* The title is made available to a curated pool of reviewers. Reedsy have handpicked 120+ reviewers out of over 600 applications.* The book may or may not receive a review. If it does, it might not always be a positive one. Reviewers receive an email that a book in their preferred genre is available, and they can claim that book.* Right now, the minimum window between submitting a book for review and the Discovery launch date is 4 weeks, to make sure there’s enough time for a reviewer to pick up the book, read it, and write their review. In the future this may be reduced for authors in genres with more aggressive publication calendars.* Reviewers follow a format that provides not only a long form review and a star rating, but includes a Tweet-length “Blurb” field which, if positive, is a great marketing tool for an author.* On the Discovery launch date, the book goes “live” in the Discover feed, where readers can upvote the title. Books with negative reviews (under 3/5 stars) will be given less visibility. Books with positive reviews will receive most visibility. Books that have been upvoted will receive increased visibility (and may even defy a poor review).* The most upvoted books will be sent to Reedsy’s list of readers every week.

Find out more about Ricardo and Reedsy:

* Reedsy Marketplace* Twitter: @ReedsyHQ* Ricardo on Twitter: @RicardoFayet* ReedsyDiscovery

If you enjoy this podcast, please consider supporting us with a pledge on Patreon, leaving a review and/or subscribe on iTunes, or sharing the episode with a writing friend!

Today, Parvus Press publisher Colin Coyle returns to the podcast (previous appearances: Episode 19 – Colin Coyle Gets to Publish Books He Loves and Episode 37 – Spec Fic Anthology Kickstarter with Colin Coyle) to talk about the progress of Parvus Press’s path of total global domination.

After serenading Rekka with an adaptation of Elton John and Tim Rice’s Circle of Life, Colin and Rekka talk about the goals, lessons, and plans of Parvus Press.

Parvus is extremely proud of their authors and have gotten some great attention to their titles with talented writers and cover artists. Now they are building on their success to broaden their offering and increase their distribution with a larger, more dedicated sales team.

Colin sees Parvus doubling down and investing more money and energy into putting the books where the largest audiences can find them.

In 2018, Parvus had to back off on their catalog plans so that their new partners, Baker & Taylor, could firm plans for book distribution.

Now that they are working with a distributor, they give up some of their flexibility to have titles printed no less than 45 days out.

If This Goes On, a powerful political anthology with an impressive author list, released this week as the first Parvus Press title available through B&T distribution.

Instead of relying on algorithms or getting coverage on the right high traffic website, there will now be booksellers aware of Parvus titles talking directly to readers when they walk into stores looking for a recommendation.

Rekka’s book, Flotsam, released in 2018 and though B&T’s team is enthusiastic about the book, as an existing title it doesn’t quite fit into their standard MO for promotion.

Union Earth Privateers sold over 17K copies. What they’ve been seeing is about an 80% series follow from readers who started with book one, but it’s tricky to bring back readers who don’t convert to mailing list followers. That’s a challenge Colin is interested in solving in the long term (hopefully in time for Rekka’s sequel, Salvage).

Parvus has been very careful to avoid any surprises. Colin finds that the closer you stick to your original plan, rather than denying the impulse to spend a little bit more than planned when something shiny is being dangled in front of you.

As they plan their releases, they are looking to expand their audience at the same time they break into new audiences.

They take more chances with un-agented submissions through their general submissions because the investment is lower with regard to the risk they would take on trying to break into a new genre. The books that come in with agents tend to cost more to acquire and they limit those to audience overlap with an existing or planned title.

They received the submission for Decoding Emma over a year ago but didn’t move ahead until they felt they were ready to take on the YA category.

Advice for someone who wants to get into publishing ...