Transcription
BRANDON: Hey! Welcome to our final web exclusive for my lecture series. So this, again, is your questions asked about the publishing business. And I’m going to be here for about 30 minutes answering your questions. And I just want to preface by saying, hey, thanks for following along this year’s recording of them. We probably won’t do this again for a number of years. So it was a wonderful experience, and I liked all of your involvement, and I’m glad that I can get to some web exclusive lecture content for you. So here we go. These are your questions.
First one is:
QUESTION 1: How would you pitch to an agent to represent you for an in-progress book series with the first book already indie published?
BRANDON: I would say, make some decisions ahead of time what you’re wanting an agent for. So are you wanting to do what happened with Fifty Shades of Gray or some of these where it was an indie published series that they decided to make traditionally published? In which case, generally the author pulls all the indie published things once a publication deal is in the works and rebrands with a brand new cover and things like that and relaunches. If that’s what you’re wanting to do, just know that that’s kind of what has happened sometimes with these books in the past. Or, instead, are you getting an agent because you want the agent to sell you in foreign markets? This is a thing that agents, as I mentioned in the main lecture, do sometimes for indie published authors, is they handle all the, you know, overseas rights, film rights, that sort of stuff. What are you planning to do with that? Knowing up front what you’re asking for helps you with your query letter. At that point, the number I often hear bandied about, which, you know, I don’t have a ton of confirmation on. Maybe somebody in the comments who has done this before can say whether or not it’s confirmed. But I hear a lot of 10,000 copies sold being a pretty good benchmark for agents, meaning not counting the free ones that you give away with various promotions, but actual point of sale, “I have sold 10,000 copies of this book series.” Putting that in the query letter. And I would have a pitch. Particularly if you can meet them in person and be like, “I’m an indie author. I’ve sold X number of copies. I think that traditionally publishing some of these might take me to the next level. What are your thoughts?” And have the agent chat with you about what they have done in the past and what they’re looking for. Or say to them, “I’m OK in the US. I know what I’m doing. I would like to go traditionally published in other countries. Would you be interested in handling my foreign rights?” So those are kind of your two options there. And there might be people, again, who have done something different with this that can, in the comments, let me know whether or not they have other suggestions.
QUESTION 1: In Spain, for example, having a literary agent is much less common.
BRANDON: Yes. A lot of the foreign markets, people sell without an agent. In fact, this models what happened in the US back when science fiction and fantasy was not the powerhouse sales genre it was. The agents really weren’t that interested. In fact, you really couldn’t support the agents on the income of all these authors during, you know, the early days, the golden age and the silver age of science fiction. A lot of the deals were done just with author and publisher, to the point that there’s this legacy where science fiction accepted unagented authors for a much longer time. Like, when I was breaking in, you could still do it without an agent. Even though agents have become standard, because of that legacy of author/publisher relationships.
QUESTION 1: It tends to be 50/50 or even lower.
BRANDON: I'm not surprised by that.
QUESTION 1: Given the chance, generally, would you recommend trying to pitch to publishers alone or get an agent? Also, I've heard that the norm is an agent here takes from 15% to 20%, sometimes even more.
BRANDON: Well, even more would be shocking to me, and I would be--well, not shocking. But I would definitely avoid paying more. Twenty percent is standard for foreign deals on agents. So basically, if I sell in Spain, my agent takes 20%. Why is that? Because there's a local agent taking 10%, and there's my New York agent taking 10%. And I feel like this is a fair split considering that selling in Spain myself, I could probably do it now, but early in my career, there's just no way that you can go--. Like, the agents all fly to giant book fairs where they meet with all the editors and agents from other countries. It's a very involved process. So I wouldn't say 20% is bad if that 20% is what they charge to sell overseas. But I don't know what the norm and the standard is in given countries, so I'll just stop there.
QUESTION 1: Given the chance, would you recommend trying to pitch to publishers alone or get an agent?
BRANDON: I would always recommend, if the options exists, to sell to a publisher directly. The fewer middlemen in between you and a sale generally is just going to be better. If you have a chance to land an agent who has a very good track record at selling new books, then it is worth paying them the percent in order to do it in general. But the smaller the market, the less necessary this is. Spain is actually a pretty decently sized market for a foreign market. But really, your places where fantasy sells best are US, UK, and Germany tend to be the top three. And so I would expect those to be the places where you're most likely to need an agent. What would I recommend? Any time you can talk directly to an editor, get an editor excited and sell directly to them, I would recommend doing that. If the contract negotiations get complicated, or if the money gets good, bringing in an agent at that point might be necessary. I sold without an agent even in the US, but I got an agent once I'd sold it to actually handle the negotiations. And I'm glad that I did. I'll say that.
