Mary Robinette Kowal On Writing Disabilities & Book Marketing Outside of the Box

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 as a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Mary Robinette Kowal who is the author of The Spare Man. She is here to talk to us all about what to do when your book marketing plan goes awry, which I think is a wonderful topic for any and all people out there in the world - not even just writers. What to do when shit goes bad. It's just a good topic. We're also gonna talk about real life inspiration in science fiction, writing diversity - specifically disability. So we'll just start with Mary Robinette telling us a little bit about yourself, and then also, of course, your book, The Spare Man.

Mary: Awesome, I'm really happy to be here, Mindy. I'm a science fiction and fantasy author. I was also a professional puppeteer for about 20 years, and I'm an audiobook narrator. So that's kind of the birds-eye view of what I do, and then The Spare Man is my most recent novel. It's my 10th, which is very exciting, and it's basically an homage to The Thin Man films. It's The Thin Man in space. It's a happily married couple on an interplanetary cruise ship going between the Moon and Mars and there's murder, and they have to solve the murder with their small dog.

Mindy: Of course, small dogs are an absolute must-have when solving murders.

Mary: Absolutely, and cocktails. There's no shortage of cocktails.

Mindy: Excellent. Excellent. So I wanna touch on being an audiobook narrator for a second. A lot of my listeners are indie authors and they're always looking for talent. So talk to me a little bit about how you got into being an audiobook narrator, and then what that's like.

Mary: Sure. In college, I majored in Art Education with a minor in theater and speech and took radio as part of that and sort of fell in love with that. And then used it, the voice acting stuff, with the puppetry and then started doing audio books. Actually, I auditioned. It turns out that you can just send in a reel. Publishers will hire you. So when I started, there wasn't really a route for indie authors to do audiobooks. It was all through the big publishers. Now when I'm recording for indies, it's nice 'cause there's a little bit more hands-on from the author. A lot of times I never get to talk to the author at all when I'm recording for one of the big houses. It's like puppetry without the pain. I'm in my booth right now, so I have a fancy mic.

Mindy: Oh, you sound amazing. I was gonna say that.

Mary: Thank you. Thank you.

Mindy: Your audio is fantastic. But I do think the audio book narration is so interesting in that so many people think they can do it, and they don't understand that this is a trained skill. This is an art. I love my friends, of course, if any of my friends are listening, I love you. But so many of my friends have said I would like to get into audiobook narration because I read to my kids at night and I'm pretty good at it. And I'm like, I'm so glad you read your kids. That's wonderful, and you should keep doing that. That doesn't mean you can do this for a living. These are trained voice actors.

Mary: This is 100% accurate. The other piece of it, and people don't think about this part, is that for the most part, narrators don't get to pick the work that we do. We have to pay a bill, so we will record whatever is given to us. So if you wanna check to see whether or not this is a thing that sounds appealing, what I recommend to people is that they get a book in a genre that they don't read, and they don't get a good example of that book, and then you read it aloud. And any time you make a mistake, you have to go back to the beginning of the sentence. That means stumbling on a word - saying the wrong word. We do this all the time. Grab a word from a line below or you'll swap something out without even realizing that you've done it. You'll say huge instead of big and when you're reading to your kid, that's fine, but it has to be word perfect because it is the author's words, not yours.

Mindy: There is a huge skill set. As someone who is a writer, it puts my back up a little bit whenever anyone I'm talking to asks me what I do, and I say that I'm a writer. And they say, "Oh, I've always wanted to write," or "I think I could write a book." And I'm like, "Well, then do it." You know?

Mary: Yeah.

Mindy: I've become attuned to as a creative person moving through the world, and I think everyone is creative. Don't get me wrong. I'm not being a snob on that count. The hours and the practice and the skill and the amount of toil that goes into being able to make a living at it is not a whim. It is not a "Oh, I think I could." It is, "Oh, I'm going to break myself to make this happen."

Mary: Yeah, absolutely. With all of the arts, is that someone has done it as an amateur and thinks, "Oh, oh, I can do this. This isn't hard." And they don't think about all of the hidden effort. The stuff that happens before the final product.

Mindy: Absolutely, the overnight success that took the author 15 years.

Mary: Right.

Mindy: Yeah.

Mary: Yes.

Mindy: We're speaking of time and speaking of investment and speaking of all the easy ways to trip and fall while you're going along your publishing journey. Talk to me about book marketing and what to do if you have a plan in place, if you need to build a plan, or if your plan just completely has the rug ripped out from underneath it.

Mary: There's a couple of different things to think about when you are thinking about marketing your book. The first thing is you need to define your parameters. Like how much money can you afford to spend on it? How much time can you afford to spend on it? What sort of resources do you have at your disposal? And not everybody has the same things. I'm 10 books in, and I'm a traditionally published author. And I've been in the industry for a while. So that means that I have a lot of fancy author friends that I can call on to help. I also have two assistants. They're both part-time, but that means that I have the ability to delegate things to people. When I was starting out, I did not have those things. My second novel, this is from Tor, so from one of the big six, the book came out and the first line was missing.

Mindy: Oh! Oh my God.

Mary: Just gone. And then there was another page deeper in where none of the corrections had been applied. I think it was actually a paragraph missing, which was like the paragraph in which I explained a French term that then I proceed to use through the rest of the book. So at that point, I didn't have assistants. I didn't have the reach that I have now. So the training that I always have is, if you can't fix it, feature it. And so I could not fix the first line being missing. So I set up a quiz on my website - famous novels, guess them by their second line. I had temporary tattoos. I broadcasted as much as I could. One of the important lessons, I think, is that what gets people excited is a story. So in some ways that line going missing was actually helpful because it gave me a story that I could tell. Why should you publicize this book? Because this book had this bad thing happen to it. With The Spare Man, I don't like having a story to tell, but what has gone awry with mine is that you always dive people to do preorders. Preorders. Pre-orders. There's a bunch of good reasons for that. Preorders helps anyone decide how many copies of the book to print. The number of copies of the book is printed, that helps the bookstore go, Oh, they have a lot of confidence in this.

Mindy: Yeah.

Mary: 'Cause they'll look at the print run. So there's a bunch of different reasons to drive pre-orders besides just knowing that people want the book. The Spare Man was originally supposed to come out on July 19, and we had to push the release date for reasons. When the date got pushed, that pre-order page, they didn't change the date on it. What they did was they put up a new pre-order page. So people were still able to pre-order on that old page. The existing pre-orders were all there. And on July 19th, all of those pre-orders were just canceled.

Mindy: Oh my God. So you lost them. All of them.

Mary: Yeah, it is a nightmare. And then also for reasons... I always wanna be careful when I'm talking about this because it's easy to get mad at someone, but this is a thing that happened. But one of the other pieces that happened was that my publisher has the right to sell the book in the US in English language. Not in the UK. They sold those rights in the UK and Australia, but the Kindle page went up in the UK and Australian markets. So people pre-ordered the book and all of those preorders got canceled, but as a result of that, I have to make up ground. I don't like having a story to tell, but it gives me a story to tell.

So when you're writing a press release, they wanna know why they should care. It's the same thing as when you're writing anything else. Why should we care about this? Why is this particular book important? When you don't have a story to tell of something going wrong, then you have to think about why your piece is important. What is the story, the larger story, about your novel that makes it important? I see a lot of people, you know, their press release looks like their catalog copy. A newspaper, some days they just need to fill a column inch, and if they get a good press release in that's well written, they'll just run it as it is. Back when I was doing puppetry, we would always write our press releases as if it was a news article about the fact that this company was coming to town. Frequently newspapers would run it as it was. So one of the things you can do as an author is craft those press releases so that there's a story to tell. It's like, "Why is this author special? Why is it special that this book is coming out? How does this book connect to the community that this press release is going to?" There are ways to shape a narrative.

