Transcription
Hey, Brandon here with the final lecture in my writing lecture series, writing science fiction, fantasy. This is the final Q&A. We're going to cover anything anyone wants to know from me. So, last lecture, you made it all the way. Hey, welcome to your last [Applause] class. This is the end of writing science fiction fantasy. um if you have one of those waivers, make sure to drop it off before you leave. Um put it up here and if you haven't signed one, we'd appreciate it.
All right, so this is the final big Q&A. This is um I've got some of your questions on here that'll seat us and get us started. And then you get to ask me whatever you want for our last class period here. Except you, you don't get to ask anything. He he's one of my employees. I can do that.
Um, so we're going to begin with if you were breaking in now as a new author, how would you go about doing it? This is an excellent question and um it's a hard one to answer. For the longest time, I recommended a hybrid approach uh that I recommended. This was back when indie publishing was working just a little bit better than it is now. Um, I would recommend that authors write a book and if they were interested in both traditional and indie, they would take that book, query it, if it didn't go anywhere, stick it in a um a pile and query the next one and do that until they had enough books to launch a career indie publishing where you generally need to do a big blitz at the beginning and have a backlist that can sell off of offering the first one free or heavily discounted. that's still probably your best method.
Um, that said, indie publishing has um is not as lucrative as it once was. As a general body, it still is. In fact, more people are buying books across the board than they ever have. More people are making a living at writing uh fiction than they ever have in the past. But there are a lot more people publishing than there ever have been before. And um this means that the New York publishers generally are in our experience dropping authors faster with even with decent sales because the New York publishers are focused so much more on best sellers than they used to be. the sellers were always important, but now, as I kept keep saying with indie publishing taking a bunch of the mid list, a lot of the publishers can't make a living um or make the money they they need on the mid list. So, instead, they're dropping authors and always hunting the new best sellers.
Meanwhile, the indie publishing world has required more and more money upfront than it used to. Uh, and more and more money on ads and more and more savvy on public the publicity end even than it used to require. Um, so in some ways it's the best time ever to try to be a writer because like I said, more people are making a living. Yet it seems harder to break in than it ever has before, which is a weird dichotomy. And that might just be because the market is so crowded. It favors those who have momentum even more than it used to because no longer do you have the bookstore browsing as a kind of gateway. Uh for the longest time, you could only fit so many books on uh a bookstore shelf. Therefore, you had a certain number of sales you could count on just by people browsing the new releases shelf. Now the internet can hold any number theoretically of released books in a week and so uh this leads to just a lot of crowding of the market.
Uh I don't want to be down on uh trying to make it as a writer. Uh as I've said before this is a this this class part of the reason for it is to say yes you can do this. That's what I needed to hear from Dave when I took this class in uh 2000 was yes it's a real job. It's a job you can do, but breaking in has never felt as hard as it does now, uh, because the market is so crowded.
So, what would I do? I would probably still, um, try a hybrid approach. And I would, if you were very serious about being professional, learn what is selling in indie and how right now people are making uh, breaking in in indie, which are things I can't answer. Um because uh what what I'm not as familiar with is what is working. I'm I'm familiar with what worked five years ago, but learning what works right now. It's like the people in the trenches are doing that right now. If uh India is not at all interested interesting to you, then hunting agents is your best uh goal. Um and that is a miserable slog. Uh but that is your best your best method of breaking in. And to do that, I would start looking at good conferences in your region that regularly bring agents out that offer things like pitch sessions with that agent um and things like that. Uh locally here in Utah generally, uh writers for young readers and story makers and futurecapes are three of them that will consistently do that. I have editors and agents out. uh you'll have to look where you are and find the ones, but those conferences tend to be more expensive than other cons. You can buy a ticket to ComicCon for fairly cheap because they make all of their money off of the vendor hall and people spending there. The conferences don't have that. They so they make their money off of the ticket sales. So, you pay a lot more to get into one. So, that's what I would do right now. Um, is I would be I would be studying a lot about the market. Don't ever let that impact your writing. You need to learn to be consistent, but I'm assuming you are already consistent and uh it's about how you want to break in.
What is a mistake you made as a writer into get into publishing that you wish someone would have warned you about? The very first book I ever sent to anyone was to an agent that I had not done my research on. And fortunately, they it didn't didn't go anywhere, right? Um, but it was an agent that um didn't live in New York. And not all the best agents live in New York, but most of them do because as we talked about last week, generally agents need to be keeping their finger very closely on the pulse of publishing. So, an agent living, and I'm not going to say where they live. I don't want someone to track them down, but in a medium to small size town uh uh in the region where I am could not sell my book to anyone. And I won't go so far as to call them a scam. Uh I will go so far as to call them a well-meaning individual who thought maybe they could help people get published, but uh realistically was just a waste of time. Uh so that was a mistake I made.
One of the other things that I think slowed me down was not learning to revise. Uh being kind of a classic uh architect writer, I would want finish a book and be like, "Oh, I can just write the next book better than this one." And would start the next book. And the fact that um I realized eventually the best writers I knew were actually the best revisers. They're the people that can take a good book and make it excellent. Made me really sit down and teach myself revision, which is still my least favorite part of the process. Uh, but it wasn't until I learned revision, learn to take a good book and make it great that I got published. So, there's a couple of those.
Why don't we do a couple here? Uh, if you guys have questions. Yeah, go ahead.
What would you say is the best way to learn revision then?
Uh, best way to learn revision. So this is partially um unfortunately like everything else trial and error. So you learn revision by looking at feedback you get on a story trying out some of that feedback and seeing if it makes it it makes your story better. And if it does say okay why did that work? What what was good about this feedback? And then trying it a lot of times with different kinds of feedback and seeing what makes your book better and what doesn't. The trick about this is generally you're not going to be able to do this after you've written only one novel because you won't have the instincts yet for what makes a good book or what works for you. And so in part I don't know if I could have learned it much earlier. You need to be building instincts in yourself as a writer that what what makes you write good stories and then you need to have enough experience so that when you do a revision you know if it's better or not. um soliciting more feedback can be helpful on that. But again, beta readers and this sort of feedback is not best for everyone. It works very well for me, so I emphasize it. Some authors hate it. In this case, you find just a couple of very good alpha readers. You trust their instinct. You try revising and see if you think the book is better, if that makes sense. And so, it's just uh it's a matter of of practicing and seeing what makes a book better for me. What different strategies? Try different strategies of revision such as try the 10% cut. Is your book better if you go line by line and try to cut 10% using a spreadsheet out of every chapter? Is it not? If you're a short story writer, that probably won't make your book better. A short story writer that jumped to writing novels. For a lot of novelists, uh that can force you to look at your language and say, "Am I repeating myself? Where's my passive voice? Am I using too many um verbs that don't mean anything?" and that sort of stuff.