QUESTION 2: I'm currently writing a fantasy novella and hope for it to be my debut.
BRANDON: Well, good for you.
QUESTION 2: Specifically in the realm of traditional publishing.
BRANDON: Novella plus traditional publishing, a little rougher. But we'll talk about it.
QUESTION 2: I know you touched on how smaller, mid-size presses might be a good move for publishing novellas in your final video of your lecture series.
BRANDON: I did.
QUESTION 2: But I'm curious about your thoughts on how novellas fit in the publishing world overall. Specifically, do you think trying to break in with a novella would work? And if so, how should I go about it?
BRANDON: All right. Novellas have an interesting tradition in science fiction and fantasy. First off, what is a novella? A novella is defined by the Science Fiction Writing Association as 17,000 words to about 30,000 to about 50,000, depending on who you talk to. I think SFWA says 17,000 to 30,000, but I'm not 100% sure on that. I know 17,000 tends to be about the break point where a novelette becomes a novella. But these are all kind of squishy. Basically, you're looking at something that's plotted and paced like a novel, but just a short novel, rather than plotted and paced like a long short story. That's what a novella is. And you've probably read some famous books that technically fit into that range of novella, depending on which numbers you're using. For instance, Christmas Carol is a novella and not a novel. And Ender's Game started as a novella, not a novel. Several other, for instance, Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey was one, I think, novella. Maybe it was a novelette. But one of the shorter fiction categories, just as kind of the opening to the novel before she wrote the novel. So for the longest time, a novella or a novelette, a short novella or a longer novelette, would form the cornerstone for the magazines, back in the era where the magazines were the dominant way that people read science fiction and fantasy. You would get a bunch of cool short stories and then you would have this chunky novella in the back to really make you feel like your money was well spent and that you got a little bit more of a novel experience. Not all of the issues did this, but it was really common to do that. And that novella was often by an established author. They would rarely buy those from non-established authors. Because that novella, you can imagine it as a magazine reader you're like, "I want to try out new people. I want to see what people are capable of. But I also want to get my money's worth and know that there is a very good story in this that alone would have been worth the price of buying the magazine. So all the short stories, in some ways, are a bonus, because I know I get that cool Asimov novella at the back of this thing." And for the longest time, that was the market for novellas. You had real trouble selling them as a new author. The novella slot in a magazine was there to be the name on the cover that drew people to buy it so that they knew they were getting that money's worth. Sometimes, if it was a really great novella, they would buy it and put it in that slot even by a new author. But that's kind of the history of the novella. That's why Anne McCaffrey had this Dragonflight that was such a big deal before the novel was even written. I think they called the novella version Weyr Search and things like that. Over time the magazines kind of died off. There are still some good ones, Clarkesworld, and whatnot. They're mostly digital first right now, or they focus on the digital, though they do have--there are some print components. At that point, for a while, novellas became a great way to break in on eBook novellas. I wrote Emperor's Soul right during this ear, kind of at the forefront of this before it really took off. Back when, you know, you didn't really know how to sell a novella, but we started putting them up on Kindle for a couple of bucks, and for a while that did really well. This was back in kind of the goldrush era of Kindle where people were looking for things that were kind of inexpensive to try out their Kindle on and whatnot. And during that goldrush era, Hugh Howey and some other people hit on a cool idea where you could release a book as a series of novellas. This is how Wool, which became the television show Silo, that you might be familiar with, is just like a group of novellas that together became a novel. All of this lead to TOR.com as an imprint starting up, which was publishing kind of literary, high end if you would say, novellas with the editorial team focused on it. And a lot of the best novella winners over the last years in the various categories came from places like TOR.com that were hunting for kind of literary stylized--often they were looking for diverse voices for these imprints to have these--you might call them award bait sort of things, using that not as a pejorative. A lot the great films and stories we have would be considered. But they're looking for an eye for kind of literary excellence for these sorts of things. And that has been lately the dominant way that novellas have fit into the publishing world. Very long answer to your simple question. But how should you go about it? Well, if yours is a story that can fit TOR.com, that is often the best place. But again, they do focus on diverse voices and literary styling for that. Novellas are still an excellent way to break yourself in indie published. They can be a way that people can buy something for fairly inexpensive to try you out on. The goldrush era of indie publishing is gone, however. And a novella just kind of sitting there by itself without the support of a full indie published career is probably just not going to sell that well. That's what my gut says in today's market, unless you are going full in. If traditional publishing is your way, then you are looking at TOR.com, or you are looking for going to one of these smaller, mid-size presses and trying to publish more of a prestige piece novella that they can hope will get some award recognition to drive your name. Or you're looking at the few remaining magazines being willing to stick you in that spot. The large, traditional publishers are not looking for novellas. It is not worth the money to get those on the shelves in bookstores because people in bookstores don't traditionally buy novellas very much. They made the effort to get to a bookstore. They're generally looking for something bigger than that. Not to say it can't happen, particularly for a longer novella. A lot of novellas that sell right now are written by authors writing stories that don't quite fit in their regular novels, such as what I've done with some Stormlight Archive novellas, and those have sold very well. But they're already selling on my name. You'd have a lot more trouble doing that without a book to support it. So there's a whole bunch of context. I hope you can piece together from that a strategy for yourself.
