Our topic this week at the SFF Seven involves our non-writing hobbies.
In various discussions around burn-out and sustainably productive writing habits, I’ve discovered that many professional authors (as in, getting paid to do it) have another creative outlet that is non-monetized. Ted Kooser, a U.S. Poet Laureate (1004-1006), told me that he painted as a hobby. His paintings were apparently glorious and much-sought, but he’d made the decision to only give them away. It was important to him to have a creative outlet that wasn’t connected to money. This was a startling thought to me at the time, and one I’ve come back to often.
Other authors I’ve talked with in various scenarios have also discovered that approach: that having a non-monetized creative outlet not only refills the well, but prevents burnout (or allows a creator to recover from it).
What happens to many of us – and I’m speaking of authors, but I imagine it happens with all creatives – is that we begin with writing as the hobby. It’s the passion, the special something that we do because we LOVE it. Eventually, with persistence, hard work, and luck, we make that hobby into the profession. Then it’s no longer the alternative to the day job and other responsibilities. It’s become work.
Which, let me be clear, is good and natural. I’m a big believer in treating writing like my job. That’s how I support myself and my family.
Still, to manage the creative self, I’ve found I need other outlets to refill the well and take the place of that other, special, and relaxing Thing. Keeping it non-monetized is the challenge. Especially since the pandemic began, I think we’ve all become adept at casting about for side-gigs. In fact, the gig-culture was going strong before that. It’s tempting to take that successful hobby – I imagine Ted Kooser’s friends admiring a painting, offering money for it, and him turning it down with a slight smile and shake of his head – and begin to dream of taking that art viral and making an avalanche of comforting money from it.
I sometimes think there’s a certain magic in refusing that temptation, in enjoying creativity for its own sake.
Musings on the amount of romance in fantasy romance and romantic fantasy – and how I seem to want more lush romance feels than many books in the genre deliver. Also squees on reading a Lisa Kleypas historical.
Transcript
00:00.90
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I am here with my first cup of coffee.
00:12.88
jeffekennedy
Excellent.
00:18.71
jeffekennedy
Ah, today is say it with me Friday! August 19 beginning of a long weekend for me flying to Tucson tonight celebrate birthdays with the family.
00:38.44
jeffekennedy
Ought to be fun. Um, writer coffee yesterday was a lot of fun. Ah, it turns out that one of my writer coffee peeps the fabulous J Barton Mitchell – Jack – um, who’s got the wonderful podcast. Should pimp his podcast hang on yeah that said it’s called Derelict um, during the second season of Derelict I interviewed him on here a while back. Um, and it’s doing amazing. He was telling us yesterday that they just sold the french. Translation rights for the podcast. So go Jack so anyway, it turns out that Jack’s birthday is on Sunday the twenty first as is the fabulous Darynda Jones she is on Sunday and then I’m on Monday so we’re our little cluster of ah. Leo writer babies. Although I am on the cusp Leo Virgo so I have been described as a meticulous volcano and I mentioned that when. Jack was thinking are you on the cusp of… and I said yes I’m a meticulous volcano and they were both like that’s actually tracks like thanks guys.
02:04.90
jeffekennedy
I guess there are worse things right? Grapes grapes are falling my grapevine kind of came unraveled too. That’s why it’s sort of dangling in screen if you’re on video I need to wind it up again. But it’s not going to happen till I get back. We should harvest grapes too. But I eat them occasionally. They’re quite delicious. Sweet so sweet. So anyway, writer coffee was lovely. We had a great conversation. Jim Sorenson had just gotten back from a Transformers conference. In England where he was a headliner and so he was telling us about that and so he was pretty high on that It’s always fun when you get to be treated like ah a fancy person I did come out here early this morning and like the mosquito candle. But it’s. Cooler today. In fact, I was wondering excuse my hand you all pause. Yeah, it’s only ° we had kind of um, cold air come in last night so there’s a definite definite autumnal feel this morning. Um, oh. Um, might sneeze there. We go ah longtime listeners at least from last year may remember the debate about autumnal.
03:34.67
jeffekennedy
And a tu no feel to the air. Ah so yeah, it’s um, cooler and so there are not nearly so many mosquitoes this morning. In fact, I haven’t seen any even though I came out and lit the candle early to try to create a. Dispersing my asthma cause it was very funny yesterday if you’re on video you saw me constantly batting them away and Youtube when I upload the video they pick 3 Stills to be like the cover image and I can choose between those 3 but. Otherwise I can upload an unrelated image. But if I want an image of me sitting here yapping then it has to be 1 of the 3 that they pick and they tend to pick things that are movement. They they like things that are bigger. Movements. So I have to remember to like not. Mess with my hair because otherwise that are all 3 b me raking my hair back from my forehead which my characters do all the time for a reason people because it’s clearly one of my personal ticks. But yesterday’s were all me. Waving mosquitoes away. Um sorry to pick the least absurdly waving of mosquitoes image. Yeah, so it goes right? Ah so yeah, let’s see what else i.
05:02.64
jeffekennedy
Did get my 2000 words yesterday I’m at something like 62000 on the book I’m enjoying writing this book. That’s always nice and but it took me a little while since I was at writer coffee for a couple of hours and. Then I um I reader did not go to yoga I know I ended up canceling I just got hit with the don’t want us. Um I have to get back in that habit. But it’s so much a thing that by. Yoga class the one that I like to go to on Thursday afternoons is at 4 and by the time it starts rolling around to three o’clock and I have to cancel an hour ahead. So I have to make a decision by like around two forty five and at that point I’m just feeling like all I want to do. Is not have some fun until the sun goes down on Santa Monica Boulevard because that’s all the way over in California but what I really want to do is like sit with my book. Um and relax and so that’s what I ended up doing ah. Bad yoga person but I it was a nice evening and I and I hit tired yesterday afternoon. That’s the other thing is like by Thursday afternoon I’m hitting tired so my other options are to go um in the morning.
06:33.95
jeffekennedy
Um, there are some like 10 am classes I could go to which means I would have to like interrupt the writing for something other than writer coffee. But maybe I’ll do that I don’t know.
06:52.16
jeffekennedy
Ah, what was me I know I’m such a a ritualized person here’s my that’s the meticulous part of meticulous volcano. Ah you know I Just don’t like my schedule to be interrupted and now that that’s no longer part of my schedule.
07:10.67
jeffekennedy
Yeah, So anyway, um, the other thing I’ve been doing interestingly enough I I find it interesting. Do you guys? Do you all ever worry about this like I read this thing a long time ago that people who. Think that they are interesting conversationalists um are not whereas people who think that they are not interesting conversationists actually are most of the time I think I’m not that interesting, but every time I say that I. That something is interesting then I then I worry it’s like oh is it actually not but it’s a way to really freak yourself out. There’s hummingbird behind me oh over here. She’s getting the ah.
08:08.30
jeffekennedy
Get that naturally made nectar. So Oh and now have I forgotten the thing that’s it. Oh okay, so it’s probably not interesting but I’m going to tell you anyway. So after several reads that. Ah, ones that I enjoyed for the most part one? Um, ah I read book one and really loved book one and went on to work book 2 and ah I I hated book 2 Um. The characters seem to have like the original. The main characters from the first book. The POV characters ah seem to have like totally changed into different people and doing things that didn’t feel like they were part of their character motivations and the. People who had taken over the pov I didn’t care about them and and I got part way into it and I thought it was feeling like a slog you know and and I read it for pleasure I don’t read when I’m not having fun and so I went and looked at the reviews just to see. Like if it was going to get better if it was just me and there were a lot of reviews saying exactly the way I felt about it and and then complaining about that. The ending was so disappointing and I thought okay I’m bailing So I bailed on that book and the first book.
09:41.75
jeffekennedy
Part of the recent was disappointing was I had liked a whole lot of stuff about this first book. But then it had not really paid off on the romance in the way that I want um and I know that I’m probably different this way because I did come up out of romance. But 1 thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of fantasy romance. Romantic fantasy um YA fantasy even when there’s romance in it. It tends to be pretty romance lite and I want to spell that l I t e ah. It is um, does it dig into the romance feels and I think that maybe a lot of writers writing fantasy hesitate to dig deep into the the really lush parts of romance. There’s sex sometimes. These books did not have sex but I thought that book 2 would then like take me further into that romantic arc and give me the feels both physical and emotional and so it was feeling very um.
10:55.48
jeffekennedy
Emotionless interrupt us as it were that I had not gotten the the full I don’t know I didn’t get my climax people I did not get my romance climax and so I was in Las Vegas hanging out at the cabana with Megan and wanting something to read I picked up another one that was in my tbr I was very good I cleared out my tbr and read that book because it did give me some nice sexy thrills. But again. Not the full out romance and there are more books in that series and I was not feeling compelled to go on. Yeah so I thought well what I need to do is I need to read ah a romance romance capital r and so I had had Lisa Kleypas on my Kindle for a long time in my tbr. So I am being dutiful clearing that out and she um it was called Then came you and I had read the second book in this It’s just a 2 book series the gamblers so I had read the second one with Derek Craven which is called well let’s find out – Dreaming of You I love – I mean how much you guys love that I can.
12:28.80
jeffekennedy
Googled the character name I googled Derek Craven and it came right up as dreaming of you Lisa Kleypas um my agent and I were arguing about how to pronounce her name because when I had lunch with Sara at Apollycon.
12:45.21
jeffekennedy
Sarah said I think she referred to us Lisa Clypus and I said is that how you say her name I mean it wasn’t really an argument and she said well I think it is and I said I’ve always said clypus. It could be that I think that’s how the argument went because I have it my head that’s claypus and she said well I guess I don’t know. But but so correct me if I’m wrong. We could look I’m doing a lot of pausing and looking today. So I was right? It’s CLAYpuss It’s funny when I googled her one of the things that im automatically filled in I’m always entertained by those things was um, what happened to Lisa Kleypas?
13:23.38
jeffekennedy
I believe she’s still publishing books. So anyway, for whatever reason I don’t remember why it was like in fall of twenty twenty I had read dreaming of you really liked it and then I had bought book one then came you because those characters appear in the second book and I thought oh. Like to read that one and then I never did so I just read it. Um, finished it last night and now I’m doing a reread of dreaming of you and it ah it gave me all those romantic feels that I was dying for It was great and then I was just really noticing. What an excellent author Lisa Kleypas is I mean she’s just such a polished author and I really don’t read a lot of historical romance anymore I think I got glutted on it. Um regency england.
14:22.11
jeffekennedy
Yeah, but wow she is just um, she gave me exactly the ride I wanted she it was delightful. Absolutely delightful. So I all know. Will I go on a Lisa Kleypas binge? hard to say but I I wish that I could have more fantasy romance that has more dense romance in it like this. So as a result. Well I think dark wizard. Was this way I think all 3 bonds of magic books are a whole lot about Nic and Gabriel’s relationship tell me if you disagree but ah shadow wizard. There’s a lot of Jadren and Selly and.