Mindy: First of all, I think it's so clever, what your approach to missing the first line of your book. I don't think I could have handled that any better. You're right about a story mattering. So, my book Be Not Far From Me was supposed to come out in the fall of 2018. And it was written, and it was edited. And it was ready to go. I had done the edits. I think it was ready to go into copy editing, and I pitched them the idea for my book Heroine, which is about the opioid epidemic. And this was before Trump got the nomination, and the opioid epidemic was the only thing in the news. And my publisher was like, "We're going to stop the presses on Be Not Far From Me. We're going to do a speed release on Heroine." Because of the way that my releases were staggered, that meant that Be Not Far From Me got pushed back to a 2020 release. So that book, first of all, I got the idea when I was on an ill-fated hike with an ex, and the whole experience of deciding to write this book kind of came about as me being on this hike with this person that I had been in a relationship with for over a decade. And this hike was when I realized that this relationship was not going to make it. And so it was like, it is a break-up book, but then it got pushed back almost two years. And then it released in March of 2020.

Mary: Oh, I'm so sorry. I had a book come out in July of 2020.

Mindy: Yep. All of us in that window. Oh my God. I was on tour with three other authors, and it was the week of March 18th. We were flying across the country. We were doing the big book tour. And at our first one, there was the amount of people you would expect. At the second one, there was about half. At the third one, there were three in there wearing masks, and at the fourth one, they just basically had a sign on the door that said, "Come in. Sign stock one at a time, and then go home." We got the tour in, but it was miserable. And then it's like, I got home and literally we went on shut down like two days after I got home. You know what the experience was in releasing in a pandemic. People ask me about which book is your favorite, and I don't really have an answer to that. But I'll be like, I'll tell you which book of mine has gotten beaten around the most. Have a story, and this is the first of all, the inciting moment for the story is when I realized that my relationship of 12 years wasn't going to make it. Then it got pushed back two years, and then it came out in the pandemic. And you're right. Just telling that story about that book, I don't have to say anything about the book. I don't have to say what the book is about or anything like that. There's a story about the book becoming a book, and it interests people.

Mary: My book, Ghost Talkers, for reasons... It was supposed to - it came out in August 2016. August 2016, and then they sent me on tour... November. My first tour day was Election Day of 2016.

Mindy: Oh God.

Mary: Weirdly, the book did not sell well.

Mindy: No, I'm sure it didn't.

Mary: Yeah, being in July, we had the is tour gonna happen/is tour not gonna happen. Let's just go ahead and call it and let's set up virtual event. People were lonely. They wanted connection. They wanted a sense of immediacy. They wanted a sense of something ephemeral, because everything that we were doing was in the tiny little screens. I created the astronaut training center, which was Zoom. Set up a bunch of breakout rooms. Had tour guides. And the set up was that you had arrived at the astronaut training center to apply to be an astronaut. And in each room there was an actor who would do a skit and interact with you, and you got to do the astronaut training trials. We did huge pre-orders for that. We linked it to the pre-orders, and so for a virtual event, the pre-orders on that were really, really good. What I have found since is that it's again about what is the story that we're gonna tell? Yes, these two people are in conversation. Picking a topic before we go in, so that I don't wind up having the same conversation, but just with a different conversation partner every single time.

Mindy: Yep, absolutely. And that's what it's like, especially during the pandemic, when we were doing all those Zooms. It was like, I have rote answers and I try to say something different, a little different, each time just so that there's a distinction between this interview and the next one. You do get the same questions over and over, and I try to keep my answers from being rote, but that can be really hard. So you're right. Distinguishing your virtual event from the next virtual event during Covid was a huge challenge. It sounds like you found a way around that.

Mary: I was also in a weird spot because I was early enough in the pandemic that people were not yet experiencing Zoom fatigue, and late enough that I had some tricks. I had already learned some things about how to handle that because of the stuff that I was doing with SFWA for The Nebula Awards conference. Now, I'm in also an interesting place because people are not sure how to handle book tours now. They aren't sure if they should send people out. Well, sending people out doesn't work. Zoom doesn't work. I'm like...

Mindy: Nothing works.

Mary: Actually, first thing we did was we made a list of people that I know that are good conversational partners that have an audience that is likely to overlap with mine. Thinking outside the box. So instead of just looking at authors, I started looking at people from different areas. So when I am in San Francisco, I'm doing an event with Adam Savage. First of all, hurrah that I can ask Adam, but second, he's not a science fiction author. I'm talking to someone else who's an actor, and we're gonna do a small skit. What are the other avenues? It's very tempting to reach for exactly the same thing every time. It's the reason that everybody was doing book trailers, because one or two book trailers were successful.

Mindy: Yep, and then everyone started doing them, and everyone had one. It's not as effective. You do have to find things that play to your skill sets, as well, and your opportunities. So, as you know, I'm currently touring. But this is something I put together myself because I was a librarian in a school for 14 years, and so I had a whole bunch of contacts just throughout the library world. And then of course, becoming a writer and utilizing those - networking, networking, networking, which I am good at. So one of my books won The Gateway Award, which is an award from Missouri. I immediately had librarians and educators and teachers and English teachers start following me on Twitter when this gets announced. And I follow them all back, and I send them DMs. And I'm like, "Hey, if you're ever interested in a school visit, let me know." I string enough of them together, and I'm like, "Alright, this is what I charge, and this is where I'm going to be. Do you have anybody else around you that would be interested?" And it just blossoms and blossoms until I'm on the road for three weeks. 'Cause I did work with teens, and because I worked in a high school for 14 years, I can get in front of teens and I can talk to them and make it work. And that is a special skill. And I know a lot of writers that don't like to public speak, let alone go in an auditorium with 800 teens. Like they would rather die. And I love it, and I have a great time with it. And I had tremendous success on this particular trip because partially... Now, I do have to say also, the staff does a wonderful job of prepping the kids. And you can always tell if the staff is enthusiastic and supportive of the author visit. I drive out to Kansas. I'm in Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas this month. And I drove out here two weeks ago with my car unsafely loaded with books. It was bad. There's no excuse for what I'm doing other than capitalism, right? And so...

Mary: Right.

Mindy: And I still have two school visits left, and I have two boxes of books and they're not even full. I have sold books hand over fist and I have re-upped my stock twice. Hand selling? This is a weird thing I've discovered about myself. I am a very good handseller. And so I know that I can do it, and I know that I'm good at it. And it's not... I mean, it's a skill that's like a cool thing to have and is super useful. It also makes me feel totally slimy all the time, but I'm good at it.

Mary: Yeah. A lot of the skills that I have come from selling puppet shows - where you have to convince people that what they really need is a puppet show. You get a toe hold in one area, and then you see how you can expand. And word of mouth is one of the very, very biggest best thing. You and I are connected because Jessi and Marie were like, "Hey Mindy."

Mindy: Absolutely, and it was perfect timing 'cause I'm on tour and extremely lonely, so...

Mary: Yeah, again, so familiar. I toured for a really long time, but when I was touring with puppet shows, it was... We were on the road for nine months at a time.

Mindy: Oh, God. I don't know if I could do it. I love what I do. And I do love elements and aspects of living out of my car and doing laundry and back hallways of hotels. There are elements of this that I really like. I think I've hit the upper levels of what I can... It's mostly my dog.

Mary: Yeah.

Mindy: I haven't seen my dog in a long time.

Mary: Yeah, should just tour with your dog. That, that answers everything.

Mindy: That has been mentioned to me multiple times. That I should just bring Gus, and I think that maybe, maybe I'm gonna put that in my back pocket for next time.

Mary: Yeah, I've been thinking about trying to tour with my cat because I'm similar. I miss Elsie when I'm gone.

Mindy: Oh my God, it's hard. I've been going for walks. There's a little, there's a little park outside my area B & B that I'm in right now in Kansas, and they just got a little walking trail, And everybody's walking with their dogs. And their dogs, they'll tug on the lead, and they're like, "No, no, we're not saying hi to everyone," and I'm like, "No, please hi. Can I pet your dog?"

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Mindy: Let's talk about writing characters with disabilities and creating a diverse cast. I know that's something that's important to you.

