Lori M. Lee on Pivoting to Digital Marketing & Managing Depression During COVID

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover 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 mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.

Mindy: Today's guest is Lori M. Lee, author of the Fantasy YA title Forest of Souls. Lori joined me today to talk about launching a book during the pandemic, marketing and promo online, and how to handle depression and anxiety during COVID.

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Mindy: We're here with Lori M. Lee, who is a YA author. Her most recent release was Forest of Souls, which is a fantasy that came out this June. Now, unfortunately, I think, A lot of us have had To really kind of refocus and pivot and find new ways to promote anything that released in 2020. My book in 2020 came out on March 3rd, and I got a week of touring in, and then everything shut down and we were done. I was supposed to mostly be on the road pretty much the entire month of March and then the first half of April. And that, of course, all ended quite abruptly. So if you want to talk about promo in the time of covert, how are you reaching your readers? 

Lori: I can't even imagine actually having to begin my tour and then just like shutting it down. So I guess on the one hand, it's a good thing that I never was able to go out. Um, but I had, like, a year to plan all the promo for this book, you know, And I had so many things planned, I was gonna go on a book tour through the Midwest with, like, a lot of author friends. I was gonna be attending my first major conference as a guest, which I was so psyched about then, like you said, COVID happened and the tour was canceled, switched to being virtual. That actually didn't happen either. But that's for a different reason. The book conference, which was ALA in June, which was ALA, was literally the weekend that my book released. It just like lined up perfectly, but alas, it did not happen. 

Yeah, so, luckily, A  lot of the things I had planned, like aside from that, were virtual, though, because I always think about the international fans. It always makes me feel bad when I do like, you know, US only promotions. So, um, specifically my pre order campaign, I have to caveat this with like, Only do a pre order campaign if that's something that is fun for you because it is a lot of work, a lot of work and a lot of money too. So you have to really make that decision for yourself about whether you want to do that. 

So it was important to me to figure something out that would be flat enough. That would be a really cool gift, but also flat so I could mail it international with just like a stamp. So I just came up with an enamel bookmark and it's really pretty. I thought it was really cool. I was planning this really big cover photo challenge with Shveta Thakrar who is the author of Star Daughter. We were planning this really big cover photo challenge in June, like leading up to my book release and then I post about it. And then I had a weird mental break and I just completely lost focus. And I didn't do anything for, like, the three weeks leading up to release. In a way, the virtual events work better specifically just for me, because I can't really travel anyway. And I was like, going to focus all of my budget on that tour, but it didn't happen. So then I was able to distribute it elsewhere. 

Mindy: It sounds like you were able to kind of redirect and pivot pretty well. I want to bring up something you mentioned that has not come up on the podcast before, interestingly enough, and it is something that I also think about often. International readers very often, like if I do a giveaway on the Blog, a book or whatever. People reach out to me like, Well, is it international? And unfortunately, the answer is no, because it is expensive to ship a book overseas. 

Callous Side of the answer is you know, I'm doing giveaways in order to promote myself, and usually the entries are to gain social media followers stuff like that. I don't get a monetary benefit from this. I get a benefit of likes and follows and things like that. And if I made every single giveaway international, I would be losing a significant amount of money. That's the business side of it. The emotional side of it is that my international readers matter to me just as much as my domestic readers. 

I also I think you have a wonderful idea there. I also have bookmarks made and I have basically used, like, a very precise scale and weighed my bookmarks so that I know exactly how much they weigh. And I can mail them internationally, just using an international stamp, which still, I mean, it's not that cheap. I'm actually gonna look it up. 

Lori: It's $1.25. 

Mindy: That's what I thought. I got a lot of international stamps. They’re very pretty. Do you have the one with the succulent? 

Lori: Yes. Yes. And they just came out with, like a really pretty, um, sunflower one as well. 

Mindy: Yes. I've seen that one. I like it a lot. I think those international stamps are $1.25 That's not cheap, but it is—

Lori: Sorry, they’re $1.15

Mindy: Okay, it's $1.15 and that's not cheap, but it's still a nod to your international readers. It's something that you can do for them, and they're spending money on your book. And I don't think it's going to break the bank for you to spend $1.15 to send them some bookmarks. So what I do is particular length, width and stock of the bookmarks that I use. I can ship seven bookmarks in a single envelope. The international stamp will cover it. You know, the hope is that $1.15  that I spent, they'll keep one bookmark for themselves and maybe, like give the six others to friends. And I could possibly generate sales by spending $1.15.. And that's not bad. So I love your point. I think it's interesting. I think, too, that we as authors have had to really rethink how we do our digital marketing and our digital appearances. Have you done many Skype phone calls or presentations or zoom talks? 

Lori: I've done so many zoom presentations, not Skype so far, But Zoom has been a big thing like with all the book festivals turning virtual. I've done several of those and it's again. It's been like long enough now that I can't even recall specifically, I don't know, at least a half dozen.

Mindy: And what did you find in terms of attendance? Were you able to get numbers then and data from the organizers? 

Lori: I did not get any numbers of data, but the nice thing was that a lot of them were available, like to stream on YouTube. So, like literally, I would just go to YouTube and, like, check out like the views and the comments and stuff and if they all seem to be really well attended. So I'm not too fussed about like the numbers and stuff because at the same time, I got to chat with, like, other authors and that’s cool.

Mindy: That's cool. But you also have a piece of static promo right there that you can use on your own social media, and you can use it. It's you talking about your book, and you can reference people to it. I found it useful myself. I've done a couple of instagram chats and on Instagram live, and I've never on instagram live. It's just not a thing that I do for the most part I'm comfortable with tech. But as I said, I had never done an Instagram live. I've never done an online presentation where I'm sharing my screen or like walking like teaching and walking people through slides. And I've had to like Open up and be like Yes, I will do that And I will. I will go learn some new things so that I can still be effective in promoting my book. 

Lori: Yes, I also had to learn Instagram live. It wasn't hard, fortunately because actually, I had no idea how to use it until I was watching someone else do Instagram live and they were sort of fumbling through it. And then they figured out how To invite another person into their instagram live like, Oh, so that's how you do it. 

And then for my release day event, I had to figure out how to stream a video like, panel between me and two other authors. So I had to figure all that out, like, literally the day before my release. Okay, To be fair, I had like, weeks to do it, but I was going through like, a really tough mental time then and I wasn't sure if I was even going to do it. And then, like, you know, release date was approaching. I was just like, I have to do this. Otherwise, you know, I'll probably regret it.

I Figured out the technology literally the day before and then the day of like, we had some technical difficulties again because, you know, it was new technology to all of us. And then fortunately, we worked through it. That was a lot of fun. And then, unfortunately, I did not know how to record. So like once it was done, it was done. I don't have it anymore. 

Mindy: Yeah, this is a fear now of mine that I just live in fear of accidentally turning on Facebook live or turning on instagram live or streaming when I'm sitting on the toilet or getting into the bathtub because I am just like, I'm constantly working. I'm constantly in conversation with different people about different things, usually with book related stuff. And so I'll have my phone with me even in the bathroom, because I'm working and I live in constant fear of like, instagramming my shit or something. I don't know. 

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Mindy: So you have mentioned a couple times already having some mental health struggles with the COVID epidemic, also like tied to publishing in some ways. So that is, right now, for many of the authors that I know - It's kind of a universal story, so if you'd like to talk about that, that would be great. 

Lori: When quarantine happened when, like everything shut down, I didn't feel stressed out, but like my skin completely went crazy, right? Like I just started breaking out in a way that I haven't done since I was a teenager. So I knew something was up, but at the same time I didn’t feel any different. But I felt like I was probably now, like in hindsight, I was probably just doing a really good job like compartmentalizing. 

I was on the promo train and I was on social media like a ton. I was posting a ton and I was doing all like the virtual book festivals and the panels. And then I was, I had just posted all the stuff for our cover challenge, and then I just had, I don't know. I feel like maybe everything came to a head because at the same time there was a lot of stuff happening in terms of like, Black Lives Matter and a lot of the protests happening. And then with COVID and then with my book release coming up and I feel like I just collapsed, I just I couldn't do it anymore. And I had, like, this major bout of anxiety that just like, I've had episodes in the past that don't last for more like a day so I can handle it. Whereas this one, it just persisted and persisted and it grew. 

And then I became mildly depressed, and I got to the point where I couldn't imagine even writing another book anymore. Like and to the point where I just want it all to go away. Like I didn't even want my book release to happen. I didn't want anything to happen. I just wanted everything to just go away. 

So I went to go see my doctor. She prescribed me some antidepressants and anti anxiety medicine, which I didn't take, because - I wanna like caveat as well, like, you have to make the best choice for yourself. And if that's the best choice, please take medicine. But for me, it's just, I just read a lot of the side effects and stuff and, like, I wasn't sure if this was something that I would have to do for the rest of my life or if this was just an episode like in the past, so I sort of stuck it out for bit. I took herbal supplements and I don't know if it was the supplement or just my body self regulating, but gradually, day by day it started to lift. I feel like I'm 95% myself again, but it did take time. It was just the weirdest episode in my life, so far.

Mindy: Did you as well, in addition to the supplements, did you pull back from social media? 

Lori: Oh, yes, I just left. I left completely. I should have been posting. I will, I say should, but like you don't have To promote, you know, but me personally, I feel like I should have been posting, um, much more leading up to their release. But I didn't like, I had so many things planned that I would post which I didn't post. I just left a message saying, You know, I was having a tough time. 

And like all the things that I have to mail out, I had so many pre orders still to mail out and like gifts and stuff to mail out that I only actually Only just got to, like, a month ago because I finally had, like, the physical mental motivation to go to the post office and do it. But I still feel terrible about. But also I was waiting for stamps, so that's like my excuse, Well, because of the whole post office situation, I was waiting a very long time for stamps. 

But then, like my virtual tour I feel, I felt so bad about that because I had put a lot of planning, and my agent had put a lot of planning into, like what we would do, reaching out to like my friends, like author friends and other authors to like, Do it with me. And then this thing happened and I was just like, I don't think I could do it anymore. At the time we pushed it back, we were just like, we'll postpone it. But I mean, it's been like three months and it's it's just not gonna happen. So that was disappointing. So the only thing I really did on book release week Was my release day event. Everything else that I had planned was just out the door. 

Mindy: You're not alone in this. A fellow author that I did not necessarily know well and had only met once. But we had interacted on social media, a fellow YA Author, I saw posted some months ago, you know, I'm pulling away out entirely from social media. I did have this person's phone number and I sent them a text, and I was just like, Hey, I'm just reaching out and making sure you're okay. And she texted me back and she was like, Thank you. I will be. I just can't do a lot right now. I simply, I'm not functioning. I was like, Okay. I mean, that's fine. And don't feel bad about feeling bad. That's what I've been telling people - do not feel bad for feeling bad. This is a shit storm. This other YA author and I are now in the habit, even though we were not close before, we just check in on each other like, pretty much every week with a text like, how are you doing? You're not alone in this, And to have it hit with release. I'm so sorry. And I can't imagine. 