15:18.25
jeffekennedy
I think um, some of that lushness and passion from Lisa Kleypas are leaking into it and I feel like this can only be a good thing. So um. Probably I will not do podcasts on Monday and Tuesday ah maybe I will but whenever I say maybe I will it turns into no ah so probably a little bit more vacation. Um, and then. Otherwise I’ll have I’ll be here Wednesday Thursday Friday next week probably just blogging on Wednesday Bubonicon the following weekend if you’re local to New Mexico which I know most of you are not and then the following weekend labor day weekend. How is it labor day weekend already or will be in Chicago for WorldCon. Doing a bunch of programming. Um, so I should probably post my schedule at some point I always wonder about that you know like when you post your conference schedule I see people putting on social media. But it’s like um, does anyone really care because the people who are going to the conference. Are going to look up the program right? and do people who are not going to the conference who would see it on social media and not in the conference program or are all like okay so why post it the social media I don’t know but I am giving a workshop.
16:49.79
jeffekennedy
Worldcon if you are going. Um I’m teaching ah world building from a character driven perspective so that should be fun and participating in several panels doing a reading and a assigning so I might like pimp the reading. Just so that more than 2 people show up. It’s always the danger with readings at big conferences like that you know if you’re up against someone else like at Bubonicon they do these things that are like 50 minutes with which is essentially reading but you could also like answer questions and stuff. But I’m up against um, 50 minutes with Walter John Williams and then also ah a panel with during the jones and Connie Willis and some others talking about humor. So it’s like um.
17:47.53
jeffekennedy
Just keep saying that for the 1 or 2 people that come to my 50 minutes with I’m just gonna say how about we go over to the humor panel. We’ll have more fun. We’ll see what happens. so um so yeah busy day for me today. So I’m going to go get to it. I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend I hope you get to have some fun. Um, let me know those of you who read? Romantic fantasy fantasy romance. Are there ones that have really blushed dense romance in them or. Maybe it’s just not something that most people in their genre. Want now. Um, ones I haven’t read. Yeah I know you don’t necessarily know who they are but um, yeah, all right? You all have wonderful weekend. And I will talk to you later take care bye-bye.
More on time management and my delightful discovery on managing my To-Do List with less – even no! – mental and emotional anguish. Also a bit on finding errors in books as young reader and what I learned from them.
Transcript
00:02.62
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee.
00:15.70
jeffekennedy
Heaven.
00:21.36
jeffekennedy
Um, today is Thursday August eighteenth um closing in on the end of August it’s a lovely rainy ish morning. We got some rainy rainy in the night. So. It’s a little. Damp and cool out here this morning I was going to come out and light the mosquito candle to sort of fume me gate before I came out here but I forgot so I see them hovering about wonder if it would help to light it now. Or shall we just stick it out as what comes and lands on me I suppose I better light it I’ll be right back all right? Probably a good thing I did that because as soon as I came out here about 5 of them swarmed my head. And 1 already bit my ankle. So I knew they were thick this morning because they were gathering on my bathroom screen as I was getting ready because ah mosquitoes are attracted to light I don’t know if you all knew that but mosquitoes follow light and they will come in towards the cities and stuff. Um, and they will light candles wet. So one of the wicks just went out. They’ll ah gather on the screen outside the window. Don’t go into the light Carol Anne
01:54.31
jeffekennedy
Well 1 wick is going anyway. So here we are then um, let’s see so I’ve Writer Coffee today. We’ll be heading for that.
02:11.60
jeffekennedy
And lots of stuff to do lots of stuff to do both today and tomorrow busy days tomorrow evening flying to Tucson oh my allergies are going too.
02:28.18
jeffekennedy
Paused just in time to spare you the explosive sneeze. Ah so um, so yeah, yesterday was good day I got a lot done I got everything done on my to do list.
02:45.34
jeffekennedy
So I mentioned on Tuesday that um, there are so many mosquitoes hovering around here I mentioned on Tuesday that ah that my friend Megan had been talking to me about a new way of doing to do lists.
03:02.98
jeffekennedy
So For those of you who have listened to me for a long Time. You know that I am a hater of Mosquitoes actually do Mosquitoes are like the only living creature I will gleefully kill trying to light this other. Wake again.
03:26.82
jeffekennedy
I think it’s not going to happen now at lights and goes out. Oh well. Um to do lists so those of you who know me well know I love my spreadsheets and I I do still love my spreadsheets. And in fact, one of the things Megan was talking about was like that this guy whose name I forget but I linked to in the last podcast and I’ll link to again recommends like a physical to do list so you could cross things off I get just as much joy from deleting and taking it off so I have a to do list. That’s um, a series of running columns that with dates on it. Um, my current to do list. Well I could tell you because I’ve got it up. It’s one of the first things I open in the morning go away ski to.
04:23.98
jeffekennedy
Okay, there sorry folks, not wanting to show me well this doesn’t seem right? Oh there we go. Okay, that was it was being funny. There’s something about this touch screen the way it does things. It like splits stuff out in a way that I don’t love. So ah, yeah, it mine goes out through I think it’s set for light end of the year we don’t need to spend a bunch of time looking at this. I think I have it going out to like January. Yeah December Twenty third oh no past that why is this doing this It’s been so weird all right now we’ve spent so much time on this that I need to look wonder if this is like being out on the internet. I don’t love that Microsoft office makes you be online I’ve got it scrolling out for like through March April ah, ah, okay, it doesn’t matter ah easily through April um.
05:41.25
jeffekennedy
And I have certain things that I put on it every day. Um that I haven’t um, sort of scrolled out um in an order to try to get some balance to my days where you you all know I’m a fan of working incrementally. Ah, so I work I try to move things forward a little bit every day so like I work on finances every day I would try to do like half an hour on that I try to spend like an hour on Sifwa and then stop it doesn’t always work out that way. But. You know so I have it divided out into things like um like the podcast is on there or the blog. Um business ah household things like that or if I’m teaching a class I need to remember to like go in and deal with. The class that day so ah mosquitoes mosquitoes. So um, it’s I’m always.
06:51.18
jeffekennedy
You know I do think that everything is an editorative process. So I’m always refining how I’m doing things and with the to-do list I mentioned this on Tuesday that you know there are those things that just slide down that I always move. From one day to the next as I don’t get to them and the thing that Megan said to me that was such a revelation was to keep an ongoing list but move it off of that daily list so that you don’t have this feeling of failure when. You move those things to the next day and the next day and the next which is really what I was doing and I was ending up with like especially under business or something like that I would have like 20 things and I knew I wasn’t going to get to all of them. In one day I knew that wasn’t even possible. But I knew that I would be able to um, maybe get to them. You know I always had this idea. Well you know like if I have time. This is why I’m gonna get to them and I had them arranged in order of priority. Well that meant the ones at the bottom of the list were just. Like some of them had been moving. You know from day to day to day since the beginning of the year easily possibly before and it did have more of a mental and emotional impact on me than I realized because.
08:25.24
jeffekennedy
Taking those things off of my list created this immense sense of lightness and relief. So now I have my ongoing list that’s on another worksheet and I have to figure out um a method or a schedule to. Go to that ongoing list and bring the things over to my current list. But so I’ve been putting since since I returned so just um, well really tuesday and yesterday but still I put. On my list for that day. Only the things that I thought I could get done that day and needed to get done that day and it and I did I got them all done and it was wonderful. It felt great. So. I’m going to try to keep doing that so I have quite a bit of um Erin stuff and so forth to do today and tomorrow because as I said we’re flying to Tucson tomorrow night. So I have things to do to get ready for that. Um, birthdays my aunt’s birthday. My stepdad’s birthday. Ah so and writer coffee I mentioned that yoga I’m going to try to go to inperson yoga this afternoon I’m committed to go.
09:59.29
jeffekennedy
Um, we will see tomorrow if I make it but I really really want to go in pro person yoga today. So I’ve kind of got my schedule figured out for that. So ah, there’s like I don’t there’s so many mosquitoes around I just can’t even.
10:18.42
jeffekennedy
They must have really burgeoned in the night. Ah so let’s see what else? Yeah I mean this just really has made a difference and I think that um what I need to do is like.
10:36.81
jeffekennedy
On the weekend or on Friday go through my ongoing list and put things on the list for the following week because one of the goals is to try to not move things from one day to the next to try to have it be only on that day and then ah. This one just dive-bombed me there.
11:01.98
jeffekennedy
You know have only on that day. What you think you can get done I have considered not having lists at all. Um, but too many things drop through the cracks if I do that? Yeah so I think. This will work I’m excited for this? Um I’m excited to see how it works on a weekend when I’m not traveling as I am for the next three weekends in a row. But after that if I have only a couple things on the weekend that I really need to get done. Then I will um yeah I’ll see I’ll see how that works and maybe that’ll help free up my weekend somewhat I oh I was I just about say oh you may have noticed when I mentioned my to do list I don’t have writing on there. Um. There are certain things and maybe this is telling that I do every day that are not on the list exercising getting my words in I think because those are givens those are just part of my routine. They’re part of what I do first thing in the morning I don’t have other things on there like eating something so tickling my face now there was a time in my life when I had myself so scheduled that I did have on there.
12:33.39
jeffekennedy
Like eating and sleeping grooming when I was really trying to get maximalia fishing efficient at my time but um, no now I only have the things that I want to try to move forward every day.
12:53.69
jeffekennedy
So um, so yeah, I’m really excited about how that’s working. It’s amazing to clear out the list for the day and then I delete that column at the end of the day when I’m done and shut down the computer then I’ve done for the day if it’s great.
13:11.20
jeffekennedy
Um, so I found one of the things that was on my list yesterday was to pick up my office which really needed to happen because it drives me crazy when my office is all messed up and I did get that done and I found. A note from a while back on something I had meant to mention and that was um and I can’t remember what made me think of it originally, but it was a. An interesting insight I was thinking about errors in books inevitably There are some and I was just thinking about when I was younger particularly when I was a very young reader and really starting to pick out and glom books on my own. And I remember in particular um, reading him McCaffrey’s dragons of pern books and finding mistakes I remember finding a continuity mistake and I nearly wrote to her about it. And now I’m glad I didn’t because it’s like now I know that authors hear about their continuity mistakes all the time and but I was so surprised that there was this mistake like where she um called a character 1 thing in 1 book and then something else in the next book.
14:45.73
jeffekennedy
Um, and then the other thing that was so interesting to me is like when they would do that teaser chapter at the end of the book and when I would get the actual book. Some of the words were changed. It wasn’t the same and.
15:02.56
jeffekennedy
And I was astounded by that and and I was young at this point. Um, probably I don’t know 1112? um and really starting to maybe I was learning at school some but also just starting to really analyze stuff with a critical eye. Really. Thinking about the text I was reading and putting it in context of the world and what those character those those mistakes revealed to me was this epiphany now I understand scrambled eggs I suddenly realized. That authors are human beings and I realize that this sounds kind of silly right? but you know of course authors are human beings. But that was I’ve realized now that many people never do quite realize that um you know that whole Kresley Cole thing. When I talked about you know someone dealing with health and family issues and how hard it it is to be creative dead and it’s like my most listen to podcast listen to podcast ever because um. Somebody like shared it to a bunch of Kresley Cole fans who were frustrated. She hadn’t come out with the next book which I believe she’s come out with since but several people commented to me. That’s how I figured it out like where were all these listens coming from and they said oh you know that they’d never really thought of it that way and and I understand because.
