Writing Excuses Transcripts

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/19-08-nanowrimo-revision-with-ali-fisher-working-with-an-editor 

 

Key Points: Working with an editor or agent! First, your agent and your editor and you are all on the same team, trying to make your book a better book. What's an edit letter? There are stages of editing, starting with developmental or structural. This tends to be broad structural questions. E.g. this character arc doesn't seem to line up with the rest of the book. These are often phone conversations, not letters. Edit letters should be a compliment sandwich, starting with what is good about the book, and ending with more things that are working. When the editor asks you to do something, can you say no? Absolutely. That helps the editor or agent know what is important to you. When the editor or agent offers a suggestion, they are asking whether you can come up with a better idea. Sometimes they offer ideas that they know are not good ideas, to help you react and find a direction. Suggestions identify that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. Ask questions! Sometimes "no, this is a terrible idea" shows that you are tired, and it's time to take a break. Editors and agents are people, too. Alignment comes with asking questions.

 

[Season 19, Episode 08]

 

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

 

[Season 19, Episode 08]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] A mini-series on revision, with Ali Fisher. Working with an Editor.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Ali] And I'm Ali Fisher.

 

[Mary Robinette] Now, I am very excited about this episode. Let me tell you what we are about to do. I'm about to ask DongWon and Ali all of the questions that I wish I'd been able to ask an agent and an editor before I had published a novel.

[Ali] [garbled]

[laughter]

[DongWon] We are so excited to answer these questions. I wish I could transmit from my brain all the information I know about how this process goes to every writer in the world. Because that's the whole point of this. We want them to feel comfortable coming into the process and see how it's not scary. Even though it is difficult at times, that we're all pulling for the same goal at the end of the day.

[Ali] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yes. I will say, one of the things that's straight off the bat, dear writers, that you should know is that your agent and your editor and you are all on the same team.

[Ali] Yes. It's true.

[Mary Robinette] You're all trying to make the same book a better book.

[Ali] Amen.

[DongWon] One of the reasons I wanted to have Ali on in particular is that we are working together on several projects at this point.

[Ali] Yes.

[DongWon] Having a sense of Ali's perspective, but also so that you guys can hear a little bit of the working relationship between an agent and an editor working together. I think there is this idea that is the agent versus the publishing house sometimes, and that it's the author versus everybody sometimes. The more that, I think, if we can find ways that… To be clear, that we are all trying to accomplish the same thing. That doesn't mean that conflict doesn't happen, that doesn't mean that there aren't problems. But at least we're starting from a place of understanding and conversation and alignment in what our goals are.

[Ali] Yeah. Yeah. Which doesn't mean that your agent won't advocate for you when needed and it doesn't mean that there aren't going to be conflicts of sort of ideas or like [garbled thoughts on] campaign, etc. Like, that's just smart people working together. But when it comes to the book itself and especially… I don't know, overall, I think, there's no question that success of the book is a win win win for the whole team.

 

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yes. So, writers, you've probably heard that at some point you're going to get something that's called an edit letter. What's an edit letter?

[Chuckles]

[Ali] Never heard of it. Sounds suspicious.

[DongWon] Sounds like to me…

[Ali] Well, DongWon, do you want to start with the types of, like letters or calls you do before I do?

[DongWon] Yes. So, I think, there are different stages of editing. Right? What we sort of think of as developmental or structural. Then, sort of like editing. What I tend to do is very much on the developmental stages. I love to be involved early in a project. Or when a submission comes to me, and it's a debut, then I'm doing a lot of structural edits working with the editor to make sure that the book is in a great place before we send it off to the publishing house. So I'm asking… I tend to be asking incredibly broad questions, like big structural questions, word count questions, of, like, can we add 20,000 words? Can we cut 30,000 words? Right? Like, that's scale of question tends to be what I'm doing. So, often times…

[Mary Robinette] Can you give some examples of what a structural question is?

[DongWon] Yeah. So, a structural question can be as much like, "Hey, I'm not sure this arc for this character is lining up with sort of the central themes of the book." Right? I'm being a little bit abstract. I'd say it more specifically of like, "This character's situation feels really disconnected with our protagonist's situation. Can we make that feel more connected, or should this be here?" Like, what are… What was your intention with writing this character into this book, and how are they tying into the rest of it? So that might be a structural question I'm asking that could affect an entire character arc, which is… A solution set could be rewriting that character's entire central conflict so that there arc ties more closely in. It could be cutting that character entirely, because we all realize that they're extraneous and were vestigial from a previous draft. Or it could be changing the central thematics of the book, because that character is actually really important and their arc is more important than the protagonist's arc, and we need to make those pull into alignment in a different way. Right? So, when I'm asking these structural questions, they are kind of that big and that broad about, like, "Hey, the pacing doesn't feel great here. The act two turn, the big reveal, isn't landing in an exciting way. This character isn't feeling like they're exciting and connected. This romance isn't working right, these 2 characters don't come together in the way that I kind of wish." So that's kind of what I'm doing at that stage. Because they're such big broad questions, and because I really do frame them as questions, not like, "Hey, do XYZ," I tend to do that is a conversation. So I'll get on the phone with the author. I know, everyone's dreaded phone call. I will have edit conversations that are 2, 3, 4 hours, sometimes. As we're really just talking through the book, like, what were you trying to do, what… How does this work? What are possible solutions? For me, those are some of the most exciting, most fun conversations I have. They're very difficult and stressful for me, and for the author, but in ways that I think are really energizing when they go well.

[Ali] Yes. So, not dis-similarly, by the time it comes to me, normally, it's in more polished condition or it is… It fits more firmly within the expectations of the types of things that the house that I work at publishes. Right? So, like, it tends to be in a state that is quite recognizable to me. Then I do a lot of the same things. I'm a different reader, different eye… A different sense of… Understanding about where the author's coming from or, probably a lot less understanding of where the authors coming from, and probably just a lot more sort of like generic reader experience. I'll ask a lot of the same questions, very high structural things. You mentioned worst-case scenario twice, and we never saw it. Which made me want to see it. So, something like that. Right? Then, all the way down to sometimes through sentence level style questions or suggestions, mostly for matching things up or, like smoothness, that kind of thing. Just, for anyone out there who's curious, I am an acquisitions editor and an editor, and not a copy editor. Bless them, because I am not nearly qualified enough to make sure a book could actually go to print. But, so a lot of the same things, a lot of the same questions. So brace yourselves, this is also a part where, I think, the agent turns into a little more handholding as someone's going back into…

[Chuckles]

[Ali] Revisions after they felt like we just finished, and then we went out and the book sold, it's so exciting. So, sometimes that happens. Similarly, I also… I love and I offer a phone call as often as I possibly can because an edit letter, even though those are really fantastic, and I've also obviously found that authors with audio processing issues or who just need the time… They just need to read it, they need to think about it, and otherwise it's just not a free flow conversation. Happy to write it down. But if we get the chance to have that conversation, you avoid sort of the asynchronous issue of my assumptions running through the entire thing, whereas there can be a quick, like, "Oh, I actually intended this," and then that changes a lot of my responses. Right? So, I guess all I'm doing is sort of pitching the concept of if you can muster the confidence or the desire to get on the phone with an agent or an editor, I do think it's a really helpful thing. If you can't, that's totally fine too. Edit letters themselves look really different, editor to editor, and, for me, book to book. Sometimes it is… I go through… I have big chunks that's like character A, character B. I'll have worldbuilding questions. Then, sometimes, they're 2 pages long, and it's like bullet points of, like, this is where I cried, this is… My one big question is this. And can you add like a whole section where she's getting from here to here? Because I was desperate to know more.

[DongWon] Yeah. Sometimes they can be really brief, like you were saying, like, one or 2 pages. I think my longest edit letter, back when I was at Orbit, I think was 25 pages.

[Ali] Whoa!

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] I think sometimes…

[Ali] Oh, my God.

[DongWon] Hey, I know people who wrote longer letters. You ask [garbled] sometime what the longest letter she wrote was…

[Ali] No.

[DongWon] So, sometimes, like having… Sometimes you just need to dig into lots of detailed things. Especially if you're going chronologically through the book, of, like, chapter 1, Chapter 2, like, breaking things down. Depending on the writer and what they need and what kind of conversation and what kind of changes you're suggesting, sometimes, a lot of details was called for. But the long edit letter, I think, is very rare, don't let that scare you. That was something that was produced in conversation with the author, I didn't just spring that on them.

[Chuckles]

 

[DongWon] But one thing that I wanted to point out about edit letters that's really important is what I think of as the compliment sandwich. Right? Where you start your letter with talking about the things that are good about the book, and hopefully you end the letter also with reminding the author, here are the things that I liked about the book, here's the things that are working. Right? I think… I see sometimes younger editors, newer editors, skip that. I think that's a huge mistake to do so. Because it's not just… We're not just like blowing smoke and we're not just complimenting you for no reason. It is… Kind of going back to what we were talking about last episode, it's showing that we are in alignment about what your intentions with the book are. If I'm telling you, here are the things that I think are working, and you read that and say, "That isn't the book I wrote. That's not what I was trying to do." Then nothing in between that compliment section matters anymore. Right? Because I don't understand what you were trying to accomplish, so all of my critiques aren't going to land now. Right? So those alignment sections are… Perhaps as important if not more important than all the critical stuff in between. It's not just to make you feel good. It is to make sure that I understand as deeply as I can what it was you were trying to accomplish, so I can help you write the book that you meant to write. To make it the best version of the thing that you want it to. So don't skim those compliments, don't cut them, don't not give them, if you're an editor yourself. I think they're really, really important and really interesting, and very fruitful conversations come out of them.

[Ali] Also, that's… I think I flagged this in our last episode, so we share credit, but it's also where I say, like, please don't cut this. Like, I love this. Like, I might be telling you to make some sweeping changes, and this could get caught up in that, and I don't want to lose it. So those are genuinely… I find those very important.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. As a writer, I can also say, that now I recognize that those compliments are some of the most useful things, because it is telling you what I'm doing well, and, as writers, we are spectacularly bad at understanding what our strengths are, because those strengths are usually things that come easy to us, so we don't acknowledge them as being valuable. Having someone else recognize that allows us to be like, "Oh. Okay. So that's something I'm good at. I should look for more places where I can do the thing that I'm good at."

[Ali] Yeah. It… A lot of parts of the process to focus on what could be improved or, like, what opportunities are there that aren't here yet. So it's very important to focus on the things that are there and that are working and can be expanded, like you're saying.

