Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:11 Welcome to Small Publishing in a Big Universe, one year anniversary edition. I am your host La Jacob. We've been at this for a whole year. We'd like to thank you our listeners for sticking with us. We plan on doing more interviews of authors, publishers, book sellers, assorted panels, and all sorts of people who are involved in small publishing over the next year. If you are a small publisher or an author and would like to be featured, contact us via our website, S P B U podcast.com and let's talk from our sponsors this month, in case you missed it, songs of a Dead Forest by Travis Beatty is in a Dragon gem series from Water Dragon Publishing. A beleaguered dry ad in search of safe harbor in a land ravaged by an invasive fungus, finds herself at odds with a young dry ad who wields the blasphemous magic of men.
Speaker 1 00:01:17 Also coming up in Dragon Gems Way, crosser by Mia Ram at the truck stop. This month Better Angels by Stephen D. Brewer. After trailing a notorious trafficker across the galaxy, a self-appointed guardian angel arrives at the truck stop. And finally a new anthology from Water Dragon Publishing the future. So Bright, Stephen Viki is the publisher of Paper Angel Press and he's also an author of Building Baby Brother from Water Dragon Publishing. So we are going to ask him publisher questions and author questions. First of all, how strongly do the genres you enjoy reading correlate to those that you write?
Speaker 2 00:02:09 I would have to say that they correlate pretty strongly. I'm more of a science fiction reader. Mm-hmm <affirmative> than a fantasy reader. So most of what I write is science fiction. I'm fond of space opera and also harder science, particularly where it deals with computers or artificial intelligence and that's the kind of books and stories I tend to write. So there's a pretty close correlation I would say. In general,
Speaker 1 00:02:34 What is the most surprising thing that you learned while researching for your books?
Speaker 2 00:02:39 That one's a difficult, uh, one to answer because uh, a lot of my stories, particularly the ones in the space opera, opera genre, I kind of take the Star Trek approach and we just kind of take for granted that these things work. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, that there's faster than light travel and it's called this thing and it just works. We don't go into a lot of the physics or the <laugh>, the science. It would be like today people just use cell phones without understanding all of the technology behind them cuz they just work. They accept them as part of their environment. And I think in general, going far, far, far into the future that a career board of Starship and this year happen to be in command or engineering, you just accept that things work. The life support system works, the engines work as they should. If you have food replicators, if that's a thing, they just work.
Speaker 2 00:03:30 You don't worry too much about the details of how they work. Another tact I could take when I answer that question is if you look at building Baby Brother and the fact that it took 10 years from its original first draft to when it got published is looking at how quickly personal technology changes. In the final draft. I did a lot of edits where in the very first draft I had police officers, for example, writing down things on paper tablets, which some of them still do, but in general most of them have moved laptops or iPad. And it struck me as putting a regular paper notebook in the story in this day and age would make it feel a bit dated. So I wouldn't say that's research per se, but it was an interesting insight into why you need to be careful how much specific technology you're gonna put in contemporary stories <laugh> because it can date itself really, really fast.
Speaker 1 00:04:26 Another question that we have for you specifically, which I guess means you have to wear your publishing at besides finances, what inspires you most about publishing?
Speaker 2 00:04:36 Well, I wish I could say it was the finance A, as I've mentioned in other interviews, the pandemic has not been kind to small businesses and that's true for us as well. But to be honest, my goal had always been from a financial standpoint to make the press self-sufficient, making enough money so that it would sustain itself and be able to invest in itself to grow and bring new authors on and do events and that kind of thing. I suffered very few illusions that this was going to be my retirement fund, although it would certainly be nice if it was my real goal in starting it and I kind of have this as one of our guiding principles is traditional publishing takes way too long. You've got the whole process of trying to find an agent, which can take up to a year and then the agent has to shop your book around and then if publisher does pick it up, there's another one to two years before the book ever appears for sale in the public.
Speaker 2 00:05:30 So you do the math, you could be talking four or five years from the time you submit your manuscript to the point where it becomes available for sale. If it's a contemporary science fiction novel like I just mentioned <laugh>, you may find yourself having to do all sorts of edits to bring it up to date technologically. But the real goal is to provide an alternative to authors from the traditional publishing system. Not just in terms of the time it takes to get to market, but also being much less concerned as to what's going to be popular, what's gonna sell 20,000 copies. Cuz all of those things are nice, but the fast majority of authors who even a traditional publishing contract, never experienced any of those things. So they've waited four to five years to get their broken print, they sell 2000 copies and that's it. They get in royal advance upfront.
