Kelly Coon On Success After 106 Rejections

Mindy:             Today's guest is Kelly Coon, author of the YA fantasy Gravemaidens, which recounts the tale of two sisters come on a 16 year old healer's apprentice who wants to save the dying ruler of her city state, and then Nanaea, Kamani's little sister who will be buried alive as the ruler's bride if he dies. Kelly joined me today to talk about how to make a fantasy stand out in the crowded YA market by making her female main character have understated strength.

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Mindy:             Most of my listeners are aspiring writers and a lot of them are in the query trenches themselves. So why don't you talk a little bit about your process of landing an agent.

Kelly:               Okay. It was a process. Indeed. It took me a long time. I might not be the best person to go to for advice. I started writing a novel in 2005 I never sold it. I really thought I was an amazing writer. So I wrote this book it was an Odyssey retelling, YA fiction. And I queried and I was shocked - and this is back when you would send paper copies - and I was shocked when I was getting all the envelopes back and they were all rejections and I'm like, what? This is amazing. I had always been told I was an amazing writer and I was just absolutely not. So I continued along that path of absolutely not having a clue, wrote a total of three books that way, and just queried my brains out and not till I really kind of had a growth mindset and discovered that I might be a good writer but I am not a good novelist and really dove into the process of what writing a book was about and specifically writing a book for teens was about did I have any kind of progress at all.

Kelly:               I went to a conference, I pitched my book, I got some interest, they told me like your writing is great and your pitching is fantastic, but your premise is not what we're looking for. So I rewrote it, completely scrapped my idea, wrote Gravemaidens, sent it out, and then I got 11 requests for the full. I sent out 11 queries, got 11 requests for the full. I had to solidify a good premise that I knew would be marketable, lower my pride and realize that I had a lot to learn. But I had 106 rejections before that cause I kept track on a spreadsheet.

Mindy:             I did too. And so you said you wrote your first novel in 2005 and begin querying. What year was it when you landed your agent for Gravemaidens?

Kelly:               2017 in April. My agent is Kari Sutherland. She's with Bradford literary. She used to be an editor at Harper Teen. She actually was the acquiring agent for a Red Queen and Pretty Little Liars. So when she requested my full, within a couple hours after sending my query, I remember I was sitting in Whole Foods writing in their little cafe, sent my query, and then I got an email back from her requesting the full and I freaked out because the fact that she was an agent at all was blowing my mind and the fact that she wanted it was, I mean, I was speechless. So I sent it back to her and then she offered within a couple of weeks, another agent offered as well. And I went with Kari because we just really connected super well over the phone.

Mindy:             So 12 years, 2005 to 2017 and I actually love it.

Kelly:               I didn't start querying in 2005 I started writing my book in 2005. I finished it in 2007. I had a baby and was like, Holy crap, I'm not getting any younger. If I'm going to do this, I need to finish it. Having my first son kind of motivated me to just finish my novel. So I started querying in 2007 so 10 years total.

Mindy:             You started this story by saying, I'm not the best person to come to for advice, but I disagree because I myself was querying for 10 years. Listeners will know this, I've said this a million times, but I didn't land an agent for 10 years and a lot of the reasons why are so similar to yours. I really thought that I was just amazing and I really wasn't. Like when I read the manuscripts that I was querying then, they were so bad and this is not mock humility. They were awful. They're terrible like I DNF'd them. They were not readable. But you got to realize that. But, and the other thing is that's really important is that in order for you to be able to write and to query for 10 years, you have to believe that you are good or you have to believe that you will make it. Like you can't sit there knocking out stuff and being like, well this is crap. Right? You're like, you're going to stop if you believe it. So there's obviously a pride element and you need to get knocked down a few pegs. But the element of not quitting, of still believing in yourself, believing that you have the ability, but learning that you have to refine it.

Kelly:               At one point I was like, am I completely delusional? I had my undergrad in creative writing and my masters in English. People used to tell me all the time, you're a great writer. I love reading it. Write something else. You can do this, and I was like, are all those people just completely delusional? Am I one of them as well? There was a point when I really did doubt myself, like officially doubt myself. I always doubted myself a little bit and just would, but I was like, you know what? You can keep going. I'm nothing if not persistent. I'm kind of like a bulldog sometimes I don't plan very well, but I will go for it. There was one point I was sitting on the couch next to my husband and I had gotten maybe my 106th rejection probably. It really was. I think just a couple of days before Kari emailed me back telling me she wanted to chat and I was like, you know what, am I completely delusional?

Kelly:               Like have I lost touch with reality? Maybe I'm not meant for this kind of writing. Cause I was doing all sorts of other writing and was really successful doing it and I'm like maybe I'm just not a novelist. And my husband looked at me, he's like, remember that old saying, those guys who went mining for gold and they stopped just a couple of meters away from where there was this giant pile of gold? Like you're there you are in that pit. Just keep digging. His encouragement pushed me just to hold on for a little bit longer. I got the offer of representation from Kari two days later.

Mindy:             But you do have to have those people telling you that you can do it because if people are telling you you can't, that's not, that's not going to help. It's a bizarre little world and it is a small world. And the thing that you find, at least that I found was that if you're querying for that long now, I was querying multiple manuscripts over the course of the 10 years. I think I was querying like five different novels and I had gotten to the point where agents knew who I was. When I queried them they would be like, Oh, I remember you. You've queried me before. And so it's wonderful because then I've even run into them like now as a published author, I run into the agents that rejected me like three or four or five times conferences and stuff. And it's kind of cool because we actually like have a relationship to be able to continue those relationships.

Mindy:             And I always tell people, you know, if you get a rejection on a full or if you get repeated blanket rejections and you react badly, it's like agents remember that. Like they remembered my name even though I was not really interacting with them in any kind of personal way. It was just through the queries. My name was popping up in their inbox enough that they were like, I remember you. And so you know, you're just always being polite and always interacting because it is a very small world and they do talk to each other. So if you misbehave, people will know.

Mindy:             So you mentioned Gravemaidens. It is your debut novel. It is a young adult fantasy, which is a crowded market right now. And just given the dates that you gave me for when you were querying, you got picked up right when fantasy was starting to blow up. So now with it being kind of a more competitive arena, especially in the YA market, how do you find your niche for Gravemaidens as a debut in a crowded marketplace for YA fantasy?

Kelly:               There's a few factors. I think part of it is character development because good characters are always going to be in fashion and be in demand. If you can write a character that is relatable on a wide spectrum, whether you're a fantasy reader or Sci Fi or contemporary, wherever you are, if you write a character that people fall in love with personally, it doesn't matter what the genre is. I read a wide variety and honestly I connect with a character, so I tried really hard to make my characters, people that you could sit in a room with and get to know them. That's part of it. Also, I don't have a princess in a castle. I have a healer. My main character is a healer and she's, she's a Hufflepuff like a lot of fantasy MCs, especially girls are Gryffindors. They're brave or they're Slytherin, you know, they're kind of brave or cunning or they maybe don't like violence, but they are willing to use violence.

Kelly:               And my narrator is a healer in her chief goal is to keep people alive even if those people are not people that she cares about. So she's kind and compassionate and I think that's a little bit of a twist on the YA fantasy market. She's unlike a lot of other characters where she, she wants to save her sister from dying with a Lugal and if that means healing the Lugal, a man who had been notoriously terrible to her in the past, she'll do it and while she does it, she will even have compassion for him. There's a scene in the book where she's kneeling by his pallet after she's just treated him and she's confused about why he's so sick and she grabs his hands and she's kind of, uh, you know, rubbing his knuckles against her face. And really her heart goes out to this man, even though he has been just so terrible to her family, compassion still comes through. And for me, I think I hadn't read anything like that.

Mindy:             I like that. I like that a lot. For a long time, everybody was writing the strong female character when strong was taken, literally it was always about being a fighter and being a fierce woman. That really became the definition of female strength for a long time, especially in YA. And that is not of course an accurate representation of the different many facets of female strength. And I love what you're saying and I think it's a great point. I love the idea of the healing and the compassion, especially given everything that we're dealing with in the real world today. That being a strength and conveying that message.

Kelly:               Yes, absolutely. I am not as compassionate as she is honestly. Like I'm a Ravenclaw through and through for me. Sometimes I'm like, you know, get yourself up, pick yourself up, you got this, shake yourself off. A lot of times I've talked to my kids that way and I have to remind myself to be more compassionate and be more kind. So she is completely different from me. I actually don't have any idea where she came from. I've had friends who have read this and been like, wow, she is so different from you. Like how do you write in first person POV, somebody who is not like you at all.? And I'm like, you know, I have no idea. That is a mystery. I have no idea where she came from, but I admire her like I want to be like her,

Mindy:             You know, I have a theory and why you have written someone that is very different from you. Yeah, absolutely. I think as authors often we write characters who represent something we wish we could be.