16:35.67
jeffekennedy
When you love books when you discover books they are these magical things and realizing that somebody created them and that that person is a human being who has health issues and who you know may be unhappy. You know that they’re not like. Some angel who just emanates books discovering that Anne McCaffrey my idol had made mistakes gave me great insight seeing how she changed those. Teaser chapters into the final version of the book gave me insight too on how a person might change things and she didn’t always change things the way I liked them? um. I did have some of that syndrome where we liked the first wave that we see things and tend to wet ourselves to that. Um, but I don’t know she also smoothed it in a way that um.
17:45.55
jeffekennedy
That’s hard to explain but it gave me lots of insight into our process and I was fascinated by that so I had wanted to mention that. And I don’t think I have a whole lot else to say today. Um yeah, all of my news happened on Tuesday yesterday was good day I am past 60000 words on shadow wizard. So that’s coming along well excited for that. Thank you for all the pre-orders on that one I hope that you all love this book and ah I think on that note I’m just gonna go get to work getting hour done before I go to ride coffee and I will talk to you? All you all take care. Bye bye.
The Covenant is complete! Book 3 in A Covenant of Thorns, ROGUE’S PARADISE, is now out in the wild, walking its wild ways. Thanks to all for supporting this re-release of my very first dark fantasy romance trilogy. It’s beyond wonderful to see these books finding a new audience after all these years.
This week at the SFF Seven, we’re talking about copyeditors and the arguments we have with them. We all have grammatical hills we’ll die on – wisely or not – and we want to know what yours is! On what point will you refuse to give way, regardless of how the copyeditor might argue?
(I feel I should note at this point that the author/editor/copyeditor relationship is a symbiotic one. Even in traditional publishing – all rumor to the contrary of authors being “forced” to do x, y, z – seldom will anyone INSIST on a change. Almost always the author has final say, because it is their book, and they also bear final responsibility. It’s in the contract. If an author commits slander or other blunders, the ultimate responsibility – financial, legal, and moral – rests with them.)
I, like most authors, have a love/hate relationship with copyeditors. On the one hand, they catch potentially horrifying errors. In fact, in the book above, the copyeditor corrected a character “peeing at her face” to “peering at her face” – something my editor and I had both missed and were hysterically relieved to have fixed.
We love them. We need them. As with all love/hate relationships, copyeditors drive us crazy.
I won’t fight about commas, as a rule. I really even don’t care about the Oxford comma. I know people like to make jokes showing how important that Oxford comma is, but in most cases the context makes it clear. I don’t get why copyeditors hate m-dashes so much, but I’ll concede in many cases. I personally find semi-colons archaic and not all that useful, but whatever.
You know what gets me, what I’ll really fight for?
Metaphorical language.
That’s what kills me (yes, LITERALLY KILLS ME) about many copyeditors is that they can be so freaking literal. Some examples.
“His eyes can’t really crawl over her. Imagine eyeballs rolling over her. Gross.”
“Can a cloud really look sad?”
“I don’t think this is a word.”
I could go on. The thing is, as writers, we’re often expanding the use of language. Dictionary definitions often include citations of first usage of a “new” word or expression. That’s because language is our medium and we are the ones shaping it. Copyeditors are on the side of enforcing the status quo. So a writer ends up walking the line between bending to the regulatory insistence of correctness as the rules currently stand and being the iconoclast who breaks those rules to open up new worlds.
Guess which side I’m on?
Yeah, copyeditors hate me right back.
But, I believe this push-pull is a part of our jobs, on both sides. We all want to produce the best book possible. We all love language and what it can do. I will say, however, to all the writers out there: believe in yourself and defend your words, because you are the fount of change.
ROGUE’S PARADISE, Book 3 in the Covenant of Thorns re-release, is out today! Also, ORIA’S GAMBIT, book 2 in the Sorcerous Moons series is out on Scribd audio! Plus insights on managing To-Do lists and my Vegas vacay.
Transcript
00:06.35
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee home. Delicious today is tuesday. August Sixteenth why am I having trouble focusing on that. Yes August Sixteen ha and I’m back went to Las Vegas for the weekend tra la tra lay as one does it was super fun. We went on Saturday morning picked up my friend Megan our friend Megan and went to drove down to Albuquerque there was a little bit of concern with whether or not our flight would go. We actually did a backup flight just in case. But then we made it. Got to Las Vegas um I think I’d mentioned on the planning that we’ve gotten free rooms at the venetian from David’s gambling last spring his. Ah. Big party so they gave us two free nights and we got these extremely cheap tickets on spirit airlines which I’d never flown before and the airplane turned out not to be made of balsa wood um I would fly spirit again I was um. Actually considering how much and I feel bad I have tremendous loyalty for southwest airlines I’ve flown them forever. Ah, but both southwest and american have gotten kind of shoddy and the spirit jets were very new. Very nice. Yes, you have to pay for every little thing they really tried to nickel and dime you. But if you don’t go in for that. It’s um, you know it’s really quite inexpensive. They charge for food and drink on the airplane. But. You know it’s it’s not that different. You know? Ah, ah, if you want wine or anything alcoholic. You have to pay for it on any airline and you know for your free seltzer coke or really bad coffee I had the worst coffee. Coming back on Delta and I really like delta otherwise so I didn’t complain about this but something had gone wrong. It was like brown water. There was like no coffee in the coffee and I didn’t complain but it was like seriously.
02:53.37
jeffekennedy
So yes I would have had to pay $4 on spirit for coffee which I did not do because I thought I don’t want to pay $4 for crappy coffee and you have to pay to check your bags which you have to do on everybody but southwest um, the huge difference is is you have to pay that carry on a bag. You can have a personal item which is like a small item that what did they say 18 by 14 by 8 which they were not enforcing at least on the way from Albuquerque to Las Vegas there were kids with. Great big backpacks as their personal items that clearly didn’t count unless I’d paid to check to carry them on so people get mad that they have to pay pay to carry on a bag but I’ll tell you what the boarding and de cleaning was so much faster because of it and. There was a time when I was a real road warrior and traveled so much for the day job that I had said that if I were ever in charge of the world that people would not be allowed to carry on luggage because people spend so much time fucking around with that carry on luggage trying to get a fit and they overhead been. And worried about there. They’re going to have space for it. Is it wheels in or wheels out and ah ah and then trying to get it down again. You know and the people who aren’t strong enough to lift it down which you know I I understand but why do you have to fucking carry on your bags. Just check them. So making people to pay to carry on their bags turns out to be a pretty great incentive. It’s like well if you have to pay anyway, you might as well check it. Their whole model is based on saving gas so they check baggage. Um, excuse me checked baggage weight is um, max weight is £40 not £50 so it was pretty funny in Las Vegas coming home. There were people did a fairly sophisticated system. Not so much in Albuquerque not sophisticated system in Albuquerque that’s all right. Ah, but in Las Vegas where which might be their mothership. They had these um where you did the bag drop they had these horizontal scales so you did the kiosk so print your tag put it on there. Do the bag drop. Put your suitcase on this um scale that is also a conveyor belt and it scooted it back and forth and then it read the id and confirmed the id electronically which was kind of cool and also did the weight and.
05:34.50
jeffekennedy
As we were watching as we’re waiting for our turn. There were many people there um like taking things out of their bags and some of them looking very sad and we laughed because on the way there from Albuquerque. Ah, we saw a pair of ripped up jeans in the garbage can like right next to they just had the regular scales right next to the ticket counter and I was like yeah somebody decided they didn’t care enough about these jeans to to keep them was kind of funny. They should put like a. Ah, used clothing bin there. so so yeah it was funny to watch the people having fits trying to take stuff out of their their bags I don’t maybe funny is wrong I didn’t mean to laugh at their misery but it was it was very very clear. You know that your bag couldn’t be over 40 pounds and I had been. Exceptionally and careful to you know, make sure that we didn’t exceed that and we were fine and even though I couldn’t weigh on the way back. So I was slightly nervous on the way there we were like 39.4 pounds and David said well we you know don’t have anything more going back than we did going there maybe less. We should be fine and I was like yes, but you got that t-shirt and my dress had gotten wet at water ads weight I was like we don’t have much margin but I took a couple things that put them in my. Personal item and we were fine. So so it takes more jiggering. Ah, they really do annoy you to death to upgrade seats. They want you to pay for like the big seat in the front. Um and they keep sending you like text some email saying. Better, get your seat. We can’t guarantee. You’ll sit together and David and I were assigned seats together I just went with the phrase I’m I’m like if we can’t sit together for an hour-long flight. We’ll probably live um and it worked out just great. Um, would totally totally fly spirit again. It worked out. Well so um, so yeah, we got there. Um Charlie met us at the airport he was flying in from work Charlie and Megan went to a different hotel. They did not have a great experience. Um, they picked out this hotel I think because. American Express had recommended it and american express ended up making it making it up to them. They stayed because they said their room was fabulous, but the rest of the hotel sucked. So they’re like we’ll just like hold our nose and walk through the hotel on our way.
08:19.65
jeffekennedy
But the Venetian was amazing. Oh yes, and as I said we’ve got the free rooms and I did get reeled in when we checked in they said well if you want to upgrade and they had sent me an emails. You know one did I want to upgrade to a view room for like. $56 a night I’m like now I don’t care about a few enough. Well when we checked in the gal was like well we could she said there are no rooms available which I don’t know if it’s a trick or not probably wasn’t because we were there a little early. Um. And we could have had them hold our bags but she said but we do have rooms available if you want to upgrade and I was like ah and she said well let me show you and she she was very good I mean I almost did it partly because she was so good. She had her tablet and she said for a hundred and twenty dollars a night you could upgrade to this. She did not say it this way but fucking amazing sweet. You guys you all? Um, it’s a view of the pool and the strip and it had a living area and the. Bedroom was off to the side and it had a walk-in closet and an amazing bathroom with a sunken bathtub and so we just like you know $120 a night. How often do we get a chance to stay in a really nice suite like that so we did it and it was it was lovely. We really enjoyed that and as David said we have paid $120 a night to stay in some really shitty places so it was um, it was well worth it. We went down to the pool that afternoon um had a snack and a froze that was excellent. And we um and that I hung out by the pool for a while then we met Charlie and Megan for dinner at bouchon at the venetian which was a french bistro that I had wanted to go when we were there before and we could get in partly because of pandemic hours. Everything was so much more open now. Everything felt like it was totally back. It was interesting, almost nobody wearing masks. Um, so we had wonderful dinner at Bouchon which Charlie picked up the tab. He has just the I I tried to stop it and he was like no no because it was. It. It was my almost birthday so it was um because my birthday is well a week from yesterday. So next monday and I had put it down as a birthday at Bouchon just because it would be fun and they brought us free desserts. We had a creme brulee and lemon tart and.