Speaker 2 00:06:27 So our goal has really been to allow authors to live their dreams of becoming published authors and doing it in a much quicker timeframe than you would get with traditional publishing. Depending on the state in which the manuscript is received and what other things we've got going on in our publishing timeline. We can go from original submission to book on the shelf in six months. The waiting period, it's much shorter so we can turn things around much more quickly. We can help those authors achieve those dreams much more quickly. Then they went through a traditional publishing model. So that's really what we're focused on, is to help these authors become published authors and to do it in such a way that it happens more quickly and pitch their book and sell their book and brag about their book as opposed to it's coming very, very soon when soon is 18 or 24 months away. That's the primary reason that I got into it.
Speaker 1 00:07:19 How does writing as a business differ from writing as an activity?
Speaker 2 00:07:24 You know, I've never really treated it as, as aside from business communications that I, that I have to do like blog posts and that kind of thing. I personally have never treated my writing quote as a business from that perspective. But I would say that primarily the difference is going to be when you do it as an activity, you're doing it because you're trying to explore an idea, you're trying to get a story out of your head, you're trying to, to bring some characters to life. You're pursuing a creative exercise to kind of see where it goes, whereas you're doing it as a business, you're usually constrained by deadlines, maybe theme, you know, if you're writing for an anthology or something, it will tend to be much more focused in terms of time, in terms of content than if you just do it as a a creative exercise.
Speaker 1 00:08:14 Yeah, I kind of agree with that. When I open a notebook to write something, I write it as creativity, not as, okay I'm gonna sell this. It's more like you said, to explore an idea than it is to actually make money off
Speaker 2 00:08:28 It. I would amend to that, that if you're writing something like a trilogy and you've only written the first book and the publisher has said yes, we'll publish his first book. That tends to also imply a commitment of producing the other two books within a timely manner. Cuz a lot of publishers will sign you up for all three at once and then those other two suddenly have deadlines on them, which the first one ever had. Right. So the first one may have been fun, fighting, creative and everything. Now the second two are now a business that you now have to
Speaker 1 00:09:00 Produce. I see. So be careful if you're going to write, make sure you have the trilogy at least outlined. How concerned should an author be regarding efforts to ban books or police author speech?
Speaker 2 00:09:11 Well, I think authors should definitely be concerned about it. Whether they have to be personally concerned about it in terms of their own work kind of varies depending on what it is they're writing. That being said, those that want to ban books are always looking for new targets. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So an author may not find themselves to be a target today or tomorrow or next year, but two years later there may be something in their book that offends somebody and they're suddenly the subject of an effort to get things banned. All authors should support one another in keeping books from being banned and to support libraries and support bookstores. Who are the targets of people who want that to happen? Those businesses have to make calls based on their business constraints based on what their corporate environments say they must do. Those who have banned books, if you look at history, have never turned out to be the good guys.
Speaker 2 00:10:03 Right. Not that I think most of those who are currently trying to get books banned care about that, but history has never been kind to them over the long term. So to answer the question, authors should be concerned about it. They should do what they can to support other authors whose books are being selected to be banned or otherwise challenged because you could be next on the list and their strength in numbers. Two people speaking up that a book should be banned at a school board meeting while they can be loud and ruckus and everything, if there's 10 authors or 10 parents that are telling those people go away, be quiet. A lot of what we see in that forum and just politics in general, it isn't that the majority opinions are driving these decisions, it's the minorities because they're being louder and more troublesome.
Speaker 1 00:10:49 Squeaky wheel gets the grease,
Speaker 2 00:10:51 Something like that. So these, these organizations are caving just because they want the problem to go away and they don't want the bad publicity. So the authors need to support each other. That's the bottom line.
Speaker 1 00:11:03 Stephen D. Brewer is the author of many A short story. How many Short Stories?
Speaker 3 00:11:09 Well, I'm doing a series of uh, novelettes Reverend's, heart for Water Dragon Publishing and that has seven novelettes and then there'll be three side stories that will be published as a follow on for the series is All Out. And I also have better angels coming out for the truck stop.
Speaker 1 00:11:25 How strongly do the genres you enjoy reading correlate to those that you actually write?