Go ahead. Yeah. Um, kind of along in that vein, um, I know that you've shared like prior versions of your books before, like King's Prime. Yep. Um, is there any resources other than that? Do you know like is it worth spending the time to like read a first draft of some of an author who's been share that and then read the published work and like is that is it worthwhile to read an author's first draft and last draft?
I'm not 100% sure, but I thought it might be. So, when we did um uh Shadows Beneath uh a collection that we did, we included every version of the story, including a redline version that showed what we changed. If this is valuable to you, you might want to try picking up a copy of that. Uh, I don't know if you can find, you'd want to get the print version cuz all four of our stories, um, me, Dan, Howard, and Mary Robinette, we did a version of first and last, so you could so you could see that. And I know mine has the track changes, um, like strikethroughs and things like that. Um, I hope that that's useful. I think it might be hard to find consistently um, ways to do that and, uh, ways to study that. I think doing it yourself is always going to be better than reading someone else's but maybe that'll be helpful. So there is a resource that we have there.
Go ahead. When you're writing your stories like say the one of the Stormlight novels, do you write it in a linear fashion or do you write one story arc and then another and then splice them?
Right. Do I write in a linear fashion or do I write by story arc and splice them? Uh Stormlight I always write by story arc and splice them. This is more work. I don't recommend it except for the fact that I have to do it on Stormlight because there are so many characters that I feel like um I would lose the threads of the character arcs. So when I can write straight through if there's only a couple of threads, I will or I'll write like one chunk and then jump. Um I have found that the amount of revision I have to do goes up if I write by uh story arc. This is because there is a natural sort of feeling of pacing you want to have in a book. And once you're splicing together a bunch of uh viewpoints, what you will find is one viewpoint has a nice pacing unto itself and then you mix it with another one, it just messes up the pacing um and in ways that take a lot of work to fix. So yeah.
Um, you mentioned that when you sign on with a agent Yes. that they have the first rights to the the books that you Yes. When you sign up with an agent, you are signing up as a person with an agent, not for a specific book. So my question is how did you handle that with your secret projects?
How did I handle that with uh my secret projects? They were not published. I didn't look for contracts with New York. So the agenting is uh and these were kind of a special case. I don't know how all agents respond, but I didn't go when I sold the new the rights to New York. So, with the secret projects, you'll see there are editions in bookstores. I went through my agent and when uh I self-publish them, usually agents, and you can be very upfront with agents, most of them their contract won't include anything you're indie publishing. You're just completely uh blanket. And what they want is if you're going to go handle negotiations, if they're you're going to use an agent, you're going to use them is kind of what the contract is saying.
Did your secret projects affect your relationship with your agent at all?
Uh, did my secret projects affect my relationship? No. Uh, Joshua was well aware. I do lots of indie publishing. Um, and Joshua. Oh, look who it is. Sorry, I shouldn't uh highlight you. Uh, this is nobody important except the most beautiful woman in the world. Um, yay, Emily. Um so no but I did inform him early. Um Joshua was well aware of our uh strong independent publishing uh thing and he had been along for the whole journey. Uh Joshua is also a bit of a strange duck. Um and I say that with the most affection possible. Everybody who knows him is nodding. Um um Joshua is a bit of strange duck and he basically lives to be an agent. He has like no life other than being an agent. I mean he does have his board game night but I think he canceled that even during co right like he does he lives drinks breathes everything. What can I do for my clients? And it is always about what can I do for them? He is very serviceoriented. Um, and Joshua you know if there's a a place that he there's not service he can a service he can perform then he is totally fine with that. and he's been very clear with me. He doesn't want to stand in the way of any of that. But he also knows that I'll use him when I when I need to. When we are having really complicated contract negotiations with Spotify because you know the whole Audible thing, he handled those for us, right? Uh, and any contract he negotiates, then he gets his cut of um and there are authors for whom Joshua is only their foreign agent. He doesn't handle any of their US because they are strongly independent published. Um, like the Sullivanss I believe use him for foreign agents and things like that. I can't get quoted on that 100% but I think Michael J. Sullivan that's what he does. Um, and Joshua where he can be of service he is of service and he he knows he earns his money so he's not he he doesn't feel insecure. Um, but you know I think that the the relationship with the publisher is more what someone would want to worry about in that instance. Um, and we did approach them earlier um be before everyone else and we explained to what we're doing and they would of course rather us have done everything through them but they knew and they know uh that they can't handle everything that uh that my aspirations will want to uh include. So the I am a very strange case. In your case, if you go with an agent, just make it clear. I want to be indie publishing also and I don't consider you know that uh part of the agency contract and they almost certainly will be just fine with it. Mhm.
Did your agent help you with your Kickstarter campaign?
Did my agent help with the Kickstarter? No. We did all of that ourselves. If he had helped, um I would have expected him to take a percentage. Um, but at the same time, he doesn't know Kickstarters. That's not a thing that agents really do. That's an indie publishing thing. And so I I I wouldn't be surprised if more agents are learning about it because of what we did. But when we did it Kickstarter, there there are definitely people who are doing it before us and years and years and years before us. But uh we did change the market pretty dramatically when we did it. So I wouldn't be surprised if more are paying attention now. But back then, an agent had would have had no idea what to do with Kickstarter.
Good question. How is it that day you were so successful with Kickstarter?