11:05.00
jeffekennedy
Charlie Bought us two bottles of rose because the first thing we did when we sat down they handed us like the you know the wine list and then the special that was summer of Rose which gets me and Megan where we live and so we ended up having 2 bottles of rose which reader we did not need that second bottle. And then we went to see Celeste barber um who I’m you know, just loved from Instagram australian comedian she put on a very tight show. We laughed all the way through it. It was great. um it was um yeah it was absolutely wonderful. So we all felt a little rough the next morning except for Davis who doesn’t treatak anymore because of the parkinson’s he is like I can’t decide if I’m sad that I can’t drink anymore i’m really glad that I’m not not as rough as you all are it’s like yeah um, so. but but I rallied and Megan rallied and she had gone ahead and gotten a kabana with the american express we’re sorry money at virgin hotel she did research on the different pools so I met her over there and we had ah a wonderful day of just. Hanging out at the pool in the cabana having drinks and it was um, it was delightful and then that evening yesterday evening. No Sunday evening I was gonna say go to be that right? No Sunday evening. It was um. They decided they were not Charlie actually never made it out of the hotel room Sunday he was going to meet us over at the pool and made several efforts and just couldn’t do it. He was definitely overserved I think they had also pregamed before they met us. They’d had several cocktails. So it was great party and Megan and I said as we were hanging out by the cabana that we wouldn’t change the thing because it was just one of those really fabulous evenings. There are times when you regret we didn’t need the second bottle of wine and yet it was so fun. So wonderful. Amazing food. Ah so with oysters on half show. They were so wonderful that they’re like Charlie’s favorite thing. He always orders them. So um. Yeah, they did not make it to dinner Sunday night Megan Texted and said yeah, we’re not leaving this hotel room tonight I said no problem because it’s not like we don’t see them here and so David and I went down and went to ah Matteos at the venetian this italian restaurant and.
13:51.64
jeffekennedy
Ah, we had the but probably the best pasta we’ve ever had in our whole lives. It was incredible. Pasta um, you know the the handmade fresh pasta and perfectly balanced sauces and we had a. Chocolate souffle for dessert where we had to wait for it. But then it came out warm with the creme Anglais and a pistachio gelato and yeah, it was delightful. So it was kind of like um, kind of a birthday celebration have a birthday weekend and good partying. Whirlwind. We got it very early Monday morning and flew home we were back home by um, eleven thirty in the morning. So and I got some words yesterday I did not get my full two k but I got some words done and um. Yeah, it was good. So now I need to buckle down and get more work done this week ah exciting news which I should have let off with but then I forgot ah is that rogues paradise. Is out today. So that completes the release the rerelease of the trilogy. Ah I’m really happy in that I had for rogue’s pawn um a certain number of preorders that was. Quite low but I didn’t expect it to be high. Um, you know I thought well it’s going to be just a few right and I had this exact same number of preorders on book 2 on rogue’s possession which I actually think is good because that means an equivalent number of readers. Ah, if not the exact same readers committed to those first two books ah and for book 3 for rogues paradise I have doubled those pre-orders. It’s still not a phenomenal number. But what do you expect for a re-release right? so. So at least that’s what it was as of yesterday evening when I shut down so very excited for rogues paradise to release today. The trilogy is now all out there wide and so forth also in a coincidence. Ah. Book 2 of sorcerous moons on audio at scribd release today. So Oria’s gambit is out today on scribd I think they’re staggering those releases like every two weeks or so so I’ll link to both of those things.
16:39.60
jeffekennedy
If you have been listening to sorcerous moons though you can continue on with book 2 and I’m I’m still working on getting those books out wide but I will get them out wide. Ah. So so those are the big things. Um, it’s it’s interesting because ah, Megan and I had a great conversation on the ride down Albuquerque airport on Saturday David volunteered to get in the back. So he could doze he knew he was going to be pretty sleepy and so Megan and I could talk which we did nonstop the whole way and that was great but she was talking about I can’t remember who she said she was listening to I should ask her so I can um, link to it but we were talking about. To do list. She was saying that she had taken Instagram off of her phone that was kind of how it got started ah making choices for happiness which you all know if you’re a longtime listener I talk about a great deal on here so I was immediately interested and she was talking about the things that slide down your to do list and how. You move them from your to do list from one day to the next which I was like oh my god ah I really hate that I do that and I was telling her that in a recent SFWA meeting somebody had said that they had read possibly in the same place who knows. That you’re not supposed to re-jigger your to-do list that you’re not supposed to rearrange it during the day from today today and we all kind of groaned because we all do that? Um, so 1 thing that Megan said that this person suggested. Is that you can have your ongoing list of things that need to get done but you move them off of the dates you move them like onto another list entirely that you then reference and only put on each day. What you absolutely. Plan and need to get done and and my big problem is is that I would put this whole raft of things on there of like in case I get to it in case I have time which never happened then I should know better because I’m a big believer in the oh if I happen to find time. I’ll do this thing that that never happens especially with writing right? You know I never find time to write. No, you have to make time to write you have to make time to get things done on your to do list. So one thing I did when I got home. Ah, which was possibly a bit of.
19:20.55
jeffekennedy
Writing procrastination but I was also excited about this idea was I rejiggered my to do list for hopefully the final time and I took all of these things that are like pending projects and moved them to another list entirely and put only on that day. What I needed to get done that day and. Reader I got everything done yesterday that I had on that list and it was it was like oh angel singing the sun broke through the clouds here. We go the sun if you’re on video ah some broke through the grape leaves. Um, it was an immense relief. So I’m very excited about this if you’re on video. You’ll also see it’s a little bit of a breezy working here a little cool and breezy. Um, but not much rain yet. They Las Vegas people said that it had been the ah coolest August. That they remembered several people said that um so monsoons in the southwest. It’s been a thing there I scooted out of the sun briefly just to say goodbye. Ah, because the the sun ah did indeed break through the clouds. I hope you all have a wonderful Tuesday and I will talk to you all on Thursday you all take care bye bye.
On writing the thing you believe in, how inspiration and survivorship bias play into the tales we share about doing this, along with thoughts on the Women Who Rock documentary (excellent!) and taking control of your own career.
Transcript
00:01.75
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee.
00:14.75
jeffekennedy
Delicious. Ah today is sit it with me Friday Woo Woo woo August Twelfth Eight Twelve Twenty Twenty Two so end of another week. Hello mosquito. Ha so here. We are I’ve I’ve had a good week. Um I am um within striking distance of oh I didn’t open it yet. Of my 10,000 words for the week which makes me happy because I’m happy. Um, yeah and I met a little shy of 54,000 words on the book. 8085 this week. So ah I have no wood to knock on does a great vine count? Um I think I should hit 10,000 for the week which is good because I’m traveling the next four weekends in a row. Which hopefully will not disrupt my productivity but we’ll see we’ll see she’ll be in good shape. Um I have committed to the release date did the cover reveal. For shadow wizard yesterday woo. So I’m putting it on the show notes today. It will be everywhere now I was experimenting with the Nine Square grid on Instagram and it looks really cool now that it’s all assembled. I did the gradual release like little bits at a time on Instagram and I think I don’t think that did anything ah very few likes throughout the day. Lots of likes overnight once the whole thing was assembled. So yeah. towhee agrees. Ah, you know, maybe you know like the bits and pieces are just not that interesting besides which Instagram only wants reals these days. So ah. I’m not sure I would do it that same way again. But I do like how the cover looks on the Nine Square grid it means that I have to be really careful. What I post to Instagram now because if I do one, it’ll like shift it and break it up so I have to do like three or nothing so that it stays.
03:04.68
jeffekennedy
Ah, the travails. But yeah, ah it was fun to see people immediately start pre-ordering. Thank you! Ah excited for you all to read this book. It’s all good and tomorrow morning we are. Flying to Las Vegas Nevada not driving an hour north to Las Vegas New Mexico and um we’re going to go see Celeste Barber very excited and going with good friends Megan and Charlie so it should be. Ah, good party. We should have a great time low party weekend so there will not be a podcast on Monday morning. Sorry mom because we’ll be flying back that morning I suppose I could do like a super sleepy. From the Las Vegas airport podcast but let’s face it. We know I’m not going to so the big challenge for me will be to see if I can get 2000 words on that Monday that’s my. Personal challenge I hope that I can I might try on the airplane to at least get it started maybe at the airport to sort of get it rolling I’m definitely noticing a pattern lately. You know I get most of my words in that third hour some days it’s pretty even the 3 hours but especially this week like my first hour will be pretty crappy and then the second hour a little better and then I’ll get like 1200 words in the third hour so so it goes but I’m I’m happy with the results of going for 2000 words a day instead of 3,000 words a day I am out I kicked my legs up and sort of hit the under circle in the table. Ouch who? ah. When I was doing 3,000 words a day I would definitely notice the mental drain at the end of the day and I would or at the end of writing and I wouldn’t have bandwidth for much else. So 2000 words a day gives me reasonable bandwidth for.
05:34.85
jeffekennedy
Dealing with business dealing with ah SFWA stuff. We did our business meeting yesterday and it was I think it went well seemed to go well, it was funny because we’re doing it on Zoom and so the board is on chat with each other reminding each other of things and so forth and. Somebody pointed out that we have the eternal ah ah difference of whether people say sifwa or sefwa I tended to be more of a sefwa person until someone commented on it I said I thought that’s what it was supposed to be but we can’t agree and I said well at least it’s not an argument like Gif versus Gif which of course then immediately started. The I cannot believe that there are people out there who want to pronounce it Gif and director at large Monica Valentinelli said. Well did you know that the creator came out and said it’s supposed to be pronounced chiff and I said yes, but he’s wrong which she was like well what do you mean? I’m like he’s just wrong. It’s it’s not it’s graphics interchange format. You don’t suddenly change the graph part to jiff. Very rarely is a leading g pronounced with a ju sound instead of a good sound so and besides Jif is already a peanut butter but executive director Kate Baker says that she is a jif kind of girl. I just can’t even so I was thinking about something ah amazingly enough I’ve just finished reading a book by Brigid Kemmerer. Think she says Brigid with a hard g we’re going to go with that since theme of this episode and she could be bridgegitte. But I think it’s Brigid Kemmerer. Ah, and I read her book a curse so dark and lonely which is ah why a fantasy romance kind. There’s not a lot of romance and it’s the one that I alluded to yesterday when I was saying that you don’t have to have hot sex. Um, in fact, there’s no sex on or off page in this book. Um, the closest it gets is a kiss and ah. Yeah, so which normally is kind of a deal breaker for me twilight was an exception because there was so much sexual tension there while it was perfectly chased and I really enjoyed that about it. Um, this one.
08:22.63
jeffekennedy
I just really enjoyed the book I thought it was um, a really interesting take on beauty and the beast and I totally enjoyed the story. So and I read it because ah Brigand was at Apollycon and a few tables down for me. And she was a ticketed author because she had so many people wanting to get their books signed. Ah so she had pretty much you know nonstop line and I didn’t get to meet her that was one thing. Several people asked me about Apollycon. If. We um, you know like if I talked to such and so were meant so such and so on I was like you know we didn’t really have opportunities to mingle. Ah, when the authors were all present in a place we were doing the signings and you. Really couldn’t leave your table for long because there were so many people wanting to come which was great. Ah, and then there weren’t any events that were just for the authors which I am going to suggest that they add I hope that they will. Yeah I was just thinking that David asked for our feedback for but they may not want our feedback I might just um, have to message. So. Ah I also think that they’re not getting some of my emails because I send from that http://jeffiekennedy.com email which tends to go to spam. It’s one of the things about having your own domain. That’s a spammo spmoific. So I was just thinking about I should give them my super secret email address. For people I actually want to hear from anyway. Ah so yeah, I was you know like oh I’ve never heard of Brigid Kemmerer and Jennifer Estep next to me said because we would chat during our lulls our rare lulls. She said how can you have not heard of her she was like Kensington at the same time we were and I was like oh know and she said well that she’d really like this book a curse so dark and lonely and it it was great. It was really good. So um, and I’m now reading the sequel a heart so fierce and broken. Interested to see how that goes there was a love triangle in the first book and it’s kind of being carried into the next book and I’m I’m actually good with this one I don’t usually like love triangles. But I like this one anyway in the acknowledgements Brigid says. Ah.