[DongWon] Yeah. Again, flagging the things that, like, this is great. This made me cry. This made me laugh. Like, as you go through the manuscript, are just really helpful, because getting… Somebody telling you the stuff that doesn't work about your book over and over again for a long period of time can be quite demoralizing. We understand that. So I encourage any people who are trying to be editors or agents out there to really remember that. Even [garbled] just like have your little notes of like, "Yay, thumbs up," like, this part is so important just to make the whole process go more smoothly. Whenever I see an edit letter that's like too harsh and sometimes even sarcastic a little bit, it's like, "Uhh, this is not working, we can't do this. We gotta switch up how we're approaching this writer."

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, when we come back, I will ask my 2nd question.

[Laughter]

 

[Ali] My things of the week are 2 incredible podcasts. One is called Rude Tales of Magic, and the other is called Oh These, Those Stars of Space. Both of these podcasts just so happen to feature me regularly on almost every episode. So if you like the sound of this, what's happening now, I simply must recommend Rude Tales of Magic and Oh These, Those Stars of Space. Rude Tales of Magic is mostly fantasy. It's a collaborative live-action role-playing…

[DongWon] I believe the phrase I said earlier is that it's a collaborative improvised storyteller podcast that is…

[Ali] Yes.

[DongWon] Roughly using the rules of Dungeons & Dragons to lightly flavor the type of story that you're telling.

[Ali] Correct. Then, Oh These, Those Stars of Space is the science-fiction version of that. Also, we have so much great merch. Go to rudetalesofmagic.com/store, get a sweatshirt, and don't listen. It's entirely up to you. The sweatshirts are so soft. I'm wearing one right now. Thank you.

[DongWon] I can attest to the quality of the merch. As someone who owns some. I'm a huge fan of the podcasts myself. As you can tell, as I'm stepping all over Ali's pitch here. But, Rude Tales in particular is a really wonderful podcast if you like things like critical roll and Dimension 20, then absolutely you should check out Rude Tales. It is much more irreverent than those, but it is a group of truly hilarious comedians and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

[Ali] Yes. Thank you.

[Laughter]

 

[Mary Robinette] I… As… I'm just going to flagged here for our listeners, even editors can be really bad pitching their own stuff.

[Laughter]

[Ali] What do you mean?

[Chuckles]

[Ali] Yeah.

[DongWon] I promise we're all better at talking about other people's stuff…

[Ali] I know.

[DongWon] Then our own stuff.

[Ali] That's… Other people's stuff…

[DongWon] That's why we do what we do.

[Ali] Exactly.

 

[Mary Robinette] Anyway. All right. As we come back in, I'm going to ask another question. So, we talked about what the edit letter is. One of the things I just wanted to draw a line under is that a lot of the edit letters that I get and that you all have talked about is really about the editor asking questions rather than giving an answer to the author. It really is about the… A trust between the editor or the agent and the author. But when you're a new author, you don't necessarily know that that trust is there, and you don't know what the rules are. So they've asked you a question, they've asked if you can add more of this and more of that, can you really say no?

[Ali] [deep breath] I don't know. What do you think, DongWon?

[Chuckles]

[That's really tough]

[DongWon] No. Absolutely. Please say no. [Garbled] people say no all the time. You have to say no. It's your project, you know it better than us. Know what you… This goes back to what I was saying earlier about loving your darlings, know what you can change and what you're not willing to change. Right? Know what the things are that are untouchable to you. That's fine. We will work around that, because what we want to know is what do you care about and why have you written the book that you've written and how can we make that the best version it can be. Right? So we will constantly be poking at stuff, and you say, "No. Actually, I don't want to do that." My best case scenario is I make a suggestion of how to fix something and the author does something completely different. They do answer the question, but they just run off into the distance and come back with something wildly different. That's always more exciting than whatever stupid idea that I had.

[Chuckles]

 

[Ali] Yeah. Oh, 100%. I have a piece of text that I put at the beginning of all of the edit letters that I send to new authors that I'm working with. I really hope it gets through. This is what it says. It says, "I'm trusting you to safeguard what makes this story for you. When I offer you suggestions for changes and opportunities for deeper exploration, I'm hoping to initiate your creative process. I fully expect you to come up with better ideas than the examples and suggestions I come up with to illustrate my thinking." Because that is really how I think of it, which is, when I'm offering a suggestion, or like a directly actionable specific recommendation, I'm really saying, like, "can you think of something better, actually?"

[DongWon] I love that so much.

[Ali] This is kind of what I mean, is, really what I'm trying to say.

 

[DongWon] There's a thing that I'll do, and this sounds worse than it actually is. But there's a thing that I do sometimes where I will suggest something that I know is not a good idea because… And that the author will also recognize is not a good idea. Because then, they'll have a reaction to it. Right? When you have a reaction, now you have a direction. Right? I do this a lot with titles most clearly. I'll just start suggesting the worst titles in the world…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] So that they'll bounce off of it, and in bouncing off of it, a direction is going to start to emerge, because, like, they keep running in this direction, like, "No, that's too comedic, it has to be more like this…" Then I'm like, "Okay. Now we have more information that we can start building around." So, the… When I make a suggestion about an edit, I mean, usually it is sincere of, like, what if we did this, what if we thought about it this way, but really what I'm looking for is a reaction to the suggestion, not an execution of the suggestion.

[Ali] Yes. 100%. Did you see Hannibal? The show?

[DongWon] Not that much of it. Only the first few episodes.

[Ali] Okay. Well, in the first season, there's an episode where Hannibal commits a murder in the style of a murderer…

[Chuckles]

[Ali] To show Will Graham, like, what it isn't. Like, what is actually special about that. I think about that all the time. How I'm committing bad murders to show…

[Chuckles]

[Ali] How their murders… This other murderer to try to figure out that's actually like this.

[DongWon] If you take nothing else away from this episode, please remember that we are the Hannibal to your Will Graham.

[Ali] Yes. That's all I'm saying.

[Mary Robinette] That's beautiful, and I'm making notes about being alone in a room with both of you.

[Chuckles]

 

[Mary Robinette] But it is… I will say that, as an author, the thing for me is, is that suggestion, for me, it identifies that there is a problem that I need to address, and the suggestion is usually wildly wrong. But the problem is usually one that's present. So, when I don't understand why a suggestion has been made, I will go back to the editor and I will ask clarifying questions.

[Ali] Beautiful.

[DongWon] Yes. I think if there's anything you truly do take a away, not joking this time, is that if you don't understand what the editor is asking you to do, or if you don't feel it's right, just ask questions. Just start a conversation.

[Ali] Yes. Please.

[DongWon] Whether it's your agent, whether it's your editor, if you feel that you cannot go to them and have a conversation about what is going well and what's not going well, then there's something that needs to be tweaked about that relationship. Because it's your book at the end of the day, and you should feel empowered to make sure that your writing the book that you want to be writing. That means asking questions, advocating for yourself, advocating for your ideas. If there is something you really care about that they're really pushing back against, then that should be at least a conversation, if not an adjustment that everyone's working around what your goal is.

[Ali] Yeah. I remind myself all the time, it's your name on the cover. Right? Nobody else that you're working with, their name's going to be on the cover. So, that's your… It is your vision, it is your job to safeguard things and to also, like, keep your ears open and be really honest with yourself if something causes friction within you. But that discomfort might settle into a realization of an opportunity. Right? So, sometimes our initial reaction can be really intense, and we thank you for your 3 day waiting period before telling us.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] Right. That too.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, I'm going to give writers a quick moment of perspective from some of my experience. And then a tool that's extremely valuable. The first is that, with my first series, I would hit things that my editor would say, and I'd be like, "No. This is very wrong, and I'm doing this for a reason, I'm going to keep it." I only did that a couple of times, but without exception… Without exception, my editor was right, there was a problem, and that is a thing that got [garbled] in reviews, that people would say… It would get brought up. So, my editor's suggestion on how to fix it was the thing that I was objecting to. I didn't recognize that at the time. But now, when I get a suggestion and I don't agree with it, I will ask for more clarification, but I will see if I can dig into it and find a way to do something that makes me happy that addresses whatever the problem is. The other piece of that is that sometimes the reason that you are having the no, this is a terrible idea, is just because you're tired. You're feeling a little bit defensive, because your baby… Someone has come in and told you that your baby is ugly. So if you hit 3 editor notes in a row that you think are stupid, walk away from the edit letter. Go take a walk. Go do something else, you're just tired and angry.

[Ali] I mean, clear your vent. Tell them how stupid we are. Get mad. Be… It's…

[Mary Robinette] Yep.

[Ali] It's totally, absolutely appropriate and shows that you give a shit about your book if you're mad at… Like, suggestions that don't feel right immediately.

[DongWon] I would encourage you to do that in private.

[Ali] In private.

[DongWon] And not on Twitter or Blue Sky.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Ali] yes.

[DongWon] That is a thing that I don't recommend you do.

[Ali] Ideally in private. Rage in private. But then come back and then see what still feels bad. Or feels different.

 

[DongWon] One more thing I just want to point out that may be too obvious to bring up, but editors, agents, are people. Right? There individuals with strengths and weaknesses. Yeah, I know, we're…

[Questionable]

[DongWon] We're all just robots and… Yeah, very questionable. But have their own personality quirks, have their own modes of communication, have their own styles. Right? One thing that may be happening if you're feeling really frustrated is an editor might just have an abrasive style or a style that just doesn't vibe with you. Sometimes I will get an email from a client being like, "Hey, I got notes from this editor. Can you take a look at them and tell me what's happening here?" Sometimes the answer is, "Oh, they're missing XYZ," or sometimes I'm just like, "They just kind of talk like that, and that is rubbing you the wrong way." I've seen that both go in the too harsh and too nice directions. Right? I've seen both send up a flag for the writer. So much of this is matching personality, matching style, matching how we communicate, how we connect. Again, that alignment stuff I'm talking about, this is where it becomes really important. So, sometimes, if your editor has left or you didn't choose your editor or for whatever reason, you might be stuck with someone for a second that… And you need to find a way to work it out. But other times, it is a question of, like, make sure that you're working with someone you're excited to work with. Don't just be taking the first thing that's offered to you or the biggest number that was offered to you when you don't like the person. The connection with your team is so important to making sure that everyone is happy with the end result.

 

[Mary Robinette] So how do you get that alignment with… Between the writer and the editor on a project? Like, are there tools that are useful to make sure that everyone's actually on the same page?

[DongWon] I mean, I think it's asking questions. Right? We kind of keep coming back to the same things in certain ways, but it's that… The compliment section of the edit letter, not to sum up what's wrong, but talking about what's going right. Sometimes it's taste stuff, right, like sometimes even talking about other books, other movies, and things that you both like can be really useful, because then that gives you a shared language of, like, "Okay, we both love Hannibal. So our series [murder] like, we want it to feel more like Hannibal than we do like Scream." Right? So having that shorthand of vibes that you both are feeling can be really, really helpful to think about it.