Kelly:               You know what, that's probably very true. Like cause I, like I said do admire her and I think she has so many great qualities. Sometimes I'm too hard lined and she has softer edges and that's admirable and it's not often celebrated.

Mindy:             No, not at all. Which is why I think you're right that that is a good angle for your book. I am fascinated by this idea that we do this almost like almost a fantasization of an element of ourselves that we ourselves would like to see encouraged more, are giving, even giving our characters abilities we wish we had. I mean sometimes that's just a great escape for us.

Kelly:               No, she is kind of like nerd girl. So she does like learning and she gets all of those elements from me but she actually admires her sister Nanaea and how she can kind of give into moments of beauty and kind of relax and just enjoy herself. Kammani sometimes is too worried like in the middle of a party Kamanni's worried about her responsibilities and I mean she gets that from me. I really admire people who kind of can give into a moment and just throw all the responsibilities and worries aside and just give in and there are parts of me that are like that but as I've gotten more kids and gotten more responsibility a lot of times it's hard for me to let go and not be the one trying to control a situation or something. I put a little bit of that. My desire is what I would like to be more of in her sister Nanaea as well.

Mindy:             Coming up, how editing and being an ACT test prep writer helped Kelly and her fiction.

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Mindy:             So speaking of Gravemaidens, that is your first novel, but you are no stranger to publishing. You are the editor for Blue Ocean Brain. You're included in the Washington Post talent network. And have also authored two strategy guides to acing the act. So if you could talk a little bit about each of those elements that are different avenues for your work because you already alluded to the fact that you knew you were a good writer. And obviously these things that I'm mentioning are very different type of writing. So if you could talk a little bit about your writing, how your writing skills are challenged in different ways by each of these facets of your professional life.

Kelly:               Oh sure. I'm an editor as you said, and I loved that job. It has taught me so much about cleaning up my writing. I have 13 writers that write for me and every day I'm reading their work and I'm streamlining what they send me. There was a New York Times article and he talked about greening your work. In the old days they would have to physically go through an article and green it out with the green highlighter words that were unnecessary or that were filler. As an editor, I do that with my writers. As a novelist it has really helped me clean up what I'm writing. So if I have this long passage of texts, I can go through and say what are the things that will add to the atmosphere or detract from the atmosphere? Or is it a sentence I just think is beautiful? And if that's the case it probably needs to go.

Kelly:               Like if I'm firing my own work and it's taking away from the story, I should probably just cut it. My editor job really helps me kind of knowing what to keep and knowing what to get rid of. The Washington Post that is just fun. I've been published with two personal essays in the Washington Post and that was about fleeing hurricane Irma and the decision to do that. I live in Florida. It was a terrifying part of my life and I was able to write those essays and kind of talk about what it felt like to have that decision to make: stay and kind of hunker down or go. I mean that kind of really helped me hone into my emotion I think as I'm writing. And then the ACT test prep books, that was all about research. I have never researched more in my life than I did when I was writing my ACT test prep books.

Kelly:               I was a test prep author. I was a test prep specialist for about.com back when it was about.com for seven years. I got approached by the research and education company, asking me if I would like to write an ACT test prep manual for them and because I cannot say no to a challenge. I was like, sure, I'm writing about it every day. It will be easy and reader, it was not easy. It was definitely the most challenging thing I've ever done. I had to get help with math. I was like, I cannot write these questions, and I had a good friend of mine who helped me with science as well. He wrote some of them. I wrote some of them. We ended up selling this book. It was amazing, but I even, I read it now, I flip back through it from time to time and I'm like, how did I do this? I don't even know how I did it.

Mindy:             I understand that feeling. When I look back at some of my papers that I wrote in college, like the critical analysis and things like that and I'm just like, who is this girl? She was so much smarter than I am now. I'm like, who is this 20 year old? What is she talking about? Oh my God, that's hilarious.

Kelly:               It like pushes me and it reminds me that when I want to do something, when I feel like, you know, I get my notes back from my editor on the sequel or something and I'm like, wow, there is no way I can do this. I know what you're asking and I know where you want it to be, but my brain cannot do this, that I remind myself, wait a minute, you can absolutely do this. So it's helpful. It's helpful to know that it's something difficult so that you know you can do it again, like childbirth.

Mindy:             Yeah. Childbirth is a great example. Yeah, I agree completely. I'm actually sitting on an edit letter right now that I am delaying working on, even though it's for, let's see, it'll be my 10th book and I'm just like, I can't do that. You know? I'm just like, I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to edit. I don't know how to revise. This is hard. I don't know how to do this. I'm going to break it this time. I'm going to break it. Right? And you know, I know that's not true. I know that's not true, but I'll tell you something - when I have an edit letter waiting on me, my house is so goddamn clean. Last time I had an edit letter, I defrosted the deep freezer. I was like, you know what that needs to get done. That needs to get done right now. That's next level procrastination right there.

Kelly:               I tend to start organizing, I organize my kitchen and I take out all the Tupperware and put it back in because that's something I can manage. That's easy. But yeah, the edit letter is too difficult. So we avoid that. Well usually I read it and cry and then call my agent and then she calms me down because she's basically my therapist and then we talk about it and she's like, remember you can do this. And I'm like, Oh yeah, I can. I talk with my editor. I'm like, okay, okay, so this is manageable. Then I cry again. Then I edit and then it works out.

Mindy:             I drink. That's mine. Um, I get the edit letter. Yeah, I don't usually have a drink like just at home. Like socially I'll have a drink but I'm just not somebody that winds down with like a glass of wine or whatever. I'm more likely to have some tea or something. But when I get an edit letter I'm like, I'm going to, I'm going to drink. I'm just going to get to that fuzzy stage where you feel like everything's okay. And then I'll read it again when I'm in a fuzzy stage and then I'm like, all right, you know, process that. But I have a friend who actually gets an edit cake when she gets her edit letters. She doesn't read it. She goes down the street to the bakery and buys like a sheet cake and then she like eats cake while she's reading her edit letter.

Kelly:               Listen, she has something because that is a way to manage and maybe, maybe I should try that.

Mindy:             Her husband will see a cake in the fridge and he's like, Oh shit.

Kelly:               Well see my husband knows that you're at edit letter cause I'm like draped across the bed sobbing. He's like, Oh, the edits came in, didn't they?

Mindy:             That's a perfectly normal reaction. Everybody I know they, they either drink too much, eat too much, or cry too much as soon as they get their edit letter. So that's okay that that's a normal part of the process. Absolutely.

Mindy:             Lastly, marketing on your own, the constant hustle and the benefits of having a street team.

Mindy:             I asked you a little bit about how Gravemaidens is going to stand out in the market for readers in the YA fantasy genre, but I want to talk to you about marketing and how you are going about getting word out about Gravemaidens because social media is a crowded place. We're all vying for attention. We're all shouting at the same people all the time. So what are your methods here for your debut book? How are you supporting the marketing efforts of your publisher? Like what are your methods?

Kelly:               This was something that was not entirely new to me because although I don't have a major in marketing or anything like that, I do have a small business. So my husband and I with some business partners, own some condos on the Gulf of Mexico and I for a long time was the person in charge of renting them and marketing them and getting customers. That was my job. So I did know a little bit about sales plus right after college when I graduated with my creative writing degree, I went right into sales because who is going to hire someone with a creative writing degree that did not have a journalism internship? No one. So I went into that was lucrative and then I hated it. So then I went and got my degree in teaching and then I taught for a while. So I did have some experience in sales.

Kelly:               However, marketing for a book is entirely a different beast. And also I thought being a newbie kind of writer at first I thought Hey my publisher is going to handle all of this and they're going to be the ones who do it all. But that is not the case. As I learned. They do a ton and I'm super grateful for everything that Delacorte Press is doing. And I mean cause it's a lot comparatively to some, you know, other books. So what I've been doing personally to try to find my way, I did a couple of things. I joined class of 2k19 which is a marketing group. There's 20 authors that are middle grade and young adult debuts. I joined that group. We all kind of pitch in for money and then we do joint things. So like we've done joint mailers that we've sent out to 800 different librarians and bookstores.

Kelly:               Oh we do chats, we do social media pushes. We have someone in charge of conferences where we're kind of trying to book each other. So that was one kind of arm of my strategy. Another arm was I got a street team together so I could have some more people who actually have ins in this area to help support me. That has been one of the biggest joys of this entire thing is having this group of people. I have a Twitter DM chat for all of us. We get in there and just kinda chat about books. And I asked them sometimes like, Hey, can you do this? And they're like, sure. I think I have an interview coming up with almost everyone in the group. So they're posting it on their blogs. A lot of them are book bloggers or fellow authors or librarians. They're supporting me in that way.