Mary: So there's a couple of things. There's, how do I plan ahead? So there's the character, and then there's the way the character interacts with the plot. One of the things that I started doing... I have a spreadsheet, and I plug into the spreadsheet where people are on their axes of power. And the idea of an axis of power is something that I got from a sociology book called Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And the idea is that everybody has an area in which they're powerful and an area in which they're not. Dominant and subordinate. So when I'm building the characters, I try to make sure that everybody has at least two areas where they are not dominant. I'm a 53-year-old white woman. On the gender axis, I am further towards the subordinate end. On the race axis, I'm all the way at the top of dominate end in the US. It doesn't have anything to do with the actual value. It has to do with the amount of power a person has in a given society. When I started doing this, I realized my characters were very cis straight. I think it allows me to look for and kind of balance things there. Including people in the plot. One of the important things that I've found is that I think about these axes of power, but then I just let them be characters in the story and try not to have whatever that is be a plot driver.

So for instance, on the disability front, there's an organizational structure that I use a lot to talk about fiction called the MICE quotient: Milieu, inquiry, character and event, and each of those are a major drivers. So milieu stories begin when you enter a place. They end when you exit. Inquiry, inquiry stories are stories in which your character has a question, "Why is this dead body on the floor?" and then the answer is, the Butler did it. Then you've got character. Character stories begin with angst as a character is unhappy with some aspect of self and then they try to change themselves. Internal conflict. Event, which is an external conflict, like an asteroid coming at the earth. So the problem is that if I take disability and I map disability into a milieu, someone is body-swapped into a disabled body, and they have to learn how to deal and navigate. The problem with a story like that, is that it makes the disability this exotic, other-ing thing. It creates this...

Mindy: Fetishized?

Mary: Yes, exactly. With the inquiry story, why is that person like that? As soon as you phrase it that way, you're like, Oh yeah, no, that's not a good… That's not it.

Mindy: It's not a good angle in.

Mary: No. The character story of basing it on disability, character begins being unhappy with themselves. So you're immediately doing a story in which you are placing a value judgment. They want to change that aspect of self. If you are a person with a disability and you are writing your own story, that's a very different thing than an outsider writing that story. And then with an event story, event is something disrupts the status quo, and that's like the sudden traumatic injury. It's - you're putting a value judgment on it. It's not that with an event that you're never allowed to have character injured. It's that if you want to tell a story that is about disability, you have to go into it making decisions and knowing that anything that you do is going to wind up coming with a value judgment. Because when you answer one of those things - you raise a story question at the beginning. You provide an answer at the end, and you tell the audience how they're supposed to feel about it. So that means that immediately you're putting value judgments on stuff. On the other hand, if you just let the character have a disability and interact with the plot, so that the disability affects the way they move through the story, but the story is not about the disability, you're going to have a much more rounded character. You're gonna have a much more nuanced approach to the disability. It's going to be actual inclusion instead of literally profiting from someone else's pain.

Mindy: I'd never heard of the MICE method. I think it's pretty fascinating. I, myself, have never had any real training in writing. I learned to write by reading and just modeling. So whenever people talk about some of the methods or the art of their craft, it's always interesting to me because my own approach was very, very different. I think that that could be extremely useful in so many different situations. I love what you're saying too about how you can write a person with a disability or perhaps some part of their identity that maybe is marginalized in our society and that isn't their story. I'm gay, and my whole life is about being gay.

Mary: Right.

Mindy: No. You just are gay, and your life is happening.

Mary: Yes, yes. Which is the way things actually go.

Mindy: Exactly. Yes. Oftentimes I think that writers that don't share the identity of a marginalized character can make the mistake of hitting on that too hard as part of the everyday experience of simply being a human moving through the world.

Mary: One of the things that happens frequently when someone is writing from a dominant position about someone in a subordinate or less powerful position, is that they only pay attention to the pain.

Mindy: Yep.

Mary: You know, as writers, we get attracted to pain. It's all of the yummy stuff about writing, but it is so reductionist to reduce people down to just their pain.

Mindy: Something I've been dabbling with, would like to continue to work with, is characters dealing with mental illnesses. Because those of us that already lived in that world had been managing it for some time, and then when the pandemic happened, I think suddenly almost everyone was having to deal with aspects of mental illness they'd never had to deal with before. And it was interesting to me because friends and family and people that were just like, "Oh my God, how do you live with this every day?" And I am like, "Oh, well. Let me show you."

Mary: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was not diagnosed with depression until I was 45, and in hindsight it's... I've had it my entire life. And I was 50 when I was diagnosed with ADHD, and again, in hindsight, so many things are much clearer.

Mindy: Oh yes.

Mary: But if you were writing the story of my life and you wrote it as a story of depression and ADHD, I'd be like, "That is not what my life is."

Mindy: No.

Mary: Does it affect the way I move through the world? Yeah. Is it really deeply annoying sometimes? Always yes. The reason I wasn't diagnosed until I was 45 was I didn't understand that I was depressed because I was cheerful.

Mindy: I think when it comes to a mental illness that many of us share, be it depression or anxiety, some people that have brushed up against it versus someone that is living with it consistently, there are so many wide and varied experiences of it, but you are still someone that is not only experiencing sadness constantly all the time. Now that does happen, but those are people that are unfortunately at the highest end of the suffering. I actually just went off of my medication after being medicated for 15 years and deciding that I wanted to find out where I am now, what my baseline is now. No one ever told me that you're not actually supposed to be on this medication for 15 years until a doctor was like, "Uh, we should do a blood draw because of your kidneys and liver," and I'm like, "Why?" He was like, "because of all the medication you're on," and I'm like, "Oh, no one ever said, maybe this is a bad idea." But it is interesting to come back to myself 15 years later as an unmedicated person. How do I feel? It's all very interesting. It's not always pleasant. That's for sure. Writing about mental illnesses in particular is something that, number one, is very important. And number two, I do think that you can write it if you haven't experienced it, but I also think that you have to understand that it is not the defining characteristic, just like sexual orientation, or gender, or identity, or race or any of those things.

Mary: I think I'm writing all of my characters as ADHD characters, but if I were trying to write a character who is explicitly ADHD, I wouldn't actually know how, because that's just the way my brain works all the time. So if I were trying to write someone who is not ADHD, and contrast with someone who is and have that be the story, I'm like, I have no idea what that would look like. 'Cause it's just my normal.

Mindy: That's just my normal set. I write really hard things, dark things, difficult topics, things that make people uncomfortable, and this is just the stuff that I think about. This is my normal. This is my brain. This is how it operates. It always has. I get emails from people, and it's always very kind and it's always very well-meaning. But I get emails from people and they're like, "I don't know what you've suffered, but I'm sorry for your trauma," and I'm like, "I'm fine." I always tell people I grew up on a farm. I have that lovely bucolic farm life. My parents love each other. They love me. I get along with my older sister, and I'd literally be out in the meadow making daisy chains and everybody else is like, "we made a pretty crown" and I'm like, "Yes, and these flowers have died, and this is actually a circle of death now," right? You know, I'm five and I'm like, "We've murdered these flowers, and now we have made crowns of suffering." That's just how my brain works. Nothing horrible happened to me as a child. This is just me. This is just who I am. So it's like my characters occasionally, and more often than not, are gonna share that same outlook. People ask me all the time, "How do you write this dark content? How do you sit with this for many hours a day and return to it? How is this possible?" And I'm like, I don't understand rom-com writers. I don't understand sitting there and writing the meet cute and making sure that there's a happily ever after and that things turn out okay. I don't understand doing that.

Mary: I also had like the bucolic Normal Rockwell... My family did, still does, talent shows on Christmas Eve.

Mindy: Oh yes.

Mary: Talent shows.

Mindy: I grew up that way, too.

Mary: I take a certain amount of delight in making people cry.

Mindy: I know. Me too. Me too. And I get emails from people that are upset, and they'll be like, "I can't believe like you did that. You made me very upset, and I'm mad at you." And I'm like, "That's awesome, because you had an emotion, and I made you feel it. And I'm proud. That was my job, and I did it." Last thing, let my listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find your books.

