Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.
Mindy: Today's guest is Shayne Leighton, editor in chief of Parliament House Press, an indie press specializing in science fiction and fantasy. Join us for a conversation about the benefits of working with an indie, discuss the occasional disparagement of genre writers and their fiction, as well as the effects of covid, The Pandemic and the new normal have affected both the traditional and the indie publishing industry. Midway through the episode, enjoy a conversation with our sponsor I, Ally, a new app specifically designed for family caregivers.
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Mindy: We're here with Shane Layton, who is the editor in chief of Parliament House a fairly new publisher located in Florida that deals specifically with science fiction and fantasy. So we're gonna talk a little bit about Parliament House specifically here in the beginning of the episode, and then later on, we're going to talk about publishing in general. But why don't we start with you telling us a little bit more about Parliament House? What it is, what it's all about.
Shayne: Parliament House came about, it is the brainchild of myself and my good friend Chantal Gadoury. We put our heads together about four years ago, and specifically we were having a conversation about the current marketplace and especially what is missing within the independent publishing community. You know, I find that publishing in general is very steeped in mystery. A lot of authors don't have a good grasp on, I guess, the ins and outs sometimes and and some of the gate keeping. And I think while some of that is necessary, I think that there could be a little bit more communication and accessibility. So we were just having that conversation, and I was a hybrid author. I was traditionally published and also independently published, so we're having a conversation.
And our first love in literature is, of course, fantasy and science fiction. I said, what if we started a publishing company? You know, it just kind of like a crazy idea, like a cockamamie thing. Like what if we did this? Because I think between the two of us, we have some really great knowledge. I think if we find people to join our team who are smarter than us and surround ourselves with people who are smarter and better than us, I think that we could, you know, do something really great.
One of my personal heroes in just pop culture in general is Guillermo del Toro. His whole stance is, you know, being at home with the monsters and being accepting of all different types of personalities - people, creatures, what have you, however you identify. He has made a home for, like, the wonderfully weird. And that's what I personally wanted to do for publishing. That's how the Parliament house was kind of born was just the way any other good novel is born, which is you ask a “what if” question. What if this were possible or what if this was A real thing. And then we made it into a real thing. And now, four years later, it's growing. There have been some growing pains, of course but it's doing really well. We hope to continue doing well and really excited about the future.
Mindy: There definitely needs to be more transparency in publishing. It's interesting to me. I've been traditionally published since 2013. There are things I don't know, I just don't know. So, for example, I don't know when the publisher sells a copy of my audiobook To a library. I don't know what it costs and how much of that cut I get. Like, if that was the question that just came up the other day with friends of mine. I could find the answer. I could ask and find out. Certainly. I mean, it's not like anybody would refuse to tell me, but there are so many at the basic level questions that could easily be answered. And it's not going to harm the publishing industry to share a little bit more.
Shayne: Absolutely.
Mindy: People that are outside of the industry, they'll ask, you know, how is the new book doing? And I'm like, Yeah, I don't know, and they're completely shocked by that, And I have to explain. Look, I won't know until I get my royalty report in six months. And they’re six months behind in timing. So I actually won't know how the book's doing for about a year. As far as like, hard numbers and people are generally shocked by that. Now I do have friends who have gone, have wandered into the self publishing world, and they tell me that there is kind of a double edged blade there in being able to have daily reports on how many books you've sold because it can get a little bit anxiety producing when you can see the immediate feedback of everything that you're doing or not doing. It can also be too much information. Interesting question. I mean, I do think that publishing it would not hurt anyone to be a little more forthcoming. I also understand that if I knew daily what my sell rate was, I might go a little bit crazy.
Shayne: If you're working with a small independent publisher like you know, let's say you were working with the Parliament House. There's a little bit of a co op energy that goes on there. I think more so than like working with a major trad publisher, Um that, in my opinion, tends to be a little bit sterile just because they have so many things that they're dealing with, of course, but you get the benefit of having that big marketing machine behind you sometimes. Not every time, of course, but that that's kind of industry misconception is that, you know, if you are a part of a major trad publisher, that you're gonna be an overnight rock star, which you know can definitely happen, and it's more likely to happen in that situation. But it's not always the case.
I strive To be as communicative as possible with our authors. So, like just this morning, I got an email from one of our authors like, Hey, I would love an update as to how you know my title is doing, and so that's pretty easy for me to see. I just go into our distributor dashboard. I have a look. I can send her a screen grab and you know we have a good understanding and a good back and forth. I know not every publisher is willing to do that. We do that because we heavily rely on working hand in hand with our authors from a marketing standpoint, I mean, yes, we absolutely do have our marketing team, somebody who's sending out your press release trying to get publicity for you. We absolutely do have all of that in place. That's our job. That's why we're here. But because we don't have that big marketing machine behind us, we need that help, and we need to work hand in hand with our author.