[Ali] Yeah. Even on that… If you have that initial call with an editor who's interested in your book, you can ask mildly irrelevant questions. Obviously, nothing like to personal or inappropriate, right. Because that's probably not your business. But you can ask questions, because the more someone talks, the more they display their values and their interests and their thoughts, and, like, it's kind of just reaching out and touching someone else's mind for a little while and seeing if you like it.

[Mary Robinette] Right. Well, with that, let's segue to our homework as we try to touch the minds of our listeners.

[Ali] Yes, yes.

[Mary Robinette] Not creepy at all.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] Not creepy at all.

[Ali] For my final style…

[DongWon] Exactly.

 

[DongWon] So, I have our homework this week. I would like you… Thinking about this alignment question, I would like you to take a work you haven't written, and come up with 3 questions you would ask the writer to help them clarify their intention in the text. Whether this is a project your beta reading for a friend, a short story, even like a movie that you've seen, take a piece, a story that you engaged with and really figure out what are the questions I would ask the creator of this to really help them understand better what it was that they were going for. Then, for bonus points, I want you to apply those questions to your own work in progress.

 

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go edit.

 

[DongWon] Hey. Have you sold a short story or finished your first novel? Congratulations. Also, let us know. We'd love hearing from you about how you've applied the stuff we've been talking about to craft your own success stories. Use the hashtag WXsuccess on social media or drop us a line at success@writingexcuses.com.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/18-16-deep-dive-publishing-is-hard-by-dongwon-song/

 

Key points: Where do you get your ideas? Whatever I'm dealing with in my day-to-day job. Issues in my inbox, what people are talking about in social media, huge kerfluffles in publishing. Who are you writing for? In theory, for other people in the industry. In practice, mostly writers.  How do you decide how much of yourself to mix in? For me, making it personal is important. How do you decide what to write about? Not a schedule, not a plan. A burr under my saddle. Do you have a file of draft essays, a boneyard? About 2 months ago, I deleted all of them. What does running the newsletter do for you or your career? It's a brand building exercise. But when you change, how does that match the brand you established? The newsletter is a living document, and I am too. Having editors who are friends helps the agent and his clients.

 

[Season 18, Episode 16]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Deep Dive: Publishing is Hard, by DongWon Song.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[DongWon] So this week, it's my turn for the deep dive. I'm not a writer, necessarily, like everyone else on this podcast. I'm on the industry side, as we talked about before. So there is a little bit of like a… What do we talk about in my case? How do we do this?

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] I realized that I thought it might be interesting to dig into a newsletter that I run. In 2019, I started a newsletter at that point on Substack that was about my experiences in publishing. It's in part instructive about how the business of publishing works, but really, it's through the lens of here's how I experience it, here's how I think about it, here's how I talk about it. So I've been doing that on and off for the past several years… Way longer than I realized. I thought I'd been doing it two years, but 2019 is not two years ago.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] So I wanted to have it featured on the podcast for us to talk a little bit as a way to understand how I think about publishing, what perspective I'm bringing to the pod, and really kind of dig into some of the tricky issues that I like to tackle there.

 

[Howard] A couple of things. DongWon, when we do these deep dives, often we put your feet to the fire…

[Laughter]

[Howard] And ask you how you did things. Also, when you say I'm not a writer like these other people, after having read several installments of Publishing is Hard, you're a writer.

[Dan] Yeah, I was going to say the same thing.

[Howard] You're absolutely a writer.

[Dan] Maybe not an author, but a very good writer.

[Mary Robinette] Again, we're going to totally digress on this. The reason I'm digressing on this is because I know that we have listeners out there who are nonfiction writers, and I want to remind them that they are writers, just like DongWon is a writer. It doesn't have to be fiction to be writing. And your pub…

[DongWon] I will back up and say I'm not a novelist and I don't write books.

[Chuckles and laughter]

[Howard] Fair enough.

[DongWon] Because I completely agree with everything… What everybody's saying. I will say I am a writer in this regard, which was… Having to go back and read things I had published several years ago was truly agonizing and I do not understand how you all do this on a regular basis.

 

[Howard] See, that brings me to the third part of this tripartite thing of mine, which is, now that we've established that you are one of us as a writer, the first question I have to ask you is where do you get your ideas?

[Laughter]

[DongWon] Suffering and trauma, Howard. Yeah, I mean, I get the con… The ideas for what I want to talk about basically by whatever it is I'm thinking about in what I'm dealing with in my day-to-day job. Right? So what issues are coming up in my inbox, what am I seeing people talk about in social media, what huge kerfuffles are happening in publishing that's… And Publishers Weekly this week. All those things are things that I start thinking about, and then… Often what happens is I'll see a bad take, I'll see somebody interpret something that somebody said as part of a testimony or as part of an article, and I'll be like, "Wait. People don't understand this the way that I understand it. Writers are seeing things happening in the industry and they don't have my 17, 18 years of experience of working inside the sausage factory. Are there things that I can explain about this? Are there ways I can illuminate some of what the logic behind what looks like an crazy decision is, and how people might approach it in a way that makes life a little bit more navigable for those of us in the industry, for those of us participating from the other side as writers and people looking to get published?" So…

 

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that you just said is a question that I'm curious about. You talked about seeing a hot take, and going, "Well, that's hot…"

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] When you're writing, who are you writing for? Are you writing for writers? For the young up and comers, or are you writing for fellow industry peers to be like, "Hey. Folks. Trying to get your…" Or does it depend?

[DongWon] The conceit of the newsletter is that I'm writing for other people in the industry. The conceit is this isn't a newsletter for writers, it is a newsletter for people in publishing, people who are looking to talk about publishing. In practice, I know most of who's reading it are writers. Even though, every time I poll, I get lots of emails from friends in the industry or colleagues or whatever. I think it really does resonate with people who work in publishing. But I also recognize that that's a very tiny population. Therefore, most of the people reading it are people who want to be published, who are either people who have books out or are aspiring published authors, whatever it happens to be. So there's a little bit of a trick that I have to pull that I'm writing for other peers when I think about it, but then I also need to adjust what I'm saying so that it lands for people who aren't in the industry in the same way, and therefore may not have all the same… I don't know, internal defenses and understandings of how the business works. Because one of the things I want to do is make publishing legible to people who aren't in it, and one of the ways it's illegible is that it's a tough business. We talk about things that are very important to people, about their art, about their craft, in ways that can be very blunt and are fundamentally about profit and money because publishing is a business. Right? So finding ways to talk about those things without unduly traumatizing my audience or discouraging people. The last thing I want people to do is read this and feel like, "Oh, I can't succeed then. I can't publish. I shouldn't be trying to do this." That's my worst-case scenario. So how do I talk about difficult experiences in a way that has enough accessibility and empathy for the audience that I can sort of navigate that balance? So it's an ongoing conversation in my head. It's a very very very good question.

[Mary Robinette] That seems like that's a very applicable thing, then, to write for one audience and then edit to broaden it.

[DongWon] Exactly. I think that's the thing that a lot of people can incorporate into their process. Right? So my first drafts often I have to be like, "Oh. I can't say that. That's too harsh. That's an inside thought." Right? How do I edit that to be for a broad audience?

[Howard] There's an entire group of writers, communicators, out there facing the same problem and that's the sci-comm community, where they are writing from the standpoint of scientists, but trying to write to everybody else.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Howard] They need to make it understandable, but they need to not dumb it down. They need to deliver the bad climate news, but they need to not send us into a panic and make us not care anymore. It's a fine line to walk.

[DongWon] It is. It's like it's a very flattering comparison to make.

[Chuckles]

 

[DongWon] I think on that note, let's pause for our thing of the week.

[DongWon] So, the thing of the week this week is actually another podcast. It's a podcast called Friends at the Table. It's an actual play role-playing podcast that is one of my very favorite things on the Internet. The previous season of this, I think, I broadly declared on Twitter that it was my favorite piece of media that year, and I still stand by that. They just launched a new season of the podcast called Palisades. That's a science fiction story about a planet under attack by sort of invading forces. It's a story that is about revolution, it's a story about resistance, and it's a story about giant robots. It is some of the most intricate fascinating world building I've ever seen with fantastic improvisational play. I cannot recommend Friends at the Table highly enough. Now is a great time to jump in as they just launched their new season.

 

[Erin] I have a question.

[DongWon] Great.

[Erin] About Publishing is Hard. Which is that one of the things that I love about it is how much personality and like personal story you weave in there. So you're doing the… Talking about the industry, but you're also talking about yourself. I'm wondering how you decide how much of yourself to kind of put in there. You know what I mean? What to share with us when you're sharing all this other information?

[DongWon] Yeah. It's a tricky question. I think, for me, making it personal is very important. We'll talk about this more in a future episode, but I don't want to be someone standing on a hill didacticly telling you, "This is how publishing should be. This is the only way to succeed. This is my 10 rules for success." That's not the kind of thing I'm trying to do. So, for me, rooting it in my own subjectivity, rooting it in my experience, feels really important to me. Right? So what I want to be doing is telling personal stories. I'm going to tell you about stuff I went through, but that's complicated because I can't talk about client stuff in a direct way. Right? I can't expose whatever's going on with the particular writers I work with, a lot of that is confidential. Also, my job as a literary agent is always to be hyping out my clients. Right? So you don't want to necessarily air people's dirty business. Right? So, it's a delicate balancing act. I am often talking about personal experiences, but I'll have to be a little vague or allude or blend a few things into one scenario. So I try to make sure that the emotional core of it is very personal and very honest, while having to elide some actual details and be a little slippery about what actually is what. Because I never want things to be mapped from one thing I write about to a situation that affected somebody else.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I find that a lot of times when talking about issues is that if you can depersonalize it or decouple it as you say from a specific incident that it becomes easier for people to apply it. At the same time, the more specific you are, the easier it is for people to internalize it because we learn from stories.

 

[Dan] So, this leads into another question I had, which is, take us behind the scenes a little bit. How do you decide what are the things that you want to write? Do you have a schedule? Do you just have some burr under your saddle that eventually turns into an essay? How do these topics get formed?

[DongWon] Anyone who has subscribed to my newsletter is very aware that it is a very irregular event. I'm not on a regular schedule. It's not monthly, it's not weekly. There are gaps between when I publish things. That is somewhat deliberate. But it's because I don't have a schedule, I don't have a plan. What I'm looking for is when do I get a burr under my saddle, I think that's it exactly. When does something gets stuck in my head in a way of like, "Oh, wait, I have something to say about this." Sometimes that's I watch a TV show, and they did a cool thing and I want to talk about that thing. Sometimes that's somebody's having a fight on Twitter and I'm like, "I have thoughts about that, but I'm going to let that cool off a bit before I share my thoughts because I don't want to contribute to the discourse, but I do have insights that I think might be helpful to people, hopefully." So, it's kind of all over the place. I'm not much of an advanced planner when it comes to the newsletter. I like to go a little bit more off-the-cuff than that. But… Yeah.