Mary: So, the easiest thing is to... My entire very long name, Mary Robinette Kowal dot com. Sign up for my newsletter. And that'll tell you where I am, and there are links to my books on my website. I'm also on most of the major social media. I'm on TikTok. I'm on Instagram. I'm on Twitter... Facebook. Mary Robinette or Mary Robinette Kowal, depending on which platform it is. I'm pretty interactive most of the time. Oh, and if you follow me on Instagram, there's lots of really adorable cat content. Just gonna say, most of my Instagram is actually my cat.

Mindy: Mine too.

Mary: My TikTok is me walking in the woods giving writing advice. And then I guess the last place to look for me is writing excuses dot com, which is a podcast that we do. That is... Our tagline is 15 minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.

Mindy: I like that a lot.

Mindy:     Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at 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.

Jessi Honard & Marie Parks on Co-Authoring, Pacing a Fantasy, and Responsibly Writing A Diverse Cast

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 as a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Marie Parks and Jessi Honard who are the authors of Unrelenting, which is a fantasy novel with the pacing of a thriller which also features LGBTQ+ characters. So we're gonna cover a bunch of different topics, but one of the things that I want to talk about first is the fact that the two of you brought 11 years worth of content marketing to your writing and publishing journey. And so you were kind of able to approach this with one foot, of course, in the creative world, but then also very firmly planted in the business world and knowing how important that is to success in publishing. So if you could talk about how you blended those two things, and especially how you brought over content marketing skills to your book launch for Unrelenting, that would be great.

Jessi: Yeah, absolutely, and thank you so much for having both of us here. It's such a great opportunity to chat with you. I'm Jessi. Absolutely, you're completely right. It is a blend of these two skill sets. Marie and I both were fiction writers for years, and also we run a content marketing business together. When we approached the launch for Unrelenting, one thing we had heard frequently from other authors was disappointment and feeling like the wind had kind of been taken out of their sails around their own launches. And often that, when we did a little digging, came down to not really having a solid grasp of the business side of it, and through no fault of their own, right? Most authors are creatives and they wanna really dive into that creative side of things, and so we went into it, well before the pre-launch period started, knowing that we really had to put that business hat on if we wanted to see the sort of traction that we were hoping for. And so I think a lot of it was just the mindset right from the get-go, we went into it saying, Okay, yes, this is a creative piece. Yes, this is something we've been working on for a long time with our author hat on, but now it's time to take that hat off for a little while. Put on the business hat and approach this just like we would one of our client projects. Marie, I'm not sure if you have more to add to that, but that's sort of the framework that I went into it with.

Marie: It may sound overwhelming for some folks who don't have over a decade of experience doing this day in and day out. But I think at the end of the day, this is something that any author can do so long as they are willing to remember that really at the end of the day, it's about relationships - leveraging the relationships you have. For instance, we were really fortunate that we were connected with you, Mindy, through our publisher, that we were able to have this opportunity to chat with you. But also those relationships with your readers. Doing what you can to make them feel special. So, putting out content that's fun for them. We did a lot of gamification. Chatted with our publisher about like, "Hey, what would be a good goal for us for pre-orders?" And then we shared that goal with our audience and said, "Hey, can you help us get there?" And then when we hit that goal, they were like, "Let's bump it up a little bit." And so it was kind of like a group team effort, and it was pretty fun.

Mindy: So when you're talking about using those elements and the things that you bring from content marketing, you're not just tweeting. A friend of mine that used to run Epic Reads, which is the YA marketing arm of Harper Teen - very good at what she does, she did that for a living for a long time - published her own book. Margo Wood is her name. And she was talking about how intensely difficult it is to stand out, and how you can really feel like on the social media side, that you're screaming into a void. And it's almost impossible to gauge what kind of effects anything is even having. I replied to her on Twitter and said, "Yes, I know. It's like, I've been doing this for 13 years, and I still don't know what works." And she replied, tongue in cheek, "Mindy, you just make a TikTok." And I'm like, "Oh, that's right. You just make a TikTok, and then you're a millionaire." Yes, there are some people that have done very well on TikTok, but the truth of that matter is that that's all fan-generated. The authors themselves are not actually creating that content. So when you talk about that high quality content, you're not just talking about, "I'm gonna send a tweet, and I'm gonna watch that go sell me some books this weekend."

Jessi: No, definitely not. Social media is a viable strategy, and it is one arm of what are many possible avenues that you can take. There are two important things that we kept in mind. One is, what Marie already mentioned around relationships first, and the second thing that was really important to us was making sure that we were keeping tabs on what we could control. If you send a tweet out into the void, you have no idea who's going to see it. You don't know if it's going to work or not, and so we set a goal for ourselves to keep track of what we could control because there's a lot that we can't. So the gamification is a really great example of that. We had a goal for our pre-orders, but we also knew that, as anyone who's published anything knows, reporting of those numbers is a little difficult to track sometimes. And so we issued a challenge to our audience of - tell us when you pre-order the book. So that we could just Excel document, put down they tally and say, "Hey, we're up to this amount of pre-orders." And we could deepen those relationships with them, and they could become a part of the community cheering us on. We also made sure that we weren't just relying on sending a tweet out. We had... Primarily email was the avenue that we relied on. We sent out a significant number of email marketing messages during the pre-launch and launch period that were focused on, yes, getting people to buy the book, but also providing value for them. Giving them sneak peaks behind the scenes looks at our writing process and our marketing process. How we had taken this journey to a published book. And I think that combining that with sending some tweets out, sending some Instagram posts out, and really, most importantly, having conversations with people, listening to what they had to say and adjusting as people gave us feedback and whatnot. I think all of that had a really big impact on our ability to reach people.

Marie: Yeah, and not just to purchase the books, but also in the back end to feel invested enough to go ahead and leave a review.

Mindy: Everything that you're saying is so true. We cannot do well if we are just sending out our tweet. And yes, of course, making a TikTok is great. I have actually been pulling back from social media pretty heavily as a consumer. I am still very present as an author. I went through a break up that was really difficult. I had to drop out of social media and all of that interaction, and I was gone for about three months. And I didn't make an announcement and say, "Hey, everyone. I'm going through a tough time. Not gonna be around." I just dropped out. And here's the thing. Number one, no one noticed. And number two, it didn't matter. It did not affect my sales. It did not affect the open rate of my newsletter. It did not affect anything. I'd been I think publishing for eight or nine years at that point, and I was like, "Why have I been setting aside like two hours a day every day to do this when it's actually not doing anything?" And I think that that tide has changed a lot. Now, you mentioned email marketing. So that is something that I will absolutely beat the bushes about for younger writers and people that are coming into this to understand. Like say for instance, TikTok. Everyone loves it. Everyone's using it. It is the go-to social media right now. If you write YA, that's where all the kids are. But there's a lot of talk about TikTok data mining and getting information from you, and TikTok has been on the verge of being shut out of the US once or twice. So if you are really relying on TikTok, and this can happen with anything - you don't know, and if you have heavily relied on 30,000 followers on Twitter... Elon Musk buys Twitter and says, "We're done with Twitter" and shuts it down, you've just lost all of that following. Your email list, the people that you have drawn to you, that want to hear from you - that belongs to you, and you have a direct access to their inbox.

Marie: Absolutely. Consistently email is the highest return on investment platform that you can leverage for your content marketing. Anyone who's trying to sell anything, including us authors. I think the stat heard most recently was like, for every dollar you spend, you get 38 back. Pretty fantastic. So it's definitely one of those things where we focused in on it, and like Jessi said, we tried to make it not just "buy the book, buy the book, buy the book," but you kinda have to. Don't be afraid to get out there and to say it again. And, as Jessi said, we added other fun stuff in there like a little character feature or let's talk about the setting or the magic or whatever. So that it also felt worth opening for somebody who had already done all the things, and they'd already purchased the book, already shared with their friends. It's about creating the invitation of the conversation.

