Episode 71: Being a Professional Author
K
Hello, my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you’d like to be welcome to the Writers Triangle, a podcast about publishing and all things books. And today we’re going to be talking about what actors need to know to be a professional author. And part of that, of course, is how to get published. So I’m going to just briefly touch on that, and then move on to other topics. Because we did do an entire episode on how to be published. And you can check that out, just go to our videos and look back across some of our older videos. And we do cover that quite a bit. So I’m just going to briefly touch on that and then move on. Basically, the easiest ways to get published is to write short stories, poems, and flash fiction, and publish those and magazines and also get to know other authors. Every author that we’ve published has either been a referral from one of our authors, an author whose short story we published, or a poet that we know of, or someone that we met on social media, and did flash fiction or family members of some of our authors and some of the cinnabar moth publishing team. So really public, getting politics really about who you know, and the connections you make and short stories, flash fiction, and poetry are a great way to get your name out there, especially if you’re a novelist, because it lets people sort of get to know you and create a buzz about your name before you go in to publish that novel. And if you want to know more details about how to make those connections, check out our episode on getting published. The thing that I want to talk about next is how to monetize your writing. And that kind of ties in with publishing, basically publish or start a website or become an influencer by doing reviews, a tastemaker and those sorts of things. And we covered that we cover monetization of your writing more fully in the how to get published episode. So I don’t want to go into that too heavy, but just to say, most authors that requires seven to 10 novels before that they can make a living off of their writing, because most authors only make their advance if they’re traditionally published. And if you self publish, making recouping the investment that it takes to self publish, takes about seven or 10 books to where you’re earning money off of your your back catalogue. And that ties into setting realistic expectations. I say the numbers all the time, because I want authors to know what publishing success means and what publishing success looks like. Because everybody’s sort of dreams of having their book go to auction where a lot of publishers auction they get a really high advance, or they have a best seller, and there’s a lot of road between average book sells and a best seller. And 2022. I think it was something like 275,000 books were published, and 2022 that when I last checked the numbers, that was the number it might have gone up since then, because it does take a little bit into the new year to get all of the numbers, I want to say the first three quarters of 2020 to about 275,000 books were published. And if you look at those 275,000 books that were published, only 10%. So over 1000 copies in their first year, and only 20% sell over 100 copies in their first year. And I just look at that huge jump right from 20 to the 10%. You’ve got 10% selling over 1000, but only 20% selling over 100. And that’s a big space in the number. And for me, I just I feel like you have to be realistic about where you’re going to fall in that. And you have to understand why you’re being an author. Do you want to share your stories with the world? Or are you doing it to become a best selling author? What’s your motivation? And then what’s How long do you plan for it to take like, do you have an understanding of how much momentum it takes and how challenging it is and what you need to do to reach the goals. And so having realistic expectation that it’s going to take a while to create your brand as an author, I think is so important to being a professional author because I find that impatience creates rudeness. And I think that if we have realistic expectations, we’re less likely to be rude or snippy or snarky with people. And we’re less likely to feel disheartened. It’s really, really hard to say Leave with it in the belief zone. And I always tell myself when I’m struggling in the belief zone, I just tell myself simply, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. And every book is another shot at success. However, you’re defining that success. There, it really is a matter of if you want to succeed as an author, knowing that it’s going to take seven to 10 books to be able to have a steady income from your writing specifically. And if you’re a poetry author, or a short story, or flash fiction author, there really isn’t any data. But most places don’t pay for short stories, poetry or flash fiction we do we pay $25. For flash fiction, we don’t publish poetry, except for our poetry, our excellence and poetry award winner. And that’s a whole separate thing. You know, look at cinnabar moth, Lurie collections, and that’ll detail all of that. And, of course, our our novel authors and our short story contributors to the E zine. So looking at those, and realizing, okay, these dollar amounts are low, because you’re looking at anywhere from having to pay $25 to be paid $100. And that’s sort of the highest price tag I’ve seen for a short story, I think was $100. It may have changed. I’m recording this in 2023. So of course, you know, cost of living goes up and the industry evolves and prices go up for things.