 

[Howard] Do you have a file of draft essays, a boneyard of things where like, "Oh. Now I'm ready to finish this essay, and I will release it to the world."

[DongWon] I did and then about two months ago, I went through and deleted all of them because I looked at all of them and I was like, "I don't want to talk about any of these anymore."

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] The moment had passed for me. Right?

[Howard] A piece of me just died inside. You deleted your boneyard. I think those are words.

[DongWon] They are words, but there's always more words, and there's always more ideas. Right? I think that's one thing that… I encourage people to save their stuff. Go back to what's in the chest. Go back and see what's in that desk drawer. But also, don't be afraid of throwing stuff out. You will have more ideas. More stuff will happen. Even as I was trying to pick out newsletters for us to talk about for the podcast, I was going through some of it… I don't necessarily agree with everything I said before. I was surprised, actually, by how much… I was like, "Oh, I still vibe with this." I still stand by what I said then, even if I would change a couple of things here and there. But an idea that I had for a newsletter eight months ago that I was like, "Oh, not interested enough to finish this." I'm happy to let that go by the wayside. Maybe something similar will occur to me again six months from now, and I'll do it then.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I find that that's true for me with a lot of things, that there's the… The person who started that, that original thing, is not the same person that is sitting down to write it.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] It's… Unless I have a new spin on something… I used to blog every day and talk about stuff, and I would bank things. Where I'd like write several things in a day. I don't understand how I did that. A. But, also, frequently I would come back to something and be like, "I don't… I have no connection to this." That was a different person who wrote it.

[DongWon] Yeah. I mean, sometimes I think, Oh, maybe I'd have more subscribers, maybe I'd grow the audience more, those kinds of things, if I did have that bank of more regular content to tap into. But it's also just not the kind of project I'm doing. I'm doing this as much for my own interest in amusement as for anything else. There is a paid tier to the newsletter, but all the content is free. Anyone can read any of the issues. The paid thing is almost more of a tip jar. Like, do you like what I'm doing? Do you want to support it? I started doing twit streams and bringing guests on. Those guests are paid roles. That's kind of what the subscribers go to, is just making it so that it's worth it for me to spend time on this and to bring in some guests and things like that. But, for me, because it's free, I feel comfortable posting stuff when I want to post stuff. When it feels relevant to me.

 

[Dan] I want to dig into this a little bit. Let's talk about what you think the newsletter has done for you. Clearly, it's a thing that seems primarily designed to give back a little bit. You love the industry, you love working in it. You want to talk about it, you want to help people out. But at the same time, a really common piece of advice we hear is, "Authors, get a newsletter." You're not exactly in that position. But, what are the ways in which you think running this newsletter has benefited you or your career?

[DongWon] It's a brand building exercise for me. It… The revenue from it is nice, it's a little bonus. The educational component has a lot of emotional investment in it. The professional reasons for doing it are is it does build my brand. Writers get to see this is how I do business, this is how I think, this is how I think about the industry. Does that make sense to me? Does that seem like someone I want to work with? Right? It's a way for writers to sort of audition me a little bit before working with me. If they like my ethics, if they like my perspectives, if they like my view of how to be in the business. That's very important to me. It's also marketing for me towards publishers. Right? So a lot of editors read my newsletter. I hear from them, I get lovely messages from them, and those are people who want to work with me. Who… They think of me positively when one of my manuscripts lands in their inbox. So it sets me up in a number of ways, it lets me have a brand in a way that was more sustainable and clearer and more fun to do than Twitter was. I mean, Twitter is a mess in a lot of ways. So the newsletter let me talk about things at length in ways that let me be much more clear about who I am and what I stand for.

 

[Erin] This brings me back to something that both you and Mary Robinette said earlier, which is that you change as a person, and what you believe changes. So if part of it is branding yourself, how do you like square that with the fact that you may be a different person now than the brand that you established maybe a year ago or two or three years ago?

[DongWon] I mean, like, I literally have a different gender than when I started bus… The newsletter.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] Like, somebody will be going, "I don't use that pronoun anymore. What's that doing there?" Like, yeah, I've changed a lot. I certainly… I don't have the perspective in this business that I did when I started, much less five years ago, much less probably last year. It's a business that evolves. Publishing is so slow in certain ways, but how we see content, how we see our roles in it, what are… I mean, I have a lot of thoughts about workers rights in the industry. HarperCollins had that massive strike last year, which concluded positively. They got a lot of what they wanted. Like, that has absolutely informed my thoughts about like how do we resolve a lot of the issues in publishing, in the industry. It's like, "Well, I was pro-union before, but, boy am I pro-union now in terms of publishing workers, in terms of young editors and assistance and people coming up." How much better with this industry be if we had stronger labor rights and relations? Right? I'm not sure all of my publisher friends would like to hear that from me…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] Especially those in more senior positions. But our thoughts and things do evolve. It was interesting to go back into the archive and see what I still stand by and what I didn't. But I think it's a living… The thing about a newsletter is it's a living document. It's not I wrote this and this was my opinion and it's calcified in a certain way. I hope people can see that and understand that. I haven't really gone through and pruned old things I don't necessarily stand by anymore. But there's nothing in there where I was like, "Wow, I said… I was way out of pocket on that one." But it's subtler than that, I think.

[Dan] I would say in a lot of ways the brand you are building here is less about the specific insights and more about your style of thinking and analyzing things. The way in which you present things rather than the specifics that you present.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I also love them because the newsletter sounds like you. Like, the one we were reading specifically for this… I saw you give that keynote speech.

[DongWon] Right.

[Mary Robinette] I'm like, "Oh, yeah. No, this is exactly your rhythm and inflections." Then, subsequent ones I'm like, "Oh. Yeah. No, this is like sitting down to have a conversation."

[DongWon] My newsletters are profoundly ungrammatical, which is funny. I use repetition a lot in them, stylistically. It's because that is how I talk, especially when I'm lecturing, especially when I'm like speaking in front of a crowd or even on the pod or whatever. So, yeah, it's nice to hear that it is reflective of how I think and talk so much.

 

[Howard] I want to circle back to something you said earlier which… At risk of unduly waiting this, this might be a good point on which to close. That is that when you said you have friends who are editors who read this and who like what you say. If you are a writer, you want an agent who is friends with a lot of editors. Because what you are paying the agent for is to put your work in front of as many editors as possible in as positive a light as possible. To put it in front of the right editors. That is… I mean, that's the bread-and-butter of the job that you really do. The fact that this newsletter is getting you more attention from editors is good for your clients, present and future.

[DongWon] Well, one thing is I used to be on that side of the table. I was an editor at a big five house. I have a lot of understanding and empathy of what they go through. So I think my newsletter's a little bit of framing that as well. I want to be clear, though, that there are other ways to be an agent. Right? There's a mode of agenting that is much more antagonistic and much more hostile to the publisher. Right? They get projects because they're big projects, because they're big agents. It's a different way of interacting. It's much more old-school, quite frankly. It can also be really effective. It's not how I do business. It's not just who I am as a person. So part of me doing the newsletter is making clear this is my approach. Not that I think other approaches are wrong. It's not how I want to do things. But, yeah, again, it's really a way for me to express to the world, whether that's writers, whether that's my peers, whether that's people I want to work with, who I am as a person and how I want to be doing business. So, thank you for taking the time with me to dive into talking about how publishing is hard.

 

[DongWon] Dan, I believe you have our homework?

[Dan] Yeah. We have, actually, a two-part homework for you today, dear listener. We want you to subscribe to a couple of newsletters. They're a very valuable thing, they're common in the industry. We want you to seek out to with the following criteria. Number one, find a creator that you really like who has a newsletter and subscribe to it. Number two, possibly and maybe ideally with that same creator, find a newsletter that person subscribes to, and subscribe to it as well. Because then you get a sense not only of what they are putting out into the world, but what they are absorbing. What the creators you love our reading and interacting with.

[Mary Robinette] In the next episode of Writing Excuses, we'll talk about branding, personal identity, and why Dolly Parton can never have a bad day. Until then, you're out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/18-01-twenty-twenty-three-by-way-of-introduction/ 

 

Key Points:  Where is everyone? Mary Robinette is now a mid-career writer, focusing on science fiction and fantasy, with a heaping teaspoon of theater background as an influence. DongWon is a literary agent, who has worked as an editor, and brings the industry perspective, along with a deep interest in craft. Erin is an early career writer, in various formats, including tabletop role-playing games and audio narratives. She also is a teacher. Dan is starting to work as the vice president of narrative in Brandon Sanderson's company. Howard is a cartoonist who hasn't been cartooning for a while, and is finishing up the Schlock Mercenary 20 year run, and doesn't know what comes next. So, metaphorically, everyone re-introduced themselves, and there's a lot of reinventing going on! Stay tuned to see what happens next!

 

[Season 18, Episode 1]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Twenty Twenty-Three, By Way of Introduction.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Dan] Welcome to 2023. This is our very first episode of the New Year, and of our new cast and format. We decided that it was time, after so many years, a decade and a half, to shake things up. So, let's start first by giving a fond and loving farewell to our founding and now emeritus member, Brandon Sanderson. He's been kind of unofficially stepped away from this show for a while now. He still comes in for a few episodes a year. He has now moved on to other things. So, farewell, Brandon.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. He's been very supportive about the transition and about welcoming our two new hosts.

[Dan] Yeah. So we've got two brand-new core hosts this year. We're going to spend the whole 15 minutes introducing all five of us, actually, but DongWon and Erin, welcome to the show. New core hosts, new Writing Excuses wonderful people. We're happy to have you.

[DongWon] Thank you. I'm super happy to be here.

[Mary Robinette] I really wish that we had done this while we were on the cruise ship so you could hear the thunderous applause in the background. You can just imagine it though. Because we did introduce them to our… To the people on the… Who come on the Writing Excuses workshop and cruise. Who know both DongWon and Erin very well, since they been with us for several years on those.

[Yes]

[Mary Robinette] So part of what we realized was that with Brandon stepping away, we were looking at wanting to expand the cast, and we also were like we would like people who are younger than we are…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But who also have different perspectives than we do. Who are at different places in their careers or who are coming at it from a different angle. So…

[Howard] By way of clarification, when Dan said we want to introduce you to our new hosts this year, it is not our new hosts for this year, it is our new hosts, as of this year.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[Howard] This is not just 2023. This is time immemorial…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Until something terrible happens or you quit, both of which are kind of the same thing.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] We are bound to this forever.

[Mary Robinette] That's right.