Jessi: I would be remiss to ignore the impact that having a community as we were building our email list had for us. If you're an author who doesn't have an email list and is still building it up, one of the best things that Marie and I ever did for ourselves, well before we had our book with a publisher, was to start connecting with people who were similar writers to us and similar readers to our target audience and just building those relationships in those connections. Going to network events, whether they were in person or virtual. Joining discord communities where these people are having conversations every day about the craft of writing, about publishing, about reading, about the different types of books that people are enjoying, and just sort of being an active part of those communities to the point where you develop true friendships. And they can help uplift you when it comes to time to hit the pavement and start doing the marketing. And hopefully you can then return the favor for them.

Mindy: One of the things that I think a lot of authors struggle with when it comes to the marketing side of that, most of us are a little quieter. We're not that outgoing. I am fortunate enough to have both introvert and extrovert qualities so that I can apply both in my career and utilize both aspects of that personality. But not everybody is that way. Asking someone for their email, you're saying, "Hey, can I have some access to you?" It can be difficult, I think, to go that route and ask people to give you access to them and to say, "Hey, I would like to be more present in your life." I have a free short story, and so I'm giving you something. I'm like, "Hey, you sign up for my email newsletter, and you will get a free short story." And it's a little... I'm also giving you something. I am not just taking a thing from you.

Marie: Yes, 100%. That's such a good strategy. We even use that for our own business. You often, you get some kind of resource or tool for your content marketing.

Jessi: I completely agree. Having some sort of reason for them to join your list beyond, "Hey, just be on my newsletter," which let's face it, we all get so many emails in a given day that just being on another newsletter is not the most enticing ask in the world. Absolutely, having something that they can receive so that they can look forward to receiving those emails from you and get a sense of who you are, how you communicate via email, all of that.

Mindy: If anybody is interested on the best ways to begin and to cultivate and to proper care and feeding of your newsletter, I highly recommend the book Newsletter Ninja by Tammi Labrecque. I started using her step-by-step advice from this little book. It was a huge, huge impact for me. It has improved my email list and the open rate and the click rate. Everything went through the roof. So for those of you that are looking to do that, I recommend Newsletter Ninja by Tammi Labrecque.

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Mindy: So you guys are co-authors, and that's something that I think a lot of people are really curious about. So can you tell us a little bit about being a co-author and what your process is like?

Marie: Go ahead Jessi.

Jessi: I like to say that we cheated a little bit being business owners together. So we spent a number of years working together prior to sitting down and writing a novel together. That allowed us to just build those collaborative skills over the years. The other side of that is our process is really kind of chaotic. It works, but it's very different from many other co-authors that we've talked to. For us, it's immensely collaborative. We do everything in Google Docs. We tend to do it live together in Google docs. We'll set a day or a few hours aside to meet at the same time, and we will be quite literally writing the same scene together. One of us will be writing, and the other person will be a few sentences behind editing. And then the writer will eventually run out of steam or not know quite how to phrase something or reach something where they know the other person is slightly more adept at it, and so they'll stop and the editor will take the writer's position and the writer will loop back and become the editor. And we'll just keep trading places.

Mindy: Of all the co-authoring processes I've ever heard of, that one is original.

Marie: It's definitely not the most efficient thing in the world. The most efficient thing might be... Maybe each of us takes a POV character. We each write half a novel. We lace it together. I mean, I've heard of that before. That sounds actually really smart. Maybe we should try that sometime, Jessi, but instead we take twice as long, 'cause also on top of it, we're both discovery writers. What are we trying to accomplish in this chapter? At what point is this in the book? What kind of plot points are we hitting? And then from there, we start writing and sometimes all the plans go out the window. But I think the thing that's been most important about it, and I think this is true no matter what a co-author strategy looks like in the weeds, being able to take our ego out of it, so that it's not like, "Oh, my idea or your idea." It's more just like, "What's best for the story? What's aligned with the shared vision that we have for it?"

Mindy: Definitely. So I do write under a pen name and I co-author with two other friends. And our process is similar that we have a Google Docs and so we often won't know exactly what is going to happen. And so we will dive into what we are writing and we'll have a general idea of characters and the world or whatever, but we don't know what's gonna happen in a particular plot. And sometimes one of us will just be like, "Guys. Um, I'm sorry, I killed this character. If you don't like it, that's fine. Let me know." But generally what happens is that one of us will take a scene and then we write it, and then much like you guys, each of us then also passes over it, makes some adjustments, says, "Hey, I don't think this character would say this." The amazing thing about co-writing is that the manuscript gets longer when you're not working on it.

Marie: True. It's pretty magical.

Jessi: It's magic, yeah.

Mindy: That's my favorite part of it. So one thing that I find can come up often, for us anyway, because there are three of us with our fingers in it - is continuity issues. So for my listeners, continuity would be like if we say that this character has black hair and then suddenly she's running his fingers through his blond hair. At the beginning of us all working together, we attempted to keep what's called a Bible, a series Bible, and described our characters and locations and anything that is involved in the world building. But then the act of just keeping the Bible straight was so much work that it would have taken - that would have been just someone's job - so we, of course, hire a copy editor. And our copy editor goes through and tries to catch all of those things. How do you guys handle continuity?

Jessi: Sort of similar to you in our drive folder for the greater Unrelenting universe is a bit of a chaotic mess. We have landed on a sort of internal series Bible, we call them our global notes document. We have them for Unrelenting and now we're working on the sequel to it. And so we have this global notes document that as we're writing something and there's an event or there's a timeline or something like that, that just like we know, we'll probably forget it at some point, we throw it into that document. We also leave comments for each other within the document itself. Yes, we wanna make sure that there's continuity within revisions, but we don't have time for that yet because we just wanna keep moving with the plot, so we'll just leave a comment in the Google Doc.

Marie: And then sometimes too, it's just a matter of like, can we simplify it? We spent probably 15 minutes one day trying to figure out what side of a door the hinges were on. Couldn't we just say instead of she pushes or she pulls, she opens the door?

Mindy: I find that to be very important myself in my individual writing as well. Something I am bad at, and I mean bad at, is linear time. My copy editors and my proof readers really just kind of hate me a little bit. I don't care what day it happened on. It doesn't matter to me. That's not part of the plot. That does not matter to me. I do not use days of the week. I'll just say, "Hey, do you wanna go to a movie sometime?" I use very general time words because I will not get it right and it will be a mess, and I truly don't believe that readers care about this. But man, copy editors do.

Marie: That's a really great hack though.

Jessi: Yeah, we had a similar issue, and it still comes up. Like, with seasons. The entire premise of the first book is that the main character, Bridget's, sister has been missing for nine months. This whole book is taking place in a location that has four distinct seasons. We need to know at least what time of year each of these events happened because it just will dramatically impact what's happening outside.

Mindy: Yep, and if you have someone walking outside and it's cold and it is June, they will find you.

Marie: I only hope a reader would care enough, but I think you're right, I don't think they really care that much. But on the off chance that they do, it could totally throw someone out of the story and the immersion, so it is totally worth fixing.

Mindy: Now, I will say, readers don't care unless you are writing a real place and they live there. And then, boy, they will be on your ass. I also wanna talk about responsibly writing LGBTQ+ characters. 'Cause representation is of course very important. Unrelenting includes asexual, bisexual, and gay characters. And especially in fantasy, I feel like a lot of the time that it is changing. Luckily, it is changing across all genres, but a lot of fantasy, I would not see this representation apart from maybe the past 10 years. So if you could talk a little bit about representation and responsibly writing these characters, not just being like, I included this so that I can claim diversity and I get my stamp.

Marie: First of all, I would say we're not certainly the resource for that. Writing the Other has so many great resources and classes. There are several teachers who are just amazing. We've learned a lot from them around, just in general, writing characters who are believable and multi-faceted. How intersectionality plays a role in how they move around the world and how they experience the world. I think a lot of it was just learning and listening a lot. We also were able to pull from personal experience, lived experience of ourselves. We were also very fortunate that our editor is also an accomplished sensitivity reader, and so was able to provide additional support for us. I mean, I really do believe it's the author's responsibility to do their research and do as great of a job as they can on it. And then also, whenever possible, to lean into additional support and to make sure that that person is compensated for it. I don't know if you have more specifics around that, Jessi, you wanna dive into.