K
So if you’re looking at that sort of mapping out, you know, okay, I know that I want to dedicate to this full time, this is how much I’m going to have to write to make a living. And it does require approaching it as a business. And I encourage all authors to write a business plan. And there are tons and tons of amazing templates out there for how to write a business plan. And there are also amazing templates out there for how to write a writing plan. And the reason I’m suggesting the business plan and the writing plan is because that lets you look at okay, this is what’s realistic for me to be able to do, and then look at how much money can you make doing what’s realistic for you to do? And kind of figuring out how many years is it going to take for you to be able to write full time, if that’s the goal. And if it’s to write part time having that, that balance right between everything else, everything else you have going on in life. And writing is so crucial. And I think having a plan really helps people have that balance. And every author is juggling and balancing a lot. If we look at just the writing space, you have reading, researching, writing, querying and maintaining some sort of social media and a website. And that’s a lot, right, you have to balance writing, research, website creation, website maintenance awards. All of that is time consuming. And I think for me, our authors that are easiest to work with are authors that have planned. We have other authors that require a lot of communication on our part to them. And I’ll be honest, that that professional standard, we shouldn’t have to be chasing people down. For manuscripts when you go into publishing as a publishing house, you know, that’s part of the gig. But if you want to be seen as a professional writer, that is so important to hit your deadlines, and communicate with your press and do everything that you need to do to publish your book, right? That’s, you have to do the cover art, you have to do the back blurb, you have to write a tagline, you have to if you’re with us, you have to interview and there are sorry, and there are different requirements for different awards. Some rewards require that you write a two line description of every chapter in your book. And some require that you write you know a five to 10 page synopsis familiarizing yourself with what awards require and all of that so that when you’re making your writing plan and making your business plan, that is a great time to make your budget and say how much time and money are you going to invest into the goal of becoming a published author if that’s the goal, or becoming someone who can live off of what they earn from writing and understand thing, the pathway for those different goals and the length of time it will take the time commitment and the financial commitment to get to wherever it is you’re trying to be, I think is super important, and will help you be more professional. And the rule of thumb on emails is to respond with n, you know, 72 hours, if you’re on it, and two weeks is our time limit. So when we send a contract, or our potential authors, they have two weeks to look over the contract or the offer is rescinded. So I think it’s really important to be aware of like these deadlines, and be aware of what the expectations are of the people who you are sending things to and the people that you are communicating with. Once you have all of that, I think that you’re really well poised to be a professional author. And I do think that part of being a professional author is devising and developing your own marketing plan. And as the process, we have a wonderful marketing plan that we do, and we can communicate with our authors about that we detail what the marketing plan is, and all of that, even though we do all of that marketing, I think there’s a lot of things that, that authors can do that that’s free to authors and like reaching out to bloggers, reaching out to magazines, and, and those sorts of things, we do have a list of magazines and writing credits and a PR list for people who are in the book review space. And that took I think, our marketing team, I think might have spent 60 to 80 hours just creating that list that we have. And we’re always adding to it, of course, and I’m really happy we have a fairly extensive list. But knowing that, you know, looking at that 60 or 80 hours and just the creation of the list that has nothing to do it, then what does it take to enact it to not an act, but to act on that list, right and do the action point of actually sending the materials that all of these people need to review the book to post about the book and all of that. So having a marketing plan, knowing what you will and won’t do, knowing what your budget is knowing Are you going to look for all free stuff, are you going to look for paid stuff. And then 60 to 80 hours is free and paid. You know, it just takes so much research. And that’s why I’m saying when you’re doing it, having that business plan, having that writing plan, having that research plan, having that marketing plan, having that budget will help you manage your time and make sure that you’re doing the things that you enjoy, but also the things that need to be done. And that goes for everybody. There are certain aspects of my job that I absolutely love to do. And I’ll be honest, buying writing is my favorite part of the job. I love reading the writing, I love sending out the contract. I love all of that excitement. That’s my favorite, absolute favorite part of the job. And plus, I get to read a lot of really great books. So that’s really fun for me, looking at what’s fun for you, what do you love to do? Make sure that when you’re making your schedule, that it’s not all stuff that feels like a grind that you’re mixing in happy stuff and stuff that maybe isn’t so happy making, just so that you’re getting everything done. But again, having balance, I just really want all authors to have a great balance and feel really good in the author space and feel professional and feel really happy about themselves. With that said there is there are a lot of scams out there that just boil my blood I get so man I’m It’s so frustrating to me that authors are getting scammed. It’s so gross, and just disappointing and a real bummer. Like, and for me, that’s mostly the pay to play sort of, of scams that are out there. I talked more about this in the publishing episode. But I do want to touch on that for me anything that requires you to pay to submit, I kind of squint at them and look at okay, are they why are they asking for the money? Are they profiting off of authors? Is that their business model? Or are there are some quarterly periodicals that do ask for authors to pay to submit and then about $2.50 I think for the quarterly review magazines that are out there and I would say have you heard of this magazine before you are researching who reads this magazine? Look at their past issues and See, have you heard of any of these authors? Other than them being published? And what are what are they getting? Go and look at their social media and look at their websites, and is this value added to them. And for us aren’t using, we have a readership between 20 and 30,000 a month and 2023 for our E zine. And we’re still not a very well known magazine, and what our authors get for being an artisan, as they get put on our website, they get promoted on our social media, and they get published in in the magazine plus we pay them. So it’s really cut and dry and really clear. What is the added value from us to our authors, we promote the authors, we put them on our website, and we pay them.