Kelly:               My publicist emailed all of them bookmarks and they are passing them around requesting it at their libraries. So I have this team of people behind me that are extending my reach that I obviously would not have. I also did a preorder campaign myself that was mostly paid for by me. Delacorte press did the bookmarks and the book plates, but I ordered the enamel pin myself. I ordered the laptop sticker. I commissioned, um, a little mocktail card to be made and I've been mailing them all out myself. I decided to take some of the advance that I got and put it back into marketing so that I could try to get my name out there a little. And I know some people can't do that because their advance goes directly to their bills. I recognize that I am privileged in that way, able to do that, that I have another job and I have a husband who also has a good job.

Kelly:               So I'm able to do that, which, and I recognize that it's a privilege. So I'm doing that. And then I'm also trying to be as active as possible on social media and I'm reaching out to conferences, pitching myself, reaching out to bookstores, pitching myself. I set up my entire bookstore tour, myself and my publicist, she supported me in that and has helped me make connections if I didn't have them. But I was like, I'm going to go and pitch myself. Everyone's been really receptive. I have been busting my butt trying to get the word out about this.

Mindy:             Yup. And that's the way to do it. Um, I was a member of the class of 2k13. I am so glad that I made that decision because two of like my closest friends now are from the class and we worked together on multiple projects and also just everyone in that class. We actually, the YA authors anyway, that we are still publishing and we run into each other all the time. We're actually pretty close and honestly it's like bonds were forged and there are people that I talk to literally every day of my life now that I would not have as friends if I didn't do that and I'm so so happy about that. And you were also mentioning just beating the pavement and getting out there and putting yourself in front of people and talking to people and presenting yourself to people.

Mindy:             That is how you do it, especially in your local area. Putting yourself in front of librarians, booksellers, people that are organizing conferences. I'm telling you I did that and it just felt like I was waving my own flag under their noses all the time and just announcing myself and I'm not a salesperson. I have become one now I have become one. I have learned how, especially when you're doing hand selling at a table in like a festival or something like that, you absolutely have to, you've got to learn how to do that and I'm telling you all the efforts that you're putting in right now, they will pay off because I was published in 2013 so here we are six years later and I don't even advertise anymore. People just reach out because I've done enough events and I have put myself in enough places, especially the library circuit, that word of mouth, the organizers and the librarians and the event coordinators, they just email each other and booksellers, same thing.

Mindy:             They're like, Hey, we just had Mindy McGinnis. She gives a great presentation. She's reasonably priced. You should reach out to her for your planning. Like I said, I don't reach out anymore. People come to me and like this month I think I've got about 20 things booked. And that was all just invitation and maybe that's just six years of beating the circuits. It does work. Those little ripples of throwing stones out in the pond, they spread. But the other part is that I will say yes to just about everything. I really will and they recognize that. So if it's a tiny little town, which is where I'm from and they're like, we can only give you this much money. I'm like, that's fine, I'll do it.

Mindy:             I've never regretted it. I love doing it. I love putting myself in front of people. That's how it works. Like that to me is just being physically present, doing a good job when you're there. Word will spread.

Kelly:               Well good. I mean that is really actually good to hear. If there's anything I've got it's hustle. I mean I've always had that and I'm always willing to push hard and I'm not someone who kind of gets beaten down as easily. Sometimes I think like I wonder what my breaking point is? Because I haven't reached it yet, but um, I'm always willing to kind of give it a shot and see what happens. I'm grateful that it's working out for you and I'm hopeful that eventually it will work out for me as well.

Mindy:             It will, it will you reach critical mass. But I will say you talk about a breaking point. I have had in these six years I've had three events where no one showed up, like literally zero people were interested in coming to see me and that's okay.

Kelly:               I hear it's common. I've had friends who are, debuts who were, you know, New York times bestsellers who said, Hey, I did an event and literally no one came or one person showed. And for whatever reason I think maybe my years of teaching, that doesn't frighten me at all. Like not in the least. I know for some people who are more introverts, I am like your typical extrovert. But for people who are introverts, I know that might be horrifying or you know, they just have to muster up their nerve to go there and the rejection might be too much. But I've been rejected so much in my life that I'd kind of be like, ah, you know what? There's just me and you. Let's go have lunch. That doesn't terrify me. Maybe it won't, because I've never experienced that. But maybe it will be horrifying. But for me, I don't know that, I'm not afraid of that.

Mindy:             But even you were talking about debut authors who have events and nobody shows up. I had one of my zeros no-shows two weeks ago. Yeah. And that's okay. I mean it's good. It keeps you humble.

Kelly:               See, I like looking for the opportunities in failing. You know, even if it's not your failure, it's marketing failure or whatever. I like looking for that. Something that you can take away from it. And I, I teach that to my boys too. You fail a test, congratulations. Because you have the opportunity to learn from that and to grow from it. And if anything else, it gives you humility, which humility only can lead to better things. That doesn't scare me away. Not yet. Hasn't yet. Maybe one day it will.

Mindy:             If anything, the organizer, like she was so upset and she was like, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I'm so sorry. And I was like, honey, it's okay. I was like, trust me, you are not the first person that has stood in front of me saying, I am so sorry that no one showed up. You can't control it. You can't control other people and it's hard to get people to show up, man. Especially when your target audience is teens and they don't have their own transportation. It's fine. As you said. I agree. Humility is a gift. Being humble is so important in this industry and so when zero people show up I'm like, okay, knock me down a peg. That's cool. I probably needed it, you know?

Kelly:               Exactly.

Mindy:             Last question, what are you working on right now and where can listeners find you online?

Kelly:               Since Gravemaidens, I've written three other books. People are asking me questions about Gravemaidens and I actually have to flip back through and reread it because I'm like, did that happen with all the millions of edits that we went through? I cannot remember and my goal is to reread the book before my launch event so I can actually answer questions about it. I wrote the sequel. Gravemaidens is a duology and we haven't announced the title yet, but that's coming soon. But I wrote the sequel. We're actually in line edit for the sequel right now.

Kelly:               I wrote a young adult Sci Fi that's a Scarlet letter retelling that's being considered right now by my publishing house. That's my option. So I'm fingers crossed for that one for me. And then I also wrote a contemporary, uh, I just the first draft of a contemporary with speculative elements. If I have this urge to write and if I have these ideas, I want to go for it while I've got it. Because sometimes I feel like you might have peaks and valleys and in those valleys I want to honor that. And if I'm not feeling like I have it or I don't want to, or there's something else going on where I can't, then I want to take advantage of it. When I do have the opportunities, I felt like I wanted to write these. So I did.

Mindy:             Yes, I agree with you 100% when you have inspiration, never turn your back on it. Go with it. If you feel like writing and you're on fire for an idea, write it. Write it while it's hot.

Kelly:               Exactly. Cause there've been moments where I'm staring at my page. It was really difficult for me to start the sequel to Gravemaidens. I knew what I wanted to do. It had been a long time since I was in that head space. I actually wrote my Sci Fi before I wrote the sequel. So I was in this other person's head space. So getting back into Kammani's point of view was I was like, who wrote this? Like I was looking at Gravemaidens. I'm like, is that me? Like is that my voice? Is that her voice? Because I had switched voices so completely that was tough to get into. So it took a while to start. I had trouble with that and then, but then once I got into it and stuff then I'm like, Oh there she is. It just took awhile. Kind of put her clothes back on. And then you also asked you where people can find me online. Well. My website is Kelly coon.com and then I'm on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook at Kelly Coon106.

Debbie Rigaud On The Value of Light Reads

Mindy:             Today's guest is Debbie Rigaud, author of the YA romcom Truly, Madly, Royally. Debbie joined me today to talk about the rejection journey being similar for scripts, magazine writing and novels, as well as the importance of community, especially that of women in publishing looking out for one another

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Mindy:             Most of my audience is comprised of aspiring authors and they love to hear about how a published author attained their agent. So if you could talk about that, I'm sure that they would love to know your story.

Debbie:            Odd to say, but I didn't have a querying journey. I had more of a pitching journey that lasted decades. Now my secret dream back in the day was to become a TV writer. This was back when most people wanted to be film screenwriters. So my journey was more of a pitching journey. For book publishing it was more of a circuitous one. I've had two literary agents. I started in magazine publishing in New York City, which felt remote, but sort of adjacent to the book publishing world. And so sometimes you can find some overlap. And my first agent, the wonderful Adrian Ingram, she's a full time editor now. She was a colleague of a friend. She was working on an anthology for African American and Latin X teens. That was back when a lot of teens were picking books up because they related to the characters on the cover. They were picking it up, but it wasn't age appropriate.