Jessi: You just said it's the writer's responsibility, and I agree with that as far as the research is concerned. I think it's also the writer's responsibility to create a world that is representative of reality, even when you're writing science fiction or fantasy. What you were saying, Mindy, about how 10 years ago or 15 years ago, you really didn't find these representations as frequently, especially within genre that is true, and also such a shortcoming of what actual world is like. If you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community and you are an avid fantasy reader, and you just gobble up fantasy book after fantasy book and you never see yourself in it, that takes its toll. We went into Unrelenting, not necessarily on a mission to wave the queer flag, but on a mission to make sure that the characters within Unrelenting represented the world and called upon some of our own lived experience, and that avid fantasy reader who picked up our book may see themselves represented in that.

Marie: Yeah, and I think it's also important for somebody who may be straight or cisgender and who may not identify as queer, for them also to see protagonists and characters who are queer. And it's not only encouraging and normalizing for people who do identify as queer, but for everybody, right? To say like, “Hey, everyone is capable of being the hero, being the sidekick, being the fill in, being the whoever, being the anything” right? For us, because Unrelenting is not a coming out story, we sort of laugh that it's like a book of casual queerness. People having adventures, and for some of them, this happens to be a part of who they are. It's not a story about struggling through life as a queer person or coming out as a queer person. It's just like people having adventures and some of them happen to have this identification. It doesn't always have to be about struggle. It doesn't always have to be about coming out. It can just be a story.

Mindy: I see writers who don't share that identity often hitting really hard on the struggle or the negative aspects. Being discriminated against. Being treated negatively because of this quality of yourself that just happens to be part of who you are. I do agree that it is so important just to show someone who is queer just having a regular day.

Jessi: And those coming out stories and those stories about struggles are absolutely valid as well. And I think we need those stories too, but we need more than just those stories.

Mindy: So the pacing for Unrelenting is very interesting because it is a fantasy novel; however, it has the pacing of a thriller. So how do you go about, combined with this co-authoring process, of managing your pacing when you are discovery writers and you're not necessarily plotting things.

Marie: I think we stumbled across it by accident. Is that fair to say, Jessi?

Jessi: This kind of maybe dives into a little bit of how Marie and I differ in our writing style. I tend to be very drawn to fast-paced plotting and cliff hanger chapter endings, which is part of what I lent to Unrelenting. A natural consequence of that as we were writing the story is that it sort of accidentally ended up taking on that thriller pace, and then we really realized it was working. People were really enjoying that fast-paced as opposed to the slightly more languid one you might find in some fantasy novels.

Marie: We were in a class that was being taught by Dan Wells, Let's Talk about Thrillers, and was defining thrillers. And I was like, this is our book. Our book, we accidentally wrote a thriller. So that was kind of fun, and at that point, I think the manuscript was already done enough that we weren't going to be making dramatic changes to hit every single beat. It's, I think, helped us in moving forward with the sequel more mindfully. We've actually learned a lot about plotting and telling compelling stories. We were told once that we kind of wrote this one by ear, just 'cause we're such readers. But now we're able to go forward more mindfully and it's yielding cleaner drafts and more purposeful writing. We're able to go forward more mindfully now.

Mindy: I also am a discovery writer. I just go. I feel like I write every single one of my books by ear, and so far it's worked out. Last thing, if each of you would like to share where you can be found on social media and where your book Unrelenting can be found as well.

Jessi: Yeah, absolutely. I am Jessi Honard, J-E-S-S-I H-O-N-A-R-D, on pretty much all of the platforms, and that's also my website address as well.

Marie: And you can find me at Marie Parks on Twitter. That's also my website, but then if you're also looking for the book, you can find it in all the places - a place where you can read a little blurb about it and then decide what seller you want to scope it out through or library. It's in a number of library systems also. Head to The Grigori, G-R-I-G-O-R-I, books... The Grigori Books dot com slash order hyphen Unrelenting.

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.

Crystal Swain Bates On Promoting Diversity In Children's 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.

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Mindy: We're here today with Crystal Swain Bates. She is a celebrated Children's book author and she's the owner of Goldest Karat Publishing, which she founded in order to address the lack of diversity in Children's literature. She's written and published 12 Children's books which have been seen on platforms including CNN, and Huffington Post. Her book, Big Hair Don't Care is one of Amazon's most highly reviewed black Children's books on the market. 

So one of the things I really want to talk to you about, because I think it's important is that at this point, I would hope that there is at least an awareness in the publishing community and in the larger, broader world that there is a need to address the issue of encouraging diversity in the publishing industry. It's become something that we talk about to an extent that I think people may not realize that we need to continue talking about it. This isn't a one and done - let's have the conversation and put a bandaid on it. So, I'd really like for you if you could talk about why this is a continuing conversation. 

Crystal: That's a really good question, because it has been at least a decade that people have been talking about the need for a greater diversity in Children's literature and although there have been articles about it, although there are some black books on the market, there still are not a lot and it's for so many different reasons. Although a lot more people have been able to use self publishing as an avenue to publish books that are more diverse, when you self publish, it's very hard to get your books actually sold in stores. You want your book to be widely available to people, you want your book to have the same status as a lot of the other books that are out there. So what I've been seeing is that a lot of the mainstream publishers, while they may have increased a little bit, the publishing of books that feature black characters, it's very much something it seems like they do just so they can hit the numbers and say, See, we published this one book, we published one book with one black character, so you should be happy. 

And the thing is, we are so far behind in Children's literature when it comes to diversity, that one book is not enough. We need books that hit on all sorts of subjects and topics that Children experience. Something as simple as potty training, something as simple as I'm a big Brother, I'm a big sister. I published a book in a I’m Big Sister and Big Brother series and people were in the Amazon Reviews so blown away saying, wow, I've never been able to find a book with a black character that talked about becoming a big brother or big sister and it seems so basic. But the way that the traditional publishers are publishing books and just doing one or two and feeling like they fulfilled that need, really reflects the reason it's still needed. 

We haven't had enough books that have been published. We don't have enough indie publishers who are being picked up by the traditional publishers - people who've had success, including myself, someone who's had so much success self publishing. So many people love my books. I've never once had a traditional publisher reach out to me and say, Hey, I'm really loving what you've been doing. I would love to get you to do some additional books for our publishing company. 

Mindy: It's so true. What you're saying about for instance, those little corners of life, like I'm a big brother, I'm a big sister, I'm the little sister. I was a Children's librarian for about 14 years. And one of the things I did for the district was I rehauled the way the entire elementary library was organized. It needed a lot of help and I went in there and just took everything off the shelves and redid the entire thing. One of the things that I ended up doing was creating a section that was for some special moments in life. So there were books like my parents are getting divorced, my grandmother died. My best friend moved away. I have to get glasses. I have to get braces. My dog died... any life moment. And those aren't just happening to white kids. Right? So I think it's so important. 

We talk a lot about Children needing to see themselves represented in literature, but you're right about that band Aid where it's like the traditional publishing model, they release so many books a season and very much they are still leaning on the, well we have our black book for this season. We have our indian book, we have it, you know, check box. The kid that has to worry about their weight and not have a book that shows themselves as a Black kid or an Indian kid or whatever their skin color is, to have the book that is about what their particular issue is and to have the character look like them. I can't even imagine the weight, the immense good that that would do for a child. 

Crystal: Absolutely. I've talked a lot about the invisibility of Black Children and Children's books and it really makes a difference. It really stands out in ways that as adults, we might not realize. An example of that is I have a book called I'm a Pretty Princess. Now, I wrote this book because it's pretty hard to find Black Princess and it is very hard to find black princess books. And the thing is when you don't have very many black princesses or any at all, that kids get to see. Guess what? They end up thinking that they can't be a princess. 

So I had a parent reach out to me, she was very upset. She said that she bought her daughter my book and she's reading it with her and her daughter is like, no, this can't be me, I can't be a pretty princess. You know, her mom's like, hyping her up, like, Oh look at you, you know, you're pretty princess too! And she says, I can't be a princess. And her mom says, well why? And she says, because I'm not white. 