 

[Dan] So, DongWon and Erin, as Mary Robinette said, they been with us on the event side for years now. DongWon's been on almost every cruise we've done. Which is wonderful. Erin has, for the last couple years, been helping us run all of the events. We're incredibly excited to have all of them now core hosts on microphone. Going forward, it's going to be cool. So what we want to do with this episode is introduce them in more detail, but also kind of reintroduce all five of us. What do we bring to the table, what kinds of things are you going to hear from us throughout the year, where we are in our career, what kind of things we're working on, what skills we're trying to develop. So let's take some time to dig into that. I would actually love to start with Mary Robinette. Tell us what you're doing and what kinds of things you are working on and what perspectives you're going to bring to us this year.

[Mary Robinette] So when I started the podcast… And this is part of why we wanted to kind of reintroduce ourselves… I was a very early career writer. I am now a decade into my career. More than that, actually. That's alarming. Anyway, I have 10 books out in the world. 10 novels. A children's book, two short story collections. I am a professional puppeteer and a voice actor. So the… My views on writing have shifted. There's a lot of things that… About the way the industry has changed since I came in that I'm excited to talk about. Also, as I have been moving through my writing process, I'm constantly having to… The shape of my imposter syndrome shifts. It never completely goes away, but the battles that I'm fighting are different each time. So you're going to get to hear from me a lot of stuff about what it's like to be a mid career writer. You're going to get to hear about the differences between writing science fiction and fantasy. You're going to get to hear about how my theater background influences the way I approach writing.

[Howard] Briefly, I'd like to take a moment and say that in our episode pie, Season Three, Episode 14, Mary Robinette came on as a guest and took principles of puppetry as they applied to writers. The whole episode, Dan and Brandon and I were just floored. Jaws dropped, being school. In that moment, the first thing we learned was, wow, it would be cool if Mary Robinette could always be with us. We didn't make that change for another couple of seasons. The second thing that we realized, kind of belatedly, is, wow, other people's perspectives can be just mind blowing, just based on a simple change to background. Sure, we're all trying to write, but we're all so danged different. Mary taught us that.

[Yay]

[Dan] Let's also point out as you were enumerating the accolades of your resume, Mary Robinette, you failed to mention that in the time since you started on our show, you have won pretty much every award this industry offers.

[Mary Robinette] Oh! Um…

[Laughter]

[Dan] You're incredibly accomplished successful and wonderful writer. So…

[Mary Robinette] Thank you. That's right. I should probably say that. I do have four Hugo awards, a Locus, a Nebula, and… Yes. I do that. Let's talk about DongWon.

 

[DongWon] Hi. I'm DongWon Song. I've guested on a number of podcasts in the past, so some of you have heard me before. I'm a literary agent by trade. I've been in the traditional publishing industry since 2005, so 17 years now, which is terrifying. Pretty much my entire adult career has been in this business. I've been an agent for seven of those years. I've worked as an editor at a big five house, I've worked in a digital publishing startup, so I have a pretty wide range of perspective. Really what I'm bringing to the podcast is a little unsurprisingly that industry perspective. I can speak to what's going on on the bookselling side, on the publishing side, what agents are looking for. Really coming at it from a perspective of not just how the writing process happens, but what happens once that gets into the hand of the industry. What are the business perspectives around that? Right? I'm someone who cares very deeply about craft, and I love talking about craft as well, but I can sort of blend that with that other perspective and bring in a little bit of context of what's happening out there on the business end of things. I really love talking about these issues. I love sort of educating people on how the business works. I love teaching craft things as well. So this is a true delight for me.

[Dan] That's great. Can I ask you for a very quick resume? When you were an editor, what kind of books people might have heard of that you worked on? Now, as an agent, who do you represent? Just so people can kind of place you in the industry.

[DongWon] Yeah. When I was an editor, I was an editor at Orbit, so I've done science fiction and fantasy primarily my whole career. As an editor, I acquired and published the first two books in The Expanse series, by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck under the name James S. A. Corey. I published the Mira Grant books, the Feed series, under the name Mira Grant. I'm sorry, that's Seanan McGuire writing under the name Mira Grant. I've worked with Walter Jon Williams, Greg Bear, a really wide range of writers doing science fiction and fantasy in different forms. Now, as a literary agent, I do primarily science fiction and fantasy, but I also do middle grade and YA and some graphic novels as well. On the science fiction and fantasy side, I work with Sarah Gailey, Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone. So they did This Is How You Lose the Time War. I've worked with Dan Scott Lynch, who is obviously a very well-known fantasy author. Arkady Martine, who has won two Hugos for her first two novels. On the young adult and middle grade side, I work with Mark Oshiro, who is co-authoring the next Rick Riordan book. Carlos Hernandez who has two really lovely little grades out from the Rick Riordan Presents line. On the graphic novel side, I work with Harmony Becker who has a memoir out by the name of Himawara House and Shing Yin Khon who has a wonderful graphic novel by the name of The Legend of Auntie Po for which they won an Eisner and were nominated for a National Book Award.

[Dan] Awesome. Cool. Thank you very much. Very excited to have you here. We are going to take a break for our thing of the week. When we come back, we will hear from Erin.

 

[Mary Robinette] I want to talk about The Lost Metal by Brandon Sanderson. I have been a fan of the Mistborn series since the moment I discovered them. It's really exciting to watch the ways Brandon keeps evolving this world. So many times when you go into a fantasy world, it's like one era and there is very little that changes. This goes through a huge evolution in the way the magic system works, in the way the characters work, and it is… I find these books so exciting. So, The Lost Metal just came out. It's the fourth and final book in the Wax and Wanes series, which is the second era of Mistborn. I recommend starting if you have… You can actually just jump in with the Wax and Wane books, but it's also really a lot of fun to go through the whole journey. I realize that I am telling you to read seven books, and I'm comfortable with that. I know what you're familiar with when you think of Brandon Sanderson. These are short for him. So I highly encourage you to pick up The Lost Metal by Brandon Sanderson.

 

[Dan] All right. Thank you very much. Now, Erin. We're so excited to have you with us. Tell us about yourself.

[Erin] So, I have to say, after these first couple of introductions, I feel like the person on the Star Trek show that's there to make the audience feel like they can relate to humans.

[Laughter]

[Erin] So I… Which is a nice way to say that I'm sort of taking the 10 years ago Mary Robinette early career writer kind of slot… Plot… Slot. I don't know what that is. Or perspective, and bringing that to the table. So I am an early career writer. I've had a few short stories published in places like Asimov's and Clarke's World and The Dark. I also like to say that I get around a bit. Which is to say that I like to write in a few different formats. I also write for tabletop role-playing games. So I have had my work in Dungeons and Dragons official books, and Pathfinder, Starfinder, all those kinds of fun tabletop games. I've also written interactive fiction. I've written for audio narrative… The audio narrative thing, Zombies Run. If you know it, you know it. If you don't…

[Mary Robinette] I love Zombies Run so much.

[Erin] So, yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Very fun being chased by zombies.

[Erin], I guess, and try out different things and see what kind of writing works in what kind of setting. I also love teaching. I teach at the University of Texas at Austin and warp the minds of the next generation. Now I'm here to do the same to you.

[Mary Robinette] The first time I saw Erin teach, I was like, "Oh. Oh, you're really good." It was… So I should also… I also want to say that Erin first came on the Writing Excuses cruise as a scholarship recipient.

[Dan] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] We have basically been impressed by her since we met her. So I'm really excited. Every time we talk, I'm like, "Oh, that's really smart." So, no pressure. No pressure at all.

[Erin] It ends here.

[Mary Robinette] Yes, well, because we're not that smart. Sorry about that. We have done that to your career.

[Dan] We're going to ruin everything now. Awesome. Erin, so excited to have you here. Thank you also for the Star Trek reference in your introduction. Back when Howard and I had a Twitch D & D show, we spun it off into a Twitch Star Trek show, and Erin was our captain on that. So… DongWon also. Actually, Mary Robinette, you're the only one that was never a cast member on our Twitch show. Sorry.

[Mary Robinette] You never invited me, so…

[Dan] I know. We should have.

[Mary Robinette] I guess I know where I stand now. Thanks.

[Dan] We'll have to resurrect that whole thing. Anyway, let's…

[Erin] You can be a Tribble.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] [squeak]

 

[Dan] All right. So it is my turn now. I also am… I have… I'm in the middle of a big career transition. About a month and a half ago, I started working full time as the vice president of narrative in Brandon Sanderson's company. So a lot of people are wondering what that means. What it mostly means is that I'm doing the same thing I used to be doing, I'm just getting paid slightly better for it now.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] I'm still writing books. I am only a year or two further into my career than Mary Robinette is. I think I have 19 books published. What I'm doing right now is mostly audio. The last several years, the Zero G series was audio originals which I wrote as scripts rather than as prose. Those I did eventually put into kind of prose format for e-book and print books, and you can find those out. Audible original Ghost Station was my brief and unsuccessful foray into historical fiction.

[I loved it]

[Dan] I'm a huge fan of that, and I tried to write one. I really like the book. All 12 people that have read the book really liked it. But it's my least successful by far.

[Mary Robinette] It's really good.

[Dan] Thank you. What I'm doing right now is I am still doing some of my own books. I'm working on a middle grade fantasy. I'm working on another YA horror series, but I'm also writing a bunch of Brandon collaborations. Our first one is called Dark One. Actually, the first thing you'll be able to read from that or listen to is another audio series. It's called Dark One Forgotten. I don't know exactly when that is launching. Sometime this month allegedly. But then eventually down the road I will be doing a Cosmere series, and lots of other things. It's been a very different experience for me to be doing. First of all, having a… What essentially is a day job again where I go to an office and I have coworkers. I haven't had that in about 15 years and it's very strange. But, yeah, I'm seeing a different side of the publishing industry. A kind of lower mid list author who is now working with the most successful fantasy author in the world, and seeing things from many different sides at once. So that's what you're going to get from me this year.

 

[Howard] Now it's my turn.

[Dan] Yes.

[Howard] I'd just like to start by saying, "Erin, get off my lawn." You're not the one who is the every person, the human being. That's been my job forever.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] I'm the not that smart. I was the not that smart for like five years and I still am. Not that smart. I'm a cartoonist. I say that with the joking self-confidence of I haven't really done any cartooning in quite a while. Because my… And I'm going to use these words absolutely unironically… My magnum opus, the Schlock Mercenary web comic, ran for 20 years with… Daily, without missing a day, and is now complete. For the next year, we're focusing on getting the last of the books into print, which is a project that I'm up to my eyeballs in, with my wife and collaborator and co-conspirator, Sandra Tayler. When that's done, I'm not sure what comes next. I don't know. What do I bring to the show? Based on what I've heard from listeners who come up to me at Gen Con and say, "Wait. Wait. I recognize that voice. Is Howard Tayler somewhere in this booth?" I think, "What the heck? How is that how someone's rec… Can you not read? My name is in 1 foot tall letters right behind my head."