So it's like I find that the authors, who are more involved, have a little bit of a louder voice are asking more questions are actively coming up with their own kind of marketing ideas. The more that happens, the more we have to build off of and to support and and bolster those efforts. Amazon, I know is, you know, their royalties are deferred by I think it's 60 days. Um, a couple of other stores are deferred as well, so it's like, you know, your publisher has to wait, just like you have to wait. But if I can see something and share that with you currently, while we're working together, To make a plan to get your book to the right readers, then why not do that?
I always tell incoming authors who have questions like, you know, why should I go with an independent publisher? Like sometimes I get that question. You can find success. Each Publishing avenue can benefit different types of personalities and different types of authors. You know, some authors are better off to self publish, and they will do wonderfully. One of my really good friends is Shelly Crane, who wrote Significance, Wide Awake. She's a New York Times best selling author. She did that all on her own. She is self published, and she is phenomenal. Some authors, like To have that kind of intimate community, that team behind you, that collaborative effort. Recently, we've achieved a couple of cool things for our authors. So we got our first starred review with Publishers Weekly, which was really cool. Yeah, so there's definitely benefits To having that that team behind you and that publisher behind you so you know, or if you want to go the traditional route absolutely do that. But I, you know, anybody who dismisses self publishing as a way to find success. I think that's BS. I think that different things are right for different people, and the only way that you're going to know is if you try to, get the experience from all of those.
Mindy: I know just from my experience in the trad world, I am very active, even though I'm published by HarperCollins. I'm very active with my own promotions and doing events and making myself visible and doing, speaking and writing classes. I’m very active or used to be more active on social media. But I'm always there, and I'm always doing everything I can every day to draw attention to my books. I do believe that I move the needle, but I have no indicators of how much. So, for example, I used To do a physical mailing. My books have had luck in different states with winning like library in awards and things like that. And so in states where I have won awards, I have a database of libraries in that state, and I started doing physical mailings.
Shayne: I don't know if you can hear that I live in a condo building and of course, they're deciding to drill right now.
Mindy: I personally think that having like little noises actually makes it more conversational for the listeners so it's not a problem.
But I would do these physical mailings of postcards to libraries all across the state, every single public library in my own state. But then I'd won some awards in Maryland and I won an award in Oklahoma. And so I had at one point like a very significant thousands, I think 3 to 4000 mailers that I would send. And so getting them printed, postage, mailing those out that got expensive and time consuming like I had no way to measure. Are these physical mailings doing any good at all? Is anyone even noticing them? Are they ending up in a trash can? Like I have no idea, because I don't have immediate feedback on sales. I can't see that boost because a lot of the people that I'm mailing To are library, school and library people. And so you know those sales are going through, probably Ingram. And so I just don't have access to that data.
Now for my newest release, which was this March, I never actually did a physical mailing. Well, I spoke with my editor and he was like, I can't say whether or not it's even putting a bump in there because I said to him, I was like, Maybe you could get me like I'll tell you when I send them and you can tell me if there's a bump. And he was basically like, I don't even know if we can get that information, kind of thing. Well, maybe it's just not worth it. And then this, of course you March was when my new book came out and the entire nation was in flux, so I just didn't do the mailing. It's difficult when you have things that you do that you really put a lot of effort into, and you simply don't know if they're working. And I think having access to numbers through an indie publisher like that. So if one of your authors did something like that, if they were mailing out 3 to 4000 postcards, you would know if it was having an effect, I would assume?
Shayne: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think I could see that right away, but I think their efforts, if they were to mail out postcards. It would be a little bit of a different situation. I mean, they might mail it to like industry professionals like you, said librarians and things like that. But I think for them, you know their efforts would be geared more directly to the reader, as opposed To like an industry person. And that's that's a major difference in Trad pub vs Indy versus Self. We’re down here trying to talk directly to the reader, whereas with your experience, its’ more of a business to business kind of a thing.
But yeah, if they were to do something similar to that, then of course, firstly, I mean, they can see their Amazon rankings fluctuate. I mean, so many of my authors revolve their day around their Amazon rankings. Like watch it, watch it like the stocks and try to try to measure it that way. But, yeah, it's for us, It's pretty instantaneous, or it had been pretty instantaneous. Um, we have been working with more of an independent distribution service in the past that anybody can really access. Our digital catalog was picked up by IPG. So we are headed in the direction of becoming more of a mid level publisher, which is my personal goal. Things will change. I don't know how things are going to change yet. That remains to be seen. But it’a definitely been a very cool experience so far. I've learned a lot, so we'll see what happens.