And I want to say this in support of your choice - Which I would support regardless - But I had an interesting experience as an author last in the summer beginning of fall. So about a year ago, I went through a break up. It was a relationship that had lasted for 12 years. I was done. Nothing matters. This is stupid. Laid in bed and cried for three days. Then my dog died. So it was not a good and I was like, Fuck you 2019. I had no idea. But anyway, I was just in such a bad place, and I just didn't care. I was like, I don't care about tweeting about my book. Like where I was emotionally right then. I was like, That's dumb. I'm not doing that. And in the past, I have been very active on social media, and I was just like, You know what? This doesn't matter to me right now. I basically cold turkey dropped, like, didn't even make an announcement that I was backing away for probably two or three months and I saw zero effect on my sales. 

I have always been a proponent of using the tools that we have to promote ourselves. I no longer believe that it is as effective as I used to. Um, you're in a slightly different situation because, like you were saying this was release week for you. I did not have anything to actively promo at the time. So, like, it is slightly different. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't do social media because I think it does bring awareness of a release or of you as an author, and I have found people and their art through a particularly interesting tweet that went out, or a Facebook post that was shared. I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm just saying it is not worth throwing yourself against that brick wall over and over If your heart is not in it. 

Lori: And the thing is my heart was in it until, like anxiety and depression happened. I could say confidently that that wasn't me. What I mean, like, that's not how I normally am. I know that a lot of authors give advice to not tie so much of your identity into your writing. For most of my adult life, that's that's sort of been my identity, you know, like I wanted to write. I wanted to be a writer, and so when that happened and I just didn't care anymore, I had a bit of an existential crisis because this is the thing I've always loved. I've always wanted, like, desperately to do, and if I don't care anymore, then what do I do? Who am I? Like I said, I was having all these questions. What do I do if that passion for writing doesn't come back? I mean, fortunately, it did. And like the fog lifted, it was a weird time.

Mindy: It is. And the phrase you just used “the fog lifted” is so accurate. I mean, it truly is just like a mental fog and a funk, and nothing matters. I mean, that's the thing I have a difficult time expressing about depression. Um, I suffered from depression like my whole life. Anxiety was a new experience for me. Can't say I enjoyed it. Depression is that, I mean, that's what gets me every time. I think it's very difficult for people that don't suffer from it to understand this like - No, it doesn't matter, like nothing matters right now, all I feel is nothing. You can't motivate yourself when nothing matters. 

However, I'm 41 now. I've been managing it for a long time. I have discovered that you know I'll have a string, two, three, usually not too bad, But like one really bad day, right? I’m like, you feel like this today. Tomorrow you might not. And then I have days that are awesome, where it's like I'm awesome and the world's awesome and people are awesome and everything's gonna be okay. Like I have those days too. Not in a manic depressive style way like it's a pretty even fluctuation. But I have good days too. 

And so when I'm in a bad day, it's like, Okay, live this. You're in your bad day. And I'm lucky enough that I do write full time. So it's like, You know what? Go take a nap. It's cool. Like you don't, you don't have to do this. You don't have to feel like this right now. If you want to take a nap, you can. I highly realize and acknowledge that that is a luxury. There is that guilt then that is associated with it, too. I'm not doing anything. I'm not working hard enough. I didn't do my hair today. I look sloppy. I didn't put on makeup. It's okay. It's okay. It is okay to feel bad. You don't need to feel bad about the fact that you feel bad.,

Lori: The guilt of letting everybody down around you, not really being able to do anything about it, like wanting to do something about it, but also not wanting.

Mindy: The incapability. When I'm just in bed and I'm not gonna be able to get out like it's just that's not gonna happen right now. And if it's the middle of the day that makes you feel like shit, it's just the way it is. 

I'd like to talk on the flip side of that about anxiety. What was your experience of that? You said you had these existential questions. If I'm not writing and if I'm not a writer, I think it's really interesting, and I know we're kind of veering away from the topic of writing and publishing. But I think it's worth talking about because your experience was COVID and publishing related, and for me, when I was going through my break up, I kind of had the opposite experience where it was like the only thing I'm good at is writing. That's everything I am. That's the only thing I am, is a writer, and that felt very empty to me. My personal life on the romantic scale was, you know, it had been vacuumed, sucked out of my life, so I had the opposite where I was just like oh, the only thing I am and the only thing I'll ever be is a writer. 

Lori: That's a really interesting contrast. I'm married, and I have kids, so I have to get up. They take up a lot of time and emotional energy. 

Mindy: I Will say, having had that feeling, it was also followed by I'm so empty right now that I can't imagine writing. 

Lori: I do also want to say that even though I am, I have a husband and kids. I also felt very alone during that time, like, no matter who was around you, like even if you don't have a partner or even if you are having a house full of people. When you're going through that, you always feel very alone. 

Mindy: It's very true. You do. No one can quite reach you. My mom came, my mom, my mom is a wonderful woman and she came over and just sat on my bed and talked to me. And I'm 41 years old and I was just laying in my bed, crying and talking to my mom, you know? And it was just like I was 16 again and going through a break up with my mom just sat there and listened to me. It was like, You're gonna be okay. You're gonna be OK. And I am. I'm fine. I'm OK now. 

I ended up with a group of people because I was forcing myself to go out, forcing myself to be with friends, forcing myself to find those things. And I was out with a group of people and I was in a canoe. We were canoeing. It was a beautiful, like fall day, and everybody was having fun and splashing. And I was just canoeing and everything was... nature was beautiful and the people around me were wonderful. And I was just like, I don't care. Don't care about any of this right now. And I was just canoeing, like, very mechanically. I remember thinking like I'm marking this day like mentally. I'm marking this day in my head and a year from now, I don't want to feel like this anymore. A year later, I'm, you know, seeing a new person, and I got a puppy. Dude, a year ago you were floating in a canoe and hating everything, and that now seems so far removed from who I am now.

Lori: I like the hopeful tone of that. 

Mindy: I wanna talk a little bit about looking back on the real down, those deep lows. Did you gain from that? What did you learn about yourself for this experience?  

Lori: I feel like that time in June was like the lowest I've ever been, which was, like, weird for me. Just because I was, I thought I had a pretty good handle on my mental health. For the longest time, I was just like I feel like I'm pretty, pretty mentally stable person. And The universe is just like -  joke’s on you. It was always very publishing related, as well like I'd be on submission or like, way back when I was querying. And, you know, all the rejections were coming in, and I had another moment, just like is this what I want to do, because it's just a lot of rejection and a lot of pain. And I'm like, whatever. But again, I had to ask myself, if I'm not writing then, what am I? What am I doing? Like obviously I'm into, like, TV series and I have hobbies and all that stuff, you know? But like career wise, there's nothing I'm really passionate about. Aside from writing, I don't wanna do anything else with my life except for write. So I guess I'm gonna have to stick with it. But what happened in June was just like the new bar, set the bar for how low I could be. And I came up from it. It's hopeful, I guess it gives me hope that if it happens again, you know that it's not forever. 

Mindy: When you were in that place, when you were in the super low, were you able Because this was your first experience being that low. Were you able to look forward and be like this will get better, I know it. Or was it because it was your first experience where you're just, like, completely gobsmacked? 

Lori: I feel like I was Gobsmacked at first. I will say, though, that like it was really, really bad in the mornings. I have no idea why it was. I would wake up, and it would just feel awful. I would just have that, like twisty turny feeling in my gut, and I would just like a whole sense of dread. And I knew that I just had to make it through the day because by the time I went to bed and I almost felt normal again, it's so weird. t

Mindy: So like, it's bizarre that you say that because I have similar experiences when I wake up in the morning and I have a lot to do, like I have a lot of work, I can feel overwhelmed like I can't do this. I can't get to all this today. Then I also have the experience of if I wake up and I have nothing to do, like I have no chores or jobs or writing like if I don't have anything to Do, I actually find it very difficult to get out of bed. I could lay in bed until three PM and no one would know. And that in itself is a little depressing. 

So that's the kind of thing that I kind of deal with. But I agree with you completely, and I actually freely share that. I find it odd and I have some guilt over it that it's like when the evening rolls around and I've always been a night owl, and I've always enjoyed nighttime and evening, so maybe that's part of it. But it's like when the evening rolls around, I almost start looking forward to the day. Like what I mean by that is I start looking forward to the evening and to the night is like, What am I going to do tonight? But daytime kind of depresses me, which is the opposite of how you're supposed to feel.

Lori: I have my son and he's seven, so I had to get out of bed regardless. But I would get up and I would do stuff with him. I don't know if it's the same for you, but I just had absolutely zero appetite. I didn't want to eat anything. I was hungry, but I didn't want to eat. So, like I would just eat for the sake of eating. And then, you know, I would wait and I would go outside and just lay out in the sun, because that I don't know, just being outside seemed to help marginally at least to distract me. Yeah, then, like you said, I would just wait until, like, it got darker, because throughout the day it would slowly ease, um, to the point where I could function. 

Mindy: I had a similar experience, and I think that maybe other people have to. I don't know why. I don't know. Um, I would love to know if anybody listening has an idea about that. Or if that's an example of some kind of particular symptom. I want to know about it because I do. I am very similar. 

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Mindy: Let's let's talk about something a little cheerier. Why don't you tell? I mean it's super important, super important, and I'm really glad we talked about it, but I definitely rather end on a higher note for the episode. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your new book Forest of Souls? 

Lori: Forest of Souls is a YA fantasy about a girl who is in spy training, and she discovers that she has this rare ability to shepherd souls. So she gets tasked with controlling what's called the Deadwood, which is an ancient forest that's possessed by eventual spirits because it is slowly devouring the kingdoms. 

Mindy: That sounds awesome. So any particular inspiration for this?

Lori: The Deadwood itself was inspired by the Deadmarsh in the Lord of the Rings. But thematically, it's about her and her best friend. And it was just really important to me to portray a friendship between girls that was unconditional, and that was all about trust and choosing each other and sticking with each other no matter what, Like plot obstacles get thrown in their way because I've just read so many books where the relationships fall apart or there's there's petty reasons that they stopped talking to each other or for whatever reason, you know. So I'm just like, I really just want a friendship portrayed between girls, specifically, where that's not even an issue, you know, like no matter what happens and like their friendship is definitely tested, you know, in the book. But the important thing is that they still choose each other. 