11:01.88
jeffekennedy
That she wrote this book because her husband said to her. It was a real dark point in her life. She’d been depressed and her husband asked her when was the last time that she wrote something um that was just for her that she enjoyed and. And she and you know that she wasn’t under contract to write and and she realized it been a long time so she wrote this book just for her and then it’s really has been the thing that launched her this has made her famous. Which great for her and it’s interesting because of course Apollycon is belongs to Jennifer L Armentrout oh here comes Isabelle affectionately known as JLA which is much easier and. She did this you know fantasy romance series recently? Um, which I always forget the name because now there’s so many Knockoffs but you know heart of blood and ash or whatever it is um, you all know right vampires and werewolves ah that traditional publishing wouldn’t take then. Said that they didn’t see at a point to it and now she’s done it with um the girls who do 1001 dark nights. So it’s sort of like a little startup press. Ah, it’s like one step different from self-publishing which is interesting. You know that we’ve got all these sort of. Phases of you know it’s no longer just traditional publishing or vanity press. There’s all of these different um levels of publishing self publishing and assisted publishing. Um, so um.
12:57.93
jeffekennedy
Jennifer has spoken a number of times about how she really wanted to write this series and traditional publishing didn’t want it and she wanted to write it anyway. So she did and how much it meant her and now it’s been phenomenally successful. So. And these are interesting stories to tell ourselves and it’s funny I’d already written down a note to talk about this when David told me a story just as I was making my coffee to come out here. He said that um this gal in a. Group that he follows that like does is into online gambling stuff and he said how that she woke up from a dream that she won a jackpot of $1000000 and so she got up and she went and played $40 on 1 of the online slots games. And so so there’s a correlation here right? We we love to tell these stories. Ah, you know she woke up from the dream that she won the jackpot she went and played $40 and she won the jackpot. Um. Brigid and JLA ah wrote the book of their heart. They wrote wrote the thing that they really wanted to write there was Isabella in the background rooting around oh and actually peeing sorry but she loves a little al fresco. Opportunity I’m glad she is at least discreetly shrouded by the vegetation Isabel fell. there’s ah there’s a lot of um, gritty reality here at first cup of coffee. So and and I feel like she’s ruined my my carefully assembled story right? Oh now she’s okay hold on it turned out. She was prepping her spot and so I spared you all the actual display. You’re welcome at least if you’re on video. So the thing is these are all examples of survivorship bias because we never tell the reverse story. Um, we do not tell the story. If the woman woke up in the middle of the night from a dream that she won a jackpot went and played her $40 and lost it all. She does not get online and told this story because it’s a non story right? same is true for writing that book.
15:44.57
jeffekennedy
That we long to write. That’s the book of our heart or that you know everybody says oh we don’t know what we’re going to do with it. We write that book. We love that book. We decide to self-publish it and it goes nowhere. It’s not a story. The exception being. The gal that I talked about yesterday who shared online how her self-publishing experience did not go well that she spent yeah $10000 and made about $750 and how that is. Ah, thing that happens so at that point it becomes a story but it’s not the story. We want to hear right? We love a story like Brigid Kemmerer or jla where they persevered wrote the thing that they wanted to write that. Well. Brigid soldiers to traditional publishing so that’s a different tale right? But you know and then it does really well and we love that we love that vindication. The triumph of the thing that no one wanted and then it does really really well and ah, it’s It’s a wonderful kind of story it and it inspires us and it keeps us going which is something that we need and do not get me wrong because I love hearing Jennifer talk about that story I’ve heard her give the speech a couple of different times. And it is it came for me at a time when I really needed to hear it. Um I don’t know why I’m a little horse this morning but a horse is a horse of course of course. Ah, um, yeah. The first time I heard it came at a time when I needed to hear that and and it helped me put dark wizard out there which definitely was a story for me that way where it was slightly different for those of you who haven’t heard me talk about it before. Dark wizard was a story that I had been mulling for a very long time. Um I mostly just hadn’t gotten around to writing it. However, because I was busy with other things and I also wasn’t sure how I was going to execute it when I told my agent about the idea she loved it. Ah, when I showed her initial pages. She loved it and then when I finished writing the book. She no longer loved it and she did not want to take it out on submission because she said she didn’t know any editor that would want to buy it.
18:27.73
jeffekennedy
And but the difference for me. There was is I had lots of other people who did love it everybody else who read it frickin love this book and including people you know who will tell me the truth. So. And then it did very well when I self-published it and it helped to hear Jennifer’s story and then I heard it again me because I asked her to give the same talk to my local Rw a chapter and and I enjoyed hearing it again then because it does. Help to hear these stories of people persevering of writing the thing that they want to write. It’s a difficult business if you’re not writing the thing you want to write. It’s perilously close to not being worth it. But. There are lots and lots of times that we write the thing we want to write and it does not do phenomenally well and that doesn’t make it any less worth it because we still have to write the thing we want to write that’s. Part of being creative. Um, and I’m getting low on time but I still want to touch on this. We watch this four part documentary on Amazon prime called women who rock highly Highly. Recommend. This documentary It’s incredibly well done. It really traces the history of women and rock as built starting from you know like Gospel and the girl bands of the 50 s and sixty s all the way up to present. And by the time they get to ah more recent times. There’s just way too many to touch on but they have interviews with lots of women some are throughout the whole thing like Nancy Wilson from heart Pat Benatar and they talk about how difficult it. Difficult it was in the beginning and there’s this. It’s wonderfully put together because there’s this chain of people reflecting on their influences so you have the people coming up and talking about listening to Nancy and Anne Wilson or listening to Pat Benatar and practicing the chords listening to those women and being inspired by them and then the older women talking about seeing the younger ones coming up and it’s wonderful with the connectedness and the women helping women and talking about how difficult it was in the industry show crow is in it.
21:15.19
jeffekennedy
Bunch of people are in Shania Twain Chakka Khan ah, other ones I was not familiar with Mavis just Mavis I can’t think of what her last name is from the old Gospel days. Um, and one theme that emerges. And David and I – I think I’ve mentioned before that watching stories about musicians is a great Venn diagram will overlap for both of us because he loves music and musicians and I love the creative aspects so we love it when we can find shows like this but I was pointing out to him and he was agreeing because I’m right. Over and over they would mention having to take control of their own careers having to that you can’t rely on anyone else to do this thing for you that you have to take control of your own career and make it be the thing you want. And I think that’s very true of all creative enterprises that as I often say nobody will ever love your book as much as you do and it’s um I think it’s probably true of of all creative enterprises that. You are the one who will care about it most and if you don’t care about it then it’s not worth it. So on that note I will leave you looking forward to seeing Celeste Barber Standup act tomorrow night and I will talk to you all on. Tuesday you all take care bye bye.
Thoughts on author events and how much heavy lifting is placed on them to bring a readership – and financial support! – to the event. Also, on self-publishing, common mistakes, and how things can go wrong.
Transcript
00:01.83
jeffekennedy
Good morning everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee. Delicious today is Thursday August eleventh and beautiful morning here in Santa Fe sunny sunny morning I’m also running a bit behind so it’s sunnier as than usual, we went for a walk this morning I also set up the cover reveal for shadow wizard. Yes, so this will be a book one. And renegades of magic and it’s um, Jadren and Selly’s story for those of you who have not been following along I didn’t light the mosquito candle this morning. So um, I’m doing the cover reveal on Instagram bit by bit. In fact, that reminds me I should have done another one but I haven’t yet I’ll do it as soon as the podcast is done. So um. So I had to get that all set up this morning. Got the preorders set up last night. It’ll be out september Twenty Ninth um fingers crossed I’m I’m past 50000 words on it I think it’s it’s going all right. Not sure how it’s going to end where it’s going to end. But um, that’s typical for me, right? All part of the I think it’s funny when authors say that that’s part of the fun for them that they ah the gardeners of the pantsersers. The ones who don’t pre-plot. Ah, say that the fund goes out of it for them if they do that and I’m like I don’t know I don’t know if it’s if I would call it fun but it’s it’s how it works for me sometimes as those of you who are a long time podcast listeners will know. It’s decidedly unfun for me now. So um, a few different things to talk about today I even have notes. So.
02:29.46
jeffekennedy
I’m trying to decide if I could talk about this one thing. Ah I’m kind of sorry I’m waffling let me pause all right I figured out a way I can talk about it. Ah recently I was asked to be. Part of a thing I mean that’s great. That’s I appreciate being asked to be part of things but then it came out ah I was asked I was actually not asked. This was part of the problem I was given instructions on how to share it on social media. And I was told that I must share it on social media in order to bring my platform bring my readers to this thing which I find very interesting and it’s not the first time this has happened and I may have talked about this before but. There are any number of events who ah I don’t want to say demand but they they sometimes they demand they ask an author to participate and then. Expect that the author will bring their readership with them to support the event which is if it’s like for charity or something like that understandable um, you know like that pixel project that was raising money to end violence against women. Yeah, sure I’m going to ask my readers to come and be part of that but there are other events where they’re totally depending on the authors to bring their readership in order to float their event. And this is partly what was amazing about Apollycon was Apollycon ah invited us to participate and they brought the readers I recently heard of another convention I think I talked about this but I’ll I’ll revisit it because I still find it so shocking. Another convention that has for a long time been famous for ah Nick and diming authors and demanding demanding. You know say more money and this particular story. It actually counts as a demand where an author who attended this paid. Upfront and it was a considerable amount that you had to pay up front to attend this convention. Um far more than the readers or attendees have to pay and then there’s all sorts of opportunities for sponsorships that cost more and more and more money and this author was pulled aside.
05:17.72
jeffekennedy
During the convention and told that she had not brought enough readers to the convention that her platform wasn’t big enough and therefore she needed to cough up a thousand dollars to sponsor something at the conference right? then and there and this author was devastated I mean. There are so many levels of awful and wrong about this this particular convention I’m not surprised that they did it I absolutely believe it happened the sources are impeccable. They might try to claim that there was a misunderstanding but the author in question was devastated. Ah, nobody first of all, nobody wants to hear that they’re supposed to cough up a thousand dollars especially if you’re a newer author and you can’t afford it ah and nobody wants to hear that that somebody thinks that you have like got. Shitty ability to bring readers to something.
06:21.16
jeffekennedy
Ah, so so it’s a thing um that this whole oh well, you need to bring your readership and in this particular case. Ah they were very specific supplied social media examples. And usually the right way to do this the right way to do this is people say um, hey here’s some graphics to share with love if you would share this on your social media boom they might give you some suggested stuff but you know you’re not required to do it. Um. Being told that I must do something that the event won’t be successful unless I do this thing is ah it gives me pause because as an author, especially if this is not a charitable event. Why am I doing this if. They don’t have the umph to bring their own readership to it. Ah you know I understand it’s hard. But yeah it um it it. It really bothered me it. It annoys me and. I talked to David about it and he said well you know can you imagine if somebody asked well he always uses big examples. He has an exalted idea of who I am but he’s like can you imagine if they asked Billy Givens to come play and then told him that oh but he needed to. Tweet certain things to make sure that enough people showed up for the event. Ah yeah, there’s just ways to do things and ways not to and um, you know one thing about social media and I know I say this often. Is even if you decide to schedule things or if you have people help you with it. Social media is about connecting personally right, it’s about doing things the way you do them. Ah and so you don’t I don’t do my social media like somebody else tells me to do it. Let’s let’s just say that’s a hard stop so that was something that was on my mind. Um, and then there’s been discussion. Um on Twitter and it’s interesting because I don’t follow enough on Twitter to. Always know the origins of things and I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of tracing back. So I’m not sure where all the conversation about gatekeepers has come from I know some of the things that I’ve been talking about in the last week about how much money authors do and don’t make on tread publishing so there was a.