QUESTION 3: I wrote the first draft of a book that I fear ended up being too close to a mega best seller in plot structure, but not in terms of my protagonist. In publishing, is it a really bad idea to try to pitch a debut novel that comes close to a super best seller?
BRANDON: No, this is generally not a bad idea. It depends on how close though. If you had the exact same idea as Hunger Games, and everyone who reads the pitch is just going to be like, "Oh, it's just Hunger Games again," you might have trouble. However, my instinct says generally authors are more aware of this than readers or publishers are, and authors are more sensitive to this than readers or publishers are. My guess is that it's probably fine, not having read the book, that the plot structure being similar as long as your protagonist and your setting feel distinctive, you really shouldn't worry as much as you probably are.
QUESTION 3: Does this mean my idea is not fresh?
BRANDON: Well, no idea is super fresh. Everything's been done before. Your take on it is important. That said, some ideas do feel well worn. This is the problem with me giving advice without knowing what the idea is. Once in a while you'll have something, and it goes out, and everyone's like, "This just feels like we've done this too much." And that could be a problem. It's not like I think it's likely to be, but it could be.
QUESTION 3: Did you shoot yourself in the foot?
BRANDON: No. I think you should try to query your book, or you should if you're trying to indie publish, either way I would give the book to some readers and see if you can get some readers. See if you can trade some readers on some places, and see if, without you telling them, they pick up and be like, "Wow, this reads exactly like X." And see if they're bothered by it. If they even write back and be like, "You know what? I loved this. It reminded me of X," you're in good shape. That's not a problem. So I would not do a major rewrite. I would stick to your guns and tell the story that you wanted to tell, and make sure that you've got your distinctive voice in your protagonist and, you know, some of the details and the setting and things like that, and see what people say. See if you're getting the, "It feels too much like X." Again, my guess is not. So go forward. I think you're fine.
QUESTION 5: At what point should you try to find an agent? Does your book need to be ready to be published (already through alpha and beta readers)? Along with that, how do you find alpha and beta readers and what distinguishes the two groups?