Mindy: I think it is important that young readers and females, especially get to see those relationships portrayed in a way that isn't catty or that just has true trust and love baked in. Because I mean one of the things that society and our culture in general has done, I think the most heinous thing that has been done… well, it's not the most heinous. But one of the less obvious things is that we've been trained to look at each other as competition for the prize of man. That's something that I have just become more and more aware of and enacted in my own life. Like when I was younger and not realizing that this was, that we’re all in this together, the female experience of moving through the world instead of looking at each other, as you know, competition. We're all having similar, if not the same experiences and bonding over them instead of tear each other down.

Lori: I definitely, um, perpetuated that sort of mindset as a teenager, as a kid, where I would be like I'm not like those girls like we're actually probably are all quite alike and That's not a bad thing. 

Mindy: I was a teenager in the nineties and it was definitely, you're right. It was perpetuated. I certainly participated in it and was in situations where I was on the flip side of it, where I was the villain, and that's fine. We're all a villain at some point, even in our own narrative, even if we don't want to admit it, Um and I do, because I substitute in schools and I'm in the schools fairly often when... I'm in a school right now, I have hope, because I don't see it as prevalent as it used to be. 

Lori: Oh, yeah, my daughter is just turned 18 And she is. She's so much smarter than I was at her age. She's so much more open minded and more the way that she thinks and the way that she views the world and how, how fair and how open minded she is. It kind of gives me hope, I guess.

Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let our listeners know where they can find you online? 

Lori: I’m mostly on Twitter, which is at Lori M. Lee and on Instagram, which is Lori M. Lee 82. 

Mindy: Awesome, and the book is called Forest of Souls. It is available now, and also I should mention you have another book coming out in 2021 called Broken Web. Is that a sequel? 

Lori: Yes, that is the sequel, and I'm super duper excited to share it and like it was, I was working on it actually through, like, the whole fog in June. So hopefully, um, it'll be OK. It's not too terrible. 

Mindy: I really understand. I have a very good friend that is also an Ohio author. And she has a book that she wrote right in the wake of dealing with her father's death. And she has said so many times I don't know what's in that book. I have no idea. I hope it doesn't suck. 

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 Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.

Indie Editor talks Pros of the Indie Path and Publishing in the Pandemic

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover 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 mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.

Mindy: Today's guest is Shayne Leighton,  editor in chief of Parliament House Press, an indie press specializing in science fiction and fantasy. Join us for a conversation about the benefits of working with an indie, discuss the occasional disparagement of genre writers and their fiction, as well as the effects of covid, The Pandemic and the new normal have affected both the traditional and the indie publishing industry. Midway through the episode, enjoy a conversation with our sponsor I, Ally, a new app specifically designed for family caregivers. 

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Mindy: We're here with Shane Layton, who is the editor in chief of Parliament House a fairly new publisher located in Florida that deals specifically with science fiction and fantasy. So we're gonna talk a little bit about Parliament House specifically here in the beginning of the episode, and then later on, we're going to talk about publishing in general. But why don't we start with you telling us a little bit more about Parliament House? What it is, what it's all about.  

Shayne: Parliament House came about, it is the brainchild of myself and my good friend Chantal Gadoury. We put our heads together about four years ago, and specifically we were having a conversation about the current marketplace and especially what is missing within the independent publishing community. You know, I find that publishing in general is very steeped in mystery. A lot of authors don't have a good grasp on, I guess, the ins and outs sometimes and and some of the gate keeping. And I think while some of that is necessary, I think that there could be a little bit more communication and accessibility. So we were just having that conversation, and I was a hybrid author. I was traditionally published and also independently published, so we're having a conversation. 

And our first love in literature is, of course, fantasy and science fiction. I said, what if we started a publishing company? You know, it just kind of like a crazy idea, like a cockamamie thing. Like what if we did this? Because I think between the two of us, we have some really great knowledge. I think if we find people to join our team who are smarter than us and surround ourselves with people who are smarter and better than us, I think that we could, you know, do something really great. 

One of my personal heroes in just pop culture in general is Guillermo del Toro. His whole stance is, you know, being at home with the monsters and being accepting of all different types of personalities -  people, creatures, what have you, however you identify. He has made a home for, like, the wonderfully weird. And that's what I personally wanted to do for publishing. That's how the Parliament house was kind of born was just the way any other good novel is born, which is you ask a “what if” question. What if this were possible or what if this was A real thing. And then we made it into a real thing. And now, four years later, it's growing. There have been some growing pains, of course but it's doing really well. We hope to continue doing well and really excited about the future.  

Mindy: There definitely needs to be more transparency in publishing. It's interesting to me. I've been traditionally published since 2013. There are things I don't know, I just don't know. So, for example, I don't know when the publisher sells a copy of my audiobook To a library. I don't know what it costs and how much of that cut I get. Like, if that was the question that just came up the other day with friends of mine. I could find the answer. I could ask and find out. Certainly. I mean, it's not like anybody would refuse to tell me, but there are so many at the basic level questions that could easily be answered. And it's not going to harm the publishing industry to share a little bit more. 

Shayne: Absolutely. 

Mindy: People that are outside of the industry, they'll ask, you know, how is the new book doing? And I'm like, Yeah, I don't know, and they're completely shocked by that, And I have to explain. Look, I won't know until I get my royalty report in six months. And they’re six months behind in timing. So I actually won't know how the book's doing for about a year. As far as like, hard numbers and people are generally shocked by that. Now I do have friends who have gone, have wandered into the self publishing world, and they tell me that there is kind of a double edged blade there in being able to have daily reports on how many books you've sold because it can get a little bit anxiety producing when you can see the immediate feedback of everything that you're doing or not doing. It can also be too much information. Interesting question. I mean, I do think that publishing it would not hurt anyone to be a little more forthcoming. I also understand that if I knew daily what my sell rate was, I might go a little bit crazy. 

Shayne: If you're working with a small independent publisher like you know, let's say you were working with the Parliament House. There's a little bit of a co op energy that goes on there. I think more so than like working with a major trad publisher, Um that, in my opinion, tends to be a little bit sterile just because they have so many things that they're dealing with, of course, but you get the benefit of having that big marketing machine behind you sometimes. Not every time, of course, but that that's kind of industry misconception is that, you know, if you are a part of a major trad publisher, that you're gonna be an overnight rock star, which you know can definitely happen, and it's more likely to happen in that situation. But it's not always the case. 

I strive To be as communicative as possible with our authors. So, like just this morning, I got an email from one of our authors like, Hey, I would love an update as to how you know my title is doing, and so that's pretty easy for me to see. I just go into our distributor dashboard. I have a look. I can send her a screen grab and you know we have a good understanding and a good back and forth. I know not every publisher is willing to do that. We do that because we heavily rely on working hand in hand with our authors from a marketing standpoint, I mean, yes, we absolutely do have our marketing team, somebody who's sending out your press release trying to get publicity for you. We absolutely do have all of that in place. That's our job. That's why we're here. But because we don't have that big marketing machine behind us, we need that help, and we need to work hand in hand with our author. 

So it's like I find that the authors, who are more involved, have a little bit of a louder voice are asking more questions are actively coming up with their own kind of marketing ideas. The more that happens, the more we have to build off of and to support and and bolster those efforts. Amazon, I know is, you know, their royalties are deferred by I think it's 60 days. Um, a couple of other stores are deferred as well, so it's like, you know, your publisher has to wait, just like you have to wait. But if I can see something and share that with you currently, while we're working together, To make a plan to get your book to the right readers, then why not do that? 

I always tell incoming authors who have questions like, you know, why should I go with an independent publisher? Like sometimes I get that question. You can find success. Each Publishing avenue can benefit different types of personalities and different types of authors. You know, some authors are better off to self publish, and they will do wonderfully. One of my really good friends is Shelly Crane, who wrote Significance, Wide Awake. She's a New York Times best selling author. She did that all on her own. She is self published, and she is phenomenal. Some authors, like To have that kind of intimate community, that team behind you, that collaborative effort. Recently, we've achieved a couple of cool things for our authors. So we got our first starred review with Publishers Weekly, which was really cool. Yeah, so there's definitely benefits To having that that team behind you and that publisher behind you so you know, or if you want to go the traditional route absolutely do that. But I, you know, anybody who dismisses self publishing as a way to find success. I think that's BS. I think that different things are right for different people, and the only way that you're going to know is if you try to, get the experience from all of those. 

Mindy: I know just from my experience in the trad world, I am very active, even though I'm published by HarperCollins. I'm very active with my own promotions and doing events and making myself visible and doing, speaking and writing classes. I’m very active or used to be more active on social media. But I'm always there, and I'm always doing everything I can every day to draw attention to my books. I do believe that I move the needle, but I have no indicators of how much. So, for example, I used To do a physical mailing. My books have had luck in different states with winning like library in awards and things like that. And so in states where I have won awards, I have a database of libraries in that state, and I started doing physical mailings.  

Shayne: I don't know if you can hear that I live in a condo building and of course, they're deciding to drill right now. 

Mindy: I personally think that having like little noises actually makes it more conversational for the listeners so it's not a problem.

But I would do these physical mailings of postcards to libraries all across the state, every single public library in my own state. But then I'd won some awards in Maryland and I won an award in Oklahoma. And so I had at one point like a very significant thousands, I think 3 to 4000 mailers that I would send. And so getting them printed, postage, mailing those out that got expensive and time consuming like I had no way to measure. Are these physical mailings doing any good at all? Is anyone even noticing them? Are they ending up in a trash can? Like I have no idea, because I don't have immediate feedback on sales. I can't see that boost because a lot of the people that I'm mailing To are library, school and library people. And so you know those sales are going through, probably Ingram. And so I just don't have access to that data. 

Now for my newest release, which was this March, I never actually did a physical mailing. Well, I spoke with my editor and he was like, I can't say whether or not it's even putting a bump in there because I said to him, I was like, Maybe you could get me like I'll tell you when I send them and you can tell me if there's a bump. And he was basically like, I don't even know if we can get that information, kind of thing. Well, maybe it's just not worth it. And then this, of course you March was when my new book came out and the entire nation was in flux, so I just didn't do the mailing. It's difficult when you have things that you do that you really put a lot of effort into, and you simply don't know if they're working. And I think having access to numbers through an indie publisher like that. So if one of your authors did something like that, if they were mailing out 3 to 4000 postcards, you would know if it was having an effect, I would assume? 

Shayne: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think I could see that right away, but I think their efforts, if they were to mail out postcards. It would be a little bit of a different situation. I mean, they might mail it to like industry professionals like you, said librarians and things like that. But I think for them, you know their efforts would be geared more directly to the reader, as opposed To like an industry person. And that's that's a major difference in Trad pub vs Indy versus Self. We’re down here trying to talk directly to the reader, whereas with your experience, its’ more of a business to business kind of a thing. 