K
So that’s like, okay, very understandable. If you’re paying to submit, what are you paying for? What are you getting? And if the answer is exposure, then ask yourself Is that the best exposure that you can get for the time, money and effort. And if they don’t respond to you, if they take your money, and you don’t hear back from them, I think I had a really great exchange back in December, with an author that I thought was just so lovely, and gave me such a positive image of them that I asked to read their manuscript. And I really loved it, they posted on social media, I paid X amount of dollars to submit to this price. And they’re supposed to get back to me. And the reason that they paid was because they were supposed to be there guaranteed feedback. And the person wanted feedback on their manuscript from someone who buys books and the potential to be published with them. Three months had gone by, and they hadn’t heard anything. And they poked them at the three month mark, because that was when they had guarantee that they would get back to them. And then when they hit the six month mark, they posted on social media, the story without naming the price. And I think that was really classy, and really smart. And they just detailed everything that they did without naming the price. And they were getting people’s advice. And it came across my feet because one of our authors retweeted it. And I read it and I, I told them, whoa, you know, paying for submission that always makes me squint. I’m like, Oh, why pay because they guaranteed to get feedback. And I haven’t heard any feedback. And I said, Hey, you know, and they were just being really nice and really polite. And we had a couple exchanges on social media. And like I said, You’d lovely, send me the first three chapters, and I guarantee I’ll give you feedback when in a month or two. And potentially, if we like it, we’ll publish it. And I wouldn’t have done that if they hadn’t been so respectful. And so nice. And for me, the key was that they weren’t adding anybody on social media, I don’t think it’s a good book to ever add someone and, you know, on social media to get a response, because you never know who’s looking. And for me, if someone’s dragging a price on social media, I don’t really want to work with them, to be honest. And if they’re super negative on social media, I don’t really want to work with them. I do think there is a certain point in time when it’s appropriate to ask somebody on social media. And and I think this case is is one of it, right? If you tell them, hey, if you don’t respond, I’m just you know, I don’t know what to do. And I think can add someone on social media without dragging them. You can say, Hey, what’s your current lead time? Because the person on social media isn’t always the person who’s making the decision. And we’re really fortunate that I’m the person who does Twitter, and I’m the owner, and the one who decides who decides whether or not I’m going to take a book to the team, the team decides whether or not we publish a book, I decide whether or not we’re going to take a book, take the book to the team. So I’m the first mind the first point of entry, so to speak. So for me, I feel like okay, I’m on social media. And there have been times when someone’s like, Hey, I submitted to you three months ago. What’s your timeline? And sometimes the submissions fall through the cracks. I’m getting hundreds of emails and a day, I try to go through each one. I tried to respond each one I tell people honestly, I didn’t respond to you in 30 days, poke me because it might have slipped through the trap through the cracks. Not everyone’s like that. But I think even if they’re not like that, even if they don’t have that point of view of, of, hey, poke me. I do think if you look at what their average time is for response, adding someone and saying, Hey, I said I submitted to you on this day. What’s your what do you think the timeline would be to get back to me Be. And if the person on social media isn’t the one who makes that decision, they probably know the person who is not super polite and not going to cause any friction and allows you to still look professional. So when you’re interacting on social media as a professional author from your