Episode 0: On Publishing

K: Hello my beautiful moths and thank you for turning into The Writer’s Triangle. I am Kisstopher, and I am one of the founders of Cinnabar Moth Publishing, and this is episode 0. So. The writer’s triangle is going to be a peek behind the curtain on what publishing is and as, a wonderful friend of mine said, it’s going to be… something that came into WMP that I can’t remember anymore. I’m just going to be real and authentic and me, and part of me is absentmindedness.

And I’m going to talk about the reality of – the realities of being a publisher. And what publishers have to deal with, and what publishers are working with, and what publishers are going through. But I also want to talk about how to work with a small press and how to get a small press to notice you. The do’s and don’ts of getting publishing – of getting published rather. What happens after you’re published? And why are some books bestsellers and others or not? And. Because I look at the bestsellers list, and sometimes I’m like, “really? That book?” And other times I’m like, “why not this book?” I’ve read books, I feel like should like be bestsellers that aren’t, and we can talk about the mechanics of that a little bit. An interesting factoid that will be on the best sell – deep dive into – the bestseller episode is a lot of people pine to be on the Oprah Winfrey list.

The Oprah Winfrey Book Club is the biggest book club in the world. I think it has like something over 65 million people in it. But getting into that book Club does not guarantee a bestseller. And that’s a fact that I thought was really interesting. Being on the Today Show does not guarantee you a bestseller. That was quite shocking to me. And also, the reality that the average first time author sells between 200 and 300 books in the first year of their book’s life. And some that’s it. Unless the press is really motivated to sell the first and second book. And a lot of people in chasing that bestseller will sell their books for a dollar or $0.99. And with an ebook you can do that, but you can’t do that with paperback and a hardback and audiobook because of how expensive those things are. And in chasing bestseller for me, that’s not what I’m doing.

I would love it if every single book that we sold was a bestseller, but that’s not why I’m in the business of publishing. I’m in the business of publishing because I truly love authors. I truly believe in books, and I truly believe the stories. And the reason I’m so passionate about that is – and this might seem kind of strange to some people – but when I was 12, I became a page in a library. And I was a foster child in a very abusive foster home. And I got to leave every day in the summer, which was just a gift because during the school year, I could leave and escape through school and then do after school activities and spend as little time as possible in the foster home. And then… something, you know, magical happened in that you know I was able to work at a library through jobs for kids in foster care. And so, you’re able to work younger, because in some states that before team to work, my point of the story is that when I went there one day, somebody dropped off a garbage bag full of Harlequin novels. and there was over 100 Harlequin novels in this bag. And it was the first time I was ever exposed to formula.

And every single one of those Harlequin books and the same formula, they had the same beginning, middle and end. And I fell in love with that, and I could read one in a couple of hours, and I would just – on my break, I would consume a Harlequin novel book. And I fell in love with the artistry. And with the consistency of these books. And I thought this is amazing, and it made me become interested in the greats. And I read Moby Dick – and this might be controversial: I don’t like the book. I don’t understand why it’s one of the greats. Because I enjoyed the Harlequin novel more than I enjoyed Moby Dick. And that made me start looking at genre. And it made me – because part of – the main thing that a page does is reshelve books. So, I was exposed to a lot of books. I would have never touched if I weren’t reshelving. And I learned the importance and the deception of cover art. And I thought, “huh. This book has this amazing cover, and it has this amazing blurb.” And the blurb in the cover had nothing to do with the book inside. And I thought that that was a neat trick. It seemed like a magic trick to me. Because I was halfway through the book before I put it down.

So, if I was buying the book, I would have bought this book. I would have read half of it, and I would have put it down. But they still have sold me a book. That was interesting… to me. “How do we get people to read books?” has always been interesting to me. And why I’ve read the books that I’ve read. So, when I was reading just for me, I’ve read lots in science fiction, and I find that in my life I go through phases. So, when I was younger, I was really into Daniel Steel, which is probably no surprise from the Harlequin novels. and then I found myself getting into science fiction and I read all of the dune series and tons and tons of science fiction that weren’t serious. Just one-off books. And I’m not trying to give any particular author more props than another, so I’m probably not going to be saying a lot of titles.

