Writing Excuses Transcripts

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/18-17-build-your-author-brand-2023-edition/

 

Key Points: Author branding on the Internet. "Find out who you are, and then do it on purpose." Form versus essence! Own your own landing page. Who do you want to be on the Internet? Don't chase virality! Be consistent. Think about what do you want to show the world, and what do you want to keep for yourself. Separate your personal brand from the brand of your fiction. 

 

[Season 18, Episode 17] 

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Build Your Author Brand, 2023 Edition.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And it's 2023 already?

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] I just got here. I'm Howard.

 

[DongWon] This week, as the title might imply, we are talking about author branding. Or, basically, building a brand on the Internet kind of in general. We're still doing the deep dive on my newsletter, Publishing is Hard. This is specifically riffing off of a post I did titled Do It On Purpose. That title comes from a quote from one of my very favorite humans on the planet, Dolly Parton, who once said, "Find out who you are, and then do it on purpose." For me, this is sort of a guiding light in terms of how to think about building a brand and having a brand. So I wanted to take a moment to sort of update our thoughts on this, 2023. The world has been evolving very fast on the social media front, on the technology front, on the publishing front. So, what does that look like in today's world?

[Dan] First, I have to say this is the first time I've heard that Dolly Parton quote and I love it immensely.

[DongWon] It's a perfect quote. I use it for my entire life.

[Dan] Yeah. It's so good.

[Howard] Well, it cuts both ways, because we all know people who have decided, for whatever reason, to be assholes on the Internet. Like, oh, you're doing that on purpose. Because that's who you really are.

[DongWon] That is a brand. Right? Being an asshole on the Internet is a brand that has been hugely successful for so many people. I mean, the Logan Paul's of the world have built empires on this.

[Mary Robinette] Can you imagine how successful Harlan Ellison would have been on…

[DongWon] Oh, good Lord.

[Howard] The thought.

[DongWon] That is a terrifying thought. I feel like I'm staring into the abyss right now.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] But, I think, that's a good example. You can say Harlan Ellison's name, and for at least a certain generation of readership, they know exactly what they're dealing with. He had a very strong brand, very strong identity. Was it a pleasant one? I wouldn't think so. It's not one I would want to have. But the only reason I bring that up is I love the Dolly Parton quote because the first part of it is figure out who you are. Then do it on purpose. Right? Figure out who you are means that your brand should be organic to who you are and how you are in the world. What choices do you make in your life?

 

[Mary Robinette] The last several years I've been working very hard on that from a different point where I've been looking at the idea of the difference between form versus essence. Which has been useful for me as social media shifts, because there's the idea… I got this from Laura Levine who's a happiness coach which sounds very woo, but her idea is that everybody has 5 to 7 essences that make them happy. An essence is about feeling, whereas form is about something you can touch or buy. So when I'm engaging with social media, I'm thinking about what are the essences of how I want to engage with this. When we had to do all of the shifting to go online during the pandemic, it's like what am I trying… What is the essence of what I am trying to get at instead of trying to replicate the form of it. So, like, I watched… When I was watching people jump ship from Twitter, they were all trying to replicate the form…

[DongWon] Right.

[Mary Robinette] In some way, forgetting that… It's like the essence of it was like rapid conversations.

[DongWon] Right. I think, to some extent, one of the challenges we have right now is the essence of what made Twitter great is a little bit not how the Internet interacts right now.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] The Internet is interacting very much more in a broadcast mode, in a more passive stream mode, rather than an interactive one, and is much more a visual and video content… The famed pivot to video actually happened and that is Reels and TikTok. It just took a lot longer to get there and came in a form that nobody really anticipated. So trying to replicate the form of Twitter has been a real challenge, I think, for a lot of people as some competitors, which are very interesting competitors, haven't quite gotten the traction in terms of being able to promote yourself and build a brand that Twitter used to have. Which used to be this sort of like cornerstone of having an identity online, especially as a writer. As Twitter becomes less and less important, for the moment at least, again, this is the 2023 edition for a reason, right? One of the things that has happened is Twitter is fading, TikTok is ascendant, Reels is ascendant on Instagram, things like that.

 

[Howard] One of the pieces that I've been recommending for literally decades is that whatever you're building… Usually I was talking to cartoonists… You need to have a landing page that you own. Your website. Your domain. Because these…

[DongWon] Your email lists.

[Howard] Your email lists.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] These things where you are getting all of your traction right now, whether they are Twitter or Facebook or whatever, they are turnkey systems that can be taken away from you with the turn of a key. So the thing that hasn't changed in the 2023 edition is it is still important for you to be maintaining a thing that is all yours that you have control of. What has changed is what are you going to plug it into. Are you still plugging it into Twitter? Are you looking for a way to create a Mastodon instance? Are you looking for newsletters? DongWon, I know you mentioned earlier Substack, and have since stepped away from Substack for reasons that I completely agree with. There are lots of alternatives to that for newsletters. So, 2023…

[DongWon] One of the most useful pieces about the Internet that I've ever read is Cory Doctorow's piece about Enshittification. I don't know if anybody's heard of it.

[Chuckles yup]

[DongWon] [garbled] this idea. Basically, the argument is that any Internet platform that is for-profit will eventually be quote unquote enshittified by their pursuit of revenue. Right? Which stands in opposition to the utility that it has to us as users. So one thing I encourage people to do is, as you think about how to brand yourself, decouple your thinking, the essence as Mary Robinette was describing, from the form, whatever platform that is. Right? So it's not about TikTok, it's not about Instagram, it's not about Twitter, it's not about Mastodon. It's about who you are on the Internet and what are you trying to put out there. How do you want to present yourself? Once you figure that out, then you can start thinking about what tools do I want to use to execute on that. Newsletter, blog, Twitter, whatever it is.

 

[Mary Robinette] So I have a great example of this from my own experience, which is that TikTok, every author is trying to like do the thing, figure it out. I discovered that what I enjoyed was going for a walk in the woods and talking about craft. Like, one of the reasons I like doing the podcast, I like talking about craft. In the process of doing that, I recorded a thing on ask versus guess culture, and how you could think about it in terms of characterization. That sucker went viral. Like, viral viral. Like, hundreds of thousands of people watching it. Every time I touch that topic, it is so many more people viewing it than anything else I write. But I don't want to be the ask versus guess girl. That's not… I'm not interested in having that as my brand. So I'll talk about it occasionally, but I very aggressively am not going after audience numbers. Like, I'm not using that is my metric for have I succeeded. What I'm looking at, because it's a thing that is more interesting to me, is the, "Oh, thank you. That unlocked something for me."

[DongWon] Well, that's actually a really important point, because I think so much of what you see in terms of online social media is a pursuit of the number. Right? People are chasing virality. I cannot emphasize enough that virality does not equal having a brand. Your brand is your identity overall. It's what you do over time, it's what you do every day. Virality is the thing that might happen if your brand is stable and good and exciting and interesting. Right? Virality… When you go big, when you get numbers… I don't know how many people have experienced that themselves. It's actually not a very pleasant experience subjectively. It is very stressful. People start saying a lot of very wild things to you. If you make a joke on the Internet and it goes viral, you may end up in corners of the Internet that are not your favorite place to be. So it is something to keep in mind that just because something went big doesn't mean it's going to serve your underlying brand, and just because your underlying brand hasn't gone viral, that doesn't mean you're not doing it right. Those things are very much decoupled from each other.

[Dan] Well, let's take this a step further. Because I worry that a lot of aspiring authors and people who are just getting into this are equating virality and sales. Because there's no link there at all.

[DongWon] Absolutely.

[Dan] Just because you have a lot of engagement online does not mean that anyone buys your books. Over and over again, there's virtually no causal link whatsoever.

 

[DongWon] So let's dig into a little bit more what it means to have a brand and what it does for you over time after we take a break.

[Howard] You've probably already heard of them. I love them and have been watching them for years. Kurzgesagt: In a Nutshell on YouTube. This is an animated sci-comm sort of short thing that… They touch on everything from Fermi's Paradox to quantum foam to understanding how to actually be happy instead of being sad when you are struggling with that. I love this program. One of the things that I love about it is that… It's put together by a team of people, animators, musicians, writers, researchers. This team of people has managed to create something that is cohesive and has their stamp on it, their signature on it all the way through. As a creator of things who… I love imagining that I can create a brand that is identifiable. I look at what they've done, and I can tell immediately, "Oh, that's a Kurzgesagt thing," and I love it. It's super cool. Kurzgesagt: In a Nutshell. Head out to YouTube and have a look, have a listen. Learn something and maybe learn what it takes to make something feel like it's you.

 

[DongWon] Okay. So, if a brand isn't virality, if virality isn't sales, then what does it mean to have a brand? To have an identity in the world? For each of you, I guess, what does that look like? How did you do the thing of figuring out who you are, much less do it on purpose?

[Erin] I will say, and it's so funny to hear y'all talk about brand equaling virality, I generally do not like to be perceived on the Internet. I am pretty much afraid of people on the Internet, and everything having to do with social media. Like, I pipe up here and there, but I always find it really interesting for me because in person, when I'm out and about among people, I tend to be pretty chatty, but on the Internet, I like tend to hide a little more. I think because of how bad it can feel, and how I've seen other people feel really like, "Oh, my gosh. I've gone viral and now everyone hates me in some dark corner of the Internet." So, but I would say is I actually feel like, for me, it is knowing where my strengths are. So a lot of the brand that I've built is in conversations with people in person, on Discord, in smaller groups. What happens is enough people get to know you in the same way, and then sometimes they will help build your brand for you in the ways that they speak about you. Because everyone feels like, oh, that's really real, and that's really consistent. Is that going to go viral? Probably never. But I think it feels very true to who I am. So that when I do speak up and say something, it feels genuine and I think that is what people vibe about me, is that I feel like I'm being myself all the time.

[DongWon] I love that so much. I mean, I think that's exactly right. To have a brand doesn't mean you have to be online in a certain way. It doesn't mean you have to be speaking up on Twitter or recording TikTok dances or whatever it is. Right? Having a brand, to me, is so much about consistency. Boy, is it easier to be consistent if you are just being natural to who you are on the inside and the ways that you think. So, being yourself in person or in private spaces with people is as much brand work as it is to have a TikTok with scheduled posts.

[Howard] There's an exercise that I learned back when I was a mid-level manager of marketing guy. You pick a few brands, like Coca-Cola, the Olympics, Chevrolet. Say the name, close your eyes, think about them. What are your impressions of them? For right or wrong, that's what their brand has delivered to you. That is how their brand is being perceived to you. Now bring it home and say the names in the same way of a few of your friends. What do they mean to you in this regard? That is, whether or not they're doing it consciously, that is the brand that they have created. Now, look at your own name. If I say Howard Tayler, I need to think of something other than just, well, obviously that's who I am. No, what are the things that make me me? It can help to have somebody else say your name, and then tell you what they think your brand is. That can be a real eye-opener.