How were we so successful at Kickstarter? Okay, big question. Let me uh break it down for you. The first and most important thing to be successful at Kickstarter is to already have an audience. Kickstarter generally is bad uh at least in the arts for people who don't already have a way of reaching an audience. Um, and so that's the most important with some fields. You can have a Kickstarter where you don't have an audience already, but if you look at the top Kickstarters in the creative fields, they're all people who had audiences. The things that go high that aren't are some sort of big tech device. And in those cases, the number two thing that makes a Kickstarter successful is uh managing to get press coverage. Um, press coverage is really important for a crowdfunding campaign like that. um, we didn't need it as much because we had the built-in audience. But if you don't, then you have to be appearing um in all the major like media um and getting all this attention and things like that in order to do very well on Kickstarter or other crowdfunding campaigns. So, there was that. My video that I did at the start was very good at going viral. Uh more so even than I anticipated. um uh faking out my fans and making them think that I was that I was retiring uh turns out was super mean, but it really made them want to prank their friends and send the video to them. And so having a really big viral video was a super uh help. Um, but number three that makes a successful crowdfunding is having the infrastructure in place already to build the thing and fulfill. Uh, when Kickstarters go wrong, it's because they overestimate or I should say they underestimate how much work it will take and overestimate how much they can do. And because of that, they don't factor in the actual cost of the thing. They don't factor in shipping costs correctly. They don't factor in um all of this stuff that can that syncs Kickstarters. We were able to do it because we had already for almost what we had when did we laced our first one? 7 years. 7 years of already doing fulfillment on our own books. Yeah. Cuz Yeah. Um, and so because we had already had this whole infrastructure in place. It meant that we knew what our limitations were, how long it would take us to get books, what it would take to ship them and all of that. So for a newer author, do I recommend uh Kickstarter? I generally wouldn't recommend Kickstarter until you have at least a small audience. Once you have a small audience, you can move to doing a crowdfunding, but I would recommend highly already having a business in place where you sign people's books and ship them to them so that you know what it takes to take a load of books to a to a mail room. Who's laughing? Yeah, somebody is laughing. I'm looking over here at some of my fulfillment team. Like going to the post office with a giant crate of books sometimes is uh you need to make those contacts and things like that and be doing that consistently. So if you have a small business uh as a writer and you're selling ebooks, 10,000 copies a year, it's where you know it's kind of your threshold for really going pro as uh an indie author. Um, and you say I want to do a Kickstarter for a print edition. you're thinking that I would recommend first getting some printed uh for one of your books and saying, "I have these. Let's start selling them on my website signed to get you copies." And get used to doing that before you do the Kickstarter. And then you're um you're kind of in this big position where you need to fulfill on a deadline. when you do Kickstarter, don't overpromise on your rewards for the Kickstarter. Um, that's another thing we were very careful on. Um, building in money for like when people do a Kickstarter often it's like, "Hey, I don't want just the thing. I want to get extra cool stuff." Um, and so building that in. So, there's a whole lot of resources out there, but for an author, get an audience first, even if it's a small one, and then get experience shipping to people before you do it. You can, if you have a successful Kickstarter, use some sort of fulfillment group that you ship the books to them and they fulfill for you. They will take a large chunk of your money. And I do not know how that works because we haven't ever used one. So, all right.
Yeah. just from like a writing as a business perspective, what would you recommend especially for indie or new authors in order to build that audience?
Building your audience as an indie or new author. Um, so one thing that I would recommend is kind of deciding and you can't do all this because some of this will be artistic concerns. You will have artistic artistic concerns override um any business concerns. Okay. uh, but picking an idea that is your brand. What is it that you are going to be doing? Uh, even if it's not um not necessarily the only thing you're doing like I do think it was advantageous to me to be like hard magic systems that we approach in interesting ways from a lot of different viewpoints are how Brandon's books are going to work particularly early in his career. And I kept a consistent tone uh across the epic fantasies to build a brand and say this is what you're getting. Uh, and I branched people out slowly, right? I didn't do trust of the emerald sea right early in my career. Uh, and I do think that was a help now that people are used to reading uh a variety of things for me. Releasing a book that has a wildly different tone was super successful. Um, but you know if um I think early on again artistic concerns set aside building and saying this is what I do consistently so that you can have people start to associate your name with something.
Build a mailing list. Mailing list should come before most other social media presences in my opinion because you have control over the mailing list and the people who are willing to sign up for it are the most dedicated of the people. if they're going to come and sign up for a mailing list, then be good with your mailing list. Um, consistently either send a newsletter or, you know, at least just inform people what you're doing and things like that and make it good value so that people want to open it, that your newsletter is not spamming them, that they're not getting something every 3 days like when you sign up for some of these uh these new letters like you know, you buy one thing off of AliExpress. Congratulations. 10 emails a day for the rest of your life, right? Um, so don't be like that. Send a really nice newsletter quarterly or something like that or monthly or whatever it is for your even if it's yearly consistently good newsletter so that you can then be able to say I have a new book out. I would appreciate your support. And here is the places where you can find it on sale. So the newsletter does value ads.
So after that, picking like um deciding if you're going to be a platform writer or not. We didn't talk about platform writing. Um, platform writing is one of the ways that you can make a name for yourself is by having a platform that you speak about on social media and upon on your blog. Uh, during the early days of indie publishing, a lot of people made their platform I am forging the path in indie publishing. Come to here to hear my uh blog to hear about indie publishing. That worked really well. You guys may know Larry Korea. Larry uh came to me. He was indie publishing uh way back way back when and I uh had a couple books out and he came to me and said, "I think I want to try traditional publishing here. Talked to me about it and things like that." And we had a really good conversation where he was be in the days before indie publishing doing really well indie publishing. And I said, "How did you do this?" And he's like, "Well, uh I like guns." That's an understatement, right? When I said to Larry, "Hey, I wanna um I've never fired an automatic weapon before and I'm writing a lot of books where they exist. Can you, you know, uh can I can you find a way for me?" He brought like 30 automatic weapons, okay, to a gun range with two of his friends who were experts in historical firearms and like a safety officer, right? and set up a tent and he was so excited and it was like just like fire all the guns, right? And he knew every one of those guns and he could tell me all about them and things. This