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That is what it does when kids don't get to see themselves in books. And of course, I mean, a princess, you know, there are real life princesses, but even if you take that to something that's more real life, more realistic and you look at something like careers. Okay, what about black characters that are doctors and nurses, or engineers or astronauts? The President? When you don't get to see these things, you automatically feel like if you're not seeing it is because I can't be it. You know, maybe this profession, maybe this happiness, this joy that I see kids having in these other books is limited to them. And it doesn't extend to me because I'm black or because I'm whatever, right? So that's why it's so important. 

And kids really do realize when they see these books, they see skin color, you know? They might not even be able to express what they're seeing, but they do see it and they see differences. Kids see colors, they see differences at a very early age. It's something that's so important to me and I really struggle with trying to explain it to people because there is a percentage of the population that is very anti the types of books that I'm writing. 

I have received hate mail over my books. I had an Amazon commercial that was nationally televised and it was all over the place. It got so many views. And the commercial shows me, you know, this was Amazon highlighting a small business that sells on Amazon. So the commercial shows me and I'm showing my books and I say that I write books that normalize Black girl Magic, and black boy joy. I get literally, I mean every time I open my email there was someone saying, oh you shouldn't be writing books with black characters, You should write books with all characters. You shouldn't be making race an issue. Whereas in none of my books is Race even mentioned. It's just a black character just being black and living their lives, right? 

So I got so much hate mail. And even on my Youtube channel, whenever I talk about my books, there's someone that comes along and they say that race is no longer important. I should not be writing black Children's books. Books that make sure that there is a black character, you know, at the start. And the thing is where were you, when all of these books were created that had nothing but white characters, you weren't saying anything. Then you weren't saying oh all Children matter. All colors matter. You didn't say anything until you saw me publishing books with black characters and you felt a way about it. So it's very difficult.

I completely understand why from a financial perspective you have a lot of the mainstream publishers who don't want to publish a whole bunch of books with black characters. It's because they don't want to publish these books and not get a lot of sales. In my experience, white people don't buy books with black characters. When you go into a bookstore, first of all, the way that they even place our books to begin with is in an African American section or an urban section. And it's very much removed from the rest of the books. So you have to actually intentionally wander over to that section to find a book with the black character. They're not just aligned with the rest of the books on the bookshelf in the genre appropriate section. They're put in their own little section. It tells people that, oh I don't need to buy this book unless I am Black or unless it's Black history month and I want to do something special for my school or you know. And that's a big part of the issue. So the sales of black books are not going to be as high because again, if only 12 or 13% of the population will purchase a book, you're already doomed. 

That's one of the really big difficulties that we still have to overcome. I've seen this happen in real life when I was vending my books. I used to do a lot of shows, a lot of exhibits and things like that where I would take my books and I would sell them at festivals and things. I saw a white father and his two kids, a boy and a girl. And the kids are looking at my table because I have a beautiful display with all of my books and they can tell it’s Children's books. So the kids are like, daddy daddy and they're trying to pull him over to my table. He looks and he sees - I assume that the books have black characters and he pulls them away, like he doesn't let them come over to the table. I've read an article about a woman who bought a baby book, right? That had a black character on it and took it to a white woman, her friend, her friend's baby shower and the lady looked at her like she was crazy. Like why would you buy my white baby this black baby book? 

So we still have a lot to overcome. We really still have to make it known that Children need to be reading books with all characters, all colors. It shouldn't just be that you're only buying books in the same way that black parents buy Children's books that have both white and black characters. And a lot of it is out of default because it's very difficult to even find black Children's books in the first place. Everyone should be reading books with characters that don't look like them, characters that do and that don't. They need to get that perspective so that when kids go to school and they meet other kids they're not so fascinated with - So why does your skin this color? Why does your hair look like that? Kids, they only do that because they're not used to seeing other kids that don't look like them. So when you create an environment in your household where all of your reading literature is of characters that look like your child, you're actually doing them a disservice and it's something that carries on throughout their lives as well. 

Mindy: I just particularly want to talk about, like you were saying, the father who pulled his kids away from your table, like, no, that's not for you. That instant othering is so harmful. And I'm not sure that people realize that even having that separate section in the bookstore, some people - white people particularly - might look at it and be like, oh look, that's great. There's a whole section for Black kids. It's like, no, they should just be in with regular books. Like there is a section for Black kids, maybe the intent is celebratory, but it's still pure and total segregation and that is affecting discoverability. 

Crystal: Exactly. 

Mindy: I mean, I am in the publishing industry, so I'm aware of what's being published and what's out and what's new and what's been done, typically in the YA sector. That's where I operate. I know very, very little about what's going on in Children's publishing. And that's kind of how publishing works, you’re active in usually one area. So when I am going to buy, for example, a book for a baby shower… which one of the things that people do now, which I think is really cool, is that instead of bringing a card, they ask for a book and to write message for the baby or the mom inside of the book and kind of to build a library for the infant, which I think is super cool. 

But when this happens when I'm invited to a baby shower, I don't know what the hot books are right now in Children's publishing. So I'm going to walk into the Barnes and Noble or whatever and I'm going to go back to the Children's section and it's pure discoverability where I'm standing there browsing and I'm going to be exposed to all of these books for the first time. So you're totally right. There is a section for white books and the Black books, I as a white person, would more than likely be buying a book for a white mother. I'm just going to go towards those books. But if the books are all in one place and it's just - these are books for Children, they're all going to be in front of me and I have the literal discoverability of being like, oh look at this one, right? And that child then grows up with a book showing kids of different colors and just like you're saying, don't have to be surprised when they go into the real world and see people that don't look like them. It's just that representation is so important in the growth of that child that it can't be overstated. 

Crystal: Exactly. 

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Crystal: This is a subject I'm so passionate about and it does make me sad because I feel like this is a fight that's been going on for so long and even when it comes to doing interviews and podcasts, this is something that I talk about a lot and you know, honestly sometimes I feel like, gosh, I'm tired of talking about this. Like I want to talk about it because it's still needed. But why do I still have to talk about the lack of diversity in Children's books? It's very frustrating. 

I have a facebook group of predominantly women and largely underrepresented women. When it comes to publishing, the group is open to everyone, but the people who tend to join do tend to be black women because they see me and I am a black woman. So one of the things that I see is right now, I've taught them how to publish books, how to write and publish their own Children's books. And I am so blown away by them because a lot of those gaps that we talked about, they are filling those gaps. So, you know, they're writing books about autism and these books have black characters. They're writing books about various diseases and cancer and depression and going to the dentist and just the things that we don't get to see when you go into a bookstore. 

But I feel like, okay, I've taught them how to do this, they're doing it and they're doing it well. But how can I get, how can I help increase the discoverability of their books? Because it's not enough to just write the book. Write the book, but how do you get it in front of the people who need to see it? So it's something that I struggle with because there's no easy way to find these books, even once they're online if they're on amazon or if they're sold an independent bookstores that may or may not pick them up, it still becomes a matter of, you know, a lot of parents are still having difficulties finding the books because when they go to the bookstore as a lot of people do, they're not seeing them. 

I would love to see a change. And even the bookstores, you know, maybe there is a mission to really focus on indie publishers. And all right, we've got this black book section. Maybe we just have an independent publisher section where now you can find books that maybe you wouldn't typically find in the store because they're not traditionally published, but they're very high quality, very excellent books. And now you have a means to discover some of these books that you wouldn't have found otherwise. 

Mindy: So true. It's an uphill battle and you've got two hills there because, I'm familiar with indie publishing and how very very very difficult it is to get eyeballs on your book. It literally is just a matter of in some cases money, you gotta spend money to make money, but you can dump money into ads and it can help, but a lot of people don't have the ability to do that upfront. And that's a major key, especially for an indie author or a self published author to grow awareness. Because like you're saying they don't have a space in your traditional bookstore. 

The other part of your battle there in just making these books visible is of course the race question, but also it's so difficult to market. You're not targeting the Children themselves, you are targeting the parents, librarians, educators. It's very, very hard in terms of tweaking and ads, knowing where to put your ad space, things like that. When it comes to indie publishing and Children's indie publishing, you're not even marketing directly to your readers, a kid. You don't have that moment where a kid sees something and says Mommy Daddy or look I want this. That's what drives parents spending when the kid says, I want this. What a difficult space to be in. 