[Dan] A really wonderful example, by which I mean terrible example…

[Giggles]

[Dan] Of accidental branding is what Pepsi has done to itself over the last 10 or 20 years. In an effort to compete with Coke in the marketplace, they started buying exclusive contracts with restaurants. Which is why when you go to a restaurant and you ask for Coke, they will say, "Is Pepsi okay?"

[Howard] Is Pepsi okay?

[Dan] That became their brand. Is Pepsi okay? To the point that they had to address it directly in an ad campaign a couple of years ago. Where I think it was Steve Carell would say, "Is Pepsi okay? Pepsi's wonderful!" Because they realized they had boxed themselves into a corner by accidentally branding themselves as the thing you're forced into.

[Howard] Oops.

[DongWon] Don't make your brand…

[Laughter]

 

[DongWon] Being the second choice. Yeah. I mean, one thing I want to emphasize is we're talking a lot about figuring out who you are, do it on purpose, those kinds of things. That doesn't mean you need to be able to list in a bullet point list here are the five adjectives that I am. Right? Sometimes it's a feeling. Sometimes it's a vibe. You don't have to be like, "Oh, I'm just this person who does this one thing, and I can't do anything else." It's about emphasis. Right? When I think about having a brand, I think about, okay, what am I putting out in the world and what am I holding back for myself? Right? What things do I do online versus things that I do in my own personal life that I don't need to be talking about all the time. Right? There are ways in which I think my life can look very transparent online, but, obviously, most of my time is doing other stuff. Right? So what I choose to put out there in terms of here's my newsletter, here's my thoughts about publishing, here are my clients, here are the author books I work on. Then, I like have a couple other things. Like, I do woodworking. I like to cook, I like to take photographs. Those are the three things I put on. Right? The other hobbies that I do, the other things I spend my time with, the people I spend my time with who aren't work related, I ain't putting that online. That's for me. That's my own personal life. Right? So knowing what you keep for yourself versus what you put in the world, I think, is a really big part and a really important part about not only having a brand but making it sustainable. Right? Because what you don't share with the world, that will become more and more precious to you the more exposed you are in all those other things. So, keeping some of your life insulated from being perceived, whether it's on the Internet or in person or whatever it is. I cannot overstate how important that is.

[Mary Robinette] Yep. Yeah. Something along those lines that I want to kind of draw attention to people… Draw people's attention to, is that there's… We're talking about your brand as a person, which is different than your brand… The brand of your fiction. Like, my fiction brand is that I write meticulously researched stories with happily married couples, and that they're generally… There is some hopeful element to it. That is what you know you're going to pick up, you're going to get from my books, regardless of which genre I happen to be writing in. My short fiction, all over the map, good luck. But my personal brand is different. Because my personal brand, I insulate my husband from the Internet. So, I am part of a happily married couple, but that is not the personal brand that I am bringing. I don't talk about Rob a lot online, because that is a choice that I've made. Those are two different things.

[Erin] I'm thinking back to that idea that Howard was talking about, about how other people see you. I would say one of the best ways, with your fiction, like, your brand of your fiction, is to listen if somebody ever introduces you or talks about you in a conversation, like in a group. Like, they'll be like, "Oh, meet so-and-so. Like, she writes dah-ta-dah-ta-dah." Like, you'll be surprised sometimes what another person will say about your fiction brand. Or your writer brand, that's very different than what you might think of for yourself. But it lets you know what's the shorthand that at least is in one person's mind.

[Howard] I will forever be grateful to our departed friend, Jay Lake, who introduced me at WorldCon by saying, "This is Howard Tayler. He writes Schlock Mercenary, which is the best science fiction comic being published today." I was like, "[gasp] Hi, Jay, thank you. Um. Yes, I'm…" How do I step up to that?

[Laughter]

[Howard] But this was my brand being communicated in a way that I couldn't communicate it. That was wonderful.

[Dan] Yeah. Erin, that's such a smart thing. It can be difficult. I wish, in advance, that we had prepared this to be like let's talk about each other's brands.

[Laughter No…]

[Dan] Because hearing someone else describe you can encapsulate you in a way that you hadn't realized. Several years ago, somebody described my fiction as, "He writes books about characters who are deeply obsessed with one specific area of knowledge." Which is 100% true, and I did not realize I was doing it. Now that I know that I'm doing it, I can lean into it and I can use that, I can take advantage of it. But, yeah, that's an aspect of my branding that I was blind to.

[DongWon] Yeah. It's really one of my favorite parts of the job is getting to help figure out what a book's brand is, what an author's career brand is, and what their personal brand is. Right? Because I'm constantly introducing people to the world. That's kind of what my job is, introducing people to other people at conventions, to editors, to the public in terms of writing book copy or whatever it is. Helping them figure out how do I write my bio. That process of really figuring it out, of like who are you, what do you do, what do you want to be in the world, how do we make this sustainable. Those are like really big questions. It is such a joy to like be able to, like, figure out strategically what makes sense and how are we going to execute on it.

[Mary Robinette] There is one like… The double-edged sword of this aspect of it is that once you've decided this brand and it's the thing you communicate, that the do it on purpose part is the part we really have to… Again, I want to draw a line under is because… Dolly Parton… Dolly Parton can never have a bad day.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Like, she can never lose her temper at anyone in person now. Because that would completely… That would be not doing Dolly Parton on purpose. As people, we are complicated, we have moods, we have good days. Everybody's allowed to have a bad day. But there was a story about James Gordon going to a restaurant…

[DongWon] Balthazar? Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Getting mad because they brought his wife something that she was allergic to twice. Like, that is a thing, like, all of us have… We all know you are good to the waitstaff, you are… But everybody has like a day where they've slipped. It's usually when you're protecting somebody else. But because his brand is he's a nice guy, it was so completely out of character that it blew up into this ginormous thing.

[Erin] Yeah, I just want to build on that to say that's making me think that… I think one of the reasons that happened is some people have like sort of this natural distaste for him. That can happen, too. Sometimes, the brand that people have in their mind for you is just incorrect. A lot of times, it can be influenced by their own prejudices and knee-jerk reactions to things that are as broad as like ethnicity and gender, or as specific as you have the same face as their ex, or who knows what. But sometimes people will just decide that you are a way. That can be, like, kind of a brand trap. I think it's good to know about it, because if you know that, like, there's a whole swath of people who see you X Way, at least you're aware. It's like you know what's going on. But, I think that's… I'm curious how you would say to deal with that, because I think that can be a really difficult thing on the Internet.

[DongWon] It's really tough to fly directly contrary to the brand. Right? So, James Gordon example, there are a group of people who think he's an unpleasant person. He spends his entire brand saying I'm a very pleasant person. Those two things… There's no overlap between them. So it will never resolve in a way that's manageable. So if you know that a certain sector of the audience thinks of you a certain way, then… Not play into it, but try and move it 10 degrees rather than moving it 90 degrees. Right? So, for me, over time, I think when I started, there was a certain set of… I could come off as like arrogant, sometimes. You know what I mean? I think in the early days, especially when I was younger and, like, didn't quite know how to navigate certain social situations. So I have worked really hard to shift that by degrees to be a little bit more fluid, a little bit more open and generous while still kind of like playing into certain angles and certain people's expectations of me. Whether that was I would go to a con wearing a really nice suit. Like, there were elements of, like, how do I move this very slightly over time to be in a place that's more comfortable to me, that is more aspirational for me. But I never tried to do a 90 degree, 180 degree pivot from you think I'm this, no, I'm this thing over here. So I think that's one way to think about it. When you shift your brand, you want to do it slowly and over time. Right? Because brands evolve with you. Sure, you'll find yourself haunted by some ghost of a thing you did or said 10 years ago. That's a thing that will happen. Especially on today's Internet. But be thoughtful about how you evolve that over time. I think you can get to a place that will make you happier with how you want to be seen online.

 

[DongWon] I think we will leave it on that. Erin, I believe you have our homework this week.

[Erin] I do. The homework is for you to write a list of… That starts with sentences that start with "I am a writer who…" Or "I am a writer that…" Trying to go as broad as possible. It could be "I am a writer who writes romance." It could be "I am a writer who likes to get up at dawn and write first thing in the morning." Then, write down a list of things, "I am a person who…", "I am a person that…" Look at that list and think what of the things on this list are the things that I want to give to the world, what I want the world to see? What are the things that I want to keep for myself? I would also suggest doing it for you now, and also for the writer and person that you aspire to be.

[Mary Robinette] In the next episode of Writing Excuses, we'll go over email marketing, building an audience, and LARPing as a newsletter sender. Until then, you're out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2022/01/30/17-5-the-promise-of-the-brand/

 

Key Points: Your packaging needs to target the right niche. The cover is an advertisement, which needs to evoke the right feel, the right genre, and the right audience. Step one, go look at the current books like your books and see what the trend is. You get to decide which faces are public, which ones are private, and which face is the right one for this moment. Check out para social relationships. Ask people, let them tell you what they see. Let them be your mirror. Put themes of what you are in each book. 

 

[Season 17, Episode 5]

 

[Howard] This is Writing Excuses, The Promise of the Brand.

[Kaela] 15 minutes long.

[Sandra] Because you're in a hurry.

[Megan] And we're not that smart.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Kaela] I'm Kaela.

[Sandra] I'm Sandra.

[Megan] And I'm Meg.

 

[Howard] When we began this series of eight episodes about expectations and promises, I mentioned the 2009 example of the Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice cover redesign. The design of the carton. This is, for me, the apex fail for brands, for making brands, for working off your existing brand. They took the existing brand, which was an orange with a straw stuck in it, and changed it to a nice sleek glass of orange juice. The ad execs had said, "You know, you've got this carton of pure Premium orange juice, and you know what, you never show people a picture of the juice. Let's talk about what's actually in the carton." So they changed it to this picture of this glass of juice, and they change the, which is… It's like a half gallon milk carton, the newer ones that have little plastic caps in the middle of the sloped face. They changed the little orange plastic cap to be a little half dome plastic orange. So it looked like an orange. They said, "So, here we're sending the message that, yes, it came from an orange, and it's full of juice, and it's awesome." As we mentioned, several episodes earlier, they spent $30 million on this redesign, and sales dropped by 20%, in large part because people just couldn't find what they were looking for. They couldn't find the Tropicana Pure Premium, so they were buying Donald Duck brand orange juice. "Oh, if I can't get the Pure Premium, I might as well buy stuff from concentrate." Whatever. Tropicana sales fell off so hard that they went back to their old design, and they lost like 50 million+ dollars over this whole thing. The mistake that was made here is that the ad exec assumed that we associate a picture of orange juice with orange juice, and we associate a plastic orange with authentic orange juice. It's like they got their wires exactly crossed. In this episode, we want to talk about how, especially for self pubbers, how your brand is defined by cover art and text treatments and all of these other things in order to send the right message and make the right promises to your audiences. Sandra?