Debbie:            A lot of times it was a lot of erotica and things like that. So Adrian was working on an anthology with more age appropriate fiction because these readers were grossly underserved. She approached me to work on that. So my agent now is Laura of Laura Dale literary agency. I have Sarah Mylnowski to thank for that. So I'm still pinching myself over this. But Laura Dale heard about me through Sarah and then asked to see my work. She's also Sarah's agent. I know. It's like, when does this ever happen? So I sent Laura A Perfect Shot, which was a romcom I did. It was a Simon Polse romantic comedy back in 2010. And that was when I was still with Adrian Ingram and I also sent her Voila. Open Mic is the name of the anthology that author Mitali Perkins is an editor of. It was about, you know, being an immigrant's kid. I actually was agent-less when there was an open submission for Open Mic. They selected my story, Voila. And so I send those to Laura and she connected with my writing style, my characters. Before that I'd sort of been languishing in limbo land for years. Sarah doing this and you know, just like out of the blue, I didn't even know Sarah was kind of talking to me up around town. It's been amazing ever since. So I've been with Laura since Truly, Madly, Royally.

Mindy:             You had these connections through networking and through a relationship with another author. I'm actually familiar with Sarah's work because I worked in a library, a middle school and high school library for about 14 years and I still go back and I volunteer. So Sarah has just tons and tons of books and I'm familiar with her work. And then I'm also familiar with Open Mic because that's a book that we carry.

Debbie:            Oh really? Oh my gosh, that's amazing!

Mindy:             Yeah. It was a Junior Library Guild selection, correct?

Debbie:            Oh my God, yes. The crazy thing about it, and I like actually cried. My story Voila was republished this past spring in Scope Scholastic, which is in middle school classes. They got an illustrator to create art for it and they brought up a lot of different topics of discussion for students and I was able to do the audio version of it that they asked me to read. So it was, it was just, I felt like it was like winning the lottery. Like they're like, Oh, we dug up your old story and we want to publish it. That came just from me sort of seeing that, you know, they were looking for an additional story to include and so I just took a chance and sent it in.

Mindy:             That's awesome.

Debbie:            Yes. Yeah, I was, you know, hustling. Just trying to keep myself out there and, and that's why it meant so much about Sarah because I really saw it as sort of like women helping women. It's like, when does that happen? Where a woman comes up to you and says, I'd love to sponsor you or I'd love to talk about you. I'd love to like help mentor you, if you have any questions.

Debbie:            It's important that we do that for each other.

Mindy:             Absolutely. Women to women, we have to help each other out. We have to. Even though you weren't necessarily having a query journey, you were certainly on a rejection journey in terms of pitching for 10 years. Talk a little bit if you can about the differences between as a screenwriter doing pitches and querying and yet the similarities in land of rejection.

Debbie:            As a screenwriter I was never in LA, it was always New York based. I did a different route. Like I'm always looking for a different routes. Trying to think outside the box. I was going to sort of the smaller production companies who have sort of had straight to video type of um, stories and and pitching them, looking at, you know, sort of their catalog of material. Just the same as you would do for an agent you're interested in. Like who else does that person represent? How would my story fit in? If not, how can I tweak it? A lot of times they're like, great, this is great that you get a response from them and sometimes a positive response, but then there's a lot of wait and see and the screenwriting world. You might connect with someone but then you might not hear back. It kind of never went anywhere. The rejection, I always related to that, I caught a bus, I caught two city buses to go to school. I would always like be cold and be standing at a bus stop and you'd see a bus in the distance and you're like, yes. And then as it gets closer you realize it's not your bus number.

Debbie:            But the way I saw it was while I was grateful for the time that I thought it was mine. It kept me feeling, you know what? This, you know, sub zero degree weather? I can do this. Yeah, sure you get disappointment when you realize it's not yours/ But, hey for the last few minutes you weren't thinking about it.

Mindy:             That's right.

Debbie:            And then here comes another bus. Those are the tricks that I use with myself. It's wild. When you hear, Oh, it's been X amount of years, you're like, has it been? It doesn't feel like that because you find other things that keep you going. You know, I was always working full time. I was always doing things that interest me on the side. Freelancing and making connections. All the while you're building relationships, those relationships, talking to other people, particularly like women, black people, you know, and just like, Oh Hey, how you holding up? How's it going? What's your next move? I love discussing career moves with people. I think it's so inspiring, I guess, you know, buckle up for the journey, not the destination.

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Mindy:             And those glimmers of hope. Those are the things that keep you going even when it's not your buss. I love the analogy.

Debbie:            Heck yeah.

Mindy:             Because I would get rejections. I was querying for like 10 years and I would get rejections, but they were complimentary rejections and they would say, you're a good writer. You're going to make it. This particular book isn't working for me or the genre has passed for the time and I would just be like, Oh, but that's awesome.

Debbie:            Oh man, you wouldn't believe like how unprepared I was. Even when I did get there. Like I remember being invited to, this is crazy, but I got invited to Penguin, like to come in and sit down and and I was so unprepared. I was invited on the strength of something that I sent in that they're like, this is amazing, but we just contracted with someone on a book very similar to yours. Do come in, let's chat. I was actually in there, like sitting down talking to top editors and I had no clue how tough that was to have that access. I didn't, I didn't even realize. And also I'm from magazine publishing and there's a lot of rejection there. Like there's a lot of pitching that goes on there. Even if you're on staff, you know, I was on staff and I'd pitch something and we'd get rejected. It's just part of this writing life that I've chosen. That's how I chalked it up too.

Mindy:             Absolutely. Rejection forms a callus and you have to have those calluses.

Debbie:            You have to have that resilience.

Mindy:             Yes, absolutely. You have to have the resilience and those little glimmers of hope. They keep you going. And, and other women and other writers. Um, it's, it's interesting you mentioned how much you love just sitting around and talking about the business or talking about your next move or their next move. And it's so funny that you say that because I find that so often, even the writers that are like my really good friends, when we are together physically, we're not talking about our kids or our families. Whatever's going on in our personal lives, like we'll touch on it. But most of the time we're talking about the industry, we're talking about what's going on in the industry. We're talking about what our next moves are, what the hot genre is, what's going on at this imprint.

Debbie:            We don't have a water cooler, do we? We don't, we're not in office spaces. So when we get together, that's how we find each other. And just like, commiserate.

Mindy:             Right. And that's part of the reason I started this podcast because I was thinking one day as I sat speaking with other authors and we were just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talking. And it was all business talk. I was like, man, as an aspiring author, I could have sat in and just listened to this conversation. I would have learned so much. And so that's part of why I started this podcast, just to have those conversations for the purpose of other people learning from them

Mindy:             Coming up. Why a YA romcom might be exactly what some readers need.

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Mindy:             So you mentioned your YA romcom Truly, Madly, Royally that came out this summer. Tell us a little bit about that book, but then also it's a YA romcom and the world that we're in right now just feels so bleak. So talk little bit about that book, what it's about and then tell us what you think the rule is of lighter stories in the world that we're living in today.

Debbie:            Well Truly, Madly, Royally, yes, came out in July. It's a romcom inspired by Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. So it happens when a girl meets a Prince, the girl's African American girl and the Prince is the Prince of Lander, a fictional European country. Zora meets Owen at prestigious university. So it's a summer program for high school students and she is taking classes on philanthropy, on grant writing because she has big plans for her organization to help these kids in her community that are very small and they often walk to school alone. And so she has a program called the Walk Me Home program. She just has to navigate her desires the reasons why she's there, versus sort of falling for someone who sort of comes with a circus. It's a bit of a risk there. There's a wedding at the end because his big brother's getting married to a lovely lady and she gets to go to that royal wedding.

Debbie:            That's a romcom. And I hear you in a world where everything does seem bleak, but I can only offer my life as an example. Being hit with never ending depressing news cycles and see it weaving the most negative and scary narrative of the country. This isn't new news for me, like hearing intense debates, divided families and passionate discussions about politics. Isn't new for me. My parents immigrated to Brooklyn from Haiti in the 1960s so I grew up in the eighties and nineties at a time when baby doc exit, AIDS being blamed on Haitians, always boatloads of desperately fleeing Haitians flashed on the news. And of course in school I get asked questions a lot of times they're ignorant. Many times unkind, like deliberately unkind. And through this I begin to see sort of the importance of not only telling stories that are tough to hear, but like enjoyable to hear.

Debbie:            It's important to acknowledge the entirety of a person's experience in terms of using lighthearted stories in tough times. I use my mom as an example. She was a hopeful person who used humor to tell a lot of tough stories the way that she did this, you know, it revealed so much of her layers to me, her emotional intelligence. It kept me hopeful. Truly. Madly, Royally is a light entertaining, but it also touches on tough topics. Self love, racism. I get that from her because that was our coping mechanism. When you're writing for young people, I sort of approach it how a nurse once told me when I went through a tough medical journey, she was like, guard your heart. I was close to letting that harden my heart. When you write for young people, you don't want to harden their hearts. Obviously you want to keep those glimmers of hope that we talked about. And so most stories in YA, middle grade literature, which is why I love it. It's like even if they are heavy reads, we offer those glimmers of hope. We take up that mantle of guarding the hearts of young people.