Speaker 3 00:11:32 Oh, there's a really strong correspondence, although I have to admit that I do like to read a wide variety of things. I like science fiction and fantasy most of all, and that's what I write. But I do also enjoy reading a lot of non-fiction. I also enjoy reading historical fiction sometimes can be a big mystery lover for the right book, the right author, techno thrillers can be a lot of fun too, but I have to admit that my first love is fantasy and that's what I mostly like to write as well.
Speaker 1 00:12:00 What is the most surprising thing that you learned while researching for your books or creating your world?
Speaker 3 00:12:07 That's kind of hard I guess for me. I spent a lot of time researching airships when I began writing Re's Heart and I probably would have more things to say in that regard except that I did all of that research in 2004 when I first wrote that as a story. Um, and it was only much later that I came back and revised it early on in my writing career, I found that I kept wanting to write the first chapter of a book. So I would write the first chapter and then send it off. And of course nobody's gonna publish that as a short story cuz it's not a story, it's just the first chapter of a book. So this was one of the places where I went back and did a lot of revision to produce something that was like a story basically doubling the size of it. But I learned a whole lot of stuff about airships and the way they were constructed, the materials that they were made out of, the fact that they have different kinds of gas bags and them. So there was a whole lot of stuff about airships that I really didn't know much about when I went into the story, but I knew that airships were really cool and so I spent a lot of time researching them.
Speaker 1 00:13:06 So how does writing as a business differ from writing as an activity?
Speaker 3 00:13:10 Well I think a lot of people when they first get into writing, imagine that they're going to write a book and then they will publish that book and then having published it, then they will start writing the next book. And so they see the activity of a writer as primarily writing. And as it turns out, you write a book and then you realize, oh, I've gotta edit this thing too. And unlike writing where you can count the numbers of words that you've written and or numbers of pages or however you wanna measure it, and you can see it accumulate over time when you begin editing, there's no landmarks, there's no ruler. And so you make pass after pass after pass over the manuscript, reading it, rereading it, smoothing it, reading it out loud to yourself and then maybe pass it on to beta readers that can provide you with some feedback about is the flow of the story working well?
Speaker 3 00:14:01 Is the character arc satisfying? Are there characters that are saying things out of character? And then you make more passes over it, editing, rewriting, reorganizing, inserting new scenes, cutting stuff that doesn't seem to be working. And then you finally have a manuscript that you can submit someplace. Or if you're in the traditional publishing world, then you start querying agents because you don't get anything published unless you've got an agent. And so then there's a whole set of activities about trying to negotiate with an agent or a publisher if you're in the small press world to try and get something published. And once something gets accepted, then of course you've got a whole other series of activities you need to create a biography for yourself, you've gotta get head shots for publicity, you end up having to respond to a whole bunch of questions. You have to deal with all of the business about getting paid.
Speaker 3 00:14:51 And so there's tax info and tax forms that need to get filed. It's just kind of immense the amount of work there is. And that's just to kind of get the ball rolling. Then of course you're going to get back edits from the publisher that you're going to need to reedit your manuscript to implement the changes that they demand and then the changes that they suggest, or at least places where they've indicated that more work is needed. You may end up having to look at artwork and decide what your cover's going to look like. And so there's a whole set of interactions associated with that. And then there's the timeline for when it's going to be published. And then the largest piece of work beyond that is the promotion. Even in the traditionally published world, you don't just like fire a book off and leave it, you're expected to do a huge amount of work to promote your work and make sure that you're engaging with a public audience and that people are aware that your work is coming out.
Speaker 3 00:15:38 And so you might very well have an announcement that you send out when your manuscript first gets accepted and then another announcement when a publication date is set and then another announcement with a cover reveal and then another announcement when the book, you know, to try and get pre-orders up once the book is available to actually be ordered. And then just ongoing engagement from a publicity standpoint up until the actual release of the book and then after the fact to continue to try and raise issues about it opposed, um, updates after the fact to continue to get it out there so that people might buy it. Writing isn't just writing, there's this entire army of work that needs to go into actually getting your work out there so that people read it.
Speaker 1 00:16:20 How concerned should authors be regarding efforts to ban books or to police authors speech?