09:11.70
jeffekennedy
Tweet thread from someone who said, um, talked about self-publishing and I will link to her Twitter thread. Ah, she’s gotten a lot of quote tweets and retweets and likes on it. Not an astonishing amount. But. Ah, she talked about her experience with self-publishing. Um, she said for her, it cost a lot and she earn very little and and I I think it’s great that she shared this. Um i’m. I’m glad that she ah you know gave the actual numbers and she says that the books were classified as new adult fantasy which is not really a thing in traditional publishing and they probably didn’t hit the right market in indie either because they weren’t sexy enough. Um, so I would kind of lie and then she goes on from there and she talks about how much money she spent. Um, she spent $5000 on the first book in its first six months which is a lot a lot to spend on a book when you’re. Ah, newbie self-publisher and I touched on this earlier this week where I mentioned that um if you don’t have a platform already. It’s hard to get started in self- publishing and and she did end up selling like the mythical. You know, average of one hundred and only to friends and family. But I think there are a lot of reasons for this and $5K is putting a whole lot of that money upfront into that first book without having the second one ready. Ah. And then the way that it sounded let’s see I won’t go into her whole thing. But.
11:17.90
jeffekennedy
Yeah, it took a long time for the second book to come out. She really invested a lot in trying to get that first book to happen which is just not how it works for self- publishing. Ah. She said when the second book launched she sold like 100 copies on the first day ultimately like one hundred and twenty nine copies of the first book and 112 of the second before she pulled them from the market and it’s not clear to me why she decided to pull them from the market. Ah. Once you have once you’ve invested once you have put them up. It doesn’t cost you anything to keep them up so it’s not clear to me why she decided to pull them. Ah, she does say at the end that you know her conclusion is um. There’s no easy way to publish. There’s no get rich quick path in this industry so that’s what she wants to warn people of and and that’s absolutely right? It’s a good take home message. She also says um, there are ways not to make the mistakes that she did. Ah, to make self-publishing a business and to succeed at it and I just wanted to talk a little bit about what I saw her doing she says um, $10000 she spent um, 2.5 years on these books. Selling two hundred and forty one copies of her books and netting something like $750 the transcript’s going to hate these numbers. It always hates numbers. Um, but 1 of the first things I notice I mean there are a number of things that didn’t go well. Ah especially if you are doing a series if you have both books ready. Maybe she didn’t but it’s really worthwhile to have that second book ready so that the people who do want to read can read right away once you have a readership they’ll wait if they’re still getting to know you they won’t wait. Especially if they’re not sure if you’ll finish the series and it’s a real thing if you’re an unknown quantity if there’s a you know destroy needs to be resolved with finishing the series or finishing the second or the you know second and third books. Ah, people want to know that it’s there before they commit because they’ve been burned before. Thank you George RR Martin um, the other thing that.
13:52.45
jeffekennedy
Is a real red flag at the beginning is when she said that it was new adult fantasy which isn’t really a thing in traditional publishing and I’ve mentioned this before self publishing is great for grabbing niche markets that. Traditional publishing won’t touch. This is so true it’s true for my books it’s true for a lot of fantasy romance. It’s true for a lot of science fiction fantasy and romance crossover. There’s not a great place for it on the bookshelf at the bookstores the brick and mortar stores. Because those are 2 different bookshelves right? So they don’t know which one to put it on if and as soon as they have to make a decision. They feel like it’s gonna be bad. They’re not happy if it’s young adult yeah, something just hit my face I don’t even know what that was ah. Felt like it was flung but there’s a little bit of a breeze. So maybe that was just liberated by the breeze a young adult has now become its own category and when people rant as I’ve seen various editors and agents do that young adult doesn’t count as a genre. Because you have all sorts of genres within young adult. Well, it’s true except that there are young adult shelves in the bookstore and once it’s a shelf then they know where to put it and it has a market in the brick and mortar stores. The online stores. Often reflect the brick and mortar stores they have more shelves and can put things in multiple places but still, there’s there’s some some correlation between the 2 so all of this is a long way of saying that if you want to publish your book that you love which. You know, bless you? Of course you do and you know do it? Definitely do it but know that if it’s a book. That’s not really a thing in traditional publishing. It’s going to make it harder for you to sell as a self-p publisher especially if you don’t already have a readership. Right? It’s um, it’s just it’s and and especially if you’re you know, not already a savvy marketer which not many of us are especially when we start right? So you, you’re stacking the odds against yourself. Why this gal pulled them from the market I don’t know and I almost want to ask her and I could follow the Twitter thread if any of you have the leisure follow the Twitter thread and see if somebody asks her or ask her yourselves. Ah there there isn’t a good reason to pull it.
16:41.44
jeffekennedy
And maybe she had one but otherwise the money is spent leave them up and maybe they will gradually gain a readership part of the problem with you know, spending money on advertising is. If. You advertise something. That’s not really a thing. How do you advertise it? What I’ve got and now it’s itchy on my face where that thing hit me wherever it was. You know if how are you going to advertise it if you don’t really know what it is and you’re. Not able to tell the readers what it is new adult fantasy um with and you know it’s that’s an a frequent I don’t want to say excuse but I hear authors say a lot like oh well, it didn’t do well because it didn’t have enough sex in it because. I didn’t want to I don’t know there. There’s always a little and I don’t know that she means this at all. She may not but there’s always a little bit of a sense of you know I wanted to maintain my standards and not put sex in that and therefore um because I didn’t kowtow to the. Ah. Sex loving masses. It didn’t do well maybe that’s not what she means by that. But there are plenty of books that do not have hot sex on them that do very well I’m reading one right now I’m waiting to see if there ends up being a sex scene in it. I’ve read a couple recently that um you know, slow burn romances don’t have any sex in the first book at all, you know, maybe there’s a promise of it later we we kind of know by authors. That’s part of having the reputation having the readership. But no, you don’t have to have it in there. Um. Yeah I’m I’m sorry that this went badly for her but she also spent 2.5 years on this. Um, that’s a long time to spend getting two books out in self-publishishing. It’s just it’s way too long and I know that not everybody has luxury of. Ah, time to spend on it and not everybody writes fast, but it’s just something to keep in mind. There were a lot of things stacked against her on this and you know it would be great if somebody would step in and help her out and say you know let’s put those books back up and let’s see if we can get them to go somewhere. The other thing is is if you are are a new author and you have not yet published anything. It’s hard to know if your books are good. Um, or you know good. You guys know that you all know that I don’t like the use of the word.
19:30.55
jeffekennedy
Good but you don’t know if the books will really grab people if you haven’t established a readership yet and it could be that those books should be trunk books I don’t know I haven’t read them. Not all books are gonna do well that’s just life. Um. There’s books of mind that you know, but the second novel I ever wrote I still love that novel. But if I’m gonna put it out there I’m gonna have to rewrite it because I I know a lot of the things that are wrong with it now and those are just things you learn with time. So. Just wanted to to talk about that. It’s it’s an unfortunate piece of self-p publishing that many many authors get into it because they decide to self-publish the book that they couldn’t sell the trat and. Certainly I’ve done that but I know at this point why it didn’t sell the tread. Ah you’ll have to know is it. Did it come close like was it really because they didn’t know what shelf to put it on. Or was it because everyone was like you know this book isn’t done cooking yet. It’s hard to listen to that feedback I saw meme the other day of somebody like showing like an author getting their ah feet criticism and like cutting up their heart on a plate and I it’s like well that’s probably. Probably you should um, have a little bit more objectivity than that. It’s not your heart. They’re cutting up. They’re talking about something you produced. But yeah, you got you got to listen to what kind of feedback are you getting on the book. Why why does traditional publishing not want it. And it’s not always because they’re messed up in the head which is tends to be the kool-aid on that note I am going to go get to work and write the book that I just put up the pre-order for ah, watch for the cover reveal. Taking shape today I think it’s kind of be kind of cool and preorder link in the show notes and I will talk to you all tomorrow you all take care bye bye.
Look for the cover reveal for SHADOW WIZARD, book one in Renegades of Magic, the new trilogy continuing the Bonds of Magic epic tale! I’m getting the preorders set up today and plan to do the cover reveal on Instagram tomorrow, August 11, 2022. Members of my private Facebook group, Jeffe’s Closet, may get a sneak peek 😉
This week at the SFF Seven, we’re asking: how has your writing practice changed over time?
It’s interesting because the topic-suggester framed it as “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” – my college French demanded I get the saying correct – which is a French saying that acknowledges that the more things change, the more they stay the same. In other words, that surface details may alter over time, but the essence of the thing, the recognizable cycle of events, is fundamentally inalterable. Often it’s applied to history. So this suggests that our writing practice may change over time, but it also stays the same. Is this this case?
I’m saying no, at least for me. My writing practice has changed considerably since my newbie days. I was reflecting recently that, as a teen and young woman, I didn’t really know how to apply myself to improving at a task. This largely came from the fact that, in school all the way through high school, I could get by without really trying. I had a good auditory and visual memory, and I tested well, so I didn’t need to work hard to get A’s. (Except in math, which I thought I wasn’t good at, even though they put me in accelerated math classes. Turns out I likely wasn’t good at it because I didn’t like math, so I didn’t listen in class. Oops.) In college and grad school, a number of professors began riding me to apply myself, to study and do the practice problems. I kind of tried to – especially when I had to retake Immunology for my biology major and really didn’t want to have to retake second semester of organic chemistry – but there was a major problem: I didn’t know how to study.
I remember thinking I needed to learn how to study, but I was mostly flailing about. It was only when I had novel deadlines to meet that I got very good at refining my ability to work in concentrated ways, incrementally, day after day. I don’t often think of messages I’d like to give to my younger self, but I now wish I could advise that college student, that graduate student, to develop the habit of working for a couple of hours every morning. This is my best brain time. If I had done that in school, if I had spent just that much time working practice problems and reviewing the material, I likely would have done much better.
Of course, then I might have ended up as a research scientist after all, when I’m so happy as a novelist. Maybe it took working on something I truly cared about to inspire me to develop the practice to do it. Que sera, sera!
Some more figures of what some authors are NOT making in traditional publishing, along with thoughts on agents – how to tell the good ones from bad (and there ARE good ones!), red flags, and how the business works.