But yeah, if they were to do something similar to that, then of course, firstly, I mean, they can see their Amazon rankings fluctuate. I mean, so many of my authors revolve their day around their Amazon rankings. Like watch it, watch it like the stocks and try to try to measure it that way. But, yeah, it's for us, It's pretty instantaneous, or it had been pretty instantaneous. Um, we have been working with more of an independent distribution service in the past that anybody can really access. Our digital catalog was picked up by IPG. So we are headed in the direction of becoming more of a mid level publisher, which is my personal goal. Things will change. I don't know how things are going to change yet. That remains to be seen. But it’a definitely been a very cool experience so far. I've learned a lot, so we'll see what happens. 

Mindy: Very cool. So the next thing I want to talk to you about deals more with genre because I have a lot of friends in the industry who are specifically genre writers. Now I am a YA author and I Can Tell you as someone that writes for teens, that writing for Children and teens is often looked down upon by people that write for adults and even readership. I've had readers, People that aren't in the industry ask me, So when are you going to write a real book? You know this book is pretty real. If I hit you with it, it'll hurt. It could be really frustrating, and I know that genre authors, their craft tends to be looked down upon a little bit more simply because of being genre writing, Sci-Fi or writing fantasy and I have many friends that are genre authors that are highly frustrated with that, and I understand completely. I know that readers can be segregated in that If you're a sci fi reader, you just read SciFi. Fantasy readers just read fantasy, and I think that may be part of it, is that you see occasionally those pockets of readers that only read the one thing and they don't wander outside of that genre. I was just really curious about your take on that, about the perception of genre, any genre writing, being “less than.”

Shayne: I haven't come up against anything personally like that Yet. I don't think we have been in the environment that would lend itself to that kind of criticism yet. But I have heard similar things from colleagues and friends that you know are working with the larger Trad or, like, you know, in kind of different circles. So I have heard that in the past. It’s super unfortunate. I agree. Every book is a real book. I mean, every author pours their blood sweat and tears into their story. So what determines a real book? When you're, you know, laboring over your words. Um, like, for instance, obviously I know JK Rowling is in a bunch of hot water right now, but like, but I do want to bring up Harry Potter, just just as a book, you know, regardless of her. That's a fantasy, obviously, and it's written for Children. It grew into an adult series as the readers grew up, which I think was done very well. 

That's a story that has transcended demographic. If an author can write something, if you can transcend demographics and if you can reach your readers so thoroughly, and if your book means so much to people the way that that did, then that's a real book. I'm going to be 30 next month. I still read I Love YA. If you can kind of blur the lines between what is YA, then there's that whole argument about New Adult. Is that a genre? My argument is that it absolutely is. I know a lot of the major publishers have yet to accept it, but you can't deny the fact that it is a category right now on Amazon, particularly in romance. But hopefully that will change and it sells like crazy. I mean, you can't deny those sales numbers. I think it's all valid. I think that the industry needs to be much more accepting. 

Mindy: Well, and I think readers in general need to be much more accepting. I freely admit, To, being at one time what my sister called a lit bitch and and Harry Potter is what broke me out of that. I was in college and I was an English major. And so, you know, I wasn't necessarily just reading the classics. But, you know, I was reading Don DeLillo and I was reading really heavy stuff, but I was not reading. I mean, I would not categorize genres, something I looked down on, but popular fiction. I was just like, No, I'm not gonna read that. 

The one thing that I admit, To having almost a complete fetishization of, was the Outlander books. And I love, I love telling people that I was reading Outlander in the nineties. So screw you, everybody. They got here 20 years later, but, um, I freaking love the Outlander books. And the thing about Outlander is that they're amazingly well written. She is an amazing writer. Everything about them really is truly next level craft. But when you try to pitch it to people just as a reader and this was 20 years ago. I'd be like, Okay, I have a book recommendation for you. It's amazing. I need you to read it. And they'd be like, What is it about? I'm like, Okay, you have to ignore the first sentence and just work with me -- Time travel, romance. And they're just like, Okay, right, you know, and I'm like, No, it's really good. You need to read it. 

So my sister would really blow me off about Outlander, and I would really blow her off about Game of Thrones and Harry Potter. And finally, she was like, You know what? You read Harry Potter or Game of Thrones and I'll read Outlander. It was over a summer, you know, spending time at the pool. And I was like, Okay, all right. And both of us end up having 2,3,4,5 hour long conversations about these books each of us had dismissed. 

Shayne: That’s wonderful. Like that just gave me chills, though, because that's that's what it should be. I wish there were, there was more of that in the world. Like, you know, I feel like on your bookshelf, you can simultaneously have A key spot for The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Right, You could read that. And then right next to it, you can have, like the Harry Potter series right, Because it's like you can. Why not? 

Mindy: Of course you can. And you don't have to hide Harry Potter when people come over. I mean, I was in my early twenties, and so I just really thought I was super smart. And, um, you know, ended up just like, really enjoying Harry Potter and and being someone that didn't even pick him up until the fourth book came out. And then, on July 7th of 2007 standing by my mailbox, waiting for my book, you know, waiting for the seventh book. I'm really glad that I had the experience. I have friends that have wandered into the self publishing and the indie industry, and, you know, they would tell you, you know, what I write is fluff. It's paying their house payment every month. So, whatever you know. 

Shayne: I wish readers would give the independently published novel more of a chance because, you know, yes, there's a lot of rough manuscripts that make it to the marketplace that probably shouldn't. But at the same time, there are a lot of gems in there, too. And it just so happens. Yeah, so, like, just in the same way as maybe you know, somebody not wanting to pick up a YA fantasy book or whatever, because their tastes are more refined or sophisticated, like you mentioned. Same thing goes for the book that is not majorly published or majorly distributed. So I really urge people To be more adventurous about what they're reading. I hope one day readers become a little bit more adventurous. 

Mindy: I used to work in a high school library. I worked in there for 14 years, and one of the things that we would do was we called it Blind Book date, and we would wrap, uh, books in paper bags from the store, cover them up, cover the cover, and then we would write on the outside. You know, boy finds out secret past and must face down huge enemy, or, you know, something like that. Like we would put a really vague description or put, you know, ah, love story about an assassin, you know, or something like that so that the readers wouldn't know what the genre was and they couldn't see the cover. They couldn't have that preconceived notion. We just believe this is what the book is about. And we would have so many kids that would pick up a book that otherwise they would have never have picked up and wander into a genre they may have never read because of that. 

Mindy: Join us now for a quick conversation with our sponsor I, Ally, a new app designed for family caregivers. I'm here with Lucinda Koza, who is the creator of an app called I Ally, which is A, holistic support app for family caregivers. So, Lucinda, why don't you tell us a little bit about what the APP does, what its purpose is and how you came to create it. 

Lucinda: So I created I, Ally After I became my father's full time caregiver in late 2018 he had suffered several strokes and I became his caregiver, even though I had siblings and other people that I expected to help out in this situation, which I found out since is really common, just all fell on me on one person, usually female as well. I had a really, really tough time, and I noticed a really lack of advocacy and support and any sort of resource is for the family caregiver. Specifically, there were social workers and their job was to help the hospital or the health insurance. There was no one that will ask me if I was okay or if I could even accomplish the tasks that were being asked of me, especially when the pandemic started. I just thought, This is unacceptable. I have to create something. There are so many of us. There are over 40 million unpaid family caregivers in the US alone. We're just invisible. Well, we need to be connected to each other. At least if we're invisible to everyone else, we have to be visible to each other. 

I created I Ally as a way for us to connect and provide mutual aid and support, but not just support, but actually action based solutions and resources. since its creation, I've been able to implement financial courses, financial literacy courses, legal counsel, along with legal matching service. So it matches you with someone in your state. There's Access To mental health treatment through chat therapy as well. And obviously telehealth. And then also you could meet your therapist in a park and do sort of like a walk and talk therapy session, which is particularly helpful for someone like a family caregiver who does not have time or flexibility To devote to their own care. I've been able to add all of these different elements, like digital matching service for available clinical trials for your patient. So there's lots of really cool resources that are involved. My mission is to just empower the caregiver. Finally, and I feel like we should be treated that way by all of these companies that are vying for our money and our attention and all of those things. 

Mindy: It's so true you were saying, especially females. It lands on our laps. I know that my ex, his mother lost one husband and had been remarried and nursed her second husband through a long Series of health problems. And then he passed away, and then her brother had become ill and been ill for a while when his doctor actually suggested to him, Why don't you just move in with your sister? 

Lucinda: No. 

Mindy: Yeah. Never bringing her wants or needs or life into account. Just simply, you know, she's a retired older woman. I'm sure she would just love to take care of you. And I was very proud of her because she just said no, I have done this twice. It's time for me, To go have my own life. And she herself was a breast cancer survivor who went through her own trials. And it was just like, No, I am not going to sacrifice myself yet again. And I was very proud of her for that and also shocked at the suggestion from a perfect stranger that this woman's life become essentially a servant. Yet again, To someone that was ill. You're, you're so right. And so many skills in so many emotional responses and so many things that are paid in the nursing and health sector that fall upon, usually women, who are not paid for this care. We are expected to be selfless in these situations, and that's a lot. 

Lucinda: Absolutely yes, it's an automatic expectation that we will serve if we don't want to complete these tasks or perform this full time job for no pay. It's like something's wrong with us.

Mindy: Your responsibility by default, which is certainly not a copasetic situation for anyone. And if you choose to pass on this great opportunity, then it is a reflection upon you and I don't know, maybe lack of compassion when instead you're simply standing up for yourself and saying, No, I don't, I don't want this. I think it's wonderful that you've created this app again. It is called I Ally, and it is a holistic support app for family caregivers. As Lucinda said, it connects users to, mutual aid, administrative advocacy, telehealth. There's also a database of providers financial and legal counsel, access to clinical trials and, of course, just the community of other caregivers and people who are in this situation. So thank you so much for coming onto the show and for the opportunity to share with my listeners about your app,  I Ally. 

Lucinda: Thank you. Thank you so much. 

Mindy: So I want to shift gears now and talk about publishing in general and specifically about COVID because we've been doing this for six months now. I know what the effect has been on the trad market because I was touring my last book. My most recent book, released on March 3rd, and I came home from a week of touring and the country shut down. I was supposed to be. I had things scheduled. My publisher had things scheduled for me, but I also personally had scheduled things for about six weeks straight. I was simply not going to be home, and we got one weekend and everything shut down. So I lost so many, so many opportunities, literally thousands of people. When you bring it all together that I would have been in front of personally speaking about my book, putting it in their hands, putting it in front of them. I lost that ability, and that loss has continued now for six months. 

Obviously, we could talk about the fact that book stores were closed for a long period of time and that, I mean, has an immediate and very real effect on my sales. But I am a personable person. I can hand sell a book. I will have my schedule as packed as I can with library events, teaching, writing classes, doing school visits, and that was a major source of income for me, a speaker. But then also, of course you know, selling my books and having a bookseller there. All of that has been lost to me. I have a long enough tail that being my 10th book, that my backlist is gonna be okay. You know, I'll get through this. But I know a lot of brand new writers who, you know, like right out of the gate A trapdoor opened up underneath them. I would just love to hear about covid from the other side of the desk. Talk to me about covid and and the epidemic from a publisher standpoint.  