Mindy:             I love that idea of guarding the hearts and I agree with you completely that we do need lighter stories. We always need them. Like right now, the national cycle of course is just completely bat shit crazy and terrible and it has been for years. But like you're saying, it's always been bad somewhere for someone at all times. There's always someone out there struggling. There's always something terrible happening to someone. Having all of those escapes open for anyone at any time is so important. And those light reads--

Debbie:            It's important. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's important not to judge someone for opting for those reads because you don't know their spirit. Some people like to judge you from the face of things. I'm a smiley girl, you know, I can break out in song, but they don't know what I've been through. It's not that it's irresponsible sometimes when someone just steps away from it. For example, I was talking to my brother-in-law the other day who's like always on top of every new story and he was just like, Oh, I took a break. I was like, wow. But he's allowed that.

Mindy:             You're talking about not shaming people for what they're reading. You're absolutely right about that. Um, I remember when e-readers first came out, how relieved and happy romance readers were because they could read their books in public and no one was looking at the cover and no one was judging that.

Debbie:            Isn't that kind of sad? Doesn't that hurt?

Mindy:             Like, yes. Yes, it is sad. No one should ever be judged by what they're reading. That's ridiculous.

Debbie:            I feel really sad when you just said that. I was like, my gosh.

Mindy:             Yeah, yeah, right. I'll read anything I really enjoy just about anything. I'm honestly not much of a romance reader, but I will read a lighter, like a beach read or, and even the term beach read though is dismissive in itself, right?

Debbie:            It's just like, you know, I'll listen to anything. You would like laugh and stuff that I listen to sometimes I'm in the mood to be, you know, like yo, I mean I listen to anything, you know, depends on what I'm in that mood for at the time and it just feeds me at that time. Everybody is going through a journey and you need that nourishment, however you can get it to get you through. You need to see that bus coming even if it's not your bus. And so if a light read gets you there right now, go for it. You know? Yes.

Mindy:             Every winter I try to read a really heavy book, like a thick book, like a classic. I try to tackle a classic because I just feel that responsibility and most of the time I really do enjoy them. Over the past couple of years, I've read War and Peace. I read Les Mis. I read Moby Dick. That's what I read last year. I read Moby Dick.

Debbie:            And you know, that's a challenge for me. I love a lot of Nigerian literature. That's a good thing to challenge myself with, you know? So I think that's cool that you did it.

Mindy:             I do. I like to have a big heavy book to read in the winter. You know, when the wind is blowing around outside and it's like I'm going to sit down with this big heavy book and my comfy bed and I'm going to read this. My nightstand is always kind of like, I don't know, schizophrenic. There's so many different things sitting there and it's, cause I might just, you know, sometimes you really don't want to pick up War and Peace, you're just not there.

Debbie:            I relate to that so hard and I think that that's just part of the complexity of being human right. My iTunes. You look through it, you got some word War and Peace equivalents in there. Yeah. You've got some Twilight equivalents in there, you know, so as it should be. It's just how it goes.

Mindy:             Lastly, writing tough topics and co-authoring with activist Alyssa Milano.

Mindy:             Well you talked about some of your work that has more of a, a weightier tone because you don't shy away from tough topics. You contributed to the YA anthology Dear Bully and your essay that is about not being a passive bystander. So what led you to that essay and why do you think that message is important?

Debbie:            There was a lot of things spotlighted in the news cycle about young people being victims to being bullied. And so we said, you know, as writers of young people, we want to contribute. I'm still close to my high school bestie. She mentioned something that happened to her that I played a role in like uh, in defending her. And I did not remember. When she told me about it is when I started recalling it, I didn't even remember and I played a part in it and she said that it meant a lot for her that the time, and that's how we became friends is that I spoke up for her. And now with her this, this story deals with issues of colorism. She's a chocolate gorgeous, dark skinned woman at the time in high school, you know, she was called out for being dark skinned and also, um, it also dealt with bias against immigrants.

Debbie:            She's Jamaican and she said that her friends would call and then maybe her mom would pick up back in the day when we had landlines right. And they would say, how come she has an accent and kind of drag her for that. This is stuff that is damaging to spirit. Took her awhile she said she's come to position of self appreciation, self love, she wants more kids to know about this. The challenges that we face, particularly in within the African American community with colorism. As for me, you know, I was like this skinny kid. I just was cool with everyone because I felt like at the time as a kid I was like, okay, you gotta be able to defend yourself. This is East orange, New Jersey. You gotta be able to fight. I'm this skinny girl. I feel like being cool with people. It was my defense mechanism, which is a shame because it's hard to break out of the people pleasing, but it wasn't more so like people pleasing was more so like, like I was just being cool, you know, that was my way of doing things right.

Debbie:            I was not the type of person to like mouth off or anything, but apparently at the time she said that I spoke up for her. It kind of just highlighted how uncool it was to talk about her in school. And hearing that I was like, I did that skinny little me? You know? Um, and so I wrote it to say sort of like you just never know what, what you can do to help another person, particularly when it comes to using your voice against this. If skinny old me, used my defense mechanism by being friendly. If somebody like me who doesn't like to get into a physical skirmishes can speak up on it and use your voice in a way that gets a message across, then maybe more can.

Mindy:             And I love what you're saying too, that for her, this was a life changing moment for her. This opened up a door where she was like, Oh, people shouldn't talk about me this way. Yeah. For you it was just like, Hey, you were just like, Hey, that's not cool man. Right. Like you didn't even remember it. But yeah, I mean it's not like you beat somebody up in her defense or anything. You just spoke up. That's it.

Debbie:            Right. I didn't even have my spinach that day. If someone like me can do it, maybe consider, you know, like speaking up, it just took a voice and someone pointing it out and saying that is not. okay.

Mindy:             So I want to talk about another project of yours. You co-wrote Hope: Project Middle-School with activist Alyssa Milano. So tell me about that co-authoring experience. How did you land that job and what was it like to work with such a high profile coauthor?

Debbie:            It's been a thrilling experience, very fast pace. So Truly, Madly, Royally is a Point Paperbacks book and my editor who's the amazing, um, Amy Friedman is there. So Point is Scholastic. It's a Scholastic imprint and so is Hope. Hope is the Scholastic book they reached out at after Truly, Madly, Royally, approached me from that. So this was thanks to Truly, Madly, Royally being talked about within Scholastic that these editors thought I'd be a great fit for this project. That's how they got me on board. When I came on, the project was already underway and Alyssa Milano, she's just like a skilled storyteller, you know, she's written a kazillion scripts. She's also written books before. She's written about her love of baseball. She's like super intuitive about characters. If I could just say like, Hope has a lot in common with Alyssa. I think she's, she just has this big heart and she leads with it.

Debbie:            We all know about her activism. It was interesting to find out like, you know, her activism started when she herself was a tween. A teen Ryan White, a kid who contracted AIDS, um, through a blood transfusion. Elton John called her and said, Ryan is a fan of yours, so can you just let him give you a kiss on your cheek? And she said, sure. And you know she's been an activist since then. Hope: Project Middle School is, so Hope is a series. It's basically like a mini activist. She's an 11 year old middle schooler. She's passionate about science and she's also navigating entering middle-school, having her friend go a different direction with some of her classes. And so having to sort of stand up on her own. And so the first book in the series is about her finding her voice. And then the next book in the series is just about her helping out a dog shelter that is closing down. It sort of walks readers through the steps of like how to be an activist in a way that a young reader would understand. And then there's Eric Keyes who is the amazing artist, he's the illustrator. And then we're backed by such a cool team at Scholastic, really one of those projects that brings a lot of the joy into writing. We're actually working on the third book. It's going to be a series of four books coming out every six months and the first one comes out mid October and then the next one in April.

Mindy:             Lastly, what are you working on now and where can listeners find you online?

Debbie:            Aside from working on Hope. I'm working on revisions for a YA romcom. This one is closer to home is called An Arranged Prom, working title. It's sort of like my big fat Greek wedding, for prom. It's about, you know, Haitian American girl. Prom season's here. She goes to an all girl school and her parents set out to arrange her prom. This is actually taken from a page in my life where my eldest sister had her prom arranged. It's a lot of fun and I'm hoping that the revision goes well.

Mindy:             And where can listeners find you online?

Debbie:            I am a little bit more active on Instagram. My Instagram is fro and a bow, so that's how I used to have my daughter's hair. I'm also at Debbie Rigaud on Twitter.

Debbie:            And I try to blog once in a while, but...

Mindy:             Yeah, it's tough, man. It's tough. Believe me, I know.

Debbie:            You're talking, your blog is looking good.

Mindy:             Oh, thank you. But it's not easy. I'm like, I spend... Basically, my whole Sunday is for the blog and the podcast, like the whole day is just set aside to do that.

Debbie:            Well, I appreciate your time because it's a great blog, so thank you.

Mindy:             I appreciate that you appreciate it, but sometimes it just feels like you're just throwing stuff out in the void. But if I know people are reading and people are listening, then I'll keep doing it. 