is Larry. So Larry likes guns. What does Larry not like? When people get guns wrong in their fiction cuz he wants his guns to be accurate. And he eventually said, I want to write books where that are fun and exciting, but also they get the guns right. And so he went to the gunnut forums that he was part of and was like, "Hey, would you guys read a book if I did this?" And they're like, "Yes, the guns, people use of guns drive us up the wall, too. Write a book where people, you know, shoot monsters and use guns accurately." And so he did. And then he went back to them and said, "Hey, I wrote the book. It's this." And a ton of them bought it. And suddenly he um he became he started he blogged a lot. Um, and these days Larry's platform is gunn nuts and yelling at people on the internet. He's very good at that too. Um, buy the book. Scar. Did you buy Did you read Monster Hunter before it was a Bane book? I went to a gun show to get it physically. Scar went to a gun show physically to get it signed. Yeah. Writes Larry's a great writer too, but he also has this platform, right? Uh, by the way, if if you are of a certain inclination politically that maybe doesn't overlap with the people who love guns, you may not like his blog. So, you may just want to read his books and stay away from the blog. I'll just uh tell you that. Um, but he is a good example of what we call a platform writer. Uh, another great example of this is Corey Doctoro. Corey Doctoro uh was one of the in the early days of blogging of professional blogging. He was one of the first early professional tech bloggers. He started writing books kind of about open source and he was one of the forces behind the creative commons and things like this. And his books very much sort of tie into those sorts of things. Like he has a a whole book about like gold farmers in China for video games banding together to make a union, right? the Gold Farmers Union, stuff like that. Um, and so he wrote books that align with what his platform was as well. And so he would blog and draw like-minded readers that maybe are self- selecting into reading his blog who might enjoy the stories he's writing. And then he would release the books. And that's what what I call a platform writer. You are using something you are passionate about that you write about eloquently and interestingly as a platform by which you sell your books. And indeed most of you would call most politicians, most YouTube uh authors and things like that platform writers. But you can be, you know, writer first and platform second and still be a platform writer. I only this is if you're going to dig deep into social media, I recommend you be a be wanting to do it for platform writing reasons. Otherwise, it will both suck your soul and uh your time. Uh, but if you have a niche that you can get into that you can then platform on and you enjoy that aspect of it, you can then turn it into something that will help you sell your books. Uh, if you are not then I recommend mailing list, a website with um, you know, and a minimal social media presence um and not spending too much time on those sorts of things. Do some interactions. Um, but one of the questions you're going to have to ask yourself is why would someone go to my social media except to hear about my books? Once you get big enough, it can just be to hear about your books. But people get so much so much information and so much marketing that it's like, you know, what what's the value you're adding to their life? If you want people to follow your social media and things like that, if you're not sure what it is, keep it to a minimum. Um, don't invest too much effort in it. Maybe pick one platform and do a good job with it. Uh, you know, Tik Tok is the one right now for books, particularly uh books of a certain certain style. Um, I didn't mean that to be a joke, right? Certain things sell better on Tik Tok. Um, meaning uh certain styles of books like YA and new adult sell really well on Tik Tok. Um, epic fantasy sells worse on Tik Tok, but romanty sells well, right? Book club books, anything that someone can take to their book club sell really well on Tik Tok, right? Uh, so it's not like a specific genre. It's just like you know it when you feel it. what kind of book like uh would would do really well on uh as a thing and so if you're on Tik Tok and you can make funny videos then you can maybe platform uh with Tik Tok but if not uh don't feel you have to do it nothing will be better for your career than writing the next good book but you do have to do a minimum amount of this I that's why I say mailing list keep a website have sample chapters on the website stuff like that thank you yeah go ahead so do you see any value in going to conferences out of state to meet and talk to agents or can you find that online?
Do I find it any value in going out of state to talk to agents at conferences? This is going to depend on the value of a dollar to you. meaning um to a person who uh to whom a,000 bucks once a year to go to a conference outside of the state is not a hardship then it's probably worth your time because you will you will be able to go to like the bigger the city generally the better the conferences will be. We are lucky in Utah that we have a pretty vibrant writing community and so we have I feel above average um conferences. Generally areas where books sell well will be the same. Pacific Northwest tends to have a better than average um writing conferences for that reason. Um, but otherwise you know New York, Baltimore area, um Boston area pl you know um places with large population centers and uh things like that are going to draw the agents cuz the flights are easier, right? Um, and East Coast is going to draw more agents than West Coast because the flights are easier. They can hop on a train and they can, you know, they can head up to head up to Boston and do a conference up there. And so watching for and learning, this is one of the things I would say. Someone said, "I want to break in." Learn the names of the agents. Learn the names of the agencies. Um, do what I said last week and have your little black book um that has a list of all the agencies that are selling books right now by new authors you can find in bookstores and the agents who work there. And keep track of of conferences that are consistently getting these people. Put them on your list to check every year to see who the agents going. and then you can spend the money. But there are some people in this room for whom $1,000 is just an enormous hardship. In that case, um staying locally, uh if you happen if you live here, if you live in one of these other places I mentioned and going to those, they will try to get different agents every year. And your bang for your buck is probably better at the local ones, but you know, if you can spend the money, uh this is an industry that will take as much of your money as you're willing to spend, so be careful, right? Um, but uh I do find value in it. Conferences I elevate above cons right now for professional development. Um, I am going to World Con this year. I'm going to scope out how I feel it is for new authors just by kind of watching um and seeing and hopefully you'll be there too cuz you can tell me the new agents that I don't know. um and be watching and see who's there because it's in Seattle which is a big enough city that we might draw a decent number of uh agents senators and then I'll know better for next year uh in the pre-COVID era what percentage are going to WorldCon. Used to be Worldcon was one of the better places to go and it might still be uh, but that's only if you know how to network where the other ones you don't have to actively network. you can buy a slot in a pitch session uh with that rather than find your way to a party and see if you can find someone to talk to who can actually help you with your career. And that's hard and that's really stressful. One of the most stressful parts of my life was going to these conventions and being like, I can barely afford this. I need to walk out of this having met editors and be able to send my books to them. And that was just like a giant boulder upon my back at every one of the conventions. Yeah. Uh, what if anything can you get away with changing between your first and second books?