Shayne: Absolutely. Because I have a completely different perspective. But I will say that A good friend of mine, who was actually published through us. But then recently kind of rebranded herself as, a thriller writer and then was published through Pegasus. Yeah, she had a similar experience. She was supposed to go on tour. It's her first novel as a you know, as a major trad author on tour, she had all these expectations and of course, that didn't come to fruition this year. And so we were just talking about that, too. And I'm sorry to hear that that happened to you, by the way. I mean, it's amazing that that's your 10th book, but I know that that doesn't diminish the excitement and what you hope tp surround your release. So I'm very sorry, I hope that somehow in 2021 when we're coming back from all of this, fingers crossed that that happens. 

But anyway, so from my perspective, in a weird way, in some way it's been beneficial because it has caused everybody especially back in, like March in April to slow down when everybody was in their house is re centering their lives around family and simpler things simply because they couldn't go and do anything else. Um, there were a lot more people who were reading and reading voraciously, and, um, you know, being locked in their houses, I think, prompted them to become more adventurous. And so like we rely a lot on our instagram presence and ah, lot of people were kind of perusing social media locked in their houses, and they would say they would see, you know, maybe a post about one of our books coming out and oh, this looks interesting. Let's let me download this because now you know I have time to read in the evenings.

From that standpoint, it has been very beneficial. And because, you know, the world kind of slowed down for a while, it gave us a little bit more cushion to be more productive and to step back and to reevaluate some of the things that we were doing. So another side of it is, you know, working with printers. We work both with Ingram and with KDP To manufacturer Our print books and both of those companies have experienced backlogs with printing and manufacturing that has slowed the process down to get books to our authors. Because they're still trying To do giveaways online and do virtual signings and things like that. I mean, there's it's it's definitely forced people to be more inventive about how they go about doing things. Um, but you know, people still need their books yesterday, and and that's become a little bit more of a challenge.

So I mean, obviously it's very unfortunate that it has affected our local bookstores. Our mom and pop book stores, which I am an advocate to, you know, bring your business there and to buy books there, opposed To Amazon, which is a little bit counterproductive of me to say, because our physical catalog is not distributed and is not like widely distributed to stores. So, you know, we rely on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online for people To purchase their books and everything. These mom and pop book stores are our cornerstone to this industry. I mean, they're integral, we need to be there. It's kind of an argument I have with myself in my own head, but I hope that a lot of these stores can survive. I know personally, like my favorite bookstore that I used to frequent did have to close down. Unfortunately, the Pandemic has done good things for Amazon and Barnes Noble online and like the big conglomerates, because people couldn't go to these mom and pop book stores. At the same time. It's been really hurtful to the other side of the industry, so it's hard. 

Mindy: I know, believe me. And that's something that you know, every author I know. We have a love hate relationship with Amazon. We love them because they move you know, 40 to 50 to 60 even higher percentage of our books for us. We hate them because they are murdering all those mom and pop stores that we love and also, you know, they sell our books at a discount. I seriously have a moral struggle with it pretty much every day, because it's like I live in the middle of nowhere. I live in Ohio and very rurally. People are lovely, and whenever I do an event or something, people want to thank me or they want to give me a little gift and they give me Starbucks gift cards and that's super cool. And the nearest Starbucks is half on hour from me. 

Shayne: Wow. 

Mindy: Yeah, I know people are often shocked. That's usually what I use as the parameter for how rural I am. Starbucks is half an hour away. McDonald's is 15 minutes away.

Shayne: I live in South Florida. So it's just one city piled on top of the other, and, uh, I actually crave more of, ah, rural life. So I envy you. 

Mindy: I love where I live. And then, you know, I just put the gift cards into my phone. And when I'm traveling, it's great. I'm like I'm good. I can have coffee for free for like, a year. But that's the kind of thing that I deal with when it comes to shopping. Because if I need a tweezers, a book and spaghetti sauce, me getting those things where I live, I would have to make three different stops to get those things. And, you know, Amazon. I could be like, I need these three things and they have it to me tomorrow. They're very smart and they murder you with their convenience. And you're just like, Yeah, sure, that sounds great. Yeah, point being I love hearing this. That Indie publishers and maybe even larger publishers as well. I don't know what the outlook is for them as far as sales. I do pay attention to industry numbers and things like that. I do know that generally one of the things that one of the arenas that saw a huge boost, of course was educational materials for Children suddenly blew up the same way adult coloring books did you know a couple years ago. 

Something that has come about as part of this that I mourn and I hope that we see recover is the audio was really having a heyday, and audio was suddenly just becoming something that you could really count on audio sales. And you could count on people searching out that particular medium and audio is really hitting a boom time and then pandemic and people aren't commuting anymore. And I was reading the other day that audio sales have become much more sluggish and that there's been difficulty selling those rights now because we don't know how much longer working from home situations will continue. Moving and working and shaking in an industry that is entirely based mostly on creating alternate realities and things that have never happened to people that don't exist, which is my tagline for this show. But the real world has a very real and prominent effect on us every day.

Shayne: Absolutely. Yeah, I can attest to what you were saying. We saw a couple of really great months in terms of audio sales then Recently, I saw those kind of plummet a little bit, which is unfortunate. I'm like audio is my preferred way of reading. Actually, I think it's just a completely different experience. I think it's so much more immersive. So I really hope that people pick up audio books more frequently because it's just like I said, It's just so immersive. It's so much fun. 

Mindy: Most of my listeners are, in fact, aspiring authors, although I'm sure I have quite a few readers out there as well. Something that has greatly impacted the publishing industry lately is a paper shortage, which sounds like the weirdest, most bizarre thing in the world. But it's true, and I don't mean toilet paper. I mean paper. It is difficult to get to printing now, and that is something that I've had to explain to people. I mean, I don't know my print run numbers for my book that's releasing in February, but I do know that they are not doing any ARCs whatsoever. Um, I don't believe they're doing any for anyone, So if you could talk a little bit about why there's a paper shortage and what the heck is going on that would you know what? 

Shayne: To be honest, I personally don't even know. Um It's interesting when you had mentioned that in our email exchange back and forth, I actually had to look it up, because we right now we're still print on demand. There's a backlog. So when we're trying to order ARCs or or even just get books out to readers or out To, you know whoever, Um, it's been taking a lot longer. So, like before. If we order, let's say, a carton of, like, 50 books to print and ship. In a nutshell, it would take two weeks, and now it's taking a month or longer. So we’re experiencing that and I'm sure, KDP, Ingram press or whatever you're working with, I'm sure that that's part of the reason. And it's also partly that they just don't have the manpower. I'm sure they didn't bring back all of their employees. My husband and I are going on a camping trip. Soon and we realized there was also a bike shortage. Covid and the pandemic has affected a bunch of things in like a really weird ways. 

Mindy: Basic raw materials I'm finding are just harder to come by. So I did some antique shopping at the beginning of the summer, and I have a bed with, you know, has to have a very specific size mattress because it's not a traditional bed frame. And so I had to order a special order mattress and I went in and I talked to the guy, the mattress store, and he's like, I'll put in the order and, you know, gladly take your money, but I'm telling you, it's gonna be a while. That was eight weeks ago, and I called the other day and it was just like, Hey, I'm just checking in, making sure that you didn't forget me. And he was like, No, he's like I called and I followed up on this the other day and they haven't even begun yet because they don't have the raw materials to make a freakin mattress, right?

Shayne: Exactly. I was I mean, just kind of getting back to books. I had placed an order for one of our authors. It was like she was waiting for, like, 30 copies for a signing. So, of course, like I have to go through Ingram and make sure all that happens and So, like I think two weeks had gone by or something like that was like 2.5 weeks. It was enough time to definitely like in the past, have these books printed and then shipped. You know, they should have been getting shipped off to her. And so she nudged me and she was like, Hey, I haven't heard anything about those books yet? Are they on their way? What's going on? And I looked and they were still printing. It was still in the printing phase. It has been crazy. 

Mindy: The last thing that I want to talk to you about, everybody in publishing, everybody knows that holiday season is a huge boon for us. So what are we expecting for 2020 Holiday? What's on the horizon?

Shayne: I can tell you what's not on the horizon It's dystopian books. I think people are not going to pick up a dystopian fantasy for a while. I think they had enough of that so I don't think that's going to be the case. Um, personally for us, we've got a couple of really great contemporary urban fantasies that are coming out in time for the holidays, and they definitely gear more toward the fun and the funny and the whimsical. Um a book that's been getting a lot of buzz from our catalog is called The Part About the Dragon was Mostly True by Sean Gibson. That's recently got The Starred Review from Publisher's Weekly. Very funny. And I think that that's going to be the kind of thing that readers are going to look for this holiday season. 

I think they're gonna look for things that boost their serotonin levels, whether it be, you know, romance or, you know, you're talking about frothy books. I think frothy books are going to do really well. They're important, you know, froth or not, Froth is important. Those and you know anything that kind of lightens the mood and brings the joy back. I think is going to do very well and also into 2021. I think they're those books. They're going to continue to do well. That's what we anticipate. But I think also what might happen is people are going to want to feel comfortable. They're gonna want that comfort in the nostalgia. So they're going to go back to what's familiar. So you're gonna see a lot of people re reading books that they've loved in the past. 

Mindy: Since a lot of my listeners are in fact writers, Why don't you tell us about the submission process for Parliament? 

Shayne: Absolutely. It actually changes season to season. We try to be very transparent, like I said before, very accommodating of authors from all walks of the industry. So when we open our submissions back up again, which will be sometime in the spring, we accept submissions from unagented authors. The submissions process is a little bit different than other publishing companies because we do the standard, write us a query. We put a lot of weight on your query letter and your pitch, Um, and your first three chapters, included the body of the email. So we go through that and once we find something we really love or we really think is interesting and we want to request a full, we request the full. But On top of that, we also request a video submission. That's created a little bit of a conversation among agents, particularly in the industry. I've heard some, I've gotten some interesting feedback about that and a lot of questions. 

The reason why we do that is because we are a very author centric company. I try or we try To work hard with our authors to not only establish, you know, their particular titles launch for release day. But we also work hard to help our authors establish their brand and their voice like you were talking about. To lay the foundation so that as they continue to publish, they have that very distinct carved out brand. So we want to get to know you. We want to get to know what's important to you, the themes of your book, what you want your readers to take away. Um, you know, if you have a certain standpoint on any social issues, or issues that are very important right now. We want to know about that, because that's all going to come into play with your branding and who you are and how you talk to your readers and and the kind of the kind of readers you engage, right? 