Loss Leaders & Pre-Order Campaigns with Lori Goldstein

Support the Podcast

Mindy:             Welcome to Writer, Writer, Pants On Fire. Where authors talk, craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing industry, marketing, and more. I'm your host Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at www.mindymcginnis.com and make sure to visit the Writer, Writer Pants On Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques, and more, at www.writerwriterpantsonfire.com If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit www.writerwriterpantsonfire.com and click support the blog and podcast in the sidebar. Today's guest is Lori Goldstein, former journalist and current author, an editor who has a bachelor's in journalism and previously worked for technology publications in the East Coast, Silicone Valley City of Boston. Laurie joined me today to talk about how the query process actually works, even though we all know how painful it is.

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Mindy:             Listeners are always curious about how my guests got their agent. So the query trenches are really tough place to be. But I've found through talking to writers over years and years that the majority of my guests on both the blog and the podcast found their agents by writing those cold queries. So what about you?

Lori:                 I am fitting writing with the majority of the people that you've talked to. Uh, I've been fortunate in my career to have two agents. I'm on my second agent right now and I found both of my agents through the query trenches. The first time it still was through the query trenches, but it wasn't for the book that became my first book, Becoming Jinn. I had written an adult book, many problems with it. One of those was I didn't know how to write a query and I was fortunate to get help from some writers online. People that were very generous on Twitter and offered to read my query and give feedback on it. And without their help, I probably wouldn't have gotten an agent because I really just had no idea how to put that query together. So when I was querying that first book that I had written, I'd finally gotten to the shape where I thought I could, could query it.

Lori:                 I wrote that query and I started to get hits on it. Unfortunately, no one offered representation on it, but the agent who became my first agent had really liked my writing, said very complimentary things and said, send me your next book. So I did, I finished Becoming Jinn and I wrote the query for it and I put it out there to, you know, a wide array of agents. And one of them was that first agent who requested my first book and she became my agent. There were other people in the mix, but we had a great connection. So then the next time when my agent and I mutually decided to part ways - she was no longer going to be representing kid lit, and I was continuing to write in the young adult genre - so I found myself needing another agent and I did it again through the query trenches.

Lori:                 By that point I had been fortunate to meet a lot of other published authors and speak with them about their agents and what they liked about them and not liked about them and I got many referrals from friends, which is always a great thing. And I think people think that's how you get an agent. You have to network, you have to do it that way. And I did send queries with referrals and I sent ones I would just call cold calls into the slush pile and the woman who became my agent was from the slush pile

Mindy:             And it's amazing to me that the slush, it works. People hate it. I understand why they hate it. I was there for 10 years. I know that when I was an aspiring writer and I would see published writers saying," don't knock the query process, it works. That's how I got my agent." I'm sitting there going, "well that's easy for you to say." I was querying for 10 years before I got an agent. It was a decade. I have four novels that I queried and were rejected continuously. A lot of that is because I didn't know how to write a query or a book. I would just become so angry and when I would see people saying "the query process works, you just have to do it right." And I'm like, well, I don't like you because you're successful. You know? And then now I find myself in that same position where I'm telling aspiring writers, look, I know it sucks, but the truth is that it does work.

Mindy:             Even though it feels like the doors are closed and the windows are shuttered and the curtains are drawn, you can get in there. You just have to write a good query. And I want everyone to know that when I say those things I say at as someone that was just tortured for 10 years in those query trenches, I mean I remember, I know what it's like and I'm still telling you that it does work. I got my agent through cold queries. I like what you're saying too about having referrals. It is a business where knowing people helps. Any business is that way, but you do not have to. I tell people, I am a farmer's daughter from a tiny town in Ohio. I did not know anyone. I had zero references. Yeah, I sent a cold query into the slush pile and I got an agent that sold my book to Harper Collins and now I am a full time writer and it is because I took the time to learn how to write a query and write it well. And I also like what you're saying about finding people online to help you with that. I was a member of and a moderator for a long time of a forum for aspiring writers called Agent Query Connect. It's not as active as it used to be, but 10 years ago that was a really great place to be. If you were looking for people, other aspiring writers, and also people a few rungs ahead of you on the ladder to help you with that query. So you mentioned Twitter. Were there any other places that you looked online for help with that query writing?

Lori:                 When I was querying, it was around the time of 2012 2013 and at that time we had some very unfortunate natural disasters. I believe that was Hurricane Sandy at that time and a couple of other things that happened. And what happens around these unfortunate incidents and still happens now is often there are auctions that writers get together and sometimes there are agents involved as well to raise money for, to help support the cause. And a lot of times people will give away critiques and query critiques. And that was something I remember being a part of my learning process, was participating in some of those auctions, donating some money, which was great. And then in return I was able to get feedback from other published writers as well as agents. And I made it a priority to get that feedback on my query because I knew that was where I really needed to get the right work done and I really needed it to shine, to represent the book in the best way. And that was a great resource for me and I know those kinds of things still exist

Mindy:             And follow agents, follow editors, follow published writers on Twitter. There is a lot of good advice out there. I mean Twitter can be a quagmire sometimes, but if you are active on Twitter you can find a lot of good advice on there. I also want to add that I do free query critiques on the Writer, Writer Pants On Fire blog every Saturday. It's called the Saturday Slash. Those are free, so if you want to check that out, go to writerwriterpantsonfire.com and click on editorial services and that will pop up and that is free. Coming up. Lori's first book series, writing loss leaders like prequel novellas and preorder campaigns. Are they worth it? Also creating swag that works.

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Mindy:             So let's talk about your first book that was Becoming Jinn. It is part of an urban fantasy series that deals with the magical world of Jinn. It was followed by a sequel and then a short story prequel. The short story is free and it's available as a download. When you are creating content like that, is that a strategic marketing choice and more importantly, does it work?

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Lori:                 It was absolutely a strategic marketing choice. I had seen other authors doing short stories. Sometimes they were part of preorder campaigns. Especially when you have a series and you have the sequel coming out to offer a short story in the world or maybe deleted content or something like that. I had seen a lot of other authors doing that at the time and I said, well, you know, I love these characters. I'd love to write more about them and why don't I do the same thing and create some extra bonus content. And it was something I could have just put on my website and pointed to. I decided with Macmillan's approval that we could make it a short story and have it as a Freebie online that people could download. Whether you're an existing fan of the series and you want more or you're kind of browsing through the free content on Amazon and come across this story and see if maybe it whets your appetite for the full series.

Lori:                 So that was definitely a marketing decision in order to write it. I had a lot of fun doing it. It was fun to return to the girls and put them a couple of years earlier. So it's set a couple of years before Becoming Jinn begins and I had a lot of fun doing it. Does it work? I don't think it works. I don't have hard numbers because you can't get hard numbers for ebooks. In this free category, at least in in my current situation, I can't get hard numbers for it. But I can see the Amazon rank and you can compare that to the book's rank and look at it that way. And also, you know, look at numbers on Goodreads and how many ads it has on Goodreads. So there are some metrics that you can kind of use and I don't think it gave a bump to the series. So that is the honest truth. I have met people at festivals or at book events asking if there was going to be another book in the Becoming Jinn world. And I said no, but there is this free little short story and they were excited to get, you know, another glimpse into the world. So for that purpose it's enticing readers to go back to the story world and read it when they're existing fans. But I do not see it as a way to garner new fans.

Mindy:             Well and that's something that we're all still looking for. That magical key that brings people in and grabs their attention and FREE makes people click. But the audience that you are attracting when you use the word FREE as an advertising or marketing ploy typically is not the audience that is going to shell out money for a book.

Lori:                 Yeah, exactly that that was some of the problems that some authors were finding by putting content on Wattpad, which I think is just a great resource for young writers and new writers and teen writers. I have an author friend who put in a complete story, a novel, you know, week by week uploaded chapters hoping that that was going to drive content to her existing books. And for the exact reason you said it did not, she had a lot of reads, but there was absolutely no correlation to the books that were published because if someone is looking to read in a certain way and a certain format and that format being free, it's not a good translation to purchasing a book. It doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. If you love doing it and you'd like to get different kinds of content out there that perhaps you wouldn't publish with your publisher. Strict marketing is much more involved and something to really be thinking about to understand what works and what doesn't.

Mindy:             It's very true. The free audience is out there and they are ravenous but they typically are not going to pay for their content. There is so much content out there, you can read for free for the rest of your life if you want to. But you know one thing that I have done - for my listeners, when you are talking about marketing and you have something that you're offering like that for free, it's called a loss leader - and what I have done is created a short story that is tied into my newsletter. And so if you sign up for my monthly newsletter, you get the free short story and that has boosted the newsletter subscriptions. So I'm accessing that free audience by offering them a short story and then they will get my newsletter and hopefully something in the newsletter will catch their attention, perhaps draw them into something more.