And it was really interesting to me. And then I want to say when I was in my later teens, I became really interested in erotica. And I was surprised that some erotica is just really well written. Just like a really good book. And some erotica isn’t. It’s like “wow, this is bad.” And that was… shocking to me that a genre that I wouldn’t have respected if I hadn’t been reading it really gained my respect. And then I went through a phase of poetry, and basically, I’ve read every genre that’s out there. And the one thing that’s been true in every single genre I’ve read: there have been books that I have loved, and there have been books that I have not enjoyed, and there have been books that I couldn’t get past the first page. And what was the difference in those books?

And I found that they were all specific to me because I’m lucky to be married to a man who’s very well read, and we have a son who’s very well read. And so, we all read, and… we read together, and we enjoy it. But we all enjoy very different things. So, when our son was little, one of our favorite things to do on the weekend was to have it. We would call a lie-in. And we would read an entire book in a day. And sometimes we will do that on both days of the weekend, and we would get through his series in about a month. And so, we would go shopping on Friday after school for the books that we were going to read. And when he was really small, for me, Caldecott winners were something that I would look at, but not always consistent.

And I wanted books that had black children in them, and one of the things I struggled with was that, at the time that our son was a child, all of these books with black characters were written by white authors. And I think white authors can write black characters – we have an author who we’ll be interviewing next week who wrote a black character and did an amazing job with it. But I wanted to have black voices represented in telling our stories. And so, for me, I like working with black artists. I like working with black authors. I like seeing our stories told by us. And, for me, it’s really important that we have two books with black main characters that are coming out in 2021.

And it was very important to me that they were voiced and narrated by a black voice actor – who’s Afro-Latino. And what that means is that they’re Latin and – but they have African ancestry as well. And forgive me if I didn’t say that in a way that was comfortable for you, Andre. I didn’t check with you before how you identify, but when I saw you, that’s what I saw. I saw Afro-Latino. And I really like that intermixed because we also have a book that’s coming – a short story that’s coming out that’s written from a Latin perspective. So, I think that Andre’s kind of Latinx because he’s not strictly from Latin America but has ancestry in South America. So, for me, looking at people’s backgrounds and their histories – like our author who wrote the black main character – her name’s Cynthia, she’ll be interviewed next week – is disabled in many other ways that the main character is disabled and there was that own voices element. And there’s also an LGBTQIA+ character. And the author is part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

So, there is that own voices elements that I thought was really great and there is also something the beyond the blackness that was new and foreign is that, as an adult, the writer had a middle-class life. But as a child grew up in not middle-class circumstances. Which, the same for me. And writing about middle class, there is a way to write about it that has an authenticity. And I really enjoyed that the black main character comes from a middle-class life and is disabled. Because, when our son was growing up, that is the one thing I couldn’t find any of. And I wanted him to be exposed to disability, and it was always white children in wheelchairs. And that was it. That was the only disability that we could find. And, in Drōmfrangil – I pronounce it wrong every time, sorry. I’m apologizing to the author. There is a diversity and complexity to his disability. It’s not just straightforward, and it’s not in a wheelchair. But it does encompass mobility issues – it encompasses issues with the character’s back, and the character has a prosthetic arm. And they’re black. And they’re interracial. And I thought all of that was just really beautifully written.

And to me, it didn’t matter that the author wasn’t black. But it did matter that the voice of this character be black. And so… we were able to find… you know, Andre – who’s amazing – and I won’t speak to his identity any further because I think I might’ve mangled it already. And have that kind of integrity. And that was one of the things that I saw was missing in a lot of presses. I saw a lot of presses bringing black stories to press written by white authors voiced by white narrators – if they did an audiobook at all – and the cover artist was white. And there was no color infused in it at all, and the story was told completely wrong. And… I – blackness is not a monolith. We’re a very diverse group, but some of them are just so horribly wrong that the community cries out and says, “hey, this book shouldn’t have been written.” And I don’t want our books to ever be one of those books that the community cries out and says, “hey this book shouldn’t have been written.”