Mindy: Very cool. So the next thing I want to talk to you about deals more with genre because I have a lot of friends in the industry who are specifically genre writers. Now I am a YA author and I Can Tell you as someone that writes for teens, that writing for Children and teens is often looked down upon by people that write for adults and even readership. I've had readers, People that aren't in the industry ask me, So when are you going to write a real book? You know this book is pretty real. If I hit you with it, it'll hurt. It could be really frustrating, and I know that genre authors, their craft tends to be looked down upon a little bit more simply because of being genre writing, Sci-Fi or writing fantasy and I have many friends that are genre authors that are highly frustrated with that, and I understand completely. I know that readers can be segregated in that If you're a sci fi reader, you just read SciFi. Fantasy readers just read fantasy, and I think that may be part of it, is that you see occasionally those pockets of readers that only read the one thing and they don't wander outside of that genre. I was just really curious about your take on that, about the perception of genre, any genre writing, being “less than.”
Shayne: I haven't come up against anything personally like that Yet. I don't think we have been in the environment that would lend itself to that kind of criticism yet. But I have heard similar things from colleagues and friends that you know are working with the larger Trad or, like, you know, in kind of different circles. So I have heard that in the past. It’s super unfortunate. I agree. Every book is a real book. I mean, every author pours their blood sweat and tears into their story. So what determines a real book? When you're, you know, laboring over your words. Um, like, for instance, obviously I know JK Rowling is in a bunch of hot water right now, but like, but I do want to bring up Harry Potter, just just as a book, you know, regardless of her. That's a fantasy, obviously, and it's written for Children. It grew into an adult series as the readers grew up, which I think was done very well.
That's a story that has transcended demographic. If an author can write something, if you can transcend demographics and if you can reach your readers so thoroughly, and if your book means so much to people the way that that did, then that's a real book. I'm going to be 30 next month. I still read I Love YA. If you can kind of blur the lines between what is YA, then there's that whole argument about New Adult. Is that a genre? My argument is that it absolutely is. I know a lot of the major publishers have yet to accept it, but you can't deny the fact that it is a category right now on Amazon, particularly in romance. But hopefully that will change and it sells like crazy. I mean, you can't deny those sales numbers. I think it's all valid. I think that the industry needs to be much more accepting.
Mindy: Well, and I think readers in general need to be much more accepting. I freely admit, To, being at one time what my sister called a lit bitch and and Harry Potter is what broke me out of that. I was in college and I was an English major. And so, you know, I wasn't necessarily just reading the classics. But, you know, I was reading Don DeLillo and I was reading really heavy stuff, but I was not reading. I mean, I would not categorize genres, something I looked down on, but popular fiction. I was just like, No, I'm not gonna read that.
The one thing that I admit, To having almost a complete fetishization of, was the Outlander books. And I love, I love telling people that I was reading Outlander in the nineties. So screw you, everybody. They got here 20 years later, but, um, I freaking love the Outlander books. And the thing about Outlander is that they're amazingly well written. She is an amazing writer. Everything about them really is truly next level craft. But when you try to pitch it to people just as a reader and this was 20 years ago. I'd be like, Okay, I have a book recommendation for you. It's amazing. I need you to read it. And they'd be like, What is it about? I'm like, Okay, you have to ignore the first sentence and just work with me -- Time travel, romance. And they're just like, Okay, right, you know, and I'm like, No, it's really good. You need to read it.
So my sister would really blow me off about Outlander, and I would really blow her off about Game of Thrones and Harry Potter. And finally, she was like, You know what? You read Harry Potter or Game of Thrones and I'll read Outlander. It was over a summer, you know, spending time at the pool. And I was like, Okay, all right. And both of us end up having 2,3,4,5 hour long conversations about these books each of us had dismissed.
Shayne: That’s wonderful. Like that just gave me chills, though, because that's that's what it should be. I wish there were, there was more of that in the world. Like, you know, I feel like on your bookshelf, you can simultaneously have A key spot for The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Right, You could read that. And then right next to it, you can have, like the Harry Potter series right, Because it's like you can. Why not?