[Chuckles]

[Howard] They come up and say, "Thank you so much for recasting these incredible things that everybody else says in dumb words that I get." Mwah, okay. They're not dumb words, they're words that I get. If I'm a one trick pony, the trick is a metaphor. I look for ways to take the tools that I'm always learning from our cohosts, from our guests, and trying to cast them in ways that I can actually wrap my head around them and use them. The operating question obviously is will I actually use them? What will I use them for? What is coming next? I don't have answers to those questions right now.

[Mary Robinette] But we will all discover those together.

[Yay]

[Mary Robinette] Thanks, Howard. Since you didn't actually say your name. That was Howard Tayler.

 

[Dan] So, that is what you've got coming from us in the year to come. This episode has gone long because we wanted to make sure that you are getting a good introduction to us. Our format for the year is going to be kind of similar to this. We are going to take the time to dig into specific works and specific ideas that each of the cast members has. Then, let them teach us. Then, bounce new ideas around. We think you're really going to like it. So, stay tuned for the rest of the year. This is going to be awesome.

[Mary Robinette] So, along those lines, one of the things that we're going to be doing is we're going to be taking a work in using it as the spine of a series of episodes that explore ideas. So you can think of this year as having a certain aspect of book club. The first book that were going to be looking at is in February. That's… We're going to be doing a deep dive on my novel The Spare Man. That's going to be full of spoilers. Just want to be very, very clear about this. That we are going to… I am going to spoil the heck out of this book as we talk about the choices that I made and how. Then we'll use that to talk about how you can use tension, how you structure murder mysteries. There's going to be a lot of things that are going to come out of that, using it as an example. So, before you get to February, listen or read The Thin Man… The Spare Man by me, Mary Robinette Kowal. Then we'll give you warnings about what the other books are well in advance so that you can be prepared for those. It's not always going to be a book, don't worry. Sometimes it'll be a short story, sometimes it'll be something on the internets that we are like let's dig into this.

 

[Mary Robinette] All right. Now, homework?

[Dan] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] For your homework, as you've noticed, we have all been talking about who we are. Several of us, and the series, are talking about how we're reinventing. What I want you to do is I want you to look at your work. This is the beginning of a new year. Look at your work, look at your process, look at where you want to be. Think about an aspect that you want to reinvent. You don't have to reinvent everything. But, just one thing that you're like, "I want to try something different, I want to try something new." This is your opportunity to do that, so write that down. Then put it someplace where you can look at it every now and then, like this is a thing I'm going to try. All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2021/01/10/16-02-publishers-are-not-your-friends/

 

Key Points: Publishers, the companies, are not your friends, even if editors and individuals may be your friends. The businesses have different incentives, which may not match your incentives as an author. Example: the corporation will try to take worldwide rights in all languages, but they probably won't exploit them well. Another example, when you want to change series or genres, the corporation wants to keep you in that well-worn slot, but you may want to change. Also, be aware that your agent and you may have different incentives. Remember, you are the person who cares about your career, so take care of it. Your relationship with the publisher and the agent is a business relationship.

 

[Season 16, Episode 2]

 

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Publishers Are Not Your Friends.

[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.

[Howard] Because you're in a hurry.

[Brandon] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Brandon] And I'm Brandon.

 

[Dan] We are back for another episode of Brandon's intensive course on career planning and kind of the inside of publishing. This time we want to talk about publishers. Now, Brandon, you named this episode Publishers Are Not Your Friends.

[Brandon] Yep.

[Dan] That's not what I want to hear.

[Brandon] Well, yeah. It's not what I wanted to hear, either. Actually, I got told this by my agent early in my career. Working on, I think, my first contract. I'm like, "But, no. I want to have a really good relationship with my publisher." The thing is, when I say publishers in this, I'm not usually meaning the individual, the publisher, I am meaning the company, the publisher. My editor is, indeed, my friend. Right? Indeed, many people at the publisher are my friends. But the corporation that is publishing you, traditionally published, is not your friend. This can be expanded to, unfortunately, Amazon is not your friend. Indeed, to an extent, your agent is an individual might be your friend, but your agency might not always be your friend. What do I mean by this? I mean that everyone is, when you're looking at yourselves as businesspeople, everyone has different incentives working on books. Your incentives as an author do not always align with your publisher or your agent. Almost always, it's going to align with your agent's incentives. But there are a lot of times where the publisher's incentives and yours are very different. I've got a bunch of examples of this. We'll go through them. But the idea is that I want you to start thinking about this. Because the publisher as a corporation will pretend to be your friend. Indeed, you will have good relationships hopefully with the people at the corporation. But they will make the corporate decisions rather than the friend decisions when money is on the line.

[Howard] Several years ago, my friend, Dave Brady, wrote a piece on loyalty to a corporation and the madness that it is. I want to read a little bit of this text from my friend Dave because it's so amazing. "A corporation is not a living creature. It has no soul, it has no heart, it has no feelings. It can neither experience towards you nor enjoy from you even the concept of loyalty. It's a legal fiction and it exists for one purpose, to make profit. If you assist in this goal, your ongoing association with the organization is facilitated. If you distract from it, will be cut. Family is where they have to take you in, no matter what you've done. A corporation is the exact opposite of that."

 

[Brandon] Exactly. Again, none of us want to hear this. I didn't want to hear this. In fact, it took me years to understand what my agent was saying. I'm hoping that with some of my examples here, you will be able to understand. Like, let me talk about one of them that happened in my career. So, when you sell the rights to your book to a publisher, there are lots of different rights that you can sell. You can sell… What is normally sold to a US publisher is US or North American English rights. They will want to take worldwide rights in all languages. They will not be able to exploit those very well. But they'll want to take them. Well, why do they want them? Well, think about it this way. If they take all of those rights from you, and they make an extra $2000, then, they have come out ahead in that contract. Those rights are only worth maybe $2000 to them. To you, those rights may be worth $50,000. The corporation is not going to look and say, "Wow. If we let him have these, it's $50,000 to him. If we keep them, is $2000 to us and $2000 to him." They're not going to think that way. They're going to think, "$2000 of profit is $2000 of profit. We should not let go of these." But to you, those mean a ton. How did this work in my career? Tor fought to try to get world English rights out of me. They let go of all the other English rights… Or all the other language rights very easily, but they wanted to sell my books to their imprint in the UK, which was going to give them a couple thousand dollars for them. My world English rights, which is usually considered the UK, Ireland, Australia, and other places they export, like India. That was worth, when we finally sold it, somewhere around $50,000 on that same book. Tor would have been perfectly happy taking that $2000 and never launching me in these other countries. And really kind of ruining my career worldwide. They would have done that in a heartbeat. We took it to a publisher in the area who had unaligned incentive with me, that wanted to sell me really big in these countries. Tor would not have lost any sleep or even shed a tear if they had made an extra couple thousand dollars off of me by ruining my career worldwide.

[Dan] Let me give an alternative perspective on this. Because, first of all, that's absolutely true. I make a vast majority of my money outside of the US. So I am all aboard for international rights. On the other hand, some of my early deals with HarperCollins, they wanted to maintain international rights and we didn't let them. We kept them because I wanted to be able to sell to Germany and South America, which are my big markets. The result is that me as a person, my contract to them was actually worth less, because I was only making them money through one channel, instead of through multiple channels. We were able to work around that, and Partials was still a very big success. But it's definitely something to think about. I had to find other ways to make myself more valuable to the publisher.

[Brandon] Yeah. Part of this equation for us, and this goes back to last week, learning your business, was understanding that Tor had a poor business in the UK, and indeed, would not have been able to do for me, in the UK and world English markets, as well as going to a local publisher. It was worth such a small amount of money to them that we didn't think it would really add anything. But it is a consideration. There are times when you want to give up some or all of these rights for one reason or another.

[Mary Robinette] Just to add on to that. The… When I had the Glamorous History series, Tor also held the English language rights. They never sold the rights to Of Noble Family in the UK, which is book 5. There's a reason, in the UK, you can only get books one through four, book five wasn't sold. That is the one that took the longest to earn out. Because we only had one stream for that, which was the US.

 

[Dan] Yeah. Now, I want to pause here for our book of the week, which is actually a little bit about my story with HarperCollins. On my second series with them, the Mirador series, which is my cyberpunk YA, that series didn't fit well with them. In hindsight, it was not a good fit. My age… My publisher, my editor, I should say, my editor loved it. He was 100% behind the book. But, as Brandon was saying earlier, the publisher at large was not. We kind of had to convince them to take a risk on it. What that meant is that they didn't really understand the book, they didn't really understand how to sell it. So the series, every book in that series sold worse than the last one. By the time we got to the third book, they essentially just opened their window and threw a bunch of copies out and hoped people caught them. It got zero marketing, zero publishing. That one is called Active Memory. It's the best book in the trilogy, and I would love for you to all go read it. Because it's great. Even though the publisher did not know what to do with it, and therefore didn't support it.

 

[Brandon] Yeah. I mean, another place that this happens is when you are trying to change up your career. Starting a new series. Starting a new genre. Another thought experiment you can have, and of course, this… There are lots of different things that play into each of my examples here that could change around the numbers for you. But let's imagine that you are pretty good at writing fantasy novels. You make, say, $50,000 at fantasy with each of your new fantasy novels. But you, as a writer…

[Mary Robinette] I would love to imagine that.

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] But you as a writer love the idea of writing different thing, because your artistic pursuits take you different directions. Indeed, let's say you could write science fiction books, and they make $40,000. Which to you is a good trade-off, because it lets you do something else. It lets you avoid burnout. It lets you just explore new areas and potentially get new fans and things like this. Publisher's not going to want you to do that. They would rather have you not be writing that $40,000 book, in fact, they would rather you just not release it. Because they would rather slot into that slot a science fiction writer earns 50,000 a year, rather than have you do $50,000 with a fantasy and the other side… And then your science fiction next year do $40,000. They would just rather have two $50,000 books and have you not publish a book that year. Now that obviously is a very different alignment in interests. I've known lots of writers who are like, "You know, I want to try a fantasy now." Publishers are like, "Oh, that's a bad idea. It's a bad idea for this reason and this reason and this reason. You shouldn't do this." Well, a big part of this is that, but even if they were making the same money, it is very… Much easier for a publisher to brand an author as "This is our fantasy person." The marketing people want to know this is our person who writes this style of book. They want to be able to have the sales force go into the bookstores and say, "You buy this sort of book from this author." That's just way easier for them, and it's actually way… They have strong incentives to have that kind of list. They don't want to have this person who does all these eclectic things that they have to explain to people. Where that may be where you want to take your career.