And that to me I feel it was just sloppiness on the part of the industry. And when we went to book conference is – when my husband to book conferences – there was one black agent. At both conferences. And at 1 conference there was one black agent, and she was the only black indigenous person of color that could follow under that umbrella at all in the entire conference. And that was shocking to me. And I’ll admit it was a little painful for me as well. And then looking at the second conference, he went to that my husband went to and it was a really big, national conference. And there was there were two people of color. And one was black, and one was Asian. And I was just like “wow. Wow.” And it made me start looking at who are the agents that are out there buying books. And I was shocked at the people responsible for buying books that there is no representation of us.

We’re not represented. So, there’s not a lot of openly LGBTQIA+ people out there. There are LGBTQIA+ a couple of presses that specialize in that, but there aren’t any open you know, openly LGBTQIA+ in large numbers in terms of agents. In terms of the publisher – in publishing houses. The ones who make the decisions on what books to buy. And so how can they in all honesty and fairness, if they’re not part of the LGBTQIA+ community? And if they’re not part of the black indigenous people of color community, then how can they accurately judge the stories written by authors who are not part of those communities? And I’m not saying because again, we have a white author that wrote a black character and did it beautifully. Add my white husband has a book coming out with a black man character. And does it beautifully. That’s what sensitivity, views or four, and I don’t think these big presses are doing. Sensitivity reads. It’s almost like they don’t even care about me is how starting to feel. And I felt hurt. And I felt betrayed by publishing. Because as the years went on, I just – I got sick of it.

I got sick of reading the same stories to my son that were read to me. I got sick of him when he was a teenager and adult, him reading the same stories that I read. And there was just this complete absence of blackness. And now there is an inclusion of it, and there aren’t books about hair texture and there are books about – but it’s a brand-new movement. That just started. Which got me excited, and I said, “you know what I want to be part of that. I want to be the change I want to see in the world. I want to publish books that tells stories. I want to read.” And have it be just that simple. And now I do.

And so that’s how it started. It started as a kernel of just deep dissatisfaction and deep pain and confusion and frustration. And also my own privilege. So, I always owned my privilege because I think it’s important to do. I’m privileged enough to have the backing and the capital. I’m privileged enough that I was able to save everything that I earned because my husband made enough money to pay all the bills so that we could start this venture. I’m also privileged enough to be able to take a year off of work, which is a little bit forced because I’m too sick to – to be a therapist, which is what I was doing before I did Cinnabar Moth. And so that’s the double-edged sword. I’m too sick to work my old job, but I’m privileged enough to slide. Don’t have to. And I want to recognize that because not every disabled person is able to say I’m too disabled to work and still have the life that they want to have. And I want to acknowledge that.

And I think that level of sensitivity and understanding needs to be throughout. That level of care needs to be throughout in publishing. When you’re reading a book… I wonder sometimes did they read this book. Did the person who bought this book did they actually read every single sentence and every single word in this book? And our process is all of our books have a sensitivity read. All of them we do a sensitivity read from a member of that demographic. And so, with the reason why I keep mentioning Cynthia’s book is because Cynthia will be interviewed next week, and I don’t like – I am big one for not doing spoilers.

And if I feel like if I go further down the road in terms of what we’re publishing, it will spoil some really cool surprises that we have coming up for you, and I don’t want to do that. So, it’s Cynthia’s book we did have – we’re lucky enough to have… in our stable of people someone with a prosthetic and someone who was a black teenager of mixed race. They weren’t the same person, but they both did it sense to be rude, and they were like, yes, “this is what life was like with a prosthetic is like for some people.” And they were able to bring us into insights because – really great insights.

Because they choose not to use their prosthetic because it just gets in the way, and it’s a pain in the rump. But when they were first injured, they did use a prosthetic a lot. And they find that a lot of people as they age find it’s easier not to use the prosthetic and other people find it’s easier to use it. So that kind of sensitivity read we were able to get someone’s authentic voice who has had the limit experience of having a prosthetic and the lived experience of having lost a limb. And specifically, having lost an arm.