Mindy:             Or at the very least, I use the newsletter to advertise when I have a kindle daily deal or a 99 cent offer on one of my books, whatever the case may be. And maybe some of that audience will translate into a dollar 99 deal or something like that. Something else that I want to add is that when we're talking about marketing, a lot of people use giveaways to drive adding people, or getting people to sign up for things like a mailing list or subscribing to a podcast or a blog. I have found that when you do a giveaway, you are getting the same audience. You're getting that free audience. So you might get a sudden glut of followers on Twitter or additions to your mailing list, but they're just there for that free whatever you're giving away. And then over time they're going to trickle away from you.

Mindy:             So they're going to unfollow you on Twitter, so that they can follow you again with the same account when you have the next giveaway. So it's actually not benefiting you at all. And then the other thing, especially with a mailing list, once you reach a certain level of subscribers you are paying, I use MailerLite. I just switched over from MailChimp and I started using MailerLite. And right now I've got room for about, I think maybe 500 or a thousand more before I get bumped up and I have to pay a higher rate because my subscriber list is decent size. It's about 1500 right now. But I did a giveaway a very large giveaway twice in this past year. I did one in December with another group, a large group of YA writers and then I did one in March with a group of Sci-Fi and fantasy writers and I got a ridiculous amount, something like 2,500 new subscribers each time.

Mindy:             It was insane. And then the next time I sent out a newsletter I had like a thousand people unsubscribe, as soon as the news letter went out and then people forget. I mean that's the other thing, they forget that they signed up. So I would send out a newsletter and then I would get the stats on my site, people were marking it as spam. People were marking it as "I didn't sign up for this". And it's like, no, you did. You just don't remember doing it. And now I've got like a flag on my account that I'm a spammer. So it's something that I have definitely rethought about how I want to market and who I want to market to when you're working with giveaways because you are attracting a pretty large audience there that may or may not actually be interested in what you have to say.

Mindy:             They just want what you're giving away. And when you are paying for their email information through a service like MailerLite, you're paying to have them on your list. You don't want to be paying people that aren't ever going to open your emails, are going to unsubscribe immediately or are going to mark you as a spammer because they forgot they signed up. It's such a difficult tight rope to walk because you want to grow that list really fast and giveaways are a great way to do it, but it may not be the most actual productive way for a healthy and interactive list.

Lori:                 I agree and I think the one problem is, even in the time that I've started - you know before publication, through publication and awaiting my next book being out - the the market of authors and especially the market of authors promoting themselves on social media and on Twitter and on Instagram, I feel like has grown exponentially and early on doing a preorder campaign or doing a giveaway, you seem to be engaging more real readers or bloggers or people who really had an interest in the books. And with the proliferation of more people entering and more people marketing this way, that has gotten worse for the author in being able to promote to their actual readers through giveaways and through promotions and retweet and follow kind of things. I feel like it's very different now than it was back in 2014 or 2015

Mindy:             Very, I used to host a giveaway every Friday on my blog. I would have a giveaway. The entrants would be just like you're saying, follow me Twitter, subscribe to me on Youtube, you know, all those things. And I would get like a healthy, it didn't really matter what the book was, I would get healthy entry numbers and now it's like 14 or 20. So many people doing it that you've got to have a book that everybody wants. Like you have to have the eighth Harry Potter book, You know, cause it's like you gotta be giving away something that people are going to beat each other over the head for. Or you have to be part of a large group giveaway where somebody is going to be receiving 15 books, you know, something like that in order to actually get attention. You're also totally right about preorder campaigns.

Mindy:             I started doing some, just to kind of experiment. I think I got maybe 12. I mean it was just, it wasn't worth it. It's just not worth the effort that you put into it, the organization, everything that you do. There's so much free content and there's so many extra special bonus lists and things that you can be a part of that it's so hard to make your voice heard in the echo chamber anyway. The amount of effort you're going to put into something like a preorder campaign or a giveaway, it's going to get lost and it's not going to be worth your time. That's my current opinion.

Lori:                 I agree. And I'm actually in the middle of a preorder campaign right now for, for my new book, Screen Queens. I did a preorder with Becoming Jinn. That was quite successful and it was a lot of work. It was a giveaway of gift cards. It was a reader and writer preorder campaign. So if you're a reader, you could be entered to win gift cards to various places. If you were a writer, you were able to enter it and you automatically got either a query or a first page critique if you preorder it. And then I picked one person and I did a full manuscript critique. So that was a lot of time to put together and quite some time after the fact, because I, I forget my exact numbers, but between the two, I know I had at least 125 preorders and there were probably split equally between the editing and the gift card giveaway.

Lori:                 And so that was a lot of work after the fact for me to edit all these queries, first pages and then a full manuscript critique for free. That's something that I don't even know if would still work now. I didn't have the time to kind of do that kind of promotion again and my preorder campaign now, it's just started. My expectations are reasonable along the lines of what you're saying. But I think the benefit for me at least is, it was content to put in my newsletter and my newsletter is made up of readers and librarians and teachers who signed up that I've met at places. But it's also a lot of family friends, older acquaintances who wanted to be updated on my books and my book going on. But they're not actually that active on social media. So they needed a way to be aware of that, I have a new book coming out and so that was content for my newsletter to kind of reach that segment that will want to hear from me and will want to know I have a new book. So it was a combination of let me run the preorder campaign, get it out there, but also have content and have a way of reaching a segment of audience that I don't have another way to reach. So depending on where you are, you can evaluate if something like that is worth it. Or you just do the newsletter announcement without the preorder campaign attached that that's a way to do that as well.

Mindy:             That's super smart. I'm impressed. Back to your Becoming Jinn preorder giveaway, you said you mentioned you were giving gift cards away to readers. How much money were you investing then in gift cards?

Lori:                 You know, I, I should have looked back on it. I don't remember specifically. I think I had a variety of a couple of in like the 15 and $25 and I think my biggest one was a hundred so it was certainly probably $200.

Mindy:             Wow. So you had not only your time with the critiquing, but you also had quite a bit of your own money wrapped up in the preorder campaign.

Lori:                 Yes, definitely. It did help with my preorders. The question is how many of those people would have preordered without the giveaway. I don't know. That's something we'll never know. So it's a decision that each author has to make.

Mindy:             Marketing's a pot shot.

Lori:                 It really is. And you know, what works for one book might not work for another. One thing I did want to say that was actually a helpful marketing tool that again, was not used as much early on when I did it with Becoming Jinn and I've seen it a bit more now. First chapter booklet. And a lot of times publishers are putting these together for their biggest lead titles. They'll put a little package together. It's like, oh, like a pamphlet. Sometimes they're smaller size of the first chapter or the first couple of chapters of a book that they send either to bookstores or they have out for promotional purposes. And I created one with the designer of the first chapter of Becoming Jinn. The first chapter had a good first page and it ended on a nice little cliffhanger at the end of the first chapter. Chapter one was about eight pages when it was laid out.

Lori:                 It had the cover on the front and information about me and, and blurbs and things on the back. And that was something I paid for. It is not an inexpensive item of swag, if that's what you want to call it. But I found that was one of my most successful marketing efforts. I had gone to a lot of festivals. I did a lot of bookstores, I did a lot of events with fellow authors that we had books coming out at the same time. And you're sitting there at a table and someone might be buying the book of the author next to you, but they're not buying yours. And you know they may only have money to buy one book that day but they're interested in yours. Or maybe they just don't think your book is interesting for them. When you have the chance to hand them something that has actual content, not just a bookmark but they can take that home, read through and you might entice people who ordinarily weren't going to buy your book.

Lori:                 I've even been at festivals where I handed it out at a, at a table and someone comes back later that they read the first chapter and they wanted to buy the book. So that's a tool that I feel like was actually worthwhile to do and to spend the money on.

Mindy:             That's a good tip. I like it. I've never done that myself, but I've seen a lot of people do it. Maybe I'll try that for my next one. I like the Idea. You mentioned Screen Queens, which is your next release. It is pitched as a teen girls invade Silicon Valley story. So what made you interested in telling this type of tail?

Lori:                 I have to say probably the first thing is that I am married to a huge tech lover, so he infuses that into my life, whether it's appliances that turn on and off, a voice activated or the latest new device or gadget that he wants. The side benefit of that is when I have computer problems, he's always around to fix them.

Lori:                 So it's a good thing that he's this into tech and this tech savvy. I kind of developed my own interest in in the tech world and one of my favorite podcasts to listen to aside from yours is called Startup. It detailed starting a podcasting company. It was very meta, but the second season of that podcast was about three women starting a dating app and it followed them from the time that they were coming up with the idea, through launching it, through going to what's called YC, which is a technology incubator, very, very coveted place to go. And it followed their whole process to the unfortunate end of the company dissolving and the founders leaving. Listening to that podcast really affected me because these women put so much into this and what they were finding when they reach the stage where they were going after funding was offers of funding offers to invest in their company and take this app that they've been building to, to the next level often came with an invitation to drinks or dinner and these were things that they were talking about openly on this podcast, their male counterparts in the tech field were not experiencing these same things.