Speaker 3 00:16:28 So when we talk about banning books, I have huge problems with that. It's almost always, um, fascists that are trying to stop ideas that they find offensive from being promulgated in the marketplace. And of course any challenge to their viewpoints is met with hostility, but yet they feel no problem in trying to police the viewpoints of others. And so that I think is a serious problem that we're confronting right now with the way things are with groups that are going out and trying to ban things in particular, they're trying to ban ideas that they think that young people might be exposed to because they want to try and present only a very curated view of the world that doesn't include a lot of the reality of people's experiences and that I think is problematic as well. I think that we need to have all of the ideas out there that people can be exposed to. And so that's one side of it. But the other side is that a lot of people talk about political correctness as being a problem and everything being woke, meaning that there are people that will challenge you if you use particular words and phrases that are dehumanizing that represent people in inappropriate ways.
Speaker 1 00:17:41 Vanessa, Nick, Lauren Ray, how strongly do the genres you enjoy reading correlate to those that you write?
Speaker 4 00:17:50 There's a strong overlap if you draw a Ben diagram because I read a lot of science fiction, I read a lot of fantasy, but I also read a lot of mystery and things like that. And I really fond of Kathy Reichs PD James. And I think it's not so much the mystery as the characters who are solving the mystery, and I think that's where it loops back around because the kind of sci-fi and fantasy I like are the ones where what's interesting are the characters not the weird stuff. The weird stuff is fun, don't get me wrong, but I think that's what what hooks me in is the characters and it's really hard to beat Temperance Brennan. She practically, she is practically a science fiction character.
Speaker 1 00:18:38 What is the most surprising thing that you learned while researching for your books?
Speaker 4 00:18:44 Yeah, this one, this one is hard because everything is surprising. As soon as you go down the rabbit holes like, oh wait, this is true
Speaker 2 00:18:54 <laugh>. Um, what about for example, like Koch machine? Did you have to do any research that you were like, Ooh, that's cool.
Speaker 4 00:19:00 No, that required? Absolutely no, it, because it's a story of an engineer solving a problem and that is just like, okay, that I just draw right on all the things that we do when we're trying to fix something in one of the family cars, that's easy. But like for Unremembered King, I was doing a lot of research into the naturally occurring flora and fauna <laugh> of, of our area here because it's set in basically the same landscape. Just like, let's start over, have completely different people, but everything else the same. And I just discovered a whole lot of different things people can eat. There are plums that are native to California, you can make cider out of them. So that I, I don't know if other people would consider that surprising, but like I thought I knew this stuff, thought, oh well there weren't that kind of stuff that we didn't have apples and plums and stuff.
Speaker 4 00:19:51 But yeah, that kinda stuff was already here. There's a book I've been working on for a while that has a lot of Irish culture in it and Irish culture has a lot of proverbs, so I've learned a lot of Irish Proverbs <laugh> while working on that book. And that has been that, that has been fun and enlightening because Irish is very fun in general. Proverbs often come out, you think it means one thing and it means another thing no matter how long the day night will come. You could certainly take that two different ways, although it's generally intended to mean that no matter how bad your day is going, it will get better later, but it can also mean your turn's coming. Buster <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:20:36 How does writing as a business differ from writing as an activity?
Speaker 4 00:20:41 It doesn't in the sense that I treat it as something that is just part of a workday sort of approach that is I have things I want to get done so I go and do them. I don't approach it like, oh, I'm gonna have a lot of fun and I'm gonna make up a story. And then it's not quite like when I was a little girl and was writing St Pony stories and then it was more like, okay, my little plastic pony and my other little plastic pony are gonna go down the road. That was just play. And now I'm writing stories where I'm trying to communicate something <laugh> more ab about the human condition than, than I like ponies. That was a primary theme in my writing between ages six and 12. I like ponies, I still like ponies and there are ponies in many of the things I write, but their functionality is different.
Speaker 4 00:21:34 I'm not sure if that's a good answer to the question, but it's kind of my answer. I it not so much business as it is serious work and I do sit down, you know, I'll have a cool funny story idea, right? It was just like, but always in the back of my mind is the reason I'm so excited about writing stories. I think someone's gonna wanna buy this story <laugh> and and somebody's gonna wanna read this story. So I kind of have that in the back of my mind, who would find this fun and who would enjoy it, which doesn't necessarily mean that I'm very commercial, but that's just the way it goes. <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:22:08 How concerned should an author be regarding efforts to ban books or police author's speech?