What can you get away with changing first and second books? You can get away with anything. That's how this industry works. That's how the world works. Um, you can get away, but what are the consequences, right? Um, there are pros and there are advantages and disadvantages. there pros and cons to uh to each each method. Um, so what are the pros to swapping? Training your audience earlier and or having not all your eggs in one basket are both very viable reasons to have your second book be different. I would recommend your third book, not your second generally. Um, if you're going to if you really want to write YA or middle grade and your other is going to be adult, I would do two in a row and then branch out. But if you really want to branch out, this doesn't put all your eggs in one basket. Uh, there was a point in my life where I thought I was going to turn into a middle-grade author because Misbornne was not selling. And the Alcatraz versus Evil Librarians contract had been uh had been for 40 grand per book, which is basically that's getting to where I could live on that money, right? And so I'm like, well, I guess I'm a middle-grade author now. Uh, but then, you know, I lost my editor at Scholastic. she moved to another thing and the new editor and I didn't click uh very well and the uh though the first Alcatraz book just sold tons the second Alraz book barely sold anything which is why I eventually bought the series back and gave it uh to tour. Um, so yeah um what uh what are they the the what are the cons? Well, the cons are what I mentioned a little earlier, which is if you're starting to build a fan base, giving them something to latch on to to remember who you are can be really valuable. Uh, having them say, "Wow, I like this book and I like this book and I like this book." Means that they'll start to look for your books and things like that. they will accept if you're like if they see a middle grade, a lot of them just won't buy it and then and they'll look for your next adult one. As long as you got one coming, you can be fine. It's not super dangerous, but those are your pros and your cons, right? Uh, another one I haven't talked about uh that is val uh v valuable to think about is in the days before you publish, this might be even more valuable to you. Let's say you're set on traditional publishing. Do you want to write all your books in one series or not? Right? Uh I get this question now and then it's worth thinking about and let me give you two case studies about this. I early on thought well if I write a sequel to Alantress I can't send it to the editors who rejected Alantress but if I write a different book and they like Alantress or whatever even though they reject it I can send them this other book that's not a sequel. So my philosophy was write a whole bunch of first books that have SQL potential. That just gave me more books to be submitting out to the world. Um Naomi Novik did not do that. Naomi uh who is uh breaking in around the same time as me wrote uh Terrare. If you haven't read them, they're very good books. They are uh Patrick O'Brien, you know, naval master commander except with a dragon air force. It's about the dragon air force. What's that? So much better. Yeah, they are very very good. Um, yeah, everything's better with dragons. Um, she's a very good writer. She's written a she can write very widely in a lot of different things, but when she was uh trying to break in, she wrote temporary. And again, I'm going off of like third-hand accounts. I can't remember if I've even asked Naomi about this, but she, as I understand, then just wrote the sequel and just wrote the third one and then sent them in and a publisher, she had all her eggs in one basket. The publisher wanted the first one. She said, "I have two more." And the publisher was like, "Wow, these are all great. We have three books. We can launch you big." And they did the indie publishing thing back before indie publishing was was a thing. They launched like her first book like one month and their second book was like two months later or even the next month and her third book was like two months after that. She they launched them all in paperback and just flooded every market with them. They didn't do the traditional here's a big prestige hard coverver. It's like paperback, paperback, paperback. And because they had all three, they were able to leverage a lot of um kind of internal going to all their marketing teams and things like that. And they got cover blurbs from um as I remember, you have to uh look this up and double check me, Stephen King, Anne McAffrey, and Terry Brooks, which for that era, just like if your blurbs are Stephen King and Macaffrey and Terry Brooks say read this book, right? So she just exploded onto the scene um with this just huge marketing blitz, which is the way indie authors now do it. release a bunch of books really fast kind of as lost leaders to build a career out of. Um, and so you can see that that both have pros and cons. If someone had rejected the first temper, they're not going to look at the second temporary. But when she did sell, she had this backlog of great books that then she was able to leverage into bursting just huge on the scene. This is why she stomped me for the Hug or the not a Hugo. Uh, they don't even call it the Campbell anymore. whatever they call the rookie of the year award uh nowadays. Um, what it is what's it new author the new author award. Okay that's that's really boring. They should just make it a Hugo for best new author. This is what everyone's always said. But that's why she stomped me. And the other person who stomped me was Scholsey my nemesis. And Scholsey was a platform writer. He was uh this is going to date us. AOL's prof official professional blogger. He wrote professionally for AOL as their blogger and on his own blog he just started serializing his novel he'd written. Uh and an editor's like uh stop serializing this. I'm going to buy it. Uh I might be shortcutting some things. I think he wasn't planning to put the whole novel up. But uh and that's how he sold by having a built-in audience already. So of course when he when we were all up for the awards, he also stomped me. Um, and so that he became my nemesis. All right, other questions. Go ahead.
Um, so I get really confused and I've tried to straighten this out looking online, but I I get really confused what delineates if it's going to be YA, middle grade, right?
Okay, let me talk you through. Uh, the middle grade YA one is uh is much easier to delineate. Okay, middle grade are books that kids are reading that are given to them generally by adults uh that they know. Okay. the age at which so the line between YA and middle grade is that line where the kid doesn't want to get a book from a teacher anymore and wants to go read the book that they're not given. Okay. Um, and so middle grade is generally and it is a bit fuzzy but you can see um it generally covers maybe fifth grade definitely sixth and seventh grade maybe eighth grade. Uh, right it can go as low as fourth grade. So Harry Potter 1 is middlerade, but by Harry Potter 4, it's actually YA. Um, age of the protagonist minus two or three or sometimes one is about your uh your age group. Kids like to read about kids older than them as a rule of thumb. All of this gets broken. I think LRA from Dark Materials is like eight, right? Uh Ender is like what, eight or something? Say starts at six. When's he go to battle school, though? Okay. Yeah, that's like eight or nine. And that's that's considered YA. Okay. Um, and so really it's books targeted at a certain um age group. And so once kids stop reading what are handed them by adults and want to find them on their own or get them from friends, that's the big uh YA tradition. Another couple transition. Another couple of things is um middle-rade puppy love, yes. Dating, no. Generally, this is the age group where kids are like starting to be interested, but they aren't they don't want stories about that. Is this a kissing book? That's middle grade, right? Right. Where by the end they're probably okay with a kiss, right? Um, and um ya is fullon romance. Uh, ya is generally coming of age. I have to learn how to be an adult. Middle grade is gen generally whimsical adventure where the parents are either idiots or locked away somewhere, right? Um, um, and so that's kind of your differentiation. One other thing is YA is not edited for content despite what people may think. Some YA lines are and some um authors, you know, but a YA book doesn't mean clean. A middle-grade book does. Uh, ya, middle grade is generally edited for content. In fact, I don't know of any that aren't. Uh, YA lines generally aren't. That doesn't mean you, you know, you can write whatever you want and plenty of clean YA sells, but you shouldn't assume that YA means uh, clean. Um, and then the transition from YA to new adult is real fuzzy and then into adult. These just kind of turn into
Marketing, um, things. Generally, YA needs to get to the point faster. It does generally use fewer viewpoints, and it generally digs deep into one, maybe two characters' experiences very deeply as they are transitioning from child to adult. Um, and that's kind of the hallmark of what makes YA. But I mean, Andrew's Game is YA. His Dark Materials is YA. Uh, who knows, right? Uh, Wheel of Time would fit that, but it's published as adult, right? Um, like it's at that point, it kind of becomes marketing sort of stuff, and you talk the marketing. Shannon Hail famously submitted Goose Girl to Tor as an epic fantasy. You guys don't read Shannon Hail enough, otherwise you'd be laughing at that. Go read Shannon. Her books are great. Uh, this is a fairy tale retelling. Uh, and they're all like, um, make your protagonist a teenager and submit it to Bloomsbury. And she did, and she got published, right? Um, so, yeah.