So we do that, and then we also utilize, you know, should we accept the manuscript for publication, then we utilize that video when we make our acquisition announcement. So just like anything else, your acquisition announcement will go through the publishers marketplace and all that good stuff. And then we'll do social posts on our various pages and I'll edit it together, and I'll make it look super fun with music and things like that and and, you know, So readers get to know the author because I think, you know, readers buy books based on a couple of different things. Obviously, if the blurb is engaging and sounds interesting to them, if the cover is really beautiful like that, that's, you know, personally, a reason for me. I'm very optics driven. So, like if I see a beautiful cover, I want it. I don't care what it's about. I just want it on my shelf. 

So there's that. And then I think that readers also buy books because they buy the authors, you know, if there is an author that they love or how that has a particular message or a standpoint that they really get on with Then then I think that helps to sell your book. So that's why we do that. Right now. Our submissions is closed, um, to anything that's unsolicited or unagented. So that's just because our queue is pretty full and we're doing some things within the company and reevaluating our production queue. Working on giving a lot more time and a lot more attention to the books that we take on, particularly like the marketing and the launches beforehand, really giving ourselves a broad window to focus on those titles as much as possible. And so as we get into 2021 we're gonna have a much more established or a better idea of the steps we want to take for those new titles coming in. So we'll be opening our submissions again, Like I said in Spring of 2021 we're excited to see what comes in.

Mindy: Awesome. And lastly, why don't you tell listeners where they can find Parliament House online? 

Shayne: Our headquarters is Parliament house press dot com. You can also find us on Twitter at Parliament books, and you can find us on Instagram at the Parliament Press.

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 Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.

Kurt Dinan On The Difficulty of Marketing YA Humor & Learning the Skills For Indie Publishing

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover 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 mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest. If you have specific questions feel free to post them on the page and I will answer them on the podcast.

This summer I'm adding a co-host, fellow author Kate Karyus Quinn. We'll be doing a series that focuses on hybrid and indie authors. If you're thinking of going the Self Pub route we've got authors who found success with six figure sales, as well as authors who are just starting out on the road to indie publishing. Learn from them. Learn with us.

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Mindy:            Kurt, first of all, Don’t Get Caught, your debut, come out with Sourcebooks. I think one of the first things I really want to talk about is the fact that you write humor, which can be a particularly difficult genre to market and to put out there. So can you talk a little bit about what it's like to write humorous YA and what that market is like? 

Kurt:                I don't know what that market is. I just know it's all I can write. Even if I'm writing a serious email to someone, I slide into this humorous thing. It's just kind of what comes naturally. I wrote horror. Horror, not whore.

Mindy:             I’ve written whore, too, Kurt.

Kurt:                I wrote horror for you know, three or 45 years when I was kind of learning to write. I've really struggled with it because I... it took me a long time to realize it's just not who I am, you know, I just naturally want to be funny, I guess. were

Kate:                Were you like the class clown in school?

Kurt:                I was just really sarcastic and biting, but that voice is always there. And, you know, I've toned that down, but I guess the humor elements still exists.

Kate:                Are you sarcastic to your Children? 

Kurt:                Yes, and my students. And they'll say, I don't know whether to believe you right now. And I’m like, Excellent. That's exactly where I want you. I don’t want you comfortable. You know, I wrote a failed YA horror psychological cult novel that all these agents read it and some partials and fulls, but didn’t want any part of it. Yeah, I'm just trying to be something I'm not. So it was like I'm just gonna kind of write in my own voice.

Kate:                But you got agents to read your horror novel. So you must have had something there that they were seeing potential. 

Kurt:                What I had was a really, really good query letter. I learned a lot of rules about YA that I didn't know existed. One being you really need more than one teenage character in it. After Don't Get Caught got picked up by my agent. She was like, Well, let me see the other one. But she goes, Yeah, that's terrible, that novel’s terrible. We're not going to submit that. And thank you for being the one to Tell me flat out.

Mindy:             Let’s say that you had luck with horror. That would be extremely difficult, cause I feel like once you’re horror writer, you're gonna be that. So if you were like, yeah, I have this great horror novel and let's say it gets published and does fairly well or even just mediocre. It’d be really hard to make the jump then and be like... and I also write humor, right? 

Kurt:                You asked about the market for humor and in publishing The Scam List, I've had to look at that and there aren't a lot of books out there and even looking like at Amazon ads and categories like I'm like, Yeah, I don't even know where to put this book. There aren't a lot of them out there. And then I get irritated when you know I start doing like so what's the number one Humor YA book, and it's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Yes, JK Rowlings did you really need to, like, try to corner that market too?

Kate:                Harry Potter, I think is the top book in every category, and Amazon is like it's about pipe fitting. Oh, Number one book is Harry Potter. 

Kurt:                I look at the books and there aren't a lot out there, but I write it anyway because it's kind of what comes natural for me, and I also know that it's not that there's an audience begging for it. But when people have the book, like When I can get the book in people's hands, they’re like that was a lot of fun and really funny. And then people will call it like a palate cleanser And I'm like, That's fine for me. 

Mindy:             I've been hearing a lot of people talk about, especially now, with the world kind of exploding or imploding. Everything is just so negative right now, has been for a while. I've heard multiple people, readers saying, but also editors and people in the publishing world saying Now is the time we need lighter reads. We need funnier stuff, the dark stuff like obviously I write very issue driven and darker, gritty edges and stuff like that. Like right now, that's the real world. And I think people are looking for more escapism of the moment.

Kate:                I agree. I also I wonder if the lack of having a big category for comedic YA is just that there hasn't been one big breakout book because I know there is an audience for that. My kids are middle grade. My oldest is 13 so he started to edge into YA. But they love funny books. There's a ton of it in middle grade, and there is almost none of it in young adult like it's not like when you reach 13, you don't want funny books anymore, so I really think it's a missing chunk of the market. We have a need for this, but until a book breaks out, no one's really gonna buy a ton of it, right?

Kurt:                Right. It's always just been kind of my complaint. I think they would do really well if publishers would push them. I get it. Lots of teenagers and lots of teenagers who read specifically like they want serious books and issue driven books. And there's a huge need for that in a lot of ways. And it's a great way to address a lot of things that are going on in the world and in teenager’s lives. That's not all their lives are. I think a big part of being a teenager is just doing stupid things with your friends and being around and having inane conversations and goofing on each other. And there is a need for that sort of thing. 

Kate:                And I feel like there's probably reluctant readers out there who are like I don't want to read the serious issue book.

Mindy:             I can say, because I was still working the library when Kurt’s first book came out, which, I should say is called Don't Get Caught and it's all about a prank war. It’s hilarious, and I would put it in the hands very often of boys and reluctant readers and sometimes the mix of both of those things. And it always worked really well as a good light, fun read that they could read and be like That was cool and I enjoyed it.

I want to talk a little bit about your experience with Don't Get Caught because you did have some success with it out of the gate. I mean, it got attention in some ways, like we're saying, just because it was a funny book and we had, kind of like Kate is saying there hasn't been a book that was like this one. This one's funny. This is the funny book this year. Gordon Korman, You can always rely on to write a good, funny YA. But he had kind of fallen off, like in recent years, as far as like producing a book a year in that category, age category. So anyway, I was using Don't Get Caught in that way. Now, if you could talk a little bit about what your trajectory was, after Don't Get Caught came out. And what led you, then to move to the idea of publishing it yourself?

Kurt:                I got an agent for pretty quickly, and then in what year was that? God, I guess it would have been 2015 because it came out in 2016. 

Mindy:             I think that sounds right 

Kurt:                All the editors who read it they were like, I really love this. We're gonna pass. 

Kate:                I’ve been there. 

Kurt:                And then Sourcebooks came along, and the editor there just really liked that. She was like, Thank God I'm reading a funny YA novel. I worked with Aubrey Pool at Sourcebooks. They were really behind the book and the book came out, and it did well. The book has continued just to sell, but I think I've sold in the last four years like 20,000 copies of that book.

Kate:                That’s a lot. 

Mindy:             For anyone who doesn't know that's a lot of books.

Kate:                That is amazing.

Kurt:                I'm like 20,000 people have bought some you know, book I wrote that's just really filled with Dick jokes, right? I finished that. That was done, and I want to write another one. Like I know these people. I know where I can take another book of it. Kerry Sparks, my agent, we contact them about me writing a sequel, and they came back and they're like, Well, we want to see how this book is selling.

Kate:                That’s infuriating. 

Kurt:                I understood it, but at the same time I was like, You now want me to wait a year to write another book? Like that didn't make a lot of sense to me, But I also understood, you know, No, it's all about money. Like that ends up being the answer to every publishing question. I was like, Well, I'm not going to sit around for a year. What else do I want to do? Well, I want to write a teen detective novel. Because, really, that's what I read. I read crime novels and detective novels and stuff. And then I started working on... I don't even know what it was. At the time I had characters, I had Boone and Darby, and I had them not liking each other, really, but liking each other like I had a whole Moonlighting David and Maddie from, you know, the eighties.

Kate:                I love that show. You are speaking my language. 

Kurt:                I started messing with it, and it was, Ah, it was a detective novel or a mystery thing, but the problem was, I didn't have a mystery for it. I had settings, I had a relationships, conversations. I had all of that stuff. But I didn't have a plot that I liked. 

Kate:                I am not a big mystery reader, but I do find when I pick up a mystery that I do want there to be a mystery in it.

Kurt:                Right. That's a problem. You read a YA novel, you do expect there to be more than one teenager. So right around that time is when Mindy tried to murder me. 

Kate:                I know that sounds super like Mindy.

Mindy:             It’s very on brand. And of course, Kurt, I want you to share the story. But I was almost the last person that Kurt spoke to on this planet. 

Kurt:                Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you tried. Okay, here's what happened. I somehow tricked my way into being the Cincinnati Public Library systems writer in residence in, like, 2017. And as part of that job, I would do, um, a podcast, much like this. One Sunday, three and a half years ago, I interviewed Mindy. That evening, I ended up in the emergency room with a mystery illness that pretty much laid me up for like three years. 

Kate:                Three years? 

Kurt:                Yeah, it was just this bizarre. It was procedures and surgeries and everything. And I wasn't quote unquote normal until... this is really odd. I think today is the anniversary of the final “now you're back to normal.” I drove up to Cleveland Clinic today four years ago for my final procedure. Um, and now here I am. I'm tempting fate again, Talking to Mindy on a podcast. At that time, Like I could barely write. Part of it was just PTSD in a lot of ways. Part of it just being in the hospital. Part of it was all the meds I was on, and depression I was dealing with and the anxiety.

Kate:                And I think a lot of people you know, right now with the pandemic and stuff can relate to that. Like, it's very hard to write and be creative when your life is an upheaval.