BRANDON: Excellent questions here. So at what point should you try to find an agent? It doesn't have to be publication ready. But if you're planning to use alpha and beta readers, I would have gone through that already before I sent it out, personally. I am a big believer in them. I should point out there are some authors--I did say this in the lectures--that do not like doing this at all. So your process may not work with alpha and beta readers. But how do you find them? Generally, I found the majority of my early beta readers by working on a science fiction magazine at the local college. If you happen to be at college, you know, or whatnot, and there is a local magazine on campus, a lot of them have them, going and volunteering and becoming part of that, and learning, like actually doing the work, reading slush for them and seeing what new writers are submitting right now to slush that's getting rejected and being like, "Hmm, what can I learn from that? What's getting bought? What can I learn from that?" You know, when I say "bought" for these student magazines, usually it's, you know, a $25 gift certificate. But it is getting, you know, passing through, and people are reading it and liking it. What's working? And get to know that group. Find that sort of thing. Find the con crowd who puts on science fiction conventions and see if you can volunteer for the writing track. Now one thing I should warn you about is long-established writing groups and things like that tend to have ossified, in a way, and may not be as good for a new author entering in to that group. They have their own ways of doing things. And, you know, there is this sort of long-standing writing groups that have become support groups for people who are solidly in the amateur space and after many years have kind of settled into that role where they know they're doing this for amateur work. If your goal is to straight up publish and make a living at it, some of those sorts of groups might not be good for you. I would recommend that you start mingling online with people who are, you know, themselves writers. And it is a hard process to find early readers that are good. Because too many early readers don't know that their job is just to read the book and give their gut impression. They instead want to change your book or try to fix your book. And that is not what a beta reader should be doing. Beta readers should just be giving their honest opinion on how they felt reading the book. And you shou8ld never be listening to any one beta reader too much. What's the difference between an alpha and a beta? Alpha, for me, are people who are industry insiders. When I say alpha reads, I am giving it to people who have a long relationship with me, and they know what they're doing in the publishing industry. And I let them say, "You should do this. You should change this." Beta readers I don't want to hear that from. Beta readers are a test audience. They're just people that are the market that would like my book, and how did they feel? Where were they bored? Where were they excited? That sort of stuff. As a new writer, it's going to be hard for you to get a large group of those, because you are competing for their attention with published books. So usually you're going to have some hybrid between what I just described, and you're going to find other authors who you're going to be trading books with, and you're going to be giving feedback on theirs, and they're going to be giving feedback on yours, even if it's not in a writing group situation. It is one of those things that's hard. You can start with your family and friends as well. Just know that it's hard for them to be objective. So don't let your beta readers ruin your book. Don't listen to any one of them too much. But you do want to try to get a feel for what people--how people respond to your work and what you think of those responses and how to interpret it. Remember that beta readers are generally bad at picking out what is wrong, but they are good at picking out that something is wrong. Usually they'll have the wrong reason why they don't like something, and that's where that problem comes in. Right? You can probably see how that would go. If they are right in noticing that the book is slow for them, but they're wrong in saying you should put in an action scene because the reason it's actually slow is you've made the wrong promises, or this feels like a tangent, you might go through and fix it as the way that they suggest, but then just make more problems and not fix the one that's there. So at what point should you try to find an agent? I talked a lot about those but did not answer that question. I would say--oh, I did answer it. Once you are comfortable that another draft on this book would be taking a lot of sideways steps instead of steps forward. For most authors, I would say--we're not talking, like, twelfth draft. We're talking, like, third or fourth draft, is where it's probably time to start looking at an agent if that's something you want to do.
QUESTION 6: Regarding bios on pitches and query letters, how relevant is academic publishing?
BRANDON: Not at all unless you're writing a book that is very related to your academic publishing.
QUESTION 6: I'm an academic researcher with plans to publish articles and maybe a manuscript of my thesis before publishing fantasy.
BRANDON: Again, if you are a medievalist writing about a specific time period and you have genuine expertise--. Like, if I were a professor of Anglo-Saxon history, say, and I have written what I consider a very good Anglo-Saxon inspired fantasy, I would mention it just like that.
QUESTION 6: I'm not sure if I should mention or show that I've gone through the peer reviewed editing process, for example.
BRANDON: Nope. They don't care. They really don't. That's probably given you some good experience, but--. Unless, for instance, let's say that you are--you've done all of this research on quantum mechanics and you're writing a novel that involves that, then I would include it. But let's say that what you do is you are an academic researcher for, like, you know, pharmaceuticals and whether these sorts of drugs work in this situation, but you're writing an epic fantasy. They're not going to care. And I might put in my bio about who you are, but I definitely wouldn't put it in such a way that they're supposed to think that this is relevant.
QUESTION 7: How would negotiations work for special editions of your book through a company like Folio Society or Broken Binding? Would those be negotiated into your contract or would those be negotiated later if the books sell well enough?
BRANDON: I recommend keeping those rights with New York publishers. That is, as I'm told, much harder to do than it used to be because of me, and I apologize for that, me doing giant special editions. I'm like the way that George Lucas, like--. If you've heard the story about Star Wars, they didn't really do merchandise for movies back in the day. George Lucas kept him merchandising rights and then they made billions. No one ever let a filmmaker keep their merchandising rights after that happened. Back in the early 2000s, special editions just, you know, even with some places like Subterranean Press and Folio Society, they just didn't--they weren't such huge money that the publishers even cared about them. Generally the money coming in was small enough that negotiating the contracts was a bigger hassle and cost more in lawyer time than the money that would come in. And so when I said, "I'm going to start keeping these," my publishers were just like, "Yeah. Sure. Fine." And then I went on to make a very large amount of money off of them. And a lot of companies started up that were doing this. Again, I can't take credit for Folio Society. They've been doing this for a long time and doing excellent work. But definitely some of the more popularized ones that are doing special editions started up, in part, because of what I did. This makes it much harder to keep your rights. I would recommend that you do it or at least put into the contract what it looks like. Generally, these, for someone like Folio Society, they only do kind of the best of the best. And therefore, if you are lucky enough to have Folio Society want to make one of yours, then you're in a good spot. But, of course, they sell a lot of their editions for, like $700, for that reason. I would try to keep them. If you fail, I would try to have good language and your agent or your attorney will know how to put that language in.