author account, it’s important that you’re not super negative, and that you’re not dragging anyone. Because, for me, I’ll be honest, negativity is a turn off. And I’m not saying that all of your posts have to be positive, I just don’t want to see magazines being dragged, which is I think dragging someone is just a really nasty mean things, which is different than having a thread reporting on a negative incident. And just like saying the facts without saying derogatory statements, or, you know, cursing or any of that kind of thing, and I don’t mind cursing, cursing at someone on social media just kind of, for me, right, and I’m just one person. So that’s just me on that. And I just think it’s not, it’s not a professional look, because there are professional standards when it comes to being an author. And one of the professional standard is how do you conduct yourself in public. And I do have to consider that because when one of the things that we do for authors, is we try to get them interviews. And we do submit their book to people who do interviews of authors. And if the author kind of has an offer, or harsh presence on social media, it kind of makes me hesitant in terms of engaging with them. Because I don’t know when that negativity is going to be turned on me. And I also don’t know what their relationship with an interviewer would be, is that negativity going to be turned on an interviewer. So keeping in mind that everything we’re doing in the world these days is fairly public, and people can research it. So the same thing with you know, don’t hide reviewers, you can comment on negative reviews and say that you disagree with the review. But that’s not going to change the review. And it’s going to make you look the cancer. And I think that for me, it’s It’s tough when I see a negative review of our books, and it’s challenging, and in my heart, I’ll be honest, I’m gonna say something and be like, Hey, this is why your opinions wrong, but that’s the thing, it’s their opinion, so isn’t wrong. And looking at, you know, presses and zines and the way they do business, where it might not be a good fit for your personality or good fit for your writing doesn’t necessarily make it wrong and doesn’t necessarily make it a scam. Unless you’re paying for things that you’re not getting them. For me. That’s, that’s something that, you know, warning other people about, hey, I had this experience, and I just want to put it out there so that people know, and that’s Have you exhausted every other request. And I do think, you know, saying something about it, about it on social media and adding them can be beneficial and can have some movement or get a response because everybody wants that that good look, right. So I think that for me, the the must haves for an author for me to think that Wow, they look really professional, is that professional website, and I just did an episode a couple weeks ago on or a month ago, my my memory slips me. My memory fails me all the time. I think having a professional website is so important. Check out our episode on websites. I think having a business plan, having a writing plan, a reading plan, a research plan, a submission plan, a marketing plan, like I don’t think you can have too many plans. I superduper plan on that level. I seriously have plan upon plan upon plan, and it’s wild, it’s wild, I know that I can be excessive with my planning, it’s just my personality, because I don’t trust my memory at all. And if I have a plan that I can look back and see, okay, I did this or that. And I also I’m very emotional when it comes to what success means to me. On some days and other days. I’m very pragmatic about what success means to me. And I find that having a plan lets me know, okay, this is my it’s not meeting my emotional feel good definition of success, but it is meeting my practical definition of success. When it comes to you know, professionalism. It really is about having systems in place for how you deal with everything and things thinking about, okay, if I get this, that or the other? What am I going to do? If someone reaches out to me? How can people find me? How can people connect with me? And what am I going to do? After people connect with me? What is the plan to be professional?