Speaker 4 00:22:17 I mean, concerned about <laugh> author should be up in arms and, uh, not allowing it to happen. Uh, it's ridiculous to be pulling books out of school libraries that children need to read, books that are about their possible experiences, books that are about things that their friends are going through. Books just are just playing books about people who are different from them because one of the most important things that kids learn in school is that other people are not the same as them. And that you need to live in a world with other people and respect them and so on. And it just breaks my heart to see that kind of stuff going on. And then to have it spill out into the public libraries and the public discourse is just, it's offensive beyond measure. If people wanna buy books by people I dislike, they are welcome to it <laugh>.
Speaker 4 00:23:15 But I want them to keep their hands off of all the other books that other people need to read. And it is correlated with other things that are going on in our society right now, which make me very angry and have to do with people trying to control things that are going on inside other people's minds and bodies and lives. So yeah, I could get vehement if you want. It all has to do with people who don't know anything trying to control people who do know stuff and that needs to stop. Well, I think we can give each other just generally emotional support. It's okay, you are okay, we understand it. Just having somebody who has your back at an emotional level can be helpful. And I think beyond that, to the extent we can, we need to take action so that we can tell each other we're taking actions, you know, we can write, write to our representatives.
Speaker 4 00:24:09 Um, if we're able, we can show up for marches or we can sit down and write books that feature characters that are almost certain to get banned in certain places. Him or, you know, invite publishers to publish books like that to seek out. I'm currently seeking an agent, as you know, so I'm approaching agents who specifically say they're looking for books that feature lgbtq plus characters or, uh, other kinds of diverse, uh, characters because those kind of stories need to get told. And if they reject me, that's fine, but I know they'll be finding somebody else who will get the word out. So we can take a lot of actions and as a group maybe we can make a difference long run and of course we can make sure that our families get to read in everything they want.
Speaker 1 00:24:58 This is La Jacob and I have some questions that need to be answered. We have with us our interviewer Tom, who is our guest interviewer. Say Hi Tom. Go ahead and ask whether the genres I read are similar to the genres I write. I usually like reading and writing in the same genre. Fantasy is my favorite with mysteries A close second, thanks to my mom letting me read her Raymond Chandler books when I was old enough to read. I also like historical fiction. I also read a lot of occult nonfiction history and writing crap books. Way too many of those. Okay. Toms, the most surprising thing I learned while researching is when I wrote a series in Germany during World War ii, which will probably never see the light of day. I was surprised to learn that ordinary people fell for Hitler's policies. I thought initially there were just crazy people. Maybe I shouldn't be so surprised at humanity considering
Speaker 1 00:26:20 I draw inspiration from everywhere. I ask why way too much? Why is this person dancing at the bus stop? Why is this woman going into church at six 30 in the morning? Then there's also the what if, what if the reservoir near the city hall breaks? What if that car coming toward me crosses the yellow line and hits me? Grimalkin came from a game I played online, homecoming and war age came from a dream and carnival farm from my life experience as a Carney. Other stories are usually from history that I read or my own life experiences.
Speaker 5 00:27:01 Well, well,
Speaker 1 00:27:05 Well, Tom, writing as a business is different than writing as an activity in the sense that when you write, you're looking for an audience, you're looking for someone else to eventually read what you wrote as an activity. It's not necessary for an audience you can write for yourself or no one. Thanks Tom for helping out visit the Small Publishing in a Big Universe marketplace at World Con 2022 in Chicago, eight from September 1st through the fifth. We'll have books from assorted authors that are attending world con. You may even get to meet them and have them sign their books for you. For more information about the small publishing in a big universe marketplace, and to be part of it, see our website s pbu.marketplace.com.
Speaker 1 00:28:16 Thanks again to our guests. Next month we'll have book seller and author Dawn Vogel to discuss book trends and other strategies. We plan on publishing new episodes every second Wednesday of the month. Watch for new episodes around that time. Music is provided by Melody Loops. If you want to know more about small publishing in a big universe, visit our website at S p B u-podcast.com. Tweet us at S pbu dash podcast and like us on Facebook at s pbu dash podcast. This podcast was recorded and edited by yours truly, LA Jacob. This month's episode was sponsored by Paper Angel Press and its imprints Water Dragon Publishing and Unruly Voices. You can hear our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music, and most of your favorite podcast services. Thank you very much for listening and talk to you soon.