[Sandra] Yes. One of the… I talk about this a lot because I do a lot of the business aspects and packaging aspects for our business. One of the things that is very important to hold in your brain as a creative person is that you've written this glorious story, and now you need to package up the story you've created in a delivery vehicle that will aim it straight into the heart of your niche. Wherever you want your story to go, to package it in a way that will deliver it there. Because failures to package correctly means that your book ends up in a mismatched audience, who will then pan your book and tank your sales. This is why being mis-shelved is a problem. Because if your cover is saying mystery when what you're delivering is a thriller, then the audience has picked it up expecting one thing and you're delivering a pro… You've delivered something else. Your packaging promised something that isn't there. They're going to be frustrated with it. So one of the key things that… I always, always, always drum into people that I'm talking about this with is that a cover is not an illustration. A cover is an advertisement. It should evoke the feel of your story, it should evoke the genre of your story, it should evoke who the audience is. It does not matter at all character on the cover matches any of the descriptions… Well, qualification there. But you don't have to match perfectly your description on the inside.

[Howard] Yeah. That's… That principle happens… We see a lot in comics. The cover of a comic book is not a scene from the book.

[Sandra] Right.

[Howard] The cover of a comic book is an illustration of the conflict in this book. Spiderman is going to fight Venom and they're going to do it in a big city. So we see Spiderman and Venom and cars being thrown around. But that panel never actually happened that way. But there are lots of other good examples of this, of the brand being… The brand wrappering the content in good ways. I'm aiming at Kaela and Meg now.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Who's ready?

 

[Megan] Okay. One of my favorite examples of a cover that really knew its audience is Eva Evergreen Semi-Magical Witch. It's a middle grade fantasy for people who love Kiki's Delivery Service. Right? So that first thing… Like, I hadn't… Yeah, I love Kiki's Delivery Service. I love Ghibli movies. I was just walking around and I look over and I see this adorable witch with an adorable animal companion on a broom who's smiling. She looks slightly anime, but not full anime. She has a long dark dress and she looks adorable and she's got her wand. I was like, "That gives me so strong Kiki's Delivery vibes." I went over immediately and picked it up. I was like, "I want to read this now."

[Giggles]

[Howard] I'm looking at the cover right now, and it's not our book of the week, but boy, howdy, that cover knows exactly who it's aiming for.

[Megan] Yeah.

[Howard] If you love Kiki's Delivery Service, you want to read this book. Is this book a repackaging of Kiki's Delivery Service? No. But if you loved that, you'll love this. You love fresh orange juice, you'll love what's in this carton. Because it's got a picture of an orange.

[Laughter]

[Megan] It may not be book of the week, but it is cover of the week. Good cover of the week.

[Howard] Oh, my. That is so brilliant.

[Megan] It is. I'm the sort of person where I'm in a bookstore, and I'm looking for a book that I don't know, I always go for an illustrated cover over a photo or a photo edited cover. Which has no indication, really, as to how much the writing would appeal to me, but I love beautifully illustrated book covers. That is actually a trend I'm seeing more and more of is fewer photos and more full illustrations. Sandra?

[Sandra] That is step one. When you're trying to figure out how to position your book, step one is literally go to the place where the books like your book are shelved and see what is the current trend. Because a mistake I see from people of my generation is that they love these 70s style covers that evoke the 1970s because that was what they were familiar with. There writing a book for teenagers and this is what they loved when they were a teenager. That is a mismatch for today's market. So you need to go find out what the current cover language is for where your aiming, so that your cover can be in communication and in dialogue with what the current trend is and just be the new cool thing.

 

[Howard] Kaela?

[Kaela] Yeah. So, I think that one of the… My cover for Cece Rios… One of… What I love about it is how… When you think of middle grade, honestly, those sections, most of it's blue. Just the colors are mostly blue. Sometimes you get a little purple in there, you might get some highlights in red, but for some reason, most middle grade books are just kind of blue colors. Blue shades. I thought it was so fun… I mean, one, because it's appropriate, but, too, that Mirella Ortega and my cover designer Catherine Lee, and everything, did such a good job. Like, one thing I told them was high saturation because that matches Mexican culture as well. But they decided to go full on into these oranges. Which means that when you put it on a shelf with any of the others, it stands out automatically, because it's the contrast color of most of the other colors on its shelf. While also still matching the vibe of all the other books on the shelf. Like, it's illustrated, it's got something about it that seems fun, it's got a strong main character full front, like middle grade often does, but it's done something to draw attention to itself at the same time. That is representative of what is inside, not just, "Oh, man, this is eye-catching. But it doesn't match."

[Howard] I'm looking at that cover right now, and it's… It's very, very warm. You mentioned that it's complementary to maybe the blue or the purple colors that you'll see alongside it. True, but there is lavender and purple right there in the cover text, so the complement… It doesn't need to be sitting next to something else to fill the requirements of good color matching. This is really, really well done. Now most of us don't get to design our own covers. The important thing here is that we need to recognize what the covers look like of the things that we will be sitting next to because the cover makes a promise. If I see a Michael Whalen or a Whalenesque illustration, a full wraparound piece of art, around a big fat book, I'm positive that it is going to be an epic fantasy. I'm 100% positive of that. If I open it up and it's a political thriller, well, that'd be weird. That'd be super weird.

 

[Megan] Yup. So, like you said how most authors don't have say… Not say, but most authors don't design their own book covers. A lot of filmmakers do not get to cut their own trailers. So you will have… I think a pretty recent example of this is the Netflix show Q Force, which is an adult comedy about a set of LGBTQ superspies that end up coming together as a team. It is a comedy, it has fun elements to it, but it also is like very sincere with a lot of heart in the series. However, the released trailer pretty much only took the goofs and the jokes and made it look like it was a stereotype poking fun of those different identities. So a lot of people who would have, I think, deeply enjoyed the show were very off put by this trailer. Something that's fun about this is a lot of times in film school, you'll get the assignment to re-cut a movie into a trailer of an opposite genre. So I did not make this trailer, but one of my favorite examples of this is Scary Mary…

[Yes!]

[Megan] Mary Poppins redone as a horror film.

[Howard] My favorite is Shining, where they took The Shining and they made it this family…

[Romantic comedy]

[Howard] Romantic comedy. Yeah, coming-of-age thing.

 

[Howard] We need to do a book of the week. We've talked about a lot of books that have had glorious covers. But we have an actual book of the week.

[Sandra] Yes. I have that this week. The book of the week I've chosen is Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. This book is brilliant packaging at its finest. It is… Like, it's a book with a slipcover, and the slipcover is actually clear plastic so you can see through it. So, there's clear spots that you can then see text that's printed on the actual hardback. Things are crossed out. So the packaging promises you kind of conspiracy theories and things that are hidden that you're trying to puzzle out and reveal. Then, on the inside, they use typography to tell parts of the story.

[Howard] Sandra is currently holding this up to…

[Yes]

[Howard] Our WebCams.

[Sandra] Yes. It's too beautiful. Like [garbled]

[Howard] The remaining three of us are here slack-jawed. Like…

[Sandra] There's art inside. There's a part where they're shooting missiles and the text actually trails itself across the page as if it's the missile trail.

[Howard] Oh, that's glorious.

[Sandra] It uses fontography as storytelling.

[Howard] Well, what I'm looking at the cover and with the clear and the effects that they've done with that, that… Yes, it makes a promise about the kind of story that's being told, but when I get to a page that has a missile trailing text, that is… That fulfills a surprising yet inevitable.

[Sandra] Yes.

[Howard] Oh. Oh, you promised me this kind of design, but I had no idea you would shoot missiles with words.

[Sandra] Yeah. Seriously, go to your local bookstore and look at a physical copy of this book, because browsing it online does not actually give you the experience of it. Yeah. So, Illuminae. There's three books in the series, this is the first one. They're all brilliant, and the stories are brilliant as well.

 

[Howard] Now. We have talked at great length, and only scratched the surface about the visual elements in our brands. These are the things that for most writers, most authors, it's out of our control. A huge part of your brand, however, is within your control. What is… What are the things that you, your name as a brand, means? My name, Howard Tayler, people associate me with Schlock Mercenary. I have a twitter feed that doesn't drop f-bombs and that doesn't do piles and piles of negging. These are things that are part of my brand. They're inherent in kind of the way I am, so it's easy. But at this point, I have now made a promise. If I were to start just trash talking everybody and throwing profanity in my twitter feed, I would be breaking a promise to the people who have followed me on twitter because of my brand.

[Sandra] I think it's very easy, for creators, especially people who are young in having a creative career, no matter what their chronological age may be… There's this adaptation. Where we have to figure out and figure out who we are as authors and how we present ourselves. It can be very anxiety inducing. The thing that I always come back to is in the Phantom Tollbooths, which is a fun adventure story, there's a set of characters called the dodecahedron That people who have heads that are literally dodecahedrons. They have a face with happy on it, and a face with sat on it, and a face with mad on it. They turn the face forward, whatever is appropriate to the moment. So their heads are actually rotating as they emote. That is a useful visual image, because you are also a dodecahedron, and you get to decide which of your faces are public and which of your faces are private, and which one is the right face to be putting forward at this moment. I'm in a book release cycle, so I need to be putting this face forward. Okay, now I'm in a lull cycle, so I can put together… I can let this other face show more often. All of it is you. You are not creating a character. Some people do create a character that they inhabit. But I find that that is mentally and emotionally exhausting over time, and it's much better to just show aspects of yourself, rather than trying to maintain an entire façade.

[Cough. Hans. Cough.]

[Sandra] Yeah. Hans. Yeah, that's…

[Laughter]

[call back]

[Sandra] Here we go. So it's a lot to decide and it's a lot to navigate and again, we could talk for hours just on this. Search term for you. Para social relationships. If you are going to live in a public life in any way, learn about para social relationships and how they work.

 

[Kaela] Yes. I'd also… This is just something I'd recommend, like a tool for you, but… I know that some of the older Writing Excuses episodes from I think January 2021, the business of being a writer, goes into this a little bit as well. But asking people, trying to get a finger on what other people are receiving from your brand, because you're bringing your self to the table. Right? You know, again, you've got all of these faces, so you're like, I don't know which ones other people see all the time. Kind of like how you don't really know how you look, you just see yourself in a mirror sometimes. So being able to get a pulse from other people, what your brand is. Like that, I have my writing group and I have some people from my family who read my books and things like that give me a few notes on… I'll say, just tell me what you… When I write something, things that you think happen a lot I found that they were like worldbuilding, luscious stuff, high-stakes mixed with very potent emotional exploration. I was like, "Okay." That gave me a pulse on like… When I'm sitting down to write something, in my delivering on at least some of these promises. Not every book is going to be the same book, but it should have themes of what I am in each book.

[Howard] That sounds a lot like you're not going to be able to just pour concentrated… From concentrate orange juice into that carton and make people…

[Very much]

[Howard] And make people happy.

[Yeah]

 

[Howard] Any other final words before I throw homework down?

[Megan] I had… A thing I do periodically is go through a social med… I've got a Facebook and I've got a Twitter and I've got an Instagram. I periodically just read through my feed to see what the balance of content is there. Is it… Am I re-tweeting a lot or am I… Has this been a complaining week? If it's been a complaining week, then maybe I should throw a cat picture. Just trying to see that I don't fall into the habit of posting just happy on Facebook and complain on Twitter. Trying… Just to see how I'm reading.