K
And we’ve had, we’re very fortunate and that a lot of bloggers will ask us, Hey, can we interview your authors? And we say, Yes, we act as the point of contact. So we know that that introduction is handled professionally, from the reviewers and bloggers side of things and literary magazines side of things, because they contact us first. And I’ll be honest with you, sometimes the contact is not professional. And what’s not professional is that it can be too casual of a voice, or too vague of a request. And I find that if you’re going to be doing interviews, and such having a boilerplate of what you want your questions to be, knowing how you’re going to interview and what topics you want to cover is super helpful. It helps the author, prepare, as an author, know what your boundaries are going to be, what you want to talk about and what you don’t want to talk about. And for authors that have any sort of romance or relationships in the writing, you have to know that you’re gonna get some racy questions, and a lot of authors aren’t comfortable answering those racy questions about themselves. And I always advise them, then answer them as your character because your characters are engaging in sexual activity in your books, you’re going to be questioned about sexual preferences, and sexual activity. Understanding who what your brand is, as an author, and understanding how your books impact your brand. If you’re writing romance, if you’re doing implied sexual contact, you’re going to get interviews, you’re going to have the potential for, for sexual question, if you’re writing in the LGBTQ i plus space, then you might have questions about issues that affect LGBTQI plus community, or what’s your motivation? What’s your connection, those kinds of things? If you’re writing middle grade, you might be asked questions about raising readers, or how does this contribute to the conversation about book banning? And looking at what you’re writing what’s being said in the media and news about whatever it is, you write what’s being said in the white space, metal, gray space, adult romance, paranormal, whatever genres you’re writing, there is a conversation in that space about that genre in the media, understanding what’s being said in the media, what are the trends, what’s topical, will help you be professional in your interviews, because you’re less likely to be blindsided. And I think that, for me, that’s one of the things that as a press, we’re able to do is we aren’t able to have the conversation back and forth, beforehand. But I think authors should be able to do that as well. If you’re reaching out to someone and saying you’d like to be interviewed by them, read their blog, read their their previous interviews, and see what it is you have to offer in that space. And I would say create a press release or sell sheet for your book and send them that to have the communication of okay, I’d like to follow up with you. And have it be a conversation. If you’re the one doing the inquiry, it’s a little bit more difficult to ask them, Hey, what are you going to what do you want to talk to me about but if they’re reaching out to you and asking you, it’s a lot more straightforward and a lot simpler. And we find that when they ask us we do have some back and forth about okay, what is what are the kinds of topics I can give the author an idea of what to expect and then I send an email introducing the author to the interviewer, and it’s all very comfortable. And we provide that level of professionalism, understanding what a professional email looks like. And I find main name, greeting or salutation, two or three sentences about what the email is about sign off and signature. And I find having your sign off be something that thanks them for their time and consideration or something that conveys positive positivity I sign a lot of my emails that I’m writing with authors and stuff. I’m so excited, because I am excited about the writers and I am excited about their work and I want them to know that when it comes to book reviewers and interviewers, I usually sign it with thank you for your time and consideration. Or thank you for connecting with us. Depending on if I’m the one inquiring or if they’re the ones sending it to me having those sorts of boilerplate emails out and knowing what looks like a professional email to you What’s the professional standards, assess, again, that extra layer of professionalism and understanding how everything you do, as part of branding, and understanding as an author, I know what it’s like right now it can be a little bit cringy, right to say, I’m a brand. But you are, if you’re an author, you’re a brand. And people buy into your brand, as well as your books. If people don’t like you, they won’t like your books, they won’t even bother reading your books we found. So it’s really important that you’re consistent, and professional, and understand who you are as an author. And this has nothing to do with who you are in your day to day life. Being an author as a job, just like being a sales clerk, or being an executive is a job and you would act differently when you went to work, then you would when you’re hanging out with your friends, right? Even if your job is to be a friend, it’s different than when you’re not being paid. Because people have expectations as to as soon as they pay you. And with authors, I think that’s where it can be a little bit confusing, because you’re not being paid for all of this stuff, right? You do a lot of free labor. And that’s such a bummer. I wish the authors were paid for interviews and such. But, you know, that’s never gonna happen, I don’t think. So looking at at that and saying, Okay, I’m going to work, this is my professional persona, this is who I’m going to be. And then sticking with that, so you’re consistent that people get to know you, and you become comfortable for them. And you’re not a surprise. And they know what they can expect. Because people really like to have their expectations met. So setting your own expectations, and also understanding the expectations that you’re setting in others based on the type of genre that you write. And that’s kind of goes back to what I was saying write about if you write romance, you’re probably going to be question have questions of a sexual nature, those types of things? Looking at, okay, this is what people assume about these types of writers. And you can juxtapose that if you absolutely don’t want to be that, right? You want to be something different. You can say, You know what, this is what people usually think of these types of writers. But this is actually how I am as an author, and this is actually who I am. And that’s why I always, you know, answering the voice of my character or what have you. Having that that easy, breezy confidence comes with really understanding your boundaries and your limitations, and what you want to put out in the world. And I think the number one thing about being professional besides planning, I would say is consistency. So I hope that this has been helpful in sort of demystifies some things that I think every author should know. That helps them be successful. You know, as I say, all the time this is this podcast is love letter to authors. I absolutely love authors. We absolutely need more books in the world and more authors in the world. I want to thank all of our beautiful cinnabar moth for listening and you don’t have to be a cinnabar moth or any kind of moth you want to be or even a butterfly but I’m not Mariah Carey I’m not trying to bite her rhyme. Thank you for listening. Bye bye