What if you want to write in a more non-traditional way? There's like, because I know an example is like Cormac McCarthy. He wrote for years not making money, but now his books are more like popular than ever after he's dead. Like, is that style now, now profitable? Is that style now profitable? Cormac McCarthy. So, I mean, Cormac McCarthy is one of the greats, right? Um, and um, Cormac McCarthy is just like such a bizarre story, right? No quotes, right? Uh, just breaking all the rules and things like this, but it works. Um, is that style more marketable now than it used to be? Um, I don't know. I can't speak to literary fiction, what's marketable or not. I know that Norah, uh, NK Jameson has done a very good job selling very well in science fiction fantasy as, um, literary. So if there's a line that, which is a fake line that doesn't exist, but it kind of separates literary science fiction fantasy from science fiction fantasy that has some literary prose, she's definitely on the literary side. Um, whereas someone like Pat Rothfuss is on the commercial side with literary prose, and she is, she sells very well. She writes very good books. Um, I would say that in sci-fi fantasy, uh, NK Jameson is selling as well as she does has helped make a market for literary fantasy. Uh, but you could make the argument that Ursula K. Le Guin was doing that for years and years and years, and Octavia Butler, and some of these, and Gene Wolfe. Um, and that there's always been a market. It's just why does some things take off and some things don't is really hard to figure out. Uh, why did it take people long, so long to figure out Cormac McCarthy's books were amazing? I don't know. I haven't studied that market. But I can tell you there's a whole lot. Like Jane Austen was started off writing for her family, and only right before she died did she start to get popular. Right. Uh, and that, that unfortunately happens a ton to artists.
So, die faster. What's that? Oh, you should just die faster. Okay, let's, let's not, let's not take that as, uh, this. We'll go here and then over here. What's your opinion on trying to publish at Shadow Mountain or small? Let's talk about small presses. So there are, um, there's actually, uh, several ranks of presses, and they, I would call Shadow Mountain for those who are watching on the videos who don't know. This is a regional press, um, headquartered in Salt Lake, but they, they cover more of a range than a small press generally does, and they generally have hardcover, um, or no paperback contracts with New York publishers. So basically, they'll handle the, the hardcover distribution, and then they'll use the channels of the big publisher. So there are a bunch of kind of mid-size presses that do this. For the longest time, DAW was one of the big forces in sci-fi fantasy. They published Pat Rothfuss. They published Tad Williams, um, and things like this. Um, and they were an indie that was not one of the big five or big six, but had a distribution partnership of some manner. I don't know all the details with Random House, Penguin Random House. And so they could release their books out wide as if they were one of the big five, but they were not. And so there are some like this that are not one of the big five that can do things like that. Uh, I do locally, particularly if you're writing middle-grade or YA, recommend Shadow Mountain. Um, I've known enough people that have, uh, that have been there that have been pleased with their experience, and I've seen enough people go fully pro from Shadow Mountain to say that Shadow Mountain is a good place to publish. Watch out for your contracts. When you get a contract, make sure you have an agent. They aren't always the most up-to-date on what current contracts should look like. I'll say that. Um, their advances generally tend to be smaller. Um, and they do generally, um, use a lot more, uh, school visits and sort of grassroots marketing. Um, but I do recommend them. Um, I don't know of a lot of other regional presses that work. DAW DAW's had financial troubles lately, but they're still a very good publisher. Uh, Bane, that I mentioned before, functions like this. Um, generally, if it's smaller than those, I don't recommend them except for specialty books. Um, this is because for the most part, and your mileage may vary, there are some very good small presses out there. And sometimes you can be the name that helps launch a small press to a mid-mid press. Uh, this happened with Joe Abercrombie and, uh, Pyr. um, the small press that became a mid-level press that started to be a force in the market because Joe Abercrombie, uh, that they got the US rights started selling so well, um, and you can be that. But in general, in the internet era, publishing with a small press is essentially the same as indie publishing, minus you getting indie publishing royalties. So I don't recommend it because you will need to do all the same work that you need to do. Uh, the reasons to publish with a small press: Number one, you have something that just does not sell well otherwise, but the prestige of the right, prestigious small press can do it. Uh, some of them do very well, special editions. Some of them do short story collections, or an example of something that just doesn't generally sell well, but having a small press behind it can lend it prestige and actually help sales on a short story collection. Um, sometimes novellas work very well with small presses. Um, and just watch for ones that are reputable. I've worked with Tachyon, and I can say they were excellent. Um, this is a small press, um, out of, uh, San Francisco. Um, I think it's San Francisco. Might be LA. I can't, can never remember. Um, but they do, they do a very good job. Um, but I wouldn't publish my first epic fantasy novel with Tachyon, as much as I like them, because in general, you're just going to have to do all the same things that you would do indie publishing. You're gonna have to do all that work yourself because, yeah, if what you want is to have a nice-looking book that someone else does all the work for, that you're not trying to make a career out of this, a small press that loves your, uh, book and wants to just give it the best cover and the best editing it can, and you all know that in the best case, it's going to sell a thousand copies, that's totally fine, right? Uh, but it just depends on your mileage may vary. Okay. Okay.
Um, this is a more personal question for you. Um, today you signed my copy of Mistborn. Yes. And in it you wrote, "I am hope." Yep. And you're of course referencing your character, Kelsier. I put that one in quotes. It's him, not me. Yeah. So he says, "You can't kill me. I represent the thing that you've never been able to kill. No matter how hard you try, I am hope." Mhm. With this in mind, what would you say is your biggest objective as a writer? My biggest objective as a writer is to tell good stories. Um, tell good stories and make good. So, I actually got asked something similar on this on a podcast just recently. Um, I know I look out at the sea of faces, and I know all of you want to be where I am, right? Um, and statistically, most of you can't be. I have been given the shot to be in this, uh, in this position, and, um, see, yeah, I was, I'll, I'll, I'll talk a little bit after another question, kind of wrapping up. But I know you all want to, to be here, and so I need to make good on having gotten this opportunity, um, and do a good job with it, uh, out of respect for all of you who would happily take the spot if I didn't do a good job with it, if that makes sense. So, I just want to do the best job I can with my stories. Yeah.