[Howard] I wanted to point out that in this situation, in this circumstance, it's really difficult for the individual author to wrap their head around the full list of things that the publisher is looking at when they're making those kinds of decisions. But the agent you may have partnered with may have a really good grasp of that. This is one of those cases where having a friend was also a business, who is an agent, can really help you deal with the publisher. Because you can talk to your agent and you can say, "Look. I want to write science fiction. That's what's going to keep me happy. What do you and I need to do, writer and agent, what do you and I need to do in order to find a way to make money with publishers for that?" The discussion after that point is going to take all kinds of shapes depending on you're publishing with.

[Mary Robinette] To that point, harkening back to the first thing in this, when we were talking about thinking of yourself as a business as well, be careful about branding yourself by whatever it is that the publisher initially slots you into. So, I was initially slotted into historical fantasy. Right now, I am writing science fiction, historical science fiction. But whatever. But the point is, I am doing much better… My sales numbers are much, much better with the science fiction. If I had branded myself solely as a historical fantasy author, if I had done that with my twitter handle, my website name, and all of those things, that would have locked me into something that did not represent everything that I could do. George RR Martin, his first books were about vampires on steamships. Like, you don't want to lock yourself into whatever that first book is, because something else may happen. The publisher, if they are paying attention to your numbers, which is what happened… The reason we moved over to Science Fiction was because they noticed… With me, they noticed that I kept winning awards with science fiction short stories. I was not winning awards with fantasy short stories. So, they're like, "Why don't you try a science fiction novel?"

 

[Brandon] It is much easier, and we'll have a whole episode on branding later on, but it is much easier for the publisher to brand you as a series. This is really common in YA. They lips us it's easier for their sales force to sell a series than an author. It's easier for the publisher to be like, "We have this series." You want to brand your name. They're going to want to brand the series. This is just very… Historically, what I've seen in almost every instance. The other thing I want to mention before we leave, even though I know were running a little low on time, is, there are a couple of places where you and your agent will have different incentives. Not nearly as many, but I do want to bring them up. It's happened in two cases, most often I've seen in the industry. One is that, particularly early in your career, a small amount of money to you might be life changing. Right? You may be able to pay your rent with an extra $500 from your book getting sold into a foreign market that does not pay a whole lot of money. Your agent will make 75 bucks off of that $500 sale. Their incentive, if you look at an hour to earnings ratio for them, it might take them three or four hours of work to get that sale to happen in that small country. They may look at it and be like, "This just isn't worth the money. I'm not going to spend the time there." Where that $500 coming to you could mean the difference between making rent and being able to be full-time and not. So you need to be in charge of your career and saying to the agent, "I really want you to go and spend this time." They... A good agent will recognize that selling you worldwide is going to help build the brand of the author in ways that are beyond that extra 500 bucks. But I've known a lot of agents who just don't do the extra work to sell those small markets.

[Howard] I was almost published by Steve Jackson games. The publisher is not your friend. Steve Jackson is my friend. The original contract that came out, I looked at it and realized if you're planning on selling a couple of thousand books and paying me 5%, I will run out of money before these hit print. Steve came to me, my friend Steve, not the publishing company friend, my friend Steve said, "The only way for you to eat is for you to self publish." Then he put me in touch with his spouse Monica who walked me through building self-publishing. Monica has since passed away and I love her and can point at that friend is one of a handful of people… A handful of people who made my career possible. But that handful of people does not include a company. It was somebody who was acting against the interests of their company in order to help me. I was very fortunate.

[Brandon] Yeah. Kind of pulling us to a close here. We'll talk about this later. But we'll keep coming back to this concept. Just get it in your head. You are the person who needs to care about your career the most. You are the person who needs to watch out for yourself and make sure you're not being taken advantage of. You can't expect an agent and a publisher to do this for you. Maybe at times they will. Maybe at times they'll help you out. But at the end of the day, you have to understand, you have business relationships with people in addition or alongside your friendships.

 

[Dan] Awesome. Now we do have one closing bit of homework, which is also from Brandon.

[Brandon] Yes. So, one thing that was related to this is that Dan and I when we were breaking in, one of the things we found very useful to do, and I've talked about this on the podcast before, but I want to give you the homework for it. Which is, make a little black book, so to speak, of publishers. This is write down all the publishers in traditional publishing who are releasing new books by new authors consistently into the bookstores where you shop and you can find them there. Write those names down, write those publisher names down, and start watching for the books that they release and the editors who work there. So that you start having a grasp on the industry and who are the players that are in the industry. Read all of the acknowledgments pages for those books. Find the names of the agents. Start actually treating yourself like a businessperson who is looking how to network and how to understand your business.

[Dan] Fantastic. So. Thank you for listening to Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2020/08/02/15-31-the-agent-in-the-room/

Key Points: How do you become an agent? Lots of different answers. Often, start as an intern or apprentice, and work your way up. It takes time to build an income stream. Start out by networking. You can be both an author and an agent. How does an agent and an author work together, especially between "send me more" and signing with an agent? Read the manuscript. Get a feeling for the person. It's a long-term relationship. When do you talk about "the sticky stuff"? When we start talking about working together, we need to talk about communications style, morals, ethics, financial issues. Agents are business partners, not used car salesmen. Remember that when an agent offers to represent you, it is now your decision, you are hiring that agent.  
 

[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 31.

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, The Agent in the Room.

[Dongwon] 15 minutes long.

[Piper] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.

[Piper] I'm Piper.

[Howard] And I'm not the agent in the room.

[Chuckles]

[Dongwon] No, that's me.

[Howard] Yes, it is.

 

[Dan] Yeah. We have an agent in the room, and before we allow him to leave, we're going to make him answer a bunch of questions. First one…

[Howard] Which you asked, fear listener.

[Dan] Yes. We have… This question showed up quite a bit when we did our little survey of listeners. We tend to think that most of you listen because you want to be writers. But there's apparently more than a couple that listen because they potentially want to work in other aspects of the industry, as editors or agents or whatever. So, first question for Dongwon, if somebody wants to be an agent, how do they go about that?

[Dongwon] Terrible mistake.

[Laughter]

[Dongwon] It's funny…

[Dan] See, you say that, but you were something else and then decided to become an agent instead, so…

[Dongwon] Well, actually, I was an agent first. So my first job in publishing was at an agency. Then I decided I didn't like selling books, I wanted to buy them instead. So I became an editor. Then e-books were a thing. So I started working at an e-book startup, before I came back to being an agent, I wanted to work with writers more closely. It's a nonlinear kind of circuitous story. Part of the challenge in answering this question is if you ask five agents how they became an agent, they all usually have a very different answer. If there is a track, it's basically that you get an internship at an agency, and then get hired as an assistant, either at that agency or another agency, and then, over time, grow until the point at which you can start taking on your own clients. Where this gets very tricky in the part that people don't talk about a lot is that each agency has a very different structure of how agents get paid. Right? So there's a thing that's called a draw, so sometimes, the agency will give you a certain amount of money, and then you earn that back out of the commissions that you're earning for the agency. How much of a percentage is counted towards that depends on your deal with each agency. So that can be anywhere from like 25% on the very, very low end to 60 to 70% on the high end. So, figuring all these kinds of elements out is really important, and the biggest challenge to being an agent in the early years is that it takes a while for that income stream to build up. Because you're not earning a salary, often, right out of the gate, and then it's hard to get those first few deals going while you're looking for clients. Then, once you do sell your first books and… $100,000 sounds like a really great deal. It is a really great deal, but your commission of that… So whatever percentage you get to keep out of that 50% that goes to the agency, that's parceled out, usually over two, three, even five years. So it takes time for that income stream to build up. Usually, about year five or six is when you're starting to get something that looks like a more livable wage. So, getting into being an agent is a very difficult process in a lot of ways. I think it sounds very attractive and easy from the outside. But the financial side of it actually can be quite tricky. One of the things that we need to look at as an industry is making that a little bit easier for people to get into the business, because, I think, we're keeping a lot of interesting voices out of the industry and out of being agents representing writers from a wider range of backgrounds. Because the type of person who comes in tends to be relatively limited.

 

[Dan] So, if somebody wants to do this, what angle of approach do they come in? Are there people they have to talk to, is it all about networking? What do those first steps look like?

[Dongwon] I think networking is the most important one, right? So, unfortunately, almost all of these jobs are in New York. They're starting to spread out a little bit more, especially on the agency side. But what you want to do is go to events where you can meet agents, meet editors, meet writers even who can help you be introduced to some of the decision-makers who might be hiring. That's how you hear about new jobs, that's how you hear about opportunities. So networking really is number one for what you need here. There are a couple paid programs, like, the Columbia program and NYU, that are sort of paths into publishing. Those can be ways to meet people. They can be quite expensive. I'm not sure that they're always effective or necessary. But those can help if you're willing to go that path.

[Piper] I think one of the things I want to jump on and say is that you don't have to choose to be an agent or a writer. I know several of the agents that I've run into overtime are both authors and agents. In fact, I've had several editors asked me if I ever wanted to become an agent. So I happened to ask this exact question to my agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan of how does one normally become an agent. She basically said exactly what you said. Generally speaking, there's an apprenticeship or an internship depending on the agency. Agencies are structured in a different way. I think the only thing that differs, and I'd be really interested in getting your opinion on that, is that she actually did spend some time in publishing first, in fact, in the contracts department, prior to starting to pursue an agent career. I personally have benefited from that because she's excellent with my contracts. But what do you think about people who potentially are getting experience with the publishing houses first, or other experiences?

[Dongwon] For me, having a wide range of experiences in the industry has been really, really helpful, right? Understanding what things look like from the editor's side, how the internal conversations at publishers work. All agents understand that to some extent, because you deal with it a lot, but having been in the room is a very different vibe from somebody explaining it to you, right? So I think having a wide range of experience can help a lot. But the thing about agents, especially, is we all have different strengths and weaknesses, which are more varied than you see in most industries, I think. How agent A versus agent B does their job can be really night and day. What skill sets they bring to the table is really defined by their background and their experience. So coming from a contracts background, your agent probably has a slightly different perspective on how some of those arguments happen in-house, whereas to me, I'm good with contracts, I know what I'm doing there, but I don't always understand when a contracts person comes back to me and says, "We can't do X or Y," like, why they're coming to that decision. It's a little bit of a black box to me sometimes. I would love it if I knew more about that process. That said, we all have different areas that we come from and different expertises, and part of the process is really figuring out what you need from an agent and how they can best support you in your career and picking someone who has that skill set, that is congruent with yours.