Kurt:                And I had no idea. Like I had never been sick in my life. And I had no concept of just how important your health is and mental health. And it gives me such a greater empathy for my students. You know, when they're like I’m dealing with a lot of anxiety, I fully understand what you're talking about. But somehow in that time, at some point I decided I'm not gonna... Why am I making this a detective novel? I don't have a mystery for it. I'm going to make them conmen. That's what I'm going to do. He's gonna be a con artist. And then the book just came out really easily. I sent it to my agent and she was thrilled with it. She was like, Oh, this is ready to go. Sent it out. And it was like, one after the other. All the publishers were like, We love this. This isn't for Me. I knew from Like my past history, like sales history. People want books like this. Kerry was like, I don't know what the problem is. She was like, I am just as shocked as you are that no one wants this in Sourcebooks. That really just irritated me. I've sold 20, you know, 20,000 copies of this little book.

Kate:                I’m surprised too, ‘cause I've generally heard good things about Sourcebooks and them being very supportive of their authors. So you must have really pissed someone off. 

Kurt:                My editor left.  And I think that--

Kate:                Ah. Well, yes, you were orphaned. Well, that's the whole story, right there. 

Mindy:             For my listeners, if you don't know you have your editor in your house. And generally your editor is your best cheerleader. Your editor is going to in some ways almost acts as your representative within that higher echelon of the publishing house. And if your editor,

Kate:                Because they picked your manuscript. 

Mindy:             Yeah, they pulled you out of the slush pile. They hung their own hat on you and your success. And editors leave houses all the time. Editors hop houses pretty consistently and what happens usually they’re authors are then left behind at the house without an editor, and they're called orphans. And you just kind of get farmed out. You’re farmed off to someone that has room on their list, And that person, you know, might not like what you write now, or might not be into you and your style and yeah, I mean, it's a really, really well known story in the publishing industry. 

Kurt:                Orphaned is the way you put that, because when other writers who were there found out who I had been given to--and this person's gone so it doesn't even matter--they were like, Oh, that's not gonna work. And I'm like, Why? They were like, that editor does not really have a sense of humor. 

Kate:                So this is a bad match. 

Kurt:                My agent texted her and said or emailed her and said, I want to talk to you on the phone about this book. 

Kate:                Were you hopeful?

Kurt:                No, no. He said, I want to explain myself. I can do it better just over the phone and got on the phone. He goes, I love this book. He goes, I would buy this book in a minute. I will buy this book for my kids. I would hand it out and tell everyone to read this book, but this is not a book that a kid would read 10 or 12 times, and that's what we want. Honestly, that was kind of a big wake up moment for me, and I was like, If that's the bar, I can never clear that bar. I don't read the book that a kid holds to his or her heart, you know, in 40 years down their line. They're like, I love, love, love. You know this. And you know, it's not like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or whatever those books are. 

Kate:                Nobody knows what book is going to strike a chord with what kid. That's bullshit, man. My 13 year old loves Stuart Gibbs, reread all of his books. I’m always asking, What do you like about the books? And they're always like fast plotting. And they like funny. 

Mindy:             Yes, and Middle grade has a plethora of authors that only write humor. Or have you know there's a huge market for that in middle grade. And then you hit YA it really is just a black hole. Those kids didn't stop liking that. The products simply aren't there, and I do. It's a shame, but I also do think marketing comes into it. I really think that publishers don't know how to market YA humor, what to sell it, to know specifically to an older audience. So it's like for middle grade kids -they're like fart jokes! Here's a guy in a diaper, right? And that is that's funny. But like Kurt's book is full of dick jokes and they're hilarious. But they cannot be like, Hey, guys, Dick Joke Book! Right?

Kate:                So target, the people who watch, um, what's it called American Vandal? Is that what is called on Netflix? 

Mindy:             But how do you produce something that, like a commercial? It says Dick jokes - Now In Books, right? mean, that's... though any type of reference like that. It's already dated. I mean, I bet a handful of people with this right now already Googled American Vandal, like, What the hell is that? And now they're like, Oh, this looks funny. Five minutes ago on Netflix is a Flash in the pan, and I'm not saying that it wouldn't be a good marketing strategy. I think it's a great marketing strategy. I just think publishers... Netflix doesn't have to worry about being banned. Netflix doesn't have to worry about backlash from librarians and parents.

Kate:                You know, being banned would be awesome. You’ve said many times like, Oh, please ban me. I get it. Like I think, honestly, the problem is marketing people are underpaid and overworked and they don't have, You know, the resources to look for a new avenue to open up. Its not like publishers are evil, big jerks. But this is definitely one of the places publishing fails to service a specific audience. And I've heard the same thing about, you know, there's more of the need for YA that skews younger and that's not there. 

Kurt:                It goes to money, right? Like the marketing thing the marketing people are like. We know what we can sell that will sell, and we know how to sell those books. Why work really hard to find how to sell it? If it’s, you know, something we don't normally put out there. 

Mindy:             They already have a template on how to make something be successful. Why remake the wheel? They don't have to for a single book for one book for one guy. 

Kurt:                Once that happened and we ran out of people, I was just sitting there. I mean, it took me a couple months. I was like, What am I going to write now? If people like it, but they don't want to try to sell it. What am I gonna possibly write? You have a book that you know is good. That's kind of what push me into self-publishing. And I got to that point because, like you said, it was like, I know I have readers who want me to put something else out.

Like First, I think, was a combination of things. One was I wasn't sick anymore. And my head had cleared somewhere in there. I listen to like, to self help books, and I think that was a combination of it. And I had to get past this ingrained prejudice, you know, self published books, or indie, books are crap. I just started researching, researching, researching, you know, indie publishing. I was like, Okay, what would this project look like? I contacted my agent, and I was like, I've kind of come to a big decision. And I told her and she was like, This is a great idea. She's like, you should. Absolutely. The book needs to be out there. It will sell. I work well with projects, and this was a new project for me to work on. 

Kate:                Right cause now you had to learn how to be a publisher, not a writer, but the publisher in the marketing department and the cover designer, right? 

Kurt:                And I mean and it was a great project and it was really good for me. But like one of the positives of COVID because suddenly March hits and you know, I'm not at school every single day. I'm at home, so I have plenty of time to work on this stuff. That's suddenly how I ended up self-publishing.

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Mindy:             You knew that you had the product. So the writing part was done. You had to learn everything else more or less so. Like, how did you go about doing that? How did you go about learning basically everything there is to know and all the different things that you have to do in order to have, like, success at this? 

Kurt:                I'm very good at researching stuff. I can go right down rabbit holes as they say, and then not come up for a long time. I asked both of you a lot of questions. I ended up on the Facebook. What is it? 20booksto50k and I would just I'd be like, my writing time today. All of my reading time today I'm just going to read posts like I'm just going to read and read and read.

Kate:                And such a great resource.

Kurt:                It's a fantastic resource, and it's got great rules. You're not allowed to advertise your book, so it ends up being about the industry. 

Kate:                And it's very selling focused in a way that's very straightforward. How to make money selling your books. There are a lot of people on there who are making a very good living. 

Kurt:                And they're more than willing to explain to you how they did it. Yeah, and it's one of those things where I think the publishing industry could learn so much from what some of those people do. It just kind of all started coming together. But I felt like I had, you know, 10 or 15 plates up in the air, and I was like, Oh, my God, will I ever possibly going to make this happen? It was a great process. I learned. I've learned a lot of things. I made a few mistakes, the book’s out there and now I've got to kind of learn this other world of Amazon ads, and I'm gonna have to like, you know, people are always like, How is the book selling? And well, before I never knew. Right? With Sourcebooks, I had to wait six months. Now I know which is a positive and a negative.

Kate:                So now you have to tell those people mind your own damn business. 

Kurt:                I like being transparent on a selfish level. It makes me more comfortable with things. Yeah, when I was sick, I would be like, OK, this is what's going on with my rectum this week to people. And I was like, Yeah, I've got a hole in my rectum and no one knows why. Well, an additional hole, I suppose. I’m way more comfortable with it. With sales, it was like Now I can know everything about it. I'm gonna be transparent about within the publishing world. 

Mindy:             So how are sales going? 

Kurt:                In the first week? And this would count presales like, I think I sold 300 copies of The Scam List in like, the first week, but I was like, OK, I'm really thrilled with this. One of the things I've learned is I can't... I had to set a rule for myself a couple of like, a week and a half ago that it was - I am only going to check my sales on Fridays. The first week was like I've sold 300 copies and I felt really good. And then Friday came. This would be two days ago and I looked it up and I sold three copies last week and I went OK. This means I need to start learning to advertise like that's 20 books to 50 K thing. It's like, No, you've got to stay on top of this. I can't rely on Publishers Weekly getting librarians to buy my book, but in a way I can, because I think I've lucked into getting a Publishers Weekly review. But I went through that process and it's like cross your fingers and all of that, but I think that's gonna happen. 

Kate:                I just want to say it's not lucky. It's not like it's a draw to read your book and they decide whether they want to review it or not. If they like it and think it’s good they review it. 

Kurt:                I tend to, just like try to be as humble is possible. Of course, they're going to review it. That's in my dark heart. It's a job, but it's kind of a job I like, because again, it's a project. YALSA Teens Top 10. Don't Get Caught was on that list a few years ago. I've got to figure out how that happened because I didn't have anything to do with it. And then I just did a ton of research and found out who's in charge of that. And I'm gonna contact them. And they were like, Oh, yeah, here are the advisers running those teen reading groups and they gave me a list and I'm like, just gonna send them copies of the book, like to give to their kids. Publishing is making your own luck. I'm kind of good at going okay, if it's all on me, how far can we take this? Not everything's gonna stick, but something will hopefully.

Kate:                Are you feeling a little boxed in by the pandemic now? And there not being a lot of events where you could sell your book? 

Kurt:                I guess I'm just realistic about it. If I thought about it too much, Yeah, because I can hand sell books. I mean, if Mindy and I were sitting next to each other at a table, and we've been close to tables, like we would sell a shit ton of books because we just have those personalities.

Kate:                I hate you guys. I'm so bad at hand selling. I hate it so much, I can tell you that. I know Mindy can. I say next to Mindy at a table, and actually, we did an event... what was it? I was SEYA in Tennessee. Mindy had this long line, and I have, like one kid and a kid from Mindy's line looks over at me and he says, It's gotta be hard being next to her, huh?

Kurt:                I have no problem with this. And it's from teaching at school. Yeah, kids walking by and I'll just call them over. Be all, come here like, and I also know my people in a lot of ways, like, I know how to talk to different types of kids and that’s a lot of what it is. 

Mindy:             I think that's what works for me, too, is just I've been in front of kids for so long and interacted with all different types of kids and librarians to like I got an in with them. And so, yeah, it's all of those hours that I put in in the public school system, like finally paying off.

Kate:                So you're saying that I should get a job in high school to work on and try to sell to them? 