QUESTION 8: How does the publishing industry feel about authors who are self-published and making a good living at it when they start trying to move to more traditional publishing?
BRANDON: These days, the attitude is very positive toward indie authors, in my experience talking to indie authors. Your mileage may vary. You may still run into--I think most of these are gone--but for a long time the publishing industry was like, "Oh, you're self-published? Whatever." And they've moved away from that and seeing indie publishing as kind of a way to find the best and try to coax them into traditional publishing. So how do they feel? They see these days as indie publishing is one of these sort of these--they would consider it a proof of concept, a place where ideas are proven and stories are proven, and a place for them to look for things that they can buy. That puts you in a pretty good position because you don't have to say yes. If you are self-publishing and making a good living at it, then you can be very, very picky. And I would talk with some authors who have made that jump and see what they think about it, and whether they are glad that it happened or not. So yeah. I would point you toward them. But generally, the attitude is positive. I mean, Fifty Shades of Gray was so successful that Random House gave a $5,000 check to every employee in the entire company. We are talking about thousands and thousands of people.
QUESTION 9: If I live in a foreign country, how hard is it to publish in the US and other English speaking countries?
BRANDON: It is hard. Not impossible, but it is hard. The main trick you're going to run into is getting your story into English. Because the US sits in this kind of privileged position in the publishing industry where the US has enough and strong enough of a market that it doesn't need to look toward foreign published things in order to sell to its audience. Because of that, only the things that sell the very best in foreign countries do US publishers buy and take on the cost of translation. If you are writing in English, then the difficulty is not much higher than it is for everyone else. If you are already writing in English, your difficulty is people who live here have a better chance of being able to meet editors and agents by going to conventions. It's just cheaper for them to do. And that is still a way that a lot of people get published. But editors aren't caring where you're from. They're caring how good the story is. And they will not, in my experience, look with any prejudice on a book from a foreign country, as long as the book is good. Sometimes, you know, having an advocate locally, if you have some author friends who are published, and you are published in your country, they can facilitate. Like Three Body Problem coming to the US was helped by Ted Chang quite a bit, and things like that. So yeah. That sort of thing. But if you're writing in a foreign language, you'll have to get it into English, most likely, and take that expense upon yourself before you can submit it in the US. Or you're going to have to sell really well in your local language, enough that, you know, the people who have made it over here are like Sapkowski-level sales, or Three Body Problem, or, you know, Cornelia Funke from Germany. Some of these authors have made it in translation. It just--it's a little stacked against you because the US publishers don't have to pay for books and translation. And the publishers in other countries generally will pay for that translation for an English book going to their language, because they have the proof of concept in the US market of something selling really well.
There you are. Thank you for your questions. Those were excellent questions. And, once again, thank you so much for hanging out, being in the comments section. I actually get your comments still to my phone. I don't respond that often. But all the comments on YouTube videos come to my phone. They tend to come in a flood, and I only see, like, one out of a hundred. But I do glance at my phone now and then and see what you guys have written in the comments section. So thank you for that. Thank you for what you have to say. Thank you for your participation. Keep writing. I know it's a hard world out there for publishing. And I give you my best. And hopefully this has been a good resource to you. If you have helpful feedback, or other answers to these questions, leave them in the comments, particularly if you--we had a couple of questions from people writing overseas, trying to maybe break into the English market or things like that. If you have experience there, please share your experience. I would love to hear what you think, people who have done it. Same thing with the indie authors. If you've been thinking of going traditional, or if you have gone traditional and either have gone back to indie, or if you have experience in that realm and you are watching these, please post your thoughts. Your experience trumps my theory. So I would like to hear what your experience is. We'll be back in probably five years, maybe more, to do another round of recordings of my lectures. So these are the ones that will stand as our newest lectures for the next five years. And I hope that they will be a long-standing resource for everyone in the industry.