And I’m not seeing that in other books. And the other smaller presses I see doing it, but the big five I feel have become so jaded and so bloated. But I don’t know. I just I lost all my connection with them. And I found that I was going to smaller presses to buy books, and I was wanting to do the indie – you know, I’ve always loved indie bookstores. And shopping the stacks in bookstores and seeing what they carry and what they carry is so different than what Barnes and Noble carries. Sorry for calling them out. I think they’re awesome. Our books are Barnes and Noble as well. But I love going to an indie bookstore and shopping because it’s such a different vibe and it’s such a different choice in books. There’s so many small little indie presses that have these really gorgeous gems that you can pick up and check out. And I thought this would be so cool to be one of these small indie presses that are kind of revolutionizing. And part of this movement that’s saying representation matters. It just does. Representation matters, accessibility matters. Which is why every book that we do has an audiobook, so I’m hard of hearing. But I’m also dyslexic. Reading every word on the page for me is a challenge. It’s a challenge that I do. But I overcome. Because I am part of the group of people who decide what books we publish, more books we don’t, and I’ll be talking more about that on a different episode.

And reading every single word is a challenge in the struggle, and I have my tricks and stuff that I do, and I think, this would be really cool if this was not an audiobook, and I could put in hearing assisted devices and – sometimes it’s just earbuds. Sometimes it’s external speakers when I can hear it clearly and I love it when it has subtitles. And I’m hoping that you know the one day the world will evolve to where we have books that are read with subtitles, because for me that’s really wonderful. I love hearing what I’m reading. So, I guess you can put the audio book in an read the book with you, but for me getting the timing right is always a little bit tricky, so I’m hoping that we get books that we can do that with in the future, because I think that would be so cool. And if that technology comes out we would definitely do it.

And if you know about that kind of technology, hit us up. You know, leave a send us a message on info@cinnabarmoth.com or hit us up @CinnabarMoth on Twitter. And let us know what’s coming down the pike. How can we be more accessible? Because we want to be, we want you to be able to read our books. If you can’t hold a book, we you want to be able to read our books. If you can’t see, we want you to be able to read our books. If you can’t hear, which is why we transcribe every podcast episode. And that’s why we have audiobooks, and that’s why we have our books available in Braille as well. And because we want everyone to be invited to the party. And we don’t want anyone to feel like they’re left behind or unwelcomed. And so, I’m really excited by looking at just the three books we have.

So, the first book we released, Not My Ruckus, has an asexual… an asexual main character who is also autistic and epileptic and undiagnosed. Because a large part of the population – the population can’t afford a diagnosis. I think a lot of people don’t know that in the United States at least, it can be anywhere between 600 and $1200 on average to get a diagnosis. And in Japan it’s hard to get a diagnosis of autism if you speak. At all. And so that’s wrong, but I can’t change that. But maybe this book can help change that by educating people you know and Not My Ruckus. And seeing what she went through, not being diagnosed. And maybe we can get diagnosis affordable for everyone globally. And we can get a global standard for diagnosis.

Because I think art is beautiful and I think art is revolutionary and I think art changes the world. So, I think this book and people reading it and people seeing what it’s like because on voices. Chad wrote it. Who’s autistic? Epileptic suffered a lot of the same abuse is in the book and had the same hyper religiosity. And I thought that was really cool because the internal voice of the MC – The same type of people who can’t connect with Chad because he’s autistic couldn’t connect with the MC, even though they knew that she was autistic.

So that was interesting to me. And I saw some people challenging themselves on that and saying, you know what? I’m going to give this book. Another read because I get it and I want to get it. I guess that I didn’t connect because the autistic and that’s not okay. So, I’m going to give this book another read and educate myself and do better and have conversations. With people who are autistic. And say, “hey is this real to you?” And that’s an awesome thing to know that this book did that with just a handful of people, but it still to me significant because autistic people are not a monolith. And for those of you who say who think I should be using person first language, I’ve yet to meet an autistic person that likes to be called a person with autism. Because of semantics and literal thinking, a person with autism would think that autism is a friend that they carry around with them. Rather than being an autistic person. because that’s a state of being. And those types of subtleties I think are important, and those distinctions are important to understand.