Crystal: It's very difficult. And you mentioned ads and even when you look at buying ads, let's say they're for Facebook or they’re for Amazon or wherever they are. You have another difficulty there because a lot of these pay per play, a lot of these ads, companies are not letting you, they're no longer letting you target your audience by race.

Mindy: Really?? 

Crystal: Mm hmm. Yeah. So Facebook used to let you target by race. People were using it for nefarious means. You know there's always somebody doing something horrible, right? There are kind of ways to get around it by just targeting magazines or things that you think a black person might read, right? Or tv shows you think only black people will watch. There are some ways that you can kind of get around it. But because of that it makes it even more difficult to target the actual audience that is more likely to purchase. So you don't want to just run ads and waste clicks or run ads and end up getting, you know, the negative comments from the non black people who are like how dare you publish a book with the black character, you know? So even running ads can be difficult. 

It's very tough. It really is and it's something I've been trying to figure out for myself. You know what is the best way? This is something I'm actively tackling. What is the best way, what will resonate the most to get these books greater discoverability? Honestly, it's very stressful. But I am happy that we do have more and more people who are publishing books and who are publishing books with black characters. Even if they are independent publishers, the books still exist and that's half the battle. And now it's just getting people to know that these books exist and then going from there. 

Mindy: Do you have any aspirations for reaching out to the larger publishing industry, the traditional Big Five? Or have you just found that those particular doors and windows aren't as perhaps open as they should be? 

Crystal: So I don't have any aspirations of reaching out. If one of the Big Five were to reach out to me, then I would be very happy to discuss whatever they wanted to discuss and see where we could go from there. But for me, when I look at what they're publishing, that pretty much tells me all I need to know. It tells me that they're not interested in publishing the quantity of diverse books that should be on the market. And I'm not one to beg for a seat at the table. I'm going to make my own table, right? I don't even want to sit at the table. I don't want to bring a chair, I'm just gonna build my own table. 

And so that's what I've done. It's been going extremely well. And I think that's one of the things a lot of people don't realize is that self publishing now is something that you can do and you can be very successful at. Yes, it does take work, but you can actually earn a very nice living by self publishing. So you don't have to be so worried about, let's say you did try to get your manuscript picked up and it never did get picked up. Well, okay, have you ever considered self publishing your book? Because a lot of the books that we write, our books are so important and books that can can really and truly change lives and have an impact. So, I hate hearing about people who are so afraid of self publishing because oh, it's not a real book or it's not considered to be as important or as high quality as the others. I hate that people let that bias hold them back from actually putting out the book that they wrote and that could actually change lives. 

Mindy: I agree, completely. Self publishing has changed dramatically. There is still some bias out there. But 10, 15 years ago, very much the concept of self publishing was that these were the people that couldn't make it. That wasn't true then, and it's certainly not true now. You can find some really great stuff. And unfortunately, like we talked about, that is where you might find more of the multicultural and the representation. Because some big five publishers, if not all, are maybe just ticking a box when they're releasing their winter titles or their spring titles. And you've got your one black kids book for this season. In the meantime, there are probably a proliferation of them out there, self published, indie published online. 

You were talking about doing festivals. So, tell me a little bit about that. Like with your publishing company, Goldest Karat publishing, Is that a shingle for your own books? You mentioned you have a Facebook page that you help encourage other authors to get their Children's books with diversity out into the world and to be created in the first place. Do you accept submissions or is that a shingle for your own titles? 

Crystal: So, it started out that I would accept submissions. I published my first book through Goldest Karat Publishing, and then I published a couple of other books from a professor at Howard University. Then I decided that I didn't like it. I decided that I didn't like it because when you publish someone else now, you need to Take royalties right? A pretty significant amount of royalties. It ends up being like around 40 or 50% or sometimes higher. 

And what I didn't like about that was one, of course you're fronting all the expenses of publication. But if your author is not doing any work to really promote the books, then you can end up losing money. It just seems very, very risky. So, like, they end up with the book, but you might not actually end up recouping your investment. And then of course, the part about having to maintain for the rest of my life, having to track royalties and send a royalty check. 

And especially at the time, because I guess this was around probably around 2014 that I took on a client and published their book. And at that time there was really no good royalty tracking system. Everything was very outdated, nothing was automated, you know, where you can just connect to Paypal and send out the money or whatever. So I shut that down. Now, Goldest Karat publishing is basically what I use for all of my own books. 

So then after that, I decided, okay, I'm not going to actually run a publishing company where people publish through my company. Now, I'm going to help people self publish through their own company. What that looked like is people would send me their manuscript, they would hire me to bring their book to life, but then their book would be uploaded and sold online and they would get to maintain 100% of their royalties. There was no cut. Like after the book was out, that was it. I did that for a few years, very successfully published a lot of people's books. And it was good, until it wasn't. Because it's something that you can't really scale. It’s very hard to have so many different clients and you're dealing with so many different illustrators and client expectations. And so in 2020, I took my last client and pretty much wrapped them up around the end of the year. 

So what I do now, I basically teach other people how to do the process that I did, that clients paid me to do, right? So instead of you having to pay me $4500 to publish your children's book, I'm going to teach you how to do this entire process yourself. So instead of you paying me, you can save that money and then you can get your book published for much less than that if you need to. It's all based on different people's budgets. But I find that that made it more accessible for people Who maybe didn't have $4500. 

The other thing is I encourage people to publish as many books as possible. That's how you get to the real money in publishing. It's not by publishing one book, it's by publishing numerous books. And so for me, the thought of someone having to pay me thousands of dollars for every single book that they wanted to publish. I didn't like it, it just didn't sit well with me. 

So that's when I created this group and started doing things like free challenges. And that's how I got a lot of people into the group, as I would do these free challenges and I would teach them for five days for free, the step by step process to publishing their book. And then after that if they wanted to take my course, get more information, more advanced information they could. But a lot of people have been publishing off of the free content that I provide. So that makes me really happy. Out of all the different means that I've tried as far as working in the publishing industry. This is my favorite way of empowering women to publish their own books on their own terms. 

Mindy: That's awesome. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I also do freelance editing on the side. I have a single where I help people just with the actual content of novels. It's funny to me how connected you can feel to the work once you've been in it, even though it's not yours. There are times when I'll be working with someone and they'll ask me like, you know, would you look at this again and you know, it's not cheap. And so there are times when I feel bad taking people's money, but you know, at the same time obviously this is a business that I am trying to make a living off of. Last thing, why don't you share with us, specifically the Facebook group, how to find it, what the name is, how to join. But then also where people can find you online and where listeners can find your books. 

Crystal: Sure. So, well I have a long name, so I'm going to apologize in advance for that. All of my books can be found, my handle everywhere is @CSwainBates. So I'll spell it. It's C S W A I N B A T E S. It's my first initial and my last name without the hyphen. 

Now I did make it easier for my Facebook group. The group is called Six Figure Self Publishing Secrets. And you can actually access it easily by just typing in Crystal on FB - Facebook. Crystal on FB and that group will pop right up. So far, we're at over 6000 members strong, it’s very exciting to be in the group. And if you're interested in finding any of my courses you can find those at publish with Crystal dot com

Mindy: That all sounds wonderful. I am sitting here thinking about what your workday must look like and I'm sure it is overwhelming.

Crystal: My work day... It really can be a lot. But I feel like there's author Crystal Swain Bates, book coach and motivator publishing expert Crystal Swain Bates. There's diversity, Publishing pro Crystal Swain Bates, to write all these things and talk to all these people about publishing and diversity and then there's entrepreneur Crystal Swain Bates because I'm always kind of working on something new. So it can be a lot to do. But the thing is when you love what you're doing, none of it feels like work. My days could be busy, but it doesn't feel like work, it just feels like, well I have lots of things on my calendar today, but I love it, I love it, I love it. And seeing the impact for me is really what makes it all worth 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.