Okay. Let's go over here. How reasonable is it to include things like maps or diagrams or sketches with your submission to a publisher? Um, maps, diagrams, sketches for a submission to a publisher. Uh, this is all going to depend on your caliber of artistic talent. Um, and we laugh about that, but if you are not of a professional caliber, I would not send any of that with a submission. If you are of a professional caliber and you know you even particularly if you have professional credits as an illustrator, then it's value-add, um, and they will want to see it, um, otherwise you don't want to do that generally. Um, I recommend if you sell with a New York publisher that you commission any art for the interior of your book yourself. Let them handle the cover. I recommend you work with that artist and get copyright to it, or at least licensing rights to it for all foreign publications and future, uh, editions of the book. So, and keep that contract handy so that you know, like, I love to protect artist rights. I don't like that a lot of places, uh, take artists, uh, you know, copyright away, but in this case, you should get a work-for-hire and have the copyright because you don't want to have to, if you sell in 30 countries, just being able to provide that map is going to streamline the process so much. So, I recommend paying well, getting a nice map, uh, and same thing with some interior, whatever interior art you want, and then having that copyright yourself so that you can, um, so that you can put it in all the books in all the different countries and things. All right? You can trust the publisher to do it. Your mileage may vary. I'm glad that I don't.
On a similar note, if you're a writer, but you're also an illustrator, yeah, for for a project, and, uh, like, like I pre-illustration, so that's going to be professional as well. Um, how easy would it be to get traditionally published that way, or would it be easier to do indie publishing when you're a writer and illustrator for a project that's not a children's book? If you're a writer and illustrator, is it better to indie publish or New York publish if you want to do both? Um, and I'm glad you left out the exclusion of children's books. Do be aware that except in rare cases, they children's book publishers, meaning, uh, children's books in the industry, by the way, is 18 and under. So just be aware that's how the vernacular goes, children's publishing. So picture books, you want in picture books, they do not want art with the text. They want one or the other unless you've really proven yourself. They're more okay with it nowadays than they used to be, but they used to just really hate it. Now they only mildly hate it. Um, if you're publishing in adult science fiction fantasy and your sketches are of a professional caliber, no one's going to complain. They might not let you do the cover because a cover, um, I don't think I've talked about this yet. The cover is not an illustration of your book. Write that down and underline it. The cover is a movie poster for your book. Just like Luke Skywalker never stands holding a lightsaber like this, um, in Star Wars. Your book cover is not an illustration. It is a marketing piece, and its job is to capture the right mood. It's your first tone promise for an audience. You can, if you want, argue that your character's left-handed, not right-handed. They got it wrong on the cover. But when you do finicky things like that, you're maybe misunderstanding. Okay. Interior art, they're much more okay with. I would still do my submission without it unless it's integral, right? Unless it's like, um, partially graphic novel in some way that you have to have it. Like Way of Kings, even with as much art as I have, I wouldn't have submitted with the art. Uh, but if it was a step beyond Way of Kings, I probably would have included it. Like Illuminae, it's not art, but Illuminae wouldn't work without all the redactions and all of this sort of stuff. Um, that's a famous one that, um, I, I think I talked about last week. Um, so in your case, um, if they love the book, send them the illustrations. Say, "I intend to illustrate this myself." Before you send the, sign the contract, make sure they're cool with it. It's basically what I'd say. And any publishing can do whatever you want. So, uh, in any publishing, you can do it. But, um, authors historically have not been as good at understanding their limitations in visual mediums as, uh, they think they are. Meaning, a lot of authors think they're better illustrators than they are. So I'll just leave that with you. Uh, that said, Christopher illustrated all of his books, I believe, and did the original covers. Uh, this Christopher. Yeah, it's extra hot today for whatever reason. Um, so it can be done. Um, and I would say if it's interior art and you're, you're good at it, no one's going to complain. And if they do complain, make it an in-world artifact. Just be like, "This, the character is not as good as the professional artist you want to hire, but this is their art." They might be more okay with that, right? Go ahead.
What suggestions do you have for consuming art, in order to, especially books, to learn better how characters and plot work? What advice? I mean, do I have? When you're consuming books, read widely. Read outside your genre, but don't read only outside your genre. Watch what people are doing, and start to think critically about books. Critically, not meaning, "This is terrible." Say, "Why did the author do this?" Make the assumption that the author is making the choices deliberately. They aren't always, but where criticism comes, it's usually better to go into the assumption of the author did this. Why did they do this? Why might they have done it? What would I have done differently? Or what can I learn from what they did? Um, and just start consuming media that way. Uh, you're probably doing it already. I don't know that I can give you more advice than that. Uh, because the more you do and the more you write, uh, you will hit this bump where reading stops being fun for you like it used to be, because now it's work. You will generally, if some are in that, uh, you, you generally will get over that, and then it'll come back. Most authors I know, the difference is, uh, if we compare my wife to me as readers, she has to finish anything she starts, no matter what the quality is. That's that's very common among readers. Among writers, we give up on books way earlier. We read a little bit, be like, "I'm not learning anything from this. I'm done." And we put it aside. And that, that's often one of the changes that happens to you. So, um, so, yeah. All right, other questions. Since we got just a couple minutes left. I, I've had a dream for a while to write a book sort of like Percy Jackson in the sense that anyone who reads it just learns about a topic extensively. Okay. Do you have any advice for a project like that? You want to write a book like Percy Jackson where someone who reads it learns about a topic extensively. Story comes first, topic comes second. If you're not a good storyteller first, it doesn't matter what the topic is. That would be my recommendation to you. Learn to write a compelling story, but then pick something you're passionate about. Um, make sure you're using all the tools we're talking about where you're not overwhelming with too much. Make sure the story comes first. You'll, it'll probably be a value-add if you do it that direction. So, yeah.