[Howard] That's… I feel like we need to can of worms that, because we could talk about that sort of…

[Tuning]

[Howard] Oh. That's a ton of work.

 

[Howard] Instead of that is a ton of work, it's a ton of work homework for you. Okay? Here we go. This is two phases, and this is deep stuff. Describe the perfect cover art for your work in progress. Now, when I say describe, you can use comp titles, comp pictures, to your heart's content. For instance, remember that Star Wars poster where Luke is holding the lightsaber up, and you got Darth Vader's silhouette in the background? Yeah, it's kind of like that, except the setting is forest greenery with mist and fog and there's eyes peering out of the forest. Okay. Well, you've now used words to give us a picture that we can kind of see. So, do this description. Then explain why this is the perfect cover. What promises does that cover make to the audience? How does it account for audience bias? Here's part two, and part two is easy. Okay? What is the right typeface for your name? Is it serif and san serif? Is it weathered or is it crisp? Is it larger than the title? Hello, Brandon Sanderson. Or is it tiny, down in the corner? Hello, me. What is… You probably have lots of fonts on your computer. Experiment with this and see what text treatment seems to fit what you imagine to be your brand. Then write down why. Why do you think that text treatment makes the right promises about who you are? I said it was big. It's huge. You're out of excuses. Now go write about pictures and fonts.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2020/11/01/15-44-rebooting-a-career/

 

Key Points: You might be orphaned by editors. Or maybe your books stop selling, the series doesn't click? You have to stick with it, keep going. Dedication, hard work, keep pivoting. Look at your brand right now, and think about how to build on that to do the thing you want to next. Diversify! Multiple pen names, projects, brands. Your skill set can carry across a pivot or reboot. You can use short fiction to explore where your strengths are quickly. "Never let more than 40% of your income come from one place." If you quit your day job and write full time, you are a freelancer. Diversify your income stream. Plan ahead. Learn how to track where your money is coming from. 

 

[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 44.

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Rebooting a Career.

[Dongwon] 15 minutes long.

[Mary Robinette] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Howard] I'm looking for something now.

[Dan] Awesome.

[Laughter]

 

[Dan] Well, we have got something new for you. We teased this episode all the way back in our very first episode of the year. Which, for us, we recorded 10 minutes ago, but you…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Had to wait 11 months for it. Thank you for your patience. So, this is something, again, that came up in an audience question. I love this topic, because it has happened to me. I'm actually in the middle of it right now. I sincerely hope by the time this airs that everything's stable and wonderful. But I have been orphaned twice by editors.

[Mary Robinette] Let's define what orphaned means, in this context.

[Dan] Orphaned… Okay. In this context, what it means is the editor who acquired my book initially at a given publishing house, I am no longer with that editor. I was moved to a different one. Then that one actually left the publishing house altogether. A year later, I am currently, as of this recording, do not have an editor at that publisher. Which is sad because now the books are not being shepherded, and my own career is a little bit in flux. So this is something that I've dealt with personally, but I'm not going to answer the question, I'm going to ask the question of Dongwon. What does an author do when they've had some success, they've had some books come out, and then they either get orphaned, or their books stop selling, the new series they have come out just doesn't take off or it tanks completely? They need to change something. How do you know when you hit that point, and how do you know what changes to make? Now talk for 15 minutes.

[Dongwon] I really… I could talk for an hour here. I really love this topic, because it's a really, really important one. I think the greatest determinant in whether or not a writer is successful in their career is their ability to ride with the tough times. Right? That's sort of stick-with-it-ness, that's sort of like ability to just keep going in the face of a lot of setbacks, is the thing that I see more often than not how people get to where they want to be. Right? I've been in publishing now for 15 years, and over that time, I've seen people over and over again who I looked at them, I looked at their sales numbers, I looked at where they're at in sort of the market, and I was like, "Ah. They're such a nice person, it's too bad their career's over." Then 10 years later, they're New York Times bestsellers. Right? I can think of half a dozen people off the top of my head of been in similar situations. Right? So many people we talk about as overnight successes really spent years and years writing books until something hit it. George Martin's a famous example. But I think the guest host for this year, Victoria Schwab's another great example of somebody who was writing for a long time before she really blew up in the way she has. It takes dedication and hard work, and the ability to keep pivoting and keep working with it. It's one of my favorite things is to take a writer who is in a position where… Not necessarily a bad position, but one where you could be doing more, and help them figure out, "Okay, what's next, how do we reposition this to grow from here?" So, I think there's a lot of different strategies. I think the thing that's really important is considering what's your brand right now, and how do you build on that for the thing that you want to do next. Right? So I think Daniel Abraham is a really great example to look at. He had a series with Tor, that was The Long Price Quartet, which was an absolute brilliant fantasy series. Sales were probably not where everyone wanted them to be, because it's a very worthy series, but not necessarily like the most commercial, like, it's not a lot of like big action romps there, right? The thing about Daniel is he had multiple brands going at once. He was also writing as M. L. N. Hanover, an urban fantasy series. Then, when urban fantasy started falling off a little bit, he was looking to pivot again. So at that point, he came to me, when I was an editor at Orbit, and pitched two different projects at once. The Dragon's Path, which is an epic fantasy sort of following in the vein of what he was doing at Tor. But then he also was like, "Hey, we also have this co-written science fiction project with this guy Ty Franck." That was what is now The Expanse. Again, that was under yet another pen name. Right? So the thing that Daniel kept doing is he kept writing new things and different things. He was doing it under different names with different brands. Until one of them just really clicked in and took off. I mean, The Expanse is really one of the big successes in science fiction over the past 10 years. Has the big TV show and all these things. Again, that's somebody who didn't have the kind of commercial success and attention that I think he deserved early in his career. But, just kept going and just kept pivoting and kept trying new things until finally something really clicked in, in the way that it did, with The Expanse.

 

[Howard] In 1998, I was working in tech support at Novell. I looked at some of the things I'd been doing and realized that within the company, within the industry, my brand was talking to people about the way the software works. Kind of being an advocate for the product and being educational about it and being entertaining. I wanted a position in the company where I could keep doing that. I got one. I like the sound of my own voice, and did a lot of presentations and a lot of traveling as a result of those presentations. Until I left the company in 2004. In 2008, I started doing Writing Excuses. Writing excuses has now been running for longer than my entire career at Novell.

[Dan] Wow.

[Howard] Okay. I was just doing the math as I was looking at the spreadsheet.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Sorry, this totally came out of left field. The idea that the career that nobody… I say nobody. I don't think many people are going to look at me and think, "Oh, yeah. That guy who was a software communications person back in the 90s and just vanished. Wow. Such a shame his software support career tanked."

[Chuckles]

[Howard] No. They're going to remember me for whatever's most recent. There was a huge pivot in there, from doing software to doing comics. But the skill set of I know how to stand up in front of people and advocate a thing and be educational about it and occasionally be funny, and leverage the comic drop of self-deprecating humor from time to time, that piece of my brand, that piece of my skill set has stayed with me and continues to serve me well. As we are having this conversation, it is September 2019. This is airing in November of 2020. Schlock Mercenary, the mega-arc, ended about five months ago, if everything went according to plan. From where I'm sitting right now, I do not know what my career reboot looks like from 2020. I'm coming up on that, and I'm terrified. But I know that the guy who is terrified is also the guy who has rebooted his career before and made good on it.

[Dongwon] There's always more opportunities, any time you find yourself in that spot.

 

[Dan] Okay. So. Our book of the week is one you've already talked about, Dongwon. This is Leviathan Wakes, the first one from The Expanse. What can you tell us about that book?

[Dongwon] Leviathan Wakes is a really wonderful space opera, that is examining, not necessarily galactic exploration, but the exploration and colonization of our own solar system. So the whole set up is, they don't have interstellar travel yet, but they can travel between the planets somewhat easily. So, the political situation is there's the Earth and then there is Mars, and they're in conflict and in tension over resources. Those resources are specifically being the asteroid belt, which is being mined by both of those great powers. Into the middle of this, a new artifact, biological weapon, has been discovered which kind of sets the whole system to the brink of war. This is a nine book series that is on the cusp of wrapping up right now. It's really, to my mind… And I am biased because I was the editor on the first couple books…

[Laughter]

[Dongwon] But, to my mind, it's really one of the most exciting, wonderful, rich character work in a space opera series that I've really ever seen. I could not love this more. The show was also great, but read the books first…

[Chuckles]

[Dongwon] Because they're even better.

[Dan] We did have Daniel and Ty on the show at some point a year or two ago. So if you want to hear them talk about it, you can find that in our archives.

[Mary Robinette] We'll include that in our liner notes.

[Dan] Yes, we totally will.

 

[Dan] Okay. So, I like what Dongwon was saying about trying new things while still staying true to what you've already been successful with. This is something that I have done. So, just very quickly, I hit the New York Times bestseller list with the Partials series, which is science fiction. Then, my next science fiction series, Mirador, really tanked. Like, I cannot overstate how little it sold.

[Mary Robinette] Which is a shame, because I love that series.

[Dan] Well, thank you. So do I. It did not click with the audience in the way everyone expected it to. It didn't click for the publisher the way we had hoped it would, to the point that they didn't even bother doing the third book in audio. I had to buy the rights back from them. So, as I set out what am I going to do next, I said, "Well, I'm going to continue with science fiction, but I'm going to twist it in a new direction." So I started doing middle grade science fiction. That's where Zero G and Dragon Planet and things like that came from. At the same time, because a far bigger success for me has been my thrillers, like I Am Not a Serial Killer, I didn't want to neglect that audience either. So I'm trying… This is a much more risky experiment. But I wrote a new… I started a new thriller career, essentially, by doing historical thrillers. That's where Ghost Station came from. So I'm trying these two different paths at the same time and just waiting to see, like you were saying, which one clicks in which one takes off. It's a lot of work, and it's a lot of faith, and you just kind of gotta hope that… And maybe neither of those does, and I'll… I don't know, come crawling to you at some point and say, "Dongwon, help me figure out what to do?"

[Mary Robinette] So, one of the things is that… I also got the whole orphaned thing, right after Ghost Talkers. When I was working on Calculating Stars, my editor left, and I got transferred to another editor, who's been wonderful, but it was… The process of learning to work with her. But the reason that we decided to switch me from doing fantasy to doing science fiction was that we looked at what I had been doing in short fiction, and I write all over the map in short fiction. My science fiction that's short fiction kind of consistently gets noticed for awards. The general thing was maybe you should be writing to your strengths, which appear to be science fiction.

[Howard] Kind of consistently, that was… Oops, two Hugos?

[Mary Robinette] I mean, yeah.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, anyway…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] So, friends, we have to brag about Mary Robinette, because she's too modest to do it herself.

[Mary Robinette] I mean, I only have four Hugos. One of them I got with you guys, so it really doesn't count.

[Dan] Barely anything.

[Howard] Thanks.

[Laughter]

[Howard] That's actually the only one I've got.