Lori:                 So that was one of the things that really kind of stuck in my mind as I was thinking about what I would like to write and kind of the the story I'd like to tell, the message I'd like to tell, and translating that down to an audience for young adults. It got me really thinking about my own experiences with science and math and technology and I was always the English major. I loved English and writing and down through high school. Junior high science and math were never my strong suit. But as I thought about it, what's interesting is that was okay with my parents. It was never expected that I would do great in math or science. When my SAT scores came and they were very low on that side, but sky high on English, that was okay and I never was encouraged nor had the confidence to kind of pursue anything like that.

Lori:                 Yet now as an adult kind of into this tech world and learning a little coding on my own to do my website or things like that, I realize it's something I probably would have been interested in. If I had either the encouragement or the confidence to pursue that. So all of this kind of was swarming in my head and came out in these three girls who have very different backgrounds but are all very much into tech, into coding and into wanting to create a new app or a new business or found something that is going to have a significant effect on the world that we live in now, which is obviously very tech driven. So that's kind of how what influenced me putting this story together.

Mindy:             That's fascinating. I love what you're saying about the inferred sexism of course in technology. Also in, of course, we all know the gaming world and math. My father, he is a farmer. We're ninth generation farmers over here, but he did teach math for a period of time in the 70s when he graduated from college. He graduated with a degree in mathematics education and he did teach math for quite a while and then ended up just deciding that farming was where he fit best and has of course been doing that for his entire life. And that's not a profession that you ever retire from. I can tell you that. It's so interesting to me now as an adult because I struggle with math. I'm just, it's just not there for me. You're talking about the tests, like your graduation tests and all those things and, and I was the same.

Mindy:             It's like I was happy to pass my math ones, you know, and everything else, would be like, yeah, you're ready to go to college. As an adult, I look back at my dad helping me with my math homework and just being like, Mindy, you can do this. You can do this. Like never ever referring to my gender as being an impediment. Never ever inferring that there was a reason why I couldn't. I can appreciate that so much now as an adult because it's like he was, you know, a teacher in the 70s it wasn't exactly the least sexist time. You know, that was never anything. He never ever referred to my gender being an issue in my math capabilities.

Lori:                 Good for your dad.

Mindy:             Yeah. He's a good guy. I love the title Screen Queens.

Lori:                 It's great and I can't take credit for it. There was a period of about two months of my editor and I going back and forth with ideas and list them and nothing was hitting. There was a couple, we floated Girls Club for a little while because a play on the idea of Boys Club. And as we were kind of talking about that and I was testing it out on the, on some friends, girls teens, the age of who will be reading the book and they had no idea what we were talking about and I realize that's not translating. I just don't know anymore. The team at RazorBill got together and had several meetings to come up with a title, so I give them all the credit for it. They worked hard and they came up with something great.

Mindy:             I find it encouraging that teens today don't know what Boys Club means. That's awesome. You were talking before about your giveaway and your preorder campaign for Becoming Jinn and how you offered editing services. That is something that you offer still through your website. You have a background in journalism and you have been an instructor at Grub Street in Boston. So all of that obviously boosts your editing credentials. So tell us a little bit about the services that you offer and where listeners can go to find that.

Lori:                 I've kind of come 100% full circle, and one of the things I love to do most is help people with their queries. I have worked as an intern at a small local children's publisher in the Boston area, and through that I was reading the slush, that was part of my job and I saw a lot of the same mistakes I would make in queries and things that could have been done better. Combined with working as a Pitch Wars mentor, the big contest, Pitch Wars, I was a mentor for three years, and over the course of that, I have read, and I'm not exaggerating, 500 queries. I've given feedback on almost all of them because as I'm mentoring Pitch Wars I said, if I'm going to do this, I want to help people like people helped me. And so I would give feedback on everybody's query.

Lori:                 So through that I've really kind of gotten this down of like what a query needs to do and more importantly what a query shouldn't do. So query editing has become one of my favorite things to do and I offer what I call a submissions package. That's your query, your synopsis and your first page to kind of get those things that get right in front of the agent right away in the best shape possible. And because I think it's important to grow and not just get feedback once because you don't know if you've implemented it in a way that is working. So I always offer two passes on that. So you get an edit on each of those pieces twice. So you get to see if the way you reworked it is resonating. That's one of my favorite things to do. The submission package. And I also do manuscript editing for all genres, including adults. I just finished a spy thriller. I've done several memoirs and I do copy editing, line editing or big picture editing. If somebody wants all three, I do all three and I have packages for each of those and that's right on my website at www.LoriGoldsteinbooks.com editing services.

Mindy:             That is awesome, especially the submissions package offering. That is incredible.

Lori:                 It's great and people, they love the fact that they get to see if what they've done works and I will say by the time we get to the that final second pass, people are well on their way to having like a great query. It's great to see people be able to hone in on really what their story is about, just by asking a few key targeted questions. No matter how many queries you read, if you read success stories online and you read queries on Writer's Digest, I believe has queries that have gotten agents, it's hard to apply it to your own story because we're so close to our own stories and talking about what are the stakes and consequences that really must come through in a query. You know them in your head and they're not translating to the page, but when somebody from the outside is pointing that out, you can see it and you can get to it in a way that would be really hard to do on your own.

Mindy:             Absolutely. It's called manuscript blindness and it is the truth. Putting together a new website for myself, I've been going back through my appearances and my guest posts and my interviews that I've done all over the internet. I will see an interview or a guest post that I did in 2013 and there's a typo like in the first line and I'm like, oh my God. You know, and it's so hilarious to me because I had read it so many times in 2013 that I didn't see it. And in 2019 I go back and I'm like, boom, oh my God, there's a typo in the first line. Sometimes you need either space or the long period of time to be able to get the distance, to actually see the words. And then also of course just fresh eyes, fresh eyes. If you don't want to wait six years to make sure you got it right, just you know, fresh eyes. Hire Lori.

Lori:                 Fresh eyes are really important. Another tip that one of my journalism professors had said was when you're trying to do that final edit on something, read it backwards. So then you're reading every word individually for itself and your brain has this tendency to insert missing words or you know, go over that Typo that you couldn't see. But if you read it backwards, you've tricked your brain into looking at it a different way and you'll often find the mistakes that way. So it's hard to read a full manuscript that way, but you can definitely do it with a query letter.

Mindy:             I have heard that before that that's a copy-editing trick to read it backwards and it'll really help you catch those little mistakes. I'm working right now on putting together just a little a loss leader to get people to sign up to follow the blog. I'm putting together a little quick printable of, you know, how to write a synopsis. I was just kind of scrolling through StoryFix and looking at some of the information that they had out there and there was a typo in highly trafficked article - Beat Sheet 101 - writing up a beat sheet and explaining what a beat sheet is and using bulleted points. And then it said "your bulleted points once you begin to flush them out will quickly become a synopsis." But it said "it will quicky become a synopsis." They didn't mean quickie. That's not what they mean. It just, the particular font that they were using, that the lower case "l" was just lost and I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't been, I highlighted the paragraph, you know, like to copy it so that I could post and then of course credit them, because I copied and pasted it and went into a different font. I saw it right away and I was like, oh my gosh, look at that. So I've heard that. That's another trick too that you can, if you change the font, it can help you see things.

Lori:                 Definitely a trick. And you can also do it if you, if you have a device, a tablet or a kindle or something. I always read my manuscript in different format, so I read it on screen, I read it printed and I read it on my kindle. And you'll see things each way that you wouldn't have seen in another format.

Mindy:             Yup, that's absolutely true. Last question, tell us about what is up next for you. What are you working on and tell us also where listeners can find you online.

Lori:                 I'm working on my next young adult novel that I cannot say all that much about, but I am on deadline for it. So that probably tells you a little something that is going to happen with it, but I cannot really give details. It follows in the same vein of the idea of Screen Queens of capturing something that is timely, putting it into the world of young adults. I get to use some of my journalism background, and we were looking at politics and the intersection with the media, social media and journalism, what journalism isn't, what journal journalism is becoming. So that's kind of the little, the little nugget, but I can't share details as of yet, hopefully soon. So my website, which I just redid it, so go check it out and let me know what you think, is www.LoriGoldsteinbooks.com and I am most often these days on Instagram. Was a huge lover of Twitter and I still enjoy the format, but with less time I'm finally, I only have time to really focus on one. So while I can be found on Twitter, not as often. Instagram @LoriGoldsteinBooks is where I am and I think it's partly when you're so in this world of words you need a break and the visual break of of Instagram, whether it's posting my own pictures or reviewing the people I follow is actually a nice mental break to go into a different kind of creative world that I'm really kind of enjoying lately.

Mindy:             That's very cool. That's a wonderful way to think of it. I like that a lot.

Mindy:             Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at www.writerwriterapantsonfire.com If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you, or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit www.writerwriterpantsonfire.com and click support the blog and podcast in the sidebar.

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