Uh, how do you prevent getting scammed by publisher companies? How do you prevent being scammed by publisher companies? Don't give them any money. Don't use publisher companies. Just don't, is my, my blanket recommendation. Um, find reputable editors who have worked on projects with reputable indie authors that charge a, um, a standard fee. Generally, it's by word or by page. I can't remember. Oh, it's by word. Um, by word. Um, have, give them a sample, pay them to do the sample, or see if they do one for free. Usually, just pay them to do a sample. They get back, and then hire that. Okay. Pay, pay money for that, and if you, and then like a proofread, copy edit, uh, if you do that separately. Um, again, people who have worked, who have good, um, you know, good pedigree. Buy, uh, artwork from a reputable artist. Um, often times you can get it cheaper by buying something that's not an exclusive license, right? Uh, finding people who are working, you know, like sometimes, uh, back in the day it was DeviantArt, now it's, uh, what's that other place? ArtStation. ArtStation. Uh, ArtStation is the good one. DeviantArt's terrible now. Um, it used to be good. Um, but now it's terrible. Um, sometimes you will be able to find people on ArtStation. They're like, "This is concept art I did for myself." You can go be like, "Hey, what's a non-exclusive license to use this for cover art cost?" Um, and sometimes like we would do this, and they come back and be like, "It's 50 bucks." And you're like, "For this professional caliber piece?" They're like, "Yeah." Um, and you'd be like, "What's exclusive?" They're like, "Uh, exclusive only for book covers. You can sell it to anything else." They're like, "Oh, you know, 250." And then you can get this like fantastic book covers. I haven't done that in a while. Um, but sometimes you can do things like that. Um, you know, or if you're lucky, or not lucky, if you, if you are writing in a field that doesn't require an illustrated cover, they can be photography-based. You can sometimes find people who are making professional caliber covers for pretty cheap using stock imagery that they buy and manipulate. But pay for your cover, cover title lettering and things, your cover design separate from your artwork. So cover design, artwork, substantive editor, copy editor, those are the things you pay for. Did I miss anything? No. Don't pay for anything else. Okay. Don't pay for a company that says they can do this all for you. Do it yourself. If you're in indie publishing, you are now a small business owner. Do it yourself. They will, um, the, your chances of getting scammed plummet if you do what I just said. And particularly if you ask other indie authors for who they're using for their editors so that you can get those, uh, recommendations. Okay. Uh, don't pay agents, don't pay publishers, pay editors and artists. You'll probably be fine. Right here. Yeah, we got a little time.
What about using AI art? For What about using AI art? Um, so, um, I'll try to be as even-handed as I can. Right now, you cannot own a copyright for an AI AI-created image. Um, and that's being contested in the courts. Um, AI art is generally been trained on the work of artists who object to that training, and for that reason is highly unethical, if not illegal yet. Um, and so, uh, what do I say? I say there are enormous ethical concerns to using AI art. Um, and you can't have a copyright for it, um, anyway. Um, and right now, AI art looks very much like AI art, and it'll make you look unprofessional. So all things are stacked against it. That last one will change, but I don't know if the first two will. So I recommend against that. Uh, I think you are much better off buying a package to a stock image, um, website, buying licenses to use the stock image images, and building a book cover that way than using AI art. But, um, that is, it's hard for me to be even-handed because I know so many of the artists who are so upset about the art being trained, the AI being trained on their art without their permission. So, uh, yeah. Go ahead.
If you were to go back to the early days of writing, what good practices would you establish for the organization of your thoughts and ideas? Uh, organization of my thoughts and ideas. I think this is going to be too individual to the individual. Um, I don't know what I would do. Like back then, I just used a Word file. Um, I found a wiki more helpful for me after I moved to that. But I would say more important than organizing your thoughts is like, what makes you productive, right? And so try the different programs, try the different, and try a Word document, try the post-it note method, you know, the Q or the index cards method. Not usually post-it notes. People have index cards that they, they, they use. Try a bunch of these things. See what makes you productive. See what doesn't distract you from the writing, and do that. All right. All right.
We're going to stop the Q&A there. Uh, and I'm just going to talk at you for five minutes. Okay. Um, how did we begin? We began with me telling you that as we enter this class, we are going to prepare, pretend that you are a professional for the course of this class. You're allowed to let that go now and go back to like, whatever your, um, your actual goals are. You have hopefully this information. These lectures are online. You can rewatch them. I say this because I want to both inspire you and be a realist. Almost certainly, several people in this room will go pro. Statistically, watching what's happened. That said, going pro doesn't necessarily even mean making a living. A lot of people sell a bunch of books and have a professional credit, but still have a day job. Um, and I got a comment on one of these YouTube videos recently that someone's like, "So, wait a minute. You're telling me, I think they just watched the first one. I need to work for 10 years to learn how to be a writer. Work for years and years, maybe another decade to sell a book, and then I'll finally have that book come out, and I might not even make a living. I'll make like 5 to 10 grand, and then the next ones, and that one might flop, and I won't even have a career after doing that. What kind of maniac would do this?" Right. And yes, right. I cannot be here and sell you a dream if that dream is being a professional author. There are, there are thousands of people outside that door that will try to sell you this dream. There are the people that want you to give them money in order to learn the secrets of publishing. There aren't any. Okay? The secrets of publishing are: work hard, be diligent over a long period of time, then get lucky. Okay? And even now, I cannot tell you what percentage of me getting published was diligent effort mixed with skill, and what part was the luck. It could be 90/10 on either, pretend I didn't go. It could be 90/10 on either direction. Right? I think I worked hard. I think I have natural talent. I can't tell you how, what percent that was behind my success. And so when you leave today, you're going to have to at some point, either you've done it, or you're going to need to do it in the future. You're going to have to make that decision that I did back when I was just finishing book 12. Do you guys remember the story where I realized, "Oh man, 12 books and not published. What am I doing?" Right? Should I have learned my lesson by now? And I did. I learned the lesson of, "I am writing because it is good for me. I'm writing because this is what I've built my self-identity around, a talent I have and an interest I have. I think it is legitimately good for me to do, and I am passionate about it." And I made that decision that I was going to keep writing for the rest of my life, even if I never sold a book. And if you are writing to sell a book, that's not enough. Certainly, you can want. I desperately wanted to, and you know, most of you in this room, I would guess, desperately want to, or at least very much so want to. That's not enough. You have to, in this business, be writing. If someone came to you today and said, "You are never going to publish, but your friends and family will enjoy the books that you write." Are you still willing to? You have to be somebody who's willing to say yes to that, because you know statistically, a couple of you will make it. That's two out of what? 200. And those two are going to fight, likely for 10 years, to even see if they can make it as a pro. Uh, talk to Rachel Aaron sometime about what it's like to sit there in those trenches and fight, even after you feel like you've made it. And it's excruciating. I went through that with Mistborn, and I came out the other end, uh, as again, one of the lucky ones. So that's the sad part, right? I am also here to inspire. This can be done. I was in one of those chairs in 2000. I didn't know what I was doing. Dave gave me the information, and I took it, and I sold. I would not have done so if he hadn't been a, told me it worked. It can be done. And it is not a one-in-a-million shot. It's more like one in a hundred of, of very serious professionals. You can do it. And if you can't control the market, which none of us can, what you can control is the satisfaction you get from writing, getting better with every story, building good habits, and being proud of the things that you create. I would bet there are millions of people in the world who want to write a book, and I would bet less than 1% of them do. If you finish a novel, you are among the elite, and you are my colleague. So, make that your goal, and we'll see where it goes from there. Thank you for taking the class. Good luck in your writing journey. [Applause]