[Dongwon] The one that doesn't count.

[Mary Robinette] No. I'm kidding. I am… I… Obviously kidding, or I would not…

[Dongwon] Of course.

[Mary Robinette] Have made that joke. But my point being that when people wonder when they're novelists, natural novelists, and they wonder why to do short fiction, one of the things that it does allow is a faster, easier way to see which of your stories are hitting with audience. Like, just, if you are getting more acceptances from your science fiction, that's a thing that's worth noting. So I didn't actually have to go through as many iterations as Dan did to figure out, oh, maybe I should be writing some science fiction novels. And, Calculating Stars have done significantly better than my fantasy.

[Dan] Or, phrased another way, you did do arguably more iterations than I did, but they were in short fiction, so you were able to do them more quickly and see results more easily.

[Mary Robinette] Yes. That is arguably accurate.

[Laughter]

 

[Dongwon] The thing that I just want to point out is, following again on what Dan was saying, is the key to so much of this is diversification, right? Not putting all of your eggs in one basket. Sometimes that is a genre thing, sometimes it's a category thing in terms of adult or YA, and sometimes… That's even an industry thing, like writing for games and writing for comics and writing for film and TV if you can get that work. But often times it's also just not writing for one publisher, right? Having multiple publishers in place, so if you get orphaned at one, even if that's the thing that goes very badly, which it sometimes does, you still have other things in your pocket that you can turn to and emphasize. If that's not working there. Then, sometimes it takes a couple of years to cycle out, and then you can pick up with a new contract or with a different publisher or with a different editor at that publisher. But having lots of different things moving out once is often the way to sort of stabilize your career overall.

[Howard] In 2006, at Emerald City Comic Con, Robert Khoo, K-H-O-O, talked about the business of web comics. This is the guy who went to the penny arcade guys before they were big and said, "You're leaving a whole bunch of money on the table." They said, "We don't know what money is." He said, "I tell you what. I will work for you for free on the understanding that if at the end of the year, I haven't earned for you a marketing guy's salary of $80,000 a year, which you can very comfortably pay me, then I will quit and you don't owe me anything." They were like, "This sounds too good to be true, but it's probably not a trap. So, join us." Robert Khoo totally reinvented them. Out of his work grew the penny arcade Expo, which was the thing that replaced E3 as the big consumer thing of displaying… It was huge. Robert Khoo… So I've established his bona fides. He said, "Never let more than 40% of your income come from one place."

[Mary Robinette] This is a…

[Howard] That stuck with me. I'm not very good at it yet. But we go over our books, Sandra and I go over our books every year and ask ourselves, "What is the thing that will hurt the most if we lose it? How do we build something that will cushion that, in case it goes away?"

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. That is absolutely a thing that they teach you in puppet theater, as well. I mean, just in general as a freelancer, this is a really important thing to understand. If you quit your day job and decide to be a writer full-time, you are a freelancer. Your publisher is your only client, unless you're at multiple publishing houses, unless you're doing hybrid stuff which, in this day and age, is a sensible thing. It's a good thing that you can do if you get your backlist back is bring it out yourself. So, remembering that you are a freelancer and trying to diversify. Like, I diversify my income stream also by teaching. That's one of the ways that I diversify. It doesn't have to be writing. The other thing that I kind of wanted to say about what happens when this moment… Like, I was orphaned by an editor, and that handoff was actually very, very smooth. But it was also because the previous two books had done so poorly, and not through fault of my own. I think. Obviously, other people have different opinions. But I had… The first of those last two books had been Of Noble Family, which was the last book in a five book series. We… There is a thing that happens in a series, where you have a slow decline in numbers. Then, the next book, Ghost Talkers, which is actually one of my favorite things that I've written, came out, and they sent me on tour. My first day of tour was election day of 2016. Everybody's sales tanked. Actually. But mine… Just like, there was… When I was on tour, the audiences were half the size that they normally were. Everyone looked shellshocked. It didn't matter, actually, which side of the political spectrum you were on, that period of time was really fraught. So, yes, obviously, my numbers were lower. But what that meant was, when we were doing… With my new editor, who was working with me on the two new books, when she was looking at acquiring another book after that, there was no incentive to do it until Calculating Stars and Fated Sky came out and did very well. At that point, I realized that my agent was part of my problem because my agent was not advocating for me and was not explaining… Like, the narrative of what was going on. So sometimes when you're midcareer and things are not going well, if you're starting to think, "Well, I wonder if I should go with a new agent?" The advice that I got from a very good friend who is sitting on the couch with me…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Was that when you begin asking yourself that question, you should probably change agents.

[Dan] I had my book, Extreme Makeover, came out the same day. Mary Robinette and I did a signing together…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Dan] In Chicago. Actually, the two of us and Wes Chu. So there were three authors, and I think maybe five people there…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Dan] If you count the bookseller. I actually, like, I love Calculating Stars, but I still consider Ghost Talkers my favorite of your books. I think Extreme Makeover is the best written thing I've ever done. No one's ever heard of either of those books. Because they got completely lost. Anyway, I assume that there are a few people who are listening to this episode who are in this situation who need to reboot their career. But I… And I hope that they do. But I suspect that most of our listeners are still looking at this from the upcoming side. Right? That's why I really want to tell you what I did not know is that you need to be planning for this already. You need to have all these income streams in place before one of them fails. Which is the lesson that I have very painfully learned. And five years later have managed to build myself back up to the point where I more or less okay.

[Howard] Or back even further up from that, we've said… I quoted Robert Khoo. 40%. Don't let any more than 40% come from any one place. Do you know how to do the math to know where your money is coming from? If you don't know how to do that yet, learn to do that. Because if you can get ahead of that, for you start receiving royalties, before you start getting advances, then you are in a position to career plan and to build your bugout bag for…

[Mary Robinette] I'm going to do a plug for something called you need a budget dot com. Which, if you are like me, and not terribly good with numbers, is a very useful way as a freelancer… It's a bud… It's a financial planning kind of tracking thing. But it's very, very useful to get a handle on exactly how much you need to make, and to figure out how to have enough of a nest egg so that if you have a. Where you have to reboot, that you have some money set aside.

[Dan] Which is a great resource. Go for it.

[Dongwon] One thing I just want to point out is as were talking about 40% of your income coming from different places and all that, remember, your day job can be one of your sources of income. Right? So the people, the clients that I work with who have widely diversified careers in terms of doing adult, middle grade, and graphic novels, and tie-in work and film and TV, those generally are the full-time writers. Right? Those are the ones who are only writing as their day-to-day job. If people… If you have a day job, it's much more feasible to focus on one thing at a time and really focus on just having your one main series because you have the financial security of that day job. Which is why my general advice is hang onto that job as long as you can stand it. Or until your… The authoring that you have to do in terms of emails and touring and things like that make having it no longer feasible to do so, right? But then you need to be planning and preparing for that transition by starting that diversification work as early as you can.

[Dan] Absolutely. Now, we are out of time. Though obviously we could talk about this for a long time.

 

[Dan] But we do have some homework for you, which is coming from Mary Robinette.

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that will happen to you when this happens, or in the early part of your career, is that the imposter syndrome is going to kick up. It's like you feel… You can feel a sense of despair, you can feel like blah. So here's a weird bit of advice, which is that I want you to write a letter to a role model. This role model does not have to be a living person. Explain to them all of the things that you're afraid of, and all of the problems that you're struggling with. Then, I want you to write a letter from them back to you with the advice that you think that they might give you. The reason I'm suggesting this is that a lot of times you, in fact, know the answer to the problem. But we are often kinder to someone else then we are to ourselves. So, by putting yourself in the shoes of someone else who has been through this, I think that it might be a way for you to access the part of your brain that knows how to handle this. You do. It's just terrifying.

[Dan] Sounds awesome. So. That's been our episode. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2020/01/05/15-01-evolution-of-a-career/

 

Key Points: This season is going to be organized around topics taken from questions from the audience. So this is what you wanted to know! Starting off with the evolution of a career, goal setting for a career as a writer. How do you choose a book for early in your career versus saving it for later? Work on what you're most excited about. Start with something simple, tell it well, tell it clearly, and tell it straight. Sometimes you want to push yourself, set a challenge for yourself. When you look back on first projects, you are sure to think you could do it better now. But that opportunity cost comes with everything you write. Pick an area to improve, but focus on the things that give you joy. If you have an idea, you're excited about it, it's ambitious… Go for it! Even if it doesn't work, you will learn. Don't worry about using your best idea too early, you will have more and better ideas later. The path you expect, the path you plan, is probably not the path you will follow. Grieve for the untaken path, but rejoice in where you are walking now. You always learn from experience. How do you plan for the next stage? Have a plan, but be ready to toss it. Look for options. Avoid closing doors. Don't brand yourself by your first project. Do a couple of books to prove you can do it, then do something else. Leave breadcrumbs for your readers to follow. Pay attention to what your readers like. Think about who is this book for. Brands evolve. As you plan your career, make sure you have a plan, and make sure it's something you love.

 

[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode One.

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Evolution of a Career.

[Dongwon] 15 minutes long.

[Mary Robinette] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Dan] Awesome. We are very excited to have Dongwon with us for this, the very first episode of 2020. We are doing something a little different than we've done in the past with this new season of our show. Mary Robinette, this was your idea. Can you tell us what we're doing?

[Mary Robinette] Well, we realized that the podcast is 15 minutes long, this is 15 years long at this point, and we're not that smart, but you all are. So we decided that rather than trying to come up with a topic, what we would do is go to you and see what things you wanted to know about. So we've collected a bunch of questions, and we're using them to guide the season this year. So you will not, in most cases, hear a specific question from an audience, but the topics and the questions that we're trying to answer for you have all been generated by you.

 

[Dan] One of the things that we saw a lot of, and this shouldn't have surprised us as much as it did… Maybe a third of the questions we got in were all based around career. What does a career look like as a writer, and how does it change over time, and how do you decide what you're going to do? So, since we've got Dongwon with us, we wanted to talk about the evolution of a career. How do you set goals for your career? So let's… Let me actually start with this question that I think is really interesting, and I'll throw it to Dongwon first. When you're starting to look at your writing as a career rather than just a thing that you do, how do you choose a book that is very good for early career versus one that you might want to save for later on when you're better or more established?

[Dongwon] It's kind of a tricky question. Because… The thing that I always, always, always tell people is when it comes to you picking the project that you want to work on, work on the one you're most excited about. That said, I do talk to a lot of writers who at some point will say, "I tried to do this thing and it was too big for me at this stage. I didn't know how to do this, I didn't know how to do that." So sometimes, when it comes to that first novel, and a lot of debuts… Often times, you can read a book and know that this was a first novel, that this was a debut, that this was the first thing you did. Because it has sort of a clear, sort of straightforward through line. It tends to be A to B to C. It tends to be much more straightforward, in terms of how we naturally as people tell a story. Right? So sometimes what you want to think about for that first book is keep it a little simpler, right? Don't try to do the 15 POV's with complicated tense things, complicated structure. Focus on telling the story that you already know how to tell. Tell it well, tell it clearly, and tell it straight.