Mindy: Of course you can. And you don't have to hide Harry Potter when people come over. I mean, I was in my early twenties, and so I just really thought I was super smart. And, um, you know, ended up just like, really enjoying Harry Potter and and being someone that didn't even pick him up until the fourth book came out. And then, on July 7th of 2007 standing by my mailbox, waiting for my book, you know, waiting for the seventh book. I'm really glad that I had the experience. I have friends that have wandered into the self publishing and the indie industry, and, you know, they would tell you, you know, what I write is fluff. It's paying their house payment every month. So, whatever you know.
Shayne: I wish readers would give the independently published novel more of a chance because, you know, yes, there's a lot of rough manuscripts that make it to the marketplace that probably shouldn't. But at the same time, there are a lot of gems in there, too. And it just so happens. Yeah, so, like, just in the same way as maybe you know, somebody not wanting to pick up a YA fantasy book or whatever, because their tastes are more refined or sophisticated, like you mentioned. Same thing goes for the book that is not majorly published or majorly distributed. So I really urge people To be more adventurous about what they're reading. I hope one day readers become a little bit more adventurous.
Mindy: I used to work in a high school library. I worked in there for 14 years, and one of the things that we would do was we called it Blind Book date, and we would wrap, uh, books in paper bags from the store, cover them up, cover the cover, and then we would write on the outside. You know, boy finds out secret past and must face down huge enemy, or, you know, something like that. Like we would put a really vague description or put, you know, ah, love story about an assassin, you know, or something like that so that the readers wouldn't know what the genre was and they couldn't see the cover. They couldn't have that preconceived notion. We just believe this is what the book is about. And we would have so many kids that would pick up a book that otherwise they would have never have picked up and wander into a genre they may have never read because of that.
Mindy: Join us now for a quick conversation with our sponsor I, Ally, a new app designed for family caregivers. I'm here with Lucinda Koza, who is the creator of an app called I Ally, which is A, holistic support app for family caregivers. So, Lucinda, why don't you tell us a little bit about what the APP does, what its purpose is and how you came to create it.
Lucinda: So I created I, Ally After I became my father's full time caregiver in late 2018 he had suffered several strokes and I became his caregiver, even though I had siblings and other people that I expected to help out in this situation, which I found out since is really common, just all fell on me on one person, usually female as well. I had a really, really tough time, and I noticed a really lack of advocacy and support and any sort of resource is for the family caregiver. Specifically, there were social workers and their job was to help the hospital or the health insurance. There was no one that will ask me if I was okay or if I could even accomplish the tasks that were being asked of me, especially when the pandemic started. I just thought, This is unacceptable. I have to create something. There are so many of us. There are over 40 million unpaid family caregivers in the US alone. We're just invisible. Well, we need to be connected to each other. At least if we're invisible to everyone else, we have to be visible to each other.
I created I Ally as a way for us to connect and provide mutual aid and support, but not just support, but actually action based solutions and resources. since its creation, I've been able to implement financial courses, financial literacy courses, legal counsel, along with legal matching service. So it matches you with someone in your state. There's Access To mental health treatment through chat therapy as well. And obviously telehealth. And then also you could meet your therapist in a park and do sort of like a walk and talk therapy session, which is particularly helpful for someone like a family caregiver who does not have time or flexibility To devote to their own care. I've been able to add all of these different elements, like digital matching service for available clinical trials for your patient. So there's lots of really cool resources that are involved. My mission is to just empower the caregiver. Finally, and I feel like we should be treated that way by all of these companies that are vying for our money and our attention and all of those things.
Mindy: It's so true you were saying, especially females. It lands on our laps. I know that my ex, his mother lost one husband and had been remarried and nursed her second husband through a long Series of health problems. And then he passed away, and then her brother had become ill and been ill for a while when his doctor actually suggested to him, Why don't you just move in with your sister?
Lucinda: No.
Mindy: Yeah. Never bringing her wants or needs or life into account. Just simply, you know, she's a retired older woman. I'm sure she would just love to take care of you. And I was very proud of her because she just said no, I have done this twice. It's time for me, To go have my own life. And she herself was a breast cancer survivor who went through her own trials. And it was just like, No, I am not going to sacrifice myself yet again. And I was very proud of her for that and also shocked at the suggestion from a perfect stranger that this woman's life become essentially a servant. Yet again, To someone that was ill. You're, you're so right. And so many skills in so many emotional responses and so many things that are paid in the nursing and health sector that fall upon, usually women, who are not paid for this care. We are expected to be selfless in these situations, and that's a lot.
Lucinda: Absolutely yes, it's an automatic expectation that we will serve if we don't want to complete these tasks or perform this full time job for no pay. It's like something's wrong with us.