Transcript
00:03.63
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee. Delicious. Ah today is Tuesday August Ninth Eight Nine sounds like a good date to me. Um, yeah, so I’m wondering. What I have to say today some mornings oh look if you’re on video. You’ll have an Isabel sighting in the background Isabel’s out here in the secret garden with me is it. She pretty. She’s a blue smoke Maine coon cat I love how she’s got that. Faintest hint of blue to her fur. So yeah, she’s feeling sprightly this morning. She’s the the queen the main Coon Queen cat she’s sixteen sixteen and a half now and she loves going out and messing around in the garden. So um, yeah, you know some mornings I come out here I have my notes some mornings I have lots of thoughts in my head other mornings I’m sort of like a a nice mellow blank today’s a nice mellow blank I’m feeling. Nicely relaxed. Got more stuff done yesterday kind of catching up on my list. Ah I’ve noticed how the lists have been creeping into the books. Ah, they always have so I suppose that’s just like one of my things. But I notice that they are in the covenant of thorns books they’re in the bonds of magic books. Not so much the one I’m writing not so much in shadow wizard but I got my two k on shadow wizard yesterday I got it in. Reasonable amount of time. Got it early in the day so that was great. Um I’m let’s see doing pretty well I think um, little shy of 48,000 words which I know.
02:31.97
jeffekennedy
That’s like I’m past midpoint I still have half the book to go but it’s feeling downhillish at this point I’m also reading a book I’m really enjoying ah and I’m hoping that I will be able to recommend it to you? ah. I need to get back on putting reviews on good reads Amazon book bub. Ah I kind of fell off of doing it I don’t know why I don’t know maybe I just sort of ran out of time but I would like to get back into doing that. Because I’ve read several good books lately and I say them on here but I feel like that’s fairly transient so I would like to go ahead and get that going again. Um I did have some um reaction to yesterday’s podcast a few different people asked me if they had heard correctly when I said that um and and it’s it’s really ebooks. That I’m talking about where an author can earn $3 a book $5 a book maybe depending on the price point. Um whereas yes from trash ah print books. We don’t earn nearly so much from ah and they’re already. They’re so expensive to produce. That’s the thing about being a self-published author is the print books are expensive because we can’t do it in bulk. We don’t have access to a printing press the the pod cost is fairly high. Ah, the like Amazon or Ingram delivery cost is fairly high so we are not able to get as much of a percentage from those not without pricing the book even higher and I think none of us wants to do that. It already feels like a. Egregious to charge you know like $18 for a trade paperback. But even when that happens a lot of times like I’m only making ¢50 on the book or something like that. It’s um, it’s fence service. It’s having print books is because. Some of you still want print books which is fine. That’s no problem at all. It’s just um, where you where you make the bulk of your income is on the ebooks if we didn’t have those we probably wouldn’t be able to do it. We wouldn’t be able to make sell enough books to make an income to live on.
05:11.57
jeffekennedy
But but yes, um, for tread publishing whether it’s print or ebook a dollar per book. Maybe that’s that’s good If you’re getting that much a lot of people are not getting that much and um. Yeah, it’s just a. It’s the way it is. It’s just a sucky cut. Um.
05:40.44
jeffekennedy
Um, yeah, it’s you know they they hold all the cards basically and you know and even then you know you’re almost certainly paying you know 15% of that then to your agent. So. That that could come before or after the dollar a book but you know a dollar goes down to ¢85. It’s um, unless you’re selling a whole lot of books. It’s just hard to make money to live on in trad. And so it goes and I’ve recently learned of a major publisher. Not one of the big 5 or big 4 um, it’s sounding like the merger is going to be improved. People are sad about it. But. And our current um climate of corporations running the country. It seemed almost inevitable running the world. Maybe so yeah, a lot of writers were lamenting it yesterday on social media. Isabel’s down next to me here. Isabel’s not concerned. She says cats don’t worry about acquisitions and mergers know course Pat cats are also arguably parasites is that right. She says as long as the cat food keeps coming. You know that’s why I write the books is to feed the cats. Yes yes, Minerva Spencer says that Isabel has a smoker’s meow. Ah she does kind of she. Um, she’s totally deaf now. So she has to be very loud to be assured that she is meowing and it’s hell on the vocal chords. Yeah, so um, so yeah, those are the breaks. What was I saying about the oh this other publisher. So. So those are the big ones and that’s why we say the big but then there are other like midsize presses or smaller presses. So you know like there other ones are like source books Kensington um. Oh I think the mosquito candles making me sneeze.
08:14.67
jeffekennedy
Who I tried to pause and then at impa. Sorry let me scoot this away I was clever this time and came out and lit the candle before I got out here and gave it a little while to drive the mosquitoes away that seems to be the effective method. So how? yeah like Tachyon there used to be other ones you don’t like skyhorse and all these others anyway, those are not the great big ones. That people mean when they’re talking about the big houses Isabel’s checking out that candle now. Yeah stinky here now she’s sleeping leaving in a huff we haven’t had um cat wrangling. On the podcast in a while. So um, so yeah I recently learned of another publisher that’s not 1 of the biggies. But that’s well known, especially in romance publishing that is offering a terrible percentage on ebooks and. 1 of my friends at Apollycon who has a very successful series told me that last year and she was sad about it that she made about $1400 in the whole year and I told somebody else this and they were like. That author but her books are doing amazing and I was like yeah um and her agent says that she doesn’t really understand the contract. Um, when my friend asked about well shouldn’t I be getting. Royalties for like the audio books or the foreign rights and stuff that our agent was like oh well I don’t know um and and I said to her friend I said that’s a really bad sign you know and it’s like. I love that people come to me for advice but I think sometimes people regret coming to me for advice because and you should all know this I’m happy to talk to you like at conventions or you know over drinks are many things I will say to in person that I will not say on the podcast. But. You know if if you do ask me for advice I’m I’m going to give it to you pretty straight and I told her you’ve got to leave this agent if your agent doesn’t understand your contract then this is a problem. It’s a problem.
10:56.41
jeffekennedy
Red flag and she says oh I know but you know she’s stuck with me. She took me when no one else would and you know I owe her and you guys I hear this story so many times and in its. Hard I know it’s hard because we love our agents. We do feel that um, it’s like the first love we. We are grateful to them and they it does feel like they took a chance of us when no one else would. And I definitely felt that way about my first agent and I don’t know why if I would have left her if she hadn’t gone into like a total spiral and left the agency and went to an agency where I couldn’t sign the contract. Um. I don’t know what I would have done I’m glad I didn’t have to make that choice leaving my second agent was a really hard choice even though I was terribly disappointed in him and I had gone through a couple of um, like performance improvement plans with with him. Which is that’s why yeah so I spoke too soon on the mosquitos that one went right for my nose. Um, that’s my corporate America coming out but it’s like okay you know I’m not happy with how this is working and so we’d come up with these things that you know for him to do. And then he didn’t do those things I was working with the senior agent in the firm. That’s the other thing about this from that I’m talking about is that her agent just has her own agency. There’s not even a senior agent to go to and so which is the first advice I would give is is if you are. Maybe not the first but still if you are unhappy with what your agent is doing or if you’re wondering if you should be managing expectations in some way you go to the senior agent at the agency and say here’s what I want and this is not what’s happening. And you know what do you recommend and and the senior agent in mine was very receptive but my agent still didn’t still didn’t do it and and break and that breakup felt like it felt like a divorce. It really did it was um, hugely emotional. My friends got sick of listening to me but it had to be done and and I feel like I’m still seeing echoes of of the ways in which he messed up my career.
13:48.74
jeffekennedy
Um, and and it’s very true and I’m sort of going off on this whole agent tangent I didn’t mean to but it’s probably worth revisiting. You know the the old adage that a bad agent is worse than no agent at all is really true and I feel like spending several years with my bad agent. And still seeing effects. But I’m still digging out of that and I love my current agent Sarah Younger at Nancy Yost literary agency who is unfortunately not taking more clients I I even asked her at Apollycon when ah. Because I was thinking maybe I could get my friend to move over to her if I could get my friend to give up this loyalty to this terrible agent and I I feel very comfortable calling this agent terrible if your agent says they don’t understand the contract I mean that’s literally their job. So I asked Sarah oh are you still not taking new clients or I said are you taking new clients and she actually physically flinched. She’s like and she said she’s just not able to keep up with all of her current clients and she’s still sort of digging out of that pandemic hole on that as well. so unfortunately and me someday but um so yeah why is my friend only making $1400 a year. She got paid twice in you know every six months and she said it was about $700 each time. And yeah yeah I mean she’s not gonna be out on the streets because she has a salaried spouse which is great but it’s disheartening when you have a very successful series. I mean I’m not kidding when I say this is a successful series. It’s it’s gotten amazing reviews and it’s very well known and how is she only getting this much money. Ah, it’s it’s criminal really. So. Um, I’m never going to be 1 of those people and there’s one in particular I can think of who like in in SFWA on discord and so forth or the forums every single time someone says something about an agent. This guy has to pop up and. Do a blast against how horrible agents are and ah it’s just like dude but he’s also I don’t know um, unpleasant in his opinions in many ways.
16:35.88
jeffekennedy
So I don’t think that all agents are terrible I think that agents are very helpful to a career particularly if you’re dealing with things like print and foreign rights and I don’t believe that hiring a lawyer is the same thing but um, but there. There are bad agents out there and they they gave give the good agents a bad name and so there it is um otherwise let’s see what’s going on I I feel like this is this is exciting news for me and not important to anything else. But I got my nails done yesterday and we may have gotten I’m trying to show you. It’s kind of better there. We go. Ah, we may have gotten a green that I really like since this is why birthday month and green is my favorite color I was trying to get a good green and. For some reason. It’s really hard to find a good green nail polish so much good green in nature. Not so much. It must be really hard to reproduce a green pigment because it’s hard to find good greens and clothing too. So I’m very happy with my green nails small things. Right? Ah, yeah, so I went long yesterday. So I think it’s okay to go shorter today I will um yeah, talk to you all on Thursday you all take care bye bye.
Some real numbers comparing the same book and series self-published vs. traditionally published – Spoiler: first month revenue is already 10% of 10 years of trad – & other thoughts on trad vs. indie.
Transcript
00:01.26
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee. Delicious.
00:19.20
jeffekennedy
Ah, so good. How are you all today is Monday August date 16 22 I don’t know why it seems like there’s so many good dates lately. Bumping the table here. So um, we are New Week New week hopefully a productive week I need a productive week. Um I’m still on track with shadow wizard I’m losing a little bit of my buffer. I did not have um, a rocking writing day on Friday for no good reason I am happy to report that. However I am caught up on royalty crunching who I’ve caught up two months ‘ worth. Always interesting. Um, just to have a break from the royalties and come back and sort of see what the sales are like and one thing that’s very interesting. Sorry if I’m using that word way too many times. Um, you can’t adjust hold on a moment. My chair is could be apart. Ah, you know it’s like one of those selfassemble patio chair things and so it has the. It’s probably gonna be too hard to explain but you know like the caps that you screw on to the ends that hold it in place and one of the caps came off and I had it sitting here on the table but very lazily had not put it back on ah because it was one of those you know like two step projects where it required me to go inside the house. To get a screwdriver to come back out and screw it on and somehow I just never would not take that freaking long but somehow I never made that complete circuit and no I’m not sure where the piece has gone hopefully some. Critter didn’t carry it off but now it’s um, bending enough that it’s like pulling entirely out of the socket without the cap thingy to hold it on so the ah problem’s becoming more pointed but. We already spent way too much podcast time on that. Ah, ah so interesting. So interesting fascinating I think that’s why they came up with fascinating for Spock because interesting just got too boring. Um.