And our second book, Gracie & Zeus Live the Dream, it is so awesome that ADD is written about just full on how it is. And also what it’s like to be a neurotypical carer of someone who is neurodiverse. And the frustrations and the inappropriateness. And the internal dialogue of that. And the hurt, and the confusion that comes along with it. But also the love. And the internal dialogue are so new has added that was beautifully written in Gracie & Zeus Live the Dream. It was also beautifully written that there is a bisexual relationship and the topic of discrimination of bisexuality in the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s really controversial to say that you’re bisexual. And a lot of bisexual people are hurt by the identity of pansexuality, but they are two different sexualities.

So, I am asexual, but I’m panromantic and I am not biromantic. Because my romantic attraction is not on the binary and is not based on gender. Just like pansexuality, the sexual attraction is not based on gender. Whereas by sexuality it is based on gender. But that doesn’t mean someone’s transphobic, and that doesn’t mean that somebody wouldn’t data trans person or a non-binary person. And so, assuming that bigotry exists within a bisexual person because of the word by that’s not correct. Every person is different, and they’re not a monolith. Just like pansexual people and pan romantic people are not a monolith. Is that it’s not a monolith.

And so, if you look at the diversity of characters that we have and just the first three books we have an MC who is asexual neurodiverse, and… the hero of the book. And then we have a character who is not neurodiverse, and we have another character who’s bisexual. In the second book. In the third book we have LGBTQIA+ representation as well, and we have a character with physical disabilities. And I think that that is so important. All of that representation coming out of the gate is so important and we’re going to continue with that representation. Our 4th book has a black main character. And I think that’s really, really important. And our winter anthology that’s coming out as just scads and scads of diversity. And we have authors from all around the world in – that are included in the anthology and literally all around the world. And we’re really excited about that. We’re excited about we’re able to do contracts with authors who aren’t in America.

Because we have an office in the United States and we have an office in Japan, so we’re not locked into. You have to be an American author to get x, y, z from us. And because we have an office in the United States, foreign authors are able to get American privileges. And one of those privileges is that they are able to be listed in the US Library of Congress, which, if you’re not published by an American publishing house, you can’t be. And so that is significant, because if you can’t get in the Library of Congress, it’s really difficult to get access – for librarians to access your book. And access your press. And so, the press is listed, and all of our authors will be listed. And that’s exciting for us.

And the passion and the care that we’re putting into every single book, every single cover, every single narration, and everything that we’re doing. We have two really wonderful narrators, and Ivy is just amazing and neurodiverse. And, just one of the more bubbly and beautiful people that you’ll ever want to meet. And captures the tragedy and Not My Ruckus just beautifully. And then captures the joy and chaos in Gracie & Zeus Live the Dream amazingly. And Andre does a beautiful job with Drōmfrangil. And if you’d like to check out a sample of those books and get a sneak peek of the audio books, you can go to the Cinnabar Moth Publishing YouTube channel. We have samples on those, and you can listen to our amazing narrators.

So next week we’ll be interviewing Cynthia, who is the author of Drōmfrangil. There is a soft G that’s really hard for me to pronounce because I have a little bit of a speech impediment. And Rasta, our… publicist will be the one interviewing – handling that interview. And then three weeks after that – so, the first Tuesday is usually going to be an author interview, and then third Tuesday is going to be a… discussion of publishing and such. So, this will come out on the first Tuesday and then the third Tuesday. We will have an interview with Cynthia. Because her book comes out on the second Tuesday. And then we will have an interview with C.W., the author of relatively normal secrets, and then after that I’ll be back with the discussion about the business and the ins and outs of publishing a book.

And I think I’m going to start with query letters. Because we’ve had some very interesting query letters. Experience and how to write a good query. Because I think that’s kind of how after how to write a good book, the query letter seems to be the next most difficult thing. And then after that I’ll probably be talking about how to write a good book at some point. What I think a good book is. Obviously, part of what I think a good book is is representation. So, I’d like to thank all of my beautiful moths. And if you don’t wanna be moths, you can be butterflies, but I’m not Mariah Carey. I don’t wanna steal her thing. And we are cinnabar moth. Thank you for spending this past half hour with us and listening to The Writers Triangle. Talk to you next week, bye.