[Mary Robinette] I sometimes talk about this with my students as setting things on the easy setting. There's nothing wrong with an easy setting. Like, you can do beautiful, beautiful work if you are dealing with things that you are confident in. So sometimes I think about that, like, waiting until you have the writing chops, or picking one aspect of the novel that you're going to put on the difficult setting and everything else is well within your comfort zone. I also want to say that having a practice novel as your first novel is… There's nothing like wrong with saying I'm going to write this without the intention of publishing it. If you finish it, and you're like, "This is publishable." Potentially. Sure. But we don't say, "I have picked up the violin. I'm going to go to Carnegie Hall…"

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] "With the first thing that I've learned to play."

[Dan] Yeah. Well, I do want to emphasize that there is absolutely nothing wrong with setting yourself a challenge that is kind of beyond your level. That's how we push ourselves. That's how we learn. But I do agree that when you're sitting down and saying, "Okay, I've got a few books under my belt. I think it's time to do one that I'm going to really try to get published." Maybe back off on that difficulty level, like Mary Robinette was saying, and do something that you know you can really hit out of the park.

[Howard] Sorry. At risk of overthinking things, there is nothing in the first five years of Schlock Mercenary that I couldn't go back now and do an infinitely better job at. There are no first projects that later you is going to look at and say, "Boy, that… I really only could have written that as an early career thing. I'm not ready to write that anymore." No. You're always going to be leveling up, you're always going to be improving. There's a story in the second year of Schlock Mercenary where I start telling the story from the point of view of the bad guys, and Schlock is the monster. I decided to use marker art for it. It was all hand-lettered. I… This is me… This is in 2001, 2002, I think, that I'm telling this story. I remember thinking at the time, "Yeah. There's no way I could have told this story or illustrated this story when I was first starting out." I looked back at that now and I think I was not ready to tell that story then.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] I could do such a good job with it now. But now it's done. Now I've told it. Now I can't tell that story again. There is an opportunity cost associated with that for me. But that opportunity cost is associated with everything you write. You don't get a do over. You know what? Life is grief.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Just own that. Own the fact that your first project is always forever… It's going to be your first thing. We all had to do that.

[Mary Robinette] My… So, the first novel I published, Shades of Milk and Honey, is the fourth novel that I wrote. When the UK edition came out and they asked me if I wanted to do anything different, I'm like, "Well, yes, in fact." So that novel, the UK edition is two chapters longer than the US edition because I had a better idea of how to do endings. But every novel I do is an iteration of like, learning where my weakness was. So I think that's the thing… Like, when I say do the easy setting, I don't mean for the entire novel and don't… But what I mean is pick something… Pick one area. Just one area to improve, when you're thinking. Like one area to stretch in, and focus on the things that make you… That give you joy. Chase that. Rather than doing the thing that I see a lot of writers do in their early career, they put so much effort… Focus on "I gotta have an original idea. It's gotta be original, it's gotta be new and exciting." So, as a result, the emotion that they're trying to evoke in the reader is that writer is clever. Which is… That's like wanting someone to say, "That person is funny." Instead of trying to…

[Dan] Instead of trying to make them laugh.

[Mary Robinette] Right. Yeah.

[Dongwon] One last point I want to make on this, and to contradict myself a little bit. I do really want to encourage people, though, that when it comes to writing that first book, if you have an idea and you're excited about it, and it's an ambitious project, swing for those fences, right? Like, go for the big thing. Don't go half measures. Kind of talking about Howard's point a little bit, resolve to not have a regret about it. Just do the thing! If it doesn't work out, you still learn so much in that process. Then it's on to the next book. Right?

[Dan] Yeah. Given that we've raised the specter of the opportunity cost, I do want to point out, the more you practice this, the more you do it, you're going to have better and better ideas every time. So don't worry that you're burning your best idea too early. Because 10, 20 years from now, you're going to have such better ideas than that one, and so many other cool things to do.

 

[Dan] Anyway, we are going to stop now for our book of the week. Which is actually a musical theater production of the week. We were… Mary Robinette and I were absolutely just geeking out about what turns out to be one of our shared favorite musicals of all time. Mary Robinette, what is it?

[Mary Robinette] Follies, by Stephen Sondheim. I love this musical so much. The idea is it's an old vaudeville house… Like a Ziegfeld follies kind of thing. It's shutting down, and all of the old performers are coming back for a reunion. So the whole thing is told in present day and flashbacks. You get to… They have cast present day elderly actors and their younger selves. It's a fascinat… It's like beautiful and heartbreaking. Some of the singers can't hit the high notes that they used to be able to hit anymore. But the depth of their performance is so much more. So it's… When we're talking about the evolution of a career, this thing that we had just been geeking about is a beautiful portrait of that.

[Dan] Yeah. One of my favorite songs in the show is called The Story of Lucy and Jessie. Where it is a woman singing about how now she is older and more experienced and much more interesting, but she doesn't have her youth and energy, whereas the youth and energy person was such a bland, boring person that nobody wanted to talk to, and how she can never be happy because she can never combine those two parts of herself. The way that it looks at age and youth and early career and late career is stunningly cool.

[Mary Robinette] So that's Follies by Stephen Sondheim. You can find it on many different forms of media. I am a big fan of the original cast. Dan is a fan of the new cast.

[Dan] I do prefer the original cast, although the new cast does have Bernadette Peters on it. She really hits it out of the park. So. Awesome.

 

[Howard] I arranged music for an a cappella group, when I was [hhhhh] 25 years younger than I am now. They did a song called Don't It Make You Wanna Go Home. Nine guys. At the end of the song… One of the guys was a contra tenor, who just killed it. Squeaking up there in the stratosphere. Another guy who was a… one of the sons of the university's music faculty. Amazing voice. End of that song, they are scatting and noodling around. The two of them duel very briefly with notes that most of us can only admire from a great distance. It was an amazing and beautiful thing. I caught up with the other singer a few years ago, and found out that… Boy, not five years after singing that, he developed vocal nodes and could no longer perform at all. But now works as music faculty. I have the recording that I was present for, where he was… I almost have guilt, because I wonder if the things that he was doing to his voice to hit those notes that the other guy was just born to hit might have been part of the problem. But that thing that he was able to do in that portion of his career will always be with me, will always be with him. It always exists. But he had to take a different path. When we talk about the evolution of careers, we have to recognize that the path that we think that we are on, the path that we have laid out for ourselves, is not the path that we will be on 20 years from now. It is going to change. We can't hit it regret free. There will always be… I said, life is grief.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] You get to grieve for the path untaken. You get to grieve the expenditure of what you thought was the best idea when you couldn't write it as well as you could now. But you also get to rejoice in where your feet are right now. You've got to be agile and keep them moving.

[Dongwon] The thing I want to say about that, though, is also there's no wasted time. You always learn from that experience. You can take so many lessons from a moment that… I'm a big believer that the only way, literally the only way we learn new things is through failure, right? You hit that wall and you learn lessons from how you hit that wall. You pick yourself back up, and then you keep moving forward. Right? So. Even if it doesn't work out, take the lessons from it, right? Examine it to see what other things you could have done, how you could have pivoted from there, and do that next time.

 

[Dan] We… I don't want to spend too much time on this specific topic, because we're going to dedicate an entire episode to it later in the year, called Rebooting Your Career. But for now, we've talked about the early stage of your career, let's talk a little then about career planning. So another question I'm going to pitch right at Dongwon. Once you've got that first book, maybe you've made your first sale you've done some self-publishing and found some success. How do you plan for the next stage?

[Dongwon] This really is one of my very favorite topics. It's one of the things I love most about my job is working with writers to help them strategize about how do we want their career to look. What are we planning for this first book, for the book after that, for the contract after that, for the contract after that? Right? So, roughly, generally with most of my clients, not necessarily everybody, with most of them, we have a sense of here's what we're doing now, here's what we're doing in five years, here's what we're doing in 10 years. Right? Now, the thing is, publishing is a system that is designed to be extremely random. Right? What makes a book work is highly unpredictable. What makes a book tank, also highly unpredictable, right? So when you're thinking about this… There's two things you need to keep in mind, is, always have a plan. Always know where you're trying to get to. But also be ready to throw that plan out the window at the drop of a hat. Often, what we're doing is, when we're planning for those decision points, right? You're looking at… We have contract one, contract two, contract three. Then, what you're doing is, at each of those junctures of when we're deciding what are we going to write next, the thing we're solving for is having options. Right? We're not solving for we will do A to B to C. What we're doing is solving for, okay, once we do this, what are the three moves we can make at that point? How do we make sure that the first move we make doesn't close doors for the next move we want to make? Right? If we get that movie deal, then we can do this. If the book sells five copies, then we can also do that. Right? So you're keeping all those things in your mind, and trying to build out a little bit of a decision tree. But you will go completely mad if you try to map the whole thing. So you pick your path, but then you're ready to know, we can pivot wherever we need to. Right?

[Mary Robinette] This is a really important point that you… Having those options open. One of the things that I see writers do at the beginning of their career is that they pin their identity and their… They brand themselves around their first project. That is, let me just say, a mistake. Because the first project is unlikely to be the first one that takes off. If George RR Martin had done that, we would all be looking… His entire brand would be vampires on a steamboat.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Because that was… Fever dream.

[Dongwon] It's a very good book.

[Mary Robinette] It's a very good book. It's not what he became known for. I did a lot of Regency stuff, but one of the things that I did, very consciously, when I was… This is, speaking of closing doors. We sat down and talked about book 2. It was a sequel. But the classic sequel in a romance is that the sister of… Or the best friend of the main character now becomes the POV character in the next book and does… It's another romance structure. We made the conscious decision not to do that, because had I done that, I would have… That would have put me on the romance path very, very firmly. I like romance, but I didn't want that to be the only thing I did. So we made the conscious decision to not do that. That's the kind of thing that you're looking for.

[Dongwon] My general rule of thumb, strategy, is you have book 1. You do book 2 in a way that's similar to book 1, either same category, similar voice, similar topic, to prove you can do it, you can do it again, and then in book 3, prove you can do something else. Right? That's generally how I think about it. It's not always that pattern, but it's why… If we're going to do a series, I like duologies, I like linked standalones, I don't like a seven book series. Right? Because if you have a seven book series, then you're trapped in that for seven years of your career at a minimum. Right? So if you're doing track… So, what you want to keep is maneuverability. You want to keep the ability to jump to something else if things go wrong. Or even if they go right, sometimes the right move is to jump to something else.

[Dan] Yeah. I want to… Excuse me. I want to jump in on this because I very specifically went maybe much farther over the line then I should have with my second project. My first thing was first person, modern day, contemporary horror. Then the second project was third person, post-apocalyptic science fiction. Multiple viewpoints instead of one, female protagonist instead of male. Like, I made it as different as I conceivably could because I wanted to not be pigeonholed. I wanted to present myself as the person who can do anything. Which has had both pros and cons. It is very difficult for a giant audience to follow me book to book. Because not everyone's interested in the same things that I am. On the other hand, I've got a historical fiction that came out last year. Everyone was like, "Oh, okay. That makes sense. Of course he's going to jump out of the other four genres he does into a brand-new one, because that's the brand he's established for himself."