03:07.34
jeffekennedy
On my covenant of thorns books this is a great example of traditional publishing versus self-publishing. You know what? and I’m even Goingnna oh I’m not going bring up the exact numbers. But. So I started releasing rereleasing Covenant of Thorn’s series Rogue’s Pawn being book one in July and then Rogue’s Possession came out later july and then third book Rogue’s Paradise is coming out in August and. For all three books considering this is a series that’s 10 years old fabulous covers beautiful covers um but old books I shared a um review on the podcast on friday. Was a very interesting review I shared it with Grace and she’s like wow that’s a great review and I was like well it’s sort of ah a mixed review but I would much rather have a review that notices. Um and notes how I’ve grown as a writer and for me going back and reading those first books. Is a little bit cringy. It’s a good reminder for me. Um, when I read new authors first books that I should probably like read one of their later books too because um, ah I mean thank goodness I’ve gotten so much better. But wow you know and people told me then that it was overwritten and I didn’t think it was ah but ah the hubris of youth and newbiness right? Ah yeah, ah. In one contest. Someone told me that it was um, overwritten like Anne Rice is overwritten and I took that as a compliment. Um I think I’m way worse than Anne Rice ah but um anyway these books are being well received but they’re not burning up the charts I mean they’re not like hugely high rankings I’ve got more preorders for book 3 than I have for books 1 or 2 I like twice as many which is really nice. So that means that the people that are reading it and loving it. Are wanting to read that third book. That’s awesome. Um, but you know it’s like it’s still double digits I mean I don’t even have preorders in the triple digits which is fine. You know it’s like that’s kind of what I expect for rereleasing an old series like this right? so.
05:54.79
jeffekennedy
Even with fairly low but climbing preorder numbers I’m trying to walk the line here I I don’t want you to Um, oh what am I trying to say I’m trying to set the correct expectation here because I figured. If I was lucky if things went well that I could recoup my investment in putting a new cover and reformatting the book putting it up for sale. Ah in the first month and I’m going to do that easily more. For the first two books and with pre-orders alone for the third book each of those books has already I mean you’ll just like in numbers I don’t have the money yet, but they’ve already earned 10 to 12% of the lifetime sales. Of the books that did that they earned through Carina press. Okay, so let me rephrase that just in case I put that in a confusing way because I track all the sales of all my books. So in all the time 10 years that those books were with Carina Press and Carina paid me quarterly royalties on those books. So I know how much each book has earned over its lifetime via Carina in the time that I have had these up self-published a month for the first book. A month the two days they’ve already earned 10 to 12% of those lifetime sales one month versus ten years right? So when we talk about self- publishishing. And the money that you can earn in self-p publishing. There is a concrete example now why didn’t these books earn more money through Carina press. There’s a couple of factors and if you all already self publish or if you are um, you know, follow. Self-pubbers then you know this information but I’m going to share it here anyway because it does bear repeating part of it is the percentage. Um from Carina press even though they gave me a very generous I think 45% something like that of the. Net so that means of the money that they get after the wholesale price and all of that they gave me 45% of that price. So and actually.
08:42.34
jeffekennedy
Okay, so I went ahead and opened the spreadsheet just so I could give you some actual numbers because I calculate approximately how much I earn per book. Um, well this is going to be a little bit deceptive. However, okay, well let me give you the the numbers. From through Carina Press which is harlequin which is under harper collins. We’re looking at big consolidation of presses. So it’s worth it looking at that tiering. Ah penguin already emerged with random house. Now Simon Shuster is looking to acquire penguin random house. So anyway before and you know under them. My books were earning I would get ¢71 to a dollar for per per book. Now I have to do some quick baths self publishing I’m getting $3 per book. Um, so easily 3 times I’m making per book so that adds up fast. The other piece of it is. Marketing. Um, and we were having this conversation over the weekend. Ah Minerva Spencer and Katie Lane are their writing names came to brunch at my house on Saturday and we. Set out in the grape arbor and talked business. It was lovely and the demystifying thing is is because we have all published traditionally and self published. And it can just be mystifying what the traditional publishers are doing I do pretty basic marketing on that Covenant of Thorns series and it’s like a 1,000 times more than Carina press did on them especially 10 years later um we were gossiping about one friend of ours who’s who had a bestselling book Usa today but still bestselling book did enormously well but it came out a long time ago now. Um, somebody was saying 3 years but I think it’s longer than 3 years because 3 years was beginning of pandemic that amazing. Um, well it was like leading up into ah it’s on my mind because like Minerva Spencer I had not seen her since September of 2019 so it was nearly three years since I had last seen her in the flesh.
11:28.84
jeffekennedy
And it’s funny to think that um you know three years ago August of 2019 I was at world con in Dublin and we traveled around Ireland just seems ages ago. So um, anyway I think this this gal’s book came out. Probably five or six years ago yeah could be even six or 7 definitely pre 2017 so that gives us a ah range anyway. But she gets very upset that her traditional publisher is not. Pouring more publicity that they’re publicizing other books newer books and not hers which ah you know sometimes that happens that way. Oh. Mosquito so it’s this is what traditional and publishers do. They’re always about the new shiny. They don’t care about the older books. Um.
12:47.54
jeffekennedy
And and it’s to the detriment of the author because I mean you know like this girl’s perfectly right to be upset that they’re not publicizing this book. Especially I mean everybody could be making money on this but they just don’t they also. Just don’t seem to know how to position books which is bizarre and they fully believe that they do know I mean they’re just certain that they are in the right? So it’s this very interesting thing. Um that there are what, one of the gals I don’t remember who they might have both said it is like well why are people still going with traditional publishers and I still think there are good reasons to publish traditionally. But as far as making a living and getting your books out there. Ah. And makes all the difference and and what’s funny is that the traditional publishers and we all know this because we have editors and agents saying this to us as they’ll say well you know you just can’t make real money self-p publishishing and they always want to go back to the Statistic. You know that most self-p publishers. Only ever sell a hundred copies a year and and it’s like yeah, but then you have to look at the the other end of the spectrum that you know you’re not looking at the person who decide to you know, write their memoir and. Printed it out for their kids and grandkids. Um, besides which we don’t have to sell as many copies to make really good money as evidenced by this statistic I’m just fascinated by that it has made this big of a difference because I thought well. You know should I even republish. These am my sinking good money into this for no reason it’s going to be great. It’s going to be awesome. I was also counting up like how many books I sold at Apollycon because in the world of the convention. You know, ah it was just like sale sale sale I sold a lot of copies of Rogues Pawn I didn’t realize how many but that was the right crowd for that book I did not sell as many copies of dark wizard as I thought I would I do have a mosquito candle out here now to fend off the mosquitoes. Ah, see if that works I’d scooted it closer because there’s a couple of mosquitoes hovering hovering hungrily. So um.
15:30.26
jeffekennedy
You know it’s just really interesting what you sell in different venues and I think this is one of the things that self-publishers are able to do is that I can go and I can see which of my books sell on site and what I can say to readers that elicits their attention. I think it’s really super cool that I sold so many copies of the print version of rogue spawn um, for $10 right? Ah, but they love that it was a face story. So um. My point and I do have one. You know that there are people in traditional publishing who make a huge amount of money but there are lots who don’t and even the ones who are making a decent living the dreaded midlist right? which has become kind of a curse. But. There was a statistic that came out the other day that said that um I don’t know if they put a percentage on it but it was most and and I believe that it is most traditionally published authors are making $25000 a year or less which is. Below poverty level in the us and I I don’t know if that’s before or after taxes. But it’s still It’s not much money. Actually I think it was $20000 a year because the person who retweeted it into my timeline said that they were. Doing relatively well compared to many of their compatriots and they’re making $25000 a year. Um, which is still not enough to live on and traditional publishing persists in this idea that um. You know that we should be grateful for the money we are making I think ah one of my friends has been kind of struggling because ah, her traditional sales have fallen off. Um, we think we know why I think I know why actually I gave her. Um. A really good insight and I’ve seen this happen to a number of my friends that’s bragging isn’t it I thought it was great insight. She agreed. Okay, so in in two cases I’m thinking of specifically and I could probably think of a lot more There was an author who was selling incredibly well in a particular thing and their publisher changed the branding of it in 1 case, an author was told no no, we don’t want more of these of this subgenre. We want you to write this other subgenre.
18:11.45
jeffekennedy
And the books just didn’t do as well and the publisher is like huh I wonder what happened? Well you went off of the main readership and this other friend of mine who has done fabulously well in. Traditional publishing to the point where she didn’t really want to self-p publishlish because she’s like I’m making better money and trap and it’s like well wherever you’re making better money and go for it but now ah her most recent series. The sales are really tanked and I realized how they changed from her main branding that these books don’t. Look or feel or have the same wording as the ones where her main platform is and and it’s a departure and and once I pointed this out to her. She’s like you know what? I’m going to put these words in my next title and I’m going to see what’s what happens and it’s like great. We can do this as self publishers meanwhile in traditional publishing land. Her editor actually said to her that it’s because she’s self-publishing that she’s diluting her sales and that’s and it’s her fault and this is what they do in traditional publishing is they tell the author that it’s their fault and because it can’t possibly be theirs. And it’s nonsense. It’s I I was telling this story to Minerva and Katie this weekend and both of them immediately said that’s bullshit because we all know that readers read much faster than we can write and they they want more books. They don’t. Get tight. They don’t say oh ho ha another j– oops sorry another Jeffe Kennedy ah slight slip there wonder if I could fudge it out I bet I didn’t say as much as I thought I did we’ll see. Ah, but yeah, another Jeffe Kennedy Blah you know it’s maybe there are some who say that but the passionate readers they want more and this idea that um, which tread really holds onto that you know that they feel that it should be 1 book a year and I even had that. Um, on my last traditional publishing excursion. You know when we were talking about the frequency of the books and they said well our market research shows that the books do best if we release some nine months apart I kind of wanted to say well, what market research is that. Because it’s sure not how it looks from our perspective. The other interesting thing about self-publishing and this is a conversation that Minerva Katie and I were having was how we know what it takes to make a good cover. We know exactly how expensive a cover is.
20:57.00
jeffekennedy
We know about layers and putting them together. You have to learn I mean it’s just like at first you don’t know and you gradually learn so when a traditional publisher comes to us and this has happened to all of us. And says look at this beautiful expensive cover and we’re like that’s clip art and this part doesn’t look right? Can you fix this and they’re like oh no, it would take so much to fix that we’re like no, no, no, all you do is go in and tweak that layer. Um and they still want to act like we don’t know this that they can still blow sunshine. Ah. So this has turned somewhat into an indictment of tread which I don’t mean it to be because um I there are a lot of things I love about traditional publishing. Um and I will still try to publish traditionally but there. I feel like we’ve been saying for more than a decade now that traditional publishing is going to have to change what they’re doing and they are somehow mysteriously still not doing it. Um, but yeah, just being able to. To make a living as a writer. There are not many people who can do that without also self- publishing or without having a sidegig. So um I do think and we were all agreeing is in our conversation Saturday that. It was huge for all 3 of us that we had already traditionally published and had that readership they’re they’re good at establishing that readership and so it made self publishing much easier. It’s it’s harder when you’re coming right out of the gate as a self-p publisher. Unfortunately, that’s just how it is. So on that note I’ve chattered on long I hope you all have a wonderful Monday and a wonderful week and I will talk to you all tomorrow you all take care bye bye.
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