 

[Dan] Cool. I want to pause here for the book of the week. Which, this week, is one of mine. My book, Extreme Makeover, which I chose specifically because it was one that my agent had a ton of input into. More so than any of my other books. The initial manuscript for this was well over 200,000 words. Then she helped me trim it down to 180, and then, of course, the final version after it got edited was like 120.

[Howard] Is 200 the one that I read? Before it had been agented?

[Dan] No. You read the 180.

[Howard] Okay.

[Dan] So, the agent had helped clean it up and helped really guide…

[Howard] So what I read had been cleaned up?

[Dan] Yes! Yes, it had.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] [garbled] old friend. What I read had been cleaned up. No, I liked it. I really liked that book, and I was reading the version that is longer and unnecessarily so.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Howard] The one that you, fair listener, can read…

[Dan] The final version… The initial version, the first draft, was a big, giant mess. I have always used my agent primarily for business stuff, and this was the first time that I went to her and said, "Hey, this is a mess." She's like, "Yeah." "Help me clean it up." With… Working with her, we wrangled that into a very good story that was kind of un-publishably long. So we got that down to 180. Then turned it in, and Whitney Ross at Tor Books trimmed it down again. But that agent relationship is really valuable, and people get different things out of agents. I typically don't use them for editorial, but in this case I did. So, that's my book, Extreme Makeover. You should go listen to it. Or buy it. Because it's awesome.

 

[Dan] But that leads us into the second half of our podcast, which is, how does an agent and an author, how do they work together? I want to guide this talk a little more specifically. What is the process… At what point… We talk a lot about submitting to an agent, and the agent saying, "Okay, this looks good. Please send me more of it." From that point on, until the point where you actually sign with an agent, what does that period of time look like?

[Dongwon] In my case, unfortunately, it often looks like a very long delay while I'm finding the time to…

[Chuckles]

[Dongwon] Read the book that I'm excited to read. But I think a lot of things go into that. The first is reading that manuscript and saying how you feel about it. Then, sort of looking into the person a little bit. I'll often Google them, take a look at their social media profile, and… There, I'm not looking for do you have a big following. I'm just trying to get a sense of who this person is. Right? A thing I talk about a lot is that I like to work… I work with people, I don't work with projects, right? I sign a client, not a book. So what I'm looking for is are we going to get along well as people and as business partners. Are you someone that I feel like I can communicate with? Are we going to be having fun together? Honestly. Like, you want that relationship to be one that has a certain energy to it, and a certain excitement to it. Especially at the beginning, when you're just figuring all that stuff out. So a lot of times, I'm looking into who that person is. Do I feel like they have a lot to bring to the table in addition to just the words? Right? Are they ambitious, do they have career plans, do they give off an air of competence and confidence in the world?

[Piper] I can say Courtney Miller-Callihan, who is my agent, was also aware of me on social media prior to our connecting. In fact, I had tweeted… Retweeted a blog post about… Just addressing when authors want agents versus not, and had lightly given my opinion that I personally would be looking for an agent when I had a manuscript to do so. She tweeted back at me and said, "Hey, drop me an email when you're ready to talk about that." Of course, the assumption was I would know her email. Which, she was correct, I did.

[Chuckles]

[Piper] So I sent her an email. Before I had… I tried to stay really, really obvious. I did not have a manuscript ready yet. But she got on the phone with me anyway. She had a conversation with me anyway. She was already familiar with my work. Because of that, and our conversation… She knew that there were a couple of other agents who were interested in working with me, but they were waiting for me to have a manuscript to send. She kind of maybe took advantage of that situation a little bit. No, I'm kidding. But she did offer me representation without a manuscript. She kind of placed a bet on a dark course.

[Dongwon] I've kind of done that a lot, actually.

[Howard] She was… You say she was familiar with your work.

[Piper] Yes. She was familiar with my work.

[Howard] That's… That's not… That's not the unknown quantity that you make it sound like.

[Piper] True.

[Howard] If an agent knows that you have written things, Indy or with another agent or whatever, they have a really strong sampling of what they can get from you when your next manuscript arrives.

[Piper] True. She was familiar with my voice that way. I will say that one of the things that she does look for in all of her clients is a sort of quirky sort of voice. So it's not nailed down by genre per se so much as she's looking for certain quirks that match her taste and her personality. She says that a lot of times, when it comes to selling books, she knows which editors have similar taste to hers, and so they are things that are marketable. Eminently so. But also quirky. They hit a… They strike a chord that unique and individual while still being [garbled]

[Dongwon] The thing is, I'm looking for that thing, that spark of energy and uniqueness and point of view. So I often will take a bet on someone who hasn't written a novel yet. I'm happy for that to be a very long-term bet, right? Five, seven years before that is going to be a book that we have out in the world. But I know, from talking to this person and seeing this person and seeing either short stories they've written or awards they've won or even podcasts they've done that they're going to do something interesting. I'm going to help them get there. If I get in early, then I can really help shape those early steps and hopefully get to where they want to go in a more exciting way than if I hadn't been involved.

 

[Dan] Cool. So, this leads into the next question, and I love the way one of our listeners phrased this. At what point in this relationship do you talk about the quote sticky stuff. This is all a lot of business, this is a lot of projects, but at what point do you start talking about personal beliefs, morals, politics, religion, the things that make that author who they are and how that will be reflected in their career? At what point do you bring that up in an agent relationship?

[Dongwon] So, whenever I'm looking at signing somebody and bringing them on board, I make sure that we have a phone conversation. There's… At a minimum, you want to have at least one conversation. There are times when I have three to four to five to… Sometimes months long that we're talking. Or even years in a couple cases. When you have that in person conversation, when I call to start talking about it, like, are we going to work together, that's the point at which you want to start asking those questions, right? What I love more than anything to see is when a writer challenges me in those conversations, and really asks me the difficult questions about communication style, about morals and ethics, about financial issues. What happens if this thing goes bad, what happens if that thing goes bad? What happens if some random event or you get in trouble on Twitter or what are your views on this? How do you feel about these things? Those are interesting conversations to have, and they're really important conversations to have. Because, ideally, an agent is a business partner you're going to have for decades. Right? So, why wouldn't you want to know more about those scenarios, before you get into it?

[Dan] Yeah. That's something that… At one point, I was at a con talking about agents and how to find agents, and somebody in the audience kind of pulled out the Freakonomics anecdote about the real estate agent, right? Like, it's in their financial interest to give you the best deal early because then they get their money quick and they're not in it for the long haul. He's like, "Aren't agents the same?" No. Not in the least tiny bit. I can think of very few people, including the Writing Excuses team, that are as closely partnered and invested in my career as my agent. We work together very closely, and it's a very long-term thing.

[Howard] Yeah. The difference there is that the agent… I mean, if Dongwon were to begin representing me… I don't have a manuscript for him, I wish I did. This conversation would be much more entertaining…

[Laughter]

[Howard] Dongwon and I would be having conversations about where he's planning on shopping it, what maybe I need to do to refine it, what plans do I have after this manuscript, because if/when it sells, that is going to open some new doors, it's going to close every door that it didn't sell to for sequels, potentially. That conversation is all about repeat business. Okay. I say repeat business. It's not repeat business when I have partnered with someone. It is a partnership. Your real estate agent is not a business partner. Your real estate agent is a used-car salesman with something that doesn't have wheels.

[Dongwon] Yeah. I mean, we are real estate agents if your real estate agent was also helping you renovate your house. Was also helping you design what your lawn is. Was also considering like how do we rebuild the neighborhood around you to be more suitable for your… Like, what would you do…

[Howard] And you're going to be buying a new house every 18 months.

[Dongwon] Exactly. Exactly. So, that conversation is really, really important. Finding those elements in that conversation that can really make you stand out, and, for me, as an agent, help me stand out as well. I had a case this last summer, where I was talking to a potential client. She was in the very enviable position of having 16 agents offering representation all at once.

[Piper] Yay!

[Dongwon] She wrote in a category that I had never represented. So it was a really interesting set of conversations that we had about why me. Why should I be in this race at all, much less the person who ended up winning it? All that came down to the conversations that we had. Right? All that came down to my strategic vision, my vision for the book, and what was coming down the road for her in five years and 10 years. We just really hit it off and had a really wonderful conversation about all the potential things that we could be doing. It's an opportunity for me, as much as it is an opportunity for the writer. The thing to remember, if there's one thing you take away from this particular podcast, is to remember that as soon as an agent offers representation, the power dynamic completely inverts. The power is now in your hands. It's now your decision. Right? Up until then, you're trying to get an agent's attention, but always remember, it's your work, it's your career, and you are effectively hiring an agent. I work for my writers, not the other way around. They pay me, quite literally, for what I do. So when you're having that conversation, think about that. It's like that old saying about when you go in for a job interview, you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. That's true in that case, too. So think of the hard questions. Think of the things you really want to know about how this partnership is going to work over the long term.

 

[Dan] Yeah. In fact, that's something we want you to start thinking about right now, even if you're not at the point where you need an agent. So that your homework today, and Dongwon is going to tell you about that.

[Dongwon] Yeah. So, what I would like you to do is start making that list of questions, right? Start making a list of the strategic questions you want answers to, the moral and ethical things, the communication style elements. Make a list of 5 to 10 questions. What's important to you? What are the things that matter in your career? What are you afraid of in terms of your relation with your agent? Don't be afraid of asking difficult questions. Because if you ask a potential agent a hard question or an uncomfortable question and they react badly, then what happens when that situation actually arises? How can you trust them to have your back in that moment? So, feel free to go hard and go big.

[Dan] Awesome. Great advice, and we hope that you've learned some good stuff about how to work with agents and potentially how to be one. So, you are now out of excuses, now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2018/09/23/13-38-how-to-find-and-use-alpha-readers/

 

Key points: Alpha and beta readers? Alpha readers, you trust to read a rough draft, to be honest and give you helpful feedback. Beta readers read a more polished version and you get their feedback. Or, alpha readers are industry professionals, while beta readers are test audience. Alpha readers are agents and writing groups. "You'll have your own definitions." Alpha readers understand the form. Where do you get them? Writing conferences. Book clubs. Face-to-face or online critiques? For alpha readers, back-and-forth, face-to-face is better. Beta readers, online feedback is okay. Don't forget targeted experts! Be aware that bad critiquing can ruin books! To get the right feedback? Make sure you and the other person can argue and articulate different opinions and understand what the other person is saying. Send it to the right people. Ask your readers to just give you their reaction, you will diagnose the problem. Look for people whose strengths complement your weaknesses. Use tiered questions, get their reaction, then drill down for specifics. Put pins in the good parts! Use targeted beta readers, who are as close to the character's experience as possible.

 

 

 

[Valynne] Homework is to take something that you have already written. Identify something within your manuscript that you can send to a targeted beta reader for.

[Brandon] And then do it.

[Howard] And then send it to them.

[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.