[Mary Robinette] I looked… So, when I was… When we were first talking, it was like, "Do I want to do a Tad Williams career, where every single book is different, or do I want to do a series, genre, where you are doing a series?" I write all over the map in my short fiction. So the thing that I have been doing is I've been doing the same, but different, path. So like book 1, straight up Re… Austen pastiche, book 2 is a courtroom thriller… Or is a wartime novel, spy novel, disguised as a Regency romance. Like, the same is the set dressing and the characters. That is my same. My plot structure shifts. When I got to Ghost Talkers, I kept a plot structure that was similar to one that I had already done, and I stayed in historical, but I jumped forward by 100 years. I also knew by that point that what people liked in my books was that I had happily committed couples. So I stuck with that. With the Lady Astronaut books, it's science fiction, but it's still historical. That, again, it's like that is a very conscious choice. The book that I have coming out this year is another Lady Astronaut book, but the one that I am working on for next year is… It's straight up science fiction, but I am deliberately giving it a 1920s noir feel, in terms of the aesthetic, to retain that sense of familiarity, to make it easier. So, I think of it as leaving breadcrumbs for my readers to follow me. Which has…

[Dongwon] I mean, really what this is is having a brand.

[Dan] One of the things we talk about a lot, and that new writers hear all the time, is don't chase market trends. Don't try to write what you think people want. This advice sounds like it's the opposite of that. Because you're saying, I know what my readers like. But it's because they're your readers. You're not trying to chase an entire market. You have found your people and you are giving them what they want. Which is a very different thing.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I am looking at expanding out of that, because I'm like, I don't want to stay just with the historical Regency. Which, obviously, I love my Regencies. But I… Like, how do I bring science fiction in? How do I bring mainstream people in? Like, I'm trying to add each time without losing my core.

[Dongwon] I talk a lot about how all of publishing is reducible to one question. That question is, who is this book for? Right? So what you're doing isn't writing to the market. It is being very intentional about who this book is for. You know this is my current audience. I want to grow my audience. I want to push my audience to also follow me to these other places. So, sometimes when you make the big jumps, as Dan was talking about earlier, it can be hard to hang onto that audience even though you know who the audience of the new stuff is, right? So in terms of transitioning and growing, I think there are two very different strategies that can work really, really well.

[Mary Robinette] I did lose people when I didn't do the traditional romance structure for the second book.

[Dongwon] I mean, you always will, right? Because you take risks when you write a new book, otherwise, why are you writing a new book? So, there are chances you will lose people, but you will also gain people, hopefully.

[Howard] When this episode airs, I'm six months away from ending the 20 year Schlock Mercenary mega-arc. In terms of career decisions, that is a conscious decision built around… Big surprise, making money. The two words…

[Dan] That's a good career goal.

[Howard] Schlock and mercenary…

[Laughter]

[Howard] Either of those words should suggest that I'm all about the art. When you reach the… When you get to the bookshelves and you are holding something and you see that it is the first book of three, or the third book of 10, and book 4 isn't out yet… There is a group of people who won't spend money yet. Well, I'm right now, in print is book 15 out of 20. I need to be able to say, "The end." And have everything in print, because there is a group of people whose money I don't have yet.

[Laughter]

[Howard] That is…

[Dongwon] There's 10 of them. You're going to get them.

[Laughter]

[Howard] I'm coming after all of them at once.

[Mary Robinette] I've never bought one of your books.

[Howard] That's just fine.

[Mary Robinette] I mean, you keep giving them to me, so…

[Howard] But this… So, this decision, I need to be able to say the end. There are people who are asking me, "So, what comes next?" No matter what the answer is, there's a group of people who won't be satisfied with that. The most important person for me to satisfy right now, and Sandra and I have had this conversation several times, is me. What do I want to do next? Part of what I want to do, and this is the sort of thing that's dangerous to put on the Internet in a recorded permanent sort of format. One of the things that I would love to do is no longer be putting out a daily comic strip. Because there are things that I can't do while I have that deadline pushing down on me. But the thing that has set me apart from almost every other comic strip out there is that it has been daily and has updated without fail. So, am I sacrificing my brand in order to do the thing that I want? Or am I making the right career decision? As of this recording, I don't have a good answer to that.

[Dongwon] I mean, but this brings up a really important point, that the thing about strategy is that brands evolve. Right? They have to evolve. If you remain static over time, you don't have a strategy, you have a pattern. Right?

[Mary Robinette] My brand when I began was the puppeteer who was also Regency. Right now, it is the writer who can talk about tea in space.

[Dan] Yeah. Which, there's a huge market for that. Who knew? We… Excuse me. We have let this episode run a little long because it is the very first one and we wanted to introduce the whole year. I do want to end on the point that Howard hit on. Which is, first of all, as you're planning your career, a) make sure you have a plan, but b) make sure it's something that you love. Because otherwise, why are you doing this? Goodness knows, there's not enough money in it to make it worthwhile. But if it's something that you genuinely love to do, that is what is going to see you through everything else that happens to you.

 

[Dan] So, we want to leave you with some homework. Let's get that from Dongwon.

[Dongwon] I think the homework is, a lot of times when I talked to a writer I'm considering working with, I'll ask them this question of whose career do you wish you could have if you look out in the market today. When I asked that question, I'm not asking who do you want your books to read like. It's not about the style of the books, it's not about the voice of the books, or even the subject matter. It's look at their career. Look at how fast they publish, what kinds of book they publish, kind of who they're publishing for, are they doing YA and adult, are they doing like all different genres, categories, and things like that? So, take a look around at the market and really pick one or two authors. Really examine how have they published. What years… What was the pace of that, when did they start taking off, and those kinds of things. Consider, is that the life that I want, or do I want something else? Then that will help start helping you inform a decision about the career choices you're looking over the next year, five years, 10 years.

[Dan] I would add to that, look at the other ways they spend their time. Are they the kind of person that does a lot of news stuff, a lot of convention appearances, do they make most of their money speaking rather than on their sales? Kind of look at all of that peripheral stuff as well.

[Dongwon] Are they doing a lot of school visits? Yeah, exactly. What's their lifestyle like, too? Do you want to live that life? Right? Do they have a day job? Or, all they are, are chained to a desk, putting out books every six months?

[Dan] Awesome. Well, great. This is been a cool episode and we're excited for the rest of the year. Please join us next week when we're going to have Brandon Sanderson and our 2020 special guest, Victoria Schwab. We're going to talk about theme and subtext. It's going to be awesome. So, for now, you are out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2019/06/23/14-25-choosing-your-agent/

 

Key points: Your agent works for you. You have a choice, make it a good one. Think about who you want to work with, who is going to be the right business partner in the long run. Someone who can help you run your business. Who do you want as part of your brand? Make sure they can do a good job. Look at online resources, talk to your network. Ask the agent to talk to their other authors. You may need to change agents as your career changes, or their career changes. Keep the lines of communication open, talk about goals, figure out what you both need. To find an agent, look for authors who have a similar communication style, and talk to them about their agents! Think about someone who can fill in your weak spots. Check which genres the agent works in, and what level of editorial involvement you want. What communications style, how frequent do you want contact? Remember, charisma is not a dump stat. Consider the Kowal relationship axes, mind, manners, money, morals… Murder! Or the Marx Brothers.

 

[Mary Robinette] Season 14, Episode 25.

[Howard] This is Writing Excuses, Choosing Your Agent.

[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Dongwon] And we're not that smart.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.

 

[Howard] Dongwon is joining us again. This is his third episode with us. Dongwon, I understand that you have spent some time working as an agent.

[Chuckles]

[Dongwon] I have. I actually started my career as an agent, and then wandered off for many years doing other tasks in the industry, and have come back to being an agent in the past 3 and a 1/2 years now.

[Howard] Well, this morning, we had the opportunity to hear you talk about the publishing business. One of the parts that was most interesting to me was that opening salvo of choosing your agent and what that relationship ends up looking like.

[Dongwon] One thing I like to talk about a lot is making it really clear to writers that your agent works for you. If you're in the query trenches right now, the power dynamic feels very weighted towards the agent's side. You're trying to get their attention, you're trying to get someone to pay attention to you and make an offer of representation. But one of the things I like to really drive home is once that offer of representation has been made, the power dynamic completely inverts. Now, what the agent wants is for you to choose them. One of the reasons that we chose this phrasing for the episode title is the idea that you have a choice in this relationship is a really important one. It's one that I think a lot of writers lose sight of, because they're just so focused on getting an agent, any agent. Instead, what I'd like people to do is start thinking very carefully about who they want to work with. Who's going to be the right business partner to them over the course of their career? Ideally, an author-agent relationship will go on for years, and hopefully decades. Optimally, it's the course of both of your careers. You need to think carefully about who you're going to be working with over that period of time, and who you want to be helping you run your business.

[Mary Robinette] This is… I want to say, something that I stumbled on, you've heard me talk about on previous episodes, where my first… My very first agent was not a good agent. We often people say, "A bad agent is worse than no agent." The concrete thing that I had happened was that my first agent… I was… I had warning flags that went off. But it was an agent, and they were excited about my work. I had heard so much about how difficult it was to get an agent. So, even though I had some warning flags that this person might be flaky, I went ahead and signed. What happened was they sat on my novel for a year without sending it out. That was a year in which it was ready. So this was a… actively holding me back. The other thing that can happen with a bad agent, or with an agent who's… This is… These are people who are just like not good at their job, is that if they try to sell your work incompetently to a publishing house, and then you leave them and you come back, it's going to be very difficult to sell that same title later.

[Howard] That's the… There's a principle here that… It's a broader business principle, harkening back to, Dongwon, what you said earlier about you're choosing a business partner. This business partner is carrying your authorial brand as the flag when they march into the office. If they misbehave, if they do a bad job with the pitch, if they happen to be somebody that's for whatever reason, that editorial team, publishing team, just really doesn't like having in the room…

[Mary Robinette] That one actually is less of an issue, because, as long as they've got good taste…

[Howard] As long as they've got good taste. But you just know that whoever you are picking, a portion of who they are ends up as part of your brand, at least to the editors and publishers.

[Dongwon] A lot of the industry's interaction with you will be filtered through your agent. So if your agent has a certain reputation, has a certain way of operating, that is going to influence how people see you. It's not entire. You will have your own brand, and, I know, many writers have the opposite reputation of their agents. But Howard is absolutely right, that in those initial contacts, those initial meetings, that would definitely color it. So, sort of… The first step in choosing an agent is don't choose someone who's bad at their job. This last year, there were… Have been a couple sort of highly publicized incidents of agents who turned out to be acting against their own writers' interests. That's been a very challenging moment. My heart goes out to all of those writers. It can be hard to spot that person. There's some online resources that you can use to check out, like query tracker or query shark, but really, your best defense is having a good network. Talking to your friends, making friends with other writers, and asking around about somebody's reputation before you make a decision to go forward with them.