Mindy:             You go substitute and come back and let me know how that goes.

Kate:                I’ll call you crying. 

Mindy:             And I’ll tell you to put on your big girl panties and you go back in there. 

Kurt:                You were saying, how to talk to those kids... thinking about those those cons being or those festivals being canceled. Yeah, it does hurt in some ways because I know it works for me. It's like the one thing I know I can count on. Ohioana was like the first one I ever did and and I walked in. I was all excited and they showed me my table and there were, like, 10 books there. Do you have more books? And they're like, No, we have 10 books. And I just in the back of my head. This isn't gonna last long. And I went with the humor aspect, and I did. I sold out of those books really fast. It was like OK, well, you know, I’ll at least talk to people.

Mindy:             Same vein, then, because I know that you do have paperbacks available of The Scam List as an indie. Those 1st 300 in your debut week with that - were you selling E books? Were you selling physicals?

Kurt:                Physical books. 

Mindy:             Really?

Kurt:                Probably 75% of them are physical looks. I don't know. YA generally sells mostly paper. 

Mindy:             I mean, that's that's a question, because I know that my numbers from my trad books, I sell four times more physical copies than I do e books. However, that's where things get like a little bit gray and a little bit fuzzy in the indie world, typically in the indie world, you're moving E books, so I don't know. Kate - Any thoughts on that? Like, why would a YA humor novel be selling physical copies over an E book?

Kate:                Well, because he was marketing them to his traditional audience who want physical books. Now, I would say as he started to advertise more, he's going to want to maybe target those indie readers a little bit more, which is where you probably want to make sure your e book is priced reasonably. One of the reasons that traditional sells way more physical books is that they have made a decision, a deliberate decision, to price their e books very high, just in almost the exact same price, sometimes even higher, or maybe just a little bit lower than the paper copy. 

And so most people look and they're like, Well, if I'm gonna pay 11.99 and get either a physical book or get an e-book. So they want to push people into paper, they don't want paper to die. Obviously, traditional has access to being on the shelves at Barnes and Noble, which is huge. You know, we all know how big that is to have that order from Barnes and Noble and have them pick up however many of your books and you know, if they put it on an end shelf or if they put it on a table. With Indies not having access to Barnes and Noble like that, we sell e books and we can price them very competitively. And the traditional space has sort of ceded the bargain books to us, except for when they want to do sakes,

Kurt:                See, I think when I published my book, I was just going with Well, what was Don't Get Caught sold at? Because that's what works. But you're right. We probably do need to, like, shift my thinking on that, especially with the e book version, because it's like, yeah, if that's gonna be the target indie reading more e books. Okay, That's very, very helpful actually. 

Kate:                Yeah don’t overprice your e-book because, you're pricing like a traditional author. You're basically saying to people don't buy the e book buy the paperback. You don't want to say that to your audience. You want to buy my ebook? Look, it's a great deal, but if you prefer to read on paper, here it is. 

Kurt:                So, you've actually helped me in this podcast, whereas, whereas four years ago, Mindy tried to kill me. You guys have a partnership in a lot of ways right there. 

Kate:                Well, it's not over. Yeah, we're not done yet. I may still, I'm just maybe trying to draw you in closer, make you, you know, let your guard down so I can go in. 

Mindy:             Well, you know, I'm always looking for the next rectum to target. So you're good. You're off my radar. I completely annihilated your rectum.

So I'm wondering then, Kurt, when you do go into making ads, where you gonna put them like, are you looking at Amazon looking at Facebook? Cause I know Kate dabbles a little bit in both and, with Amazon in particular, I know it's a bear. 

Kurt:                I fooled around with Amazon ads for a little bit. I was getting clicks, but not sales. And then I think Oh, and now you have me thinking, Oh, no, this is just your e book is probably possibly priced too high. That could be it. Who knows? We're gonna learn all of that stuff. And then Amazon and again, through 20 books to 50 k, they have groups you can join on running Amazon ads. And it's the whole science that I really feel like Okay, that's gonna be my next deep dive is into all of that and marketing it. Because I when I go with authors who write things that are funny or funnier, I don't really get a lot of like clicks or impressions. Almost like people, but the reluctant readers usually gets me pretty decent return like like it clicks, and I think it's gonna be finding that sweet spot.

Kate:                Email me. Well, we'll talk more about all the ways of Amazon and Facebook, they're both extremely difficult. There is tons off writing about them and how to use them and how to bid and how to target. And there's lots of different ways to do it. And I am still learning. I think almost everyone is always still learning. I just did Amazon 30 day ad challenge. Ah, a couple of months ago through a Facebook group, and I learned from doing stuff and it’s an ongoing process. And they also, of course, are always changing things. You're...which that you have to like a just everything, you have to go with it. I do actually okay with Amazon. I've never like I know I've read a bunch of things with people saying, Oh my gosh, I poured hundreds of dollars into Amazon and, you know, seen no returns, and I've always come out ahead with my Amazon, ads. 

Kurt:                That’s huge. Holy cow.

Kate:                Well, it helps because I my books are in KU. So that helps when you're in Kindle Unlimited. So you're getting page reads and a lot of people on Amazon are looking for those Kindle Unlimited books. So that helps. And then Facebook. I think it's harder. It's much, much harder to track whether your clicks are leading to sales.

Mindy:             I know that some of your ads on Facebook, Kate. They get a lot of interaction. I don't know if they lead to sales, which, of course, is what you want to see. But they do get interaction, they get likes, they get comments. 

Kate:                I mean, I get comments. I made an ad that I've been running for maybe Oh, six months. I made a gif actually, using a program called Pixel Loop. And it like lets you animate pictures. So I used stock photography. And so I found a stock photo that was really good for Facebook. That's the way to go is to find a stock photo that sort of captures a mood or a feeling because Facebook wants people to be scrolling through the feed and not to immediately be like, Oh, this is an ad. Like I wanted to look like This is just another friend on your feed. That's why they have a thing about putting a lot of print on an ad. You can't have a lot of text on it or they'll reject it.

And so I found this one. It's like my book books are fantasy that I'm advertising, and it's about a girl who shifts into a dragon. And so I used some of my photo shopping skills and I added some like she’s got bare shoulders. And so I added some like scales like dragon-y sort of scales. And then I went, put that picture into Pixel Loop, and I animated it. So it has, like sparkle, and movements and it looked awesome. I am awesome and I'm very skilled, and I actually think it's that input thing. Where I can, like, go down a rabbit hole like I can just spend so much time on Pixel Loop. It's like playing with all the little settings and tweaking and tweaking and tweaking forever. And it's fun to me, and it's like relaxing. And so it ended up looking super pretty and I put it up as an ad and people love it. And so I tweak like my headlines and the wording around it. But the picture stays the same, but I think at first, the headline was, it wasn't immediately apparent that it was a book I was selling. 

Mindy:             You started out by saying, cause your character supposedly has, like, some sort of spinal issue. And so things like, Here all my life I thought that my scoliosis was because of whatever... And then it turns out I'm a dragon. But people, people because they don't either... there's just not like a high reading comprehension level or they only really read the first line. Because so many of the comments are like Prayers! Feel better! 

Kurt:                Oh, no.

Kate:                She’s got scales! And it's like in the GIF.

Mindy:             It's like she has dragon scales and blue hair and like is clearly not human. And everybody's like, Oh, honey, we're thinking of you.

Kate:                There's a lot like, Oh, you're so beautiful. Yeah, there's like a couple comments from one person who I think is drunk. So honestly, you're supposed to hide those comments and I just haven't because I think there are entertaining. And someone recently left another comment that was like, I did not understand half the comments. Yeah, In a perfect world, all the comments would be like, Oh, I read this book and it's amazing. Really, none of them are like that. 

Mindy:             They're like, you're really pretty and we hope you feel better. 

Kate:                I’m just like thanks for leaving a comment! The Facebook algorithms, you know, they just know I'm getting comments so They're like, Oh, people like this ad! And they show it more. 

Mindy:             Obviously what you need to do, though, now is to create, like, a Go Fund Me for this Dragon girl’s spina bifida. Everybody wants to help.

Kate:                The question is are they gonna put their wallets where their mouths are? They just gonna stay with thoughts and prayers? 

Kurt:                You know, I guess there's only one way to find out. What you could do is the people who don't understand, you should respond with -  If you really want to help me and then leave, leave another link to the book. 

Mindy:             You're right in the even if people aren't comprehending what's going on here -  They're still interacting with the ad. The ad is performing well, People are clicking on it, People are interacting with it, and that only improves the visibility level of it. Because Facebook looks at that and says, Oh, people like this right? 

Kate:                And I personally I mean, I don't see a lot of people doing the gif ads. I'll see him occasionally, but I don't see him a whole lot. And but I think they're very effective because when you're scrolling through your Facebook feed, I feel like that little bit of movement catches your eye.

Mindy:             You know, with the new thing you can do where you make your photos 3D or whatever. Have you seen that? 

Kate:                Yes, but I don't know how to that. 

Mindy:             I don't know how to do it either, but I'm just saying it’s catching your eye when I see someone, even if it's a picture of a teacher, you know, look back to my classroom in a week, Whatever. And it's just a picture of, you know, socially distanced desks because that picture shifts as I scroll, It catches my eye. So I think that you're right about the gif ads.

Kate:                Gif ads are like cats, right? Isn't that like how cats are like you can like, use a laser pointer and a cat will run after it like movement is like what catches their eye?

Mindy:             I mean, you could also just make ads with cats that have some sort of, like, respiratory issue and that, and you could you could make a video of them like trying to chase the laser and like, not able to and put your book ad in there and the Go Fund Me. Just give me money to help the cats.

Kate:                They’ll forget I’m even selling books at that point. 

Mindy:             Indoor cats with allergies. Cats Allergic to cats. They can't have any friends. And then the catch phrase is Will you be my friend? Click below. 

Kate:                Okay. If this is gonna be our con, we should probably stop talking about it.

Mindy:             Kurt, why don't you tell us where people can find you online? Your site, your social media links and where people can find The Scam List. 

Kurt:                Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I’m Kurt Dinan on Twitter, and I barely do anything there, so that's not helpful. Um, mostly my website, which I kind of overhauled, is at Kurt Dash Dinan: D I N A N and Kurt is with a K dot com. Actually, you get like, there are three pretty cool stories to The Scam List you can get for free on there, which is like a nice introduction to kind of what the book would be. So you get that on my website and then, um yeah, The Scam List is available in, like, any sort of online retailer. Uh, you know, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. All of that. Um and that's my teen con artist book that I don't have, like, good qualifying titles for. I always just say it's like Better call Saul with teenagers. But that doesn't— 

Mindy:             I love that! It’s great! 

Kurt:                I know right? Like older people would totally get that.

Mindy:             I think you can use it. 

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 Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.