[Dan] You're also well within your rights to ask that agent if you can talk to some of their other authors. I get a lot of requests from my agent, "Hey, could you talk to this person? I would like to acquire their book." I'm always happy to recommend my agent. If you get an agent whose authors are not happy to recommend her, maybe stay away.

[Howard] Are you still with the agent you were with a year ago?

[Dan] Yes. Sarah Crowe. She's amazing.

 

[Mary Robinette] So I just… I actually just changed agents in the last year. The reason I did that was not because I had a bad agent. My agent was very good. But my career trajectory was such that I needed a different type of agent than I did at the beginning of my career. So the thing that was happening with my career trajectory was… The reason that I felt like I needed someone who was a little more aggressive, was that I was in the downward spiral. This happens to a number of writers in the course of their career, that there's what they call the death… The series' death spiral. So I'd had that happen. Then I had a novel that came out, and my book tour began on election day in 2016, which was a fraud year regardless of where you were. Book sales generally were declining. But when people are looking at your numbers, they don't look at the current events that are going on around it. They just look at the numbers. So I needed someone who was more aggressive. It was a difficult choice, because it would have been easier if my agent was doing things that were actively wrong. That wasn't the case. It was just I needed a different style. This is one of the things that I think you have to… While it's ideal to have an agent that stays with you over the course of your career, it's also important to know kind of what you need going into it.

[Howard] That is… And again, coming back to the general principle of business partners, there is this point of diminishing returns between what I need out of a new agent, what I lose if I don't switch, and the cost of switching. It's easy for us… in crossing that chasm, it's easy for us to overestimate the size of the peril, and just, out of fear of changing, stay in the same place.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] It's difficult.

[Dongwon] Many, many writers will have multiple agents over the course of their careers. There's nothing… There's no inherent problem to that. Like any long-term relationship, what you need out of it will change over time. It's also important to remember that your agent is also not a fixed point. They're evolving in their career as well, and how they operate, what circumstances they're in, what agency they're at, all those things can shift and change over time. Those changes will impact, and impact how the business operates. So it's very important to keep that line of communication open, and be talking about your goals, and are they being met in this relationship or not, and then figure out what you need out of that.

[Mary Robinette] That was very much the case with my agent, my previous agent, was that they had had a promotion at work, and were suddenly handling more things than they had been. So the attention that they were able to give to individual authors was shifting. Like, none of us were being neglected, it was just the communication style had changed. The aggression, I think, had shifted, or at least my perception of it. So that was one thing that was also going on there, was that a change in my agent's life as well.

 

[Howard] Let's take a quick break and talk about a book. Dongwon?

[Dongwon] Yeah. This week, I want to talk about Sarah Gailey's Magic for Liars. This is Sarah Gailey's debut novel, coming out from Tor Books. It should have just come out on June Fourth. It is a murderer-mystery set at a magical school for teenagers. It is not a young adult novel. It is a very adult novel about a woman who is called in to investigate a murder of a faculty member at this school. The protagonist's twin sister also is a teacher at this school. As you would have it, that sister is magic and she is not. She needs to figure out what happened and unpack this really gruesome murder and figure out why teenagers are so goddamned terrifying.

[Laughter]

[Dongwon] Especially when they have magic powers.

[Howard] Okay. As the father of two current teenagers, I would love to know the answer to that question.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey. I'm a big fan of Sarah's. Their cowboy hippopotamus books.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Loved those so much.

 

[Howard] Okay. I want to talk about your toolbox as an author. I'm big on the toolbox metaphor. What are the tools that authors have at their disposal to start searching for agents who meet their criteria?

[Mary Robinette] We've talked about a couple of them on previous podcasts. The advice that I'm often given… Had been given and often give is to pay attention to what authors are happy with their agents. Specifically, looking for authors… There's… We always are told to look at the authors whose work is similar. But I actually think you should also try to look at the author… Authors whose process is similar. Because that's going to be people with whom you have a similar communication style. I'm going to continue using myself as a useful representative example. When I left my previous agent and moved on, because of where I am in my career and I am… I do have multiple Hugos. I am marketable. I had the good fortune of having a couple of choices. I was doing due diligence, and I went into it expecting that at the end of having done due diligence that I would be signing with Dongwon. I was just like, "But I'm going to check with some other people just in case."

[Howard] Oh, she went there.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I cleared it… I cleared this with him before, before we got into it. It was a really hard choice. Because, like the authors that he represents are people that I like, there people that I have a lot in common with. I think he's wicked smart, and there were all these different things. When it finally came down to, Dongwon and Seth Fishman, who is my agent now, was I realized that what I needed was someone who filled my weaknesses. The difference between their agenting styles, in a lot of ways, they're both very good with developmental stuff and things like that, but Dongwon is about building relationships, and Seth is a shark.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And…

[Dongwon] I'm a nice shar… No.

[Mary Robinette] I know. Well, that's the thing. It's like you're the nursemaid shark. He's… There is nothing…

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] But it was basically, I was, like I'm good at relationships. That's not the spot that I need bolstering. So both of them would have been a good choice, but it was really about learning what I needed. It's quite possible that that is what I needed early in my career as well, but I didn't know myself as well, as an author and what my process and how I was going to fit into the industry was. So when you're looking at the toolbox, it's important, yes, to be able to find the agent, but just knowing a list of agent's names is not as useful as knowing what it is you need out of the agents. So, Absolute Write is a good source for checking to make sure that the agent isn't shady. I also find that if you type in the agent's name and scam afterwards…

[Dan] And hope there's no hits.

[Mary Robinette] Hope there's no hits, yes. Harassment after that. These are… Scandal. These are good words to just kind of…

[Howard] Good things to not be attached to.

[Mary Robinette] Then, looking at Publisher's Weekly, Locus. Looking at who made sales, and…

 

[Howard] In 2006, I, we played with the idea of having Schlock Mercenary represented, agented, shipped out to a publisher, because self-pubbing actual paper books that weigh actual tons of actual mass is hard work. My friend Rodney had written a technical manual a few years earlier, and had an agent… His experience with the agent was funny. He said, "Yeah, I've already sold the book. I can't mess with… There's nothing you can do." She said, "I tell you what. Let me represent you. I know the contract's been signed, but let me represent you." She went in. She got him a 50% raise on the book. Her 15% came out of that, and Rodney was like, "Oh. Oh, I do need an agent." Rodney introduced me to that agency, which was the Barbara Bova agency, which does a lot of science fiction. So I came into this from outside the industry, through a contact to was just somebody I knew in the tech world. Part of the toolbox is talking to people and listening to their experiences. That experience of Rodney's… Like, I want that to happen to me. That agency… The results were the best possible results. Which were… Everybody we talked to said, "We love this, but it's not what we do." Or, "I mean, we already read it, but it's not what we do." And, "Wow, this sounds awesome, but it's not what we do." The agent went out and determined that the market I wanted at the time didn't exist. The relationship's over now, because the agent's not going to make any money. But that is… I consider that a success story.

[Dongwon] It really is.

[Howard] Because I found an agent who, in the space of six months, told me that the business plan that I already had was the right one.

 

[Dan] So, let's expand this toolbox a little bit more. When you're talking to people, when you're talking to other authors, what are some of the questions you can ask them to find out how they work with their agent? Two of the big ones for me. First of all, is what genres does your agent work in? Because I got the… I started with Sarah because I had written a horror novel, but I knew that I wanted to write more than that. One of the reasons that she and I work so well together is that she covers horror, but also science-fiction and also YA and middle grade, which kind of covers all of the playgrounds that I wanted to play in. Not every agent does. So finding someone who's willing to go with you when you start hopping genres is valuable, if that's what you want to do. One of the other ones is what level of editorial involvement do you want your agent to have. Because different agents do it differently, different authors want different things. So if you want an agent who will be very hands-on or very hands-off, ask their authors what that relationship is like.

[Dongwon] That's one that you should also ask the agent directly. Going back to Mary's example, we had a series of very long conversations. I mean, we probably spent upwards of seven or eight hours on the phone over the course of a few weeks talking a lot of this through. When… I get nervous when I'm signing a new client if they're not asking me questions, then I start to have a little bit of a hesitation in my mind, actually. Just because I'm worried that they're not putting the work in to make sure that this relationship is going to work out, and that I'm going to be right for them. Really, at the core of this, is communication style is really one of the most important things. Do you want someone who's very formal in their communications? Do you want a letter that's laid out? Do you want something that's very casual? Do you want to be… Talk to your agent once a week, once a month, once every six months? I have certain clients I talk to almost daily, and there certain clients I talk to about every three or four months. It depends on what it is. I am very informal in how I relate to a lot of my clients. I think, for certain people, that would drive them nuts, right? There's certain people who really appreciate that, and sort of need that ability to check in periodically and be like, "Hey, is everything okay? Am I on the right track? Is this going well? What's happening with this?"

[Howard] At risk of going over-general again, this is the… Your reminder that charisma is not a dump stat.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] The ability to have a conversation with someone in which the two of you connect and determine what you expect out of this kind of relationship… You can build that skill set without talking to agents. Learning that skill set when your feet are in the fire is frightening.

 

[Mary Robinette] So you remember in a previous episode, I talked about the Kowal relationship axes, which my mother-in-law came up with as a way to describe someone that you're dating. That you want to be roughly aligned on intelligence, you want to be roughly aligned on where you feel money is important, morals… Actually, you want your… You want a moral agent. Towards you!

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But manners, similar communications style. These apply to your agent as well as to a character. There's a really good agent that is someone that I could have gotten because they are… They're the agent of a friend, they're very successful. I would have run a fire poker through them within two minutes of conversation. Because our communication styles are wildly out of alignment. At the same time, you're not looking for a best friend. Right? It is a business partner. It's good if you can be friends. But that's not… You need someone who is good at their job first, and then someone you can communicate with second.

[Howard] Mind, manners, money, morals, murder…

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Marx Brothers. We try to be more positive about it.

[Howard] All right…

[Dongwon] I will say, I often try to avoid the romantic relationship analogy when talking about finding your agent, but it is inevitable that it comes up at some point, because I think there are a lot of similarities and parallels.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

 

[Howard] There definitely are. On those notes, Dongwon, do you have homework you can assign to our listeners?

[Dongwon] Yeah. So, your homework assignment is going to be a little bit of self-examination. I want you to think about your career and what's important to you and how you like to operate. Think about times you've been in a business setting, at a job, in a meeting, and think about the things that you found very frustrating, and what you would find your dating to work with over a long period of time with somebody who is working with some of the most important work to you. Make a list of those attributes. What are you looking for in an agent? What kind of communication style? Do you want someone who edits you, do you want someone who doesn't? How would you like them to pursue a deal? Do you want them to go all out all the time, or do you want them to build relationships and be very targeted? Those are questions you should ask yourself, and start making that list of the attributes that are important to you.

[Howard] Make the list. You gotta write this down, because this is Writing Excuses, and you're out of excuses. Now, go write.