Mindy: Your responsibility by default, which is certainly not a copasetic situation for anyone. And if you choose to pass on this great opportunity, then it is a reflection upon you and I don't know, maybe lack of compassion when instead you're simply standing up for yourself and saying, No, I don't, I don't want this. I think it's wonderful that you've created this app again. It is called I Ally, and it is a holistic support app for family caregivers. As Lucinda said, it connects users to, mutual aid, administrative advocacy, telehealth. There's also a database of providers financial and legal counsel, access to clinical trials and, of course, just the community of other caregivers and people who are in this situation. So thank you so much for coming onto the show and for the opportunity to share with my listeners about your app, I Ally.
Lucinda: Thank you. Thank you so much.
Mindy: So I want to shift gears now and talk about publishing in general and specifically about COVID because we've been doing this for six months now. I know what the effect has been on the trad market because I was touring my last book. My most recent book, released on March 3rd, and I came home from a week of touring and the country shut down. I was supposed to be. I had things scheduled. My publisher had things scheduled for me, but I also personally had scheduled things for about six weeks straight. I was simply not going to be home, and we got one weekend and everything shut down. So I lost so many, so many opportunities, literally thousands of people. When you bring it all together that I would have been in front of personally speaking about my book, putting it in their hands, putting it in front of them. I lost that ability, and that loss has continued now for six months.
Obviously, we could talk about the fact that book stores were closed for a long period of time and that, I mean, has an immediate and very real effect on my sales. But I am a personable person. I can hand sell a book. I will have my schedule as packed as I can with library events, teaching, writing classes, doing school visits, and that was a major source of income for me, a speaker. But then also, of course you know, selling my books and having a bookseller there. All of that has been lost to me. I have a long enough tail that being my 10th book, that my backlist is gonna be okay. You know, I'll get through this. But I know a lot of brand new writers who, you know, like right out of the gate A trapdoor opened up underneath them. I would just love to hear about covid from the other side of the desk. Talk to me about covid and and the epidemic from a publisher standpoint.
Shayne: Absolutely. Because I have a completely different perspective. But I will say that A good friend of mine, who was actually published through us. But then recently kind of rebranded herself as, a thriller writer and then was published through Pegasus. Yeah, she had a similar experience. She was supposed to go on tour. It's her first novel as a you know, as a major trad author on tour, she had all these expectations and of course, that didn't come to fruition this year. And so we were just talking about that, too. And I'm sorry to hear that that happened to you, by the way. I mean, it's amazing that that's your 10th book, but I know that that doesn't diminish the excitement and what you hope tp surround your release. So I'm very sorry, I hope that somehow in 2021 when we're coming back from all of this, fingers crossed that that happens.
But anyway, so from my perspective, in a weird way, in some way it's been beneficial because it has caused everybody especially back in, like March in April to slow down when everybody was in their house is re centering their lives around family and simpler things simply because they couldn't go and do anything else. Um, there were a lot more people who were reading and reading voraciously, and, um, you know, being locked in their houses, I think, prompted them to become more adventurous. And so like we rely a lot on our instagram presence and ah, lot of people were kind of perusing social media locked in their houses, and they would say they would see, you know, maybe a post about one of our books coming out and oh, this looks interesting. Let's let me download this because now you know I have time to read in the evenings.
From that standpoint, it has been very beneficial. And because, you know, the world kind of slowed down for a while, it gave us a little bit more cushion to be more productive and to step back and to reevaluate some of the things that we were doing. So another side of it is, you know, working with printers. We work both with Ingram and with KDP To manufacturer Our print books and both of those companies have experienced backlogs with printing and manufacturing that has slowed the process down to get books to our authors. Because they're still trying To do giveaways online and do virtual signings and things like that. I mean, there's it's it's definitely forced people to be more inventive about how they go about doing things. Um, but you know, people still need their books yesterday, and and that's become a little bit more of a challenge.
So I mean, obviously it's very unfortunate that it has affected our local bookstores. Our mom and pop book stores, which I am an advocate to, you know, bring your business there and to buy books there, opposed To Amazon, which is a little bit counterproductive of me to say, because our physical catalog is not distributed and is not like widely distributed to stores. So, you know, we rely on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online for people To purchase their books and everything. These mom and pop book stores are our cornerstone to this industry. I mean, they're integral, we need to be there. It's kind of an argument I have with myself in my own head, but I hope that a lot of these stores can survive. I know personally, like my favorite bookstore that I used to frequent did have to close down. Unfortunately, the Pandemic has done good things for Amazon and Barnes Noble online and like the big conglomerates, because people couldn't go to these mom and pop book stores. At the same time. It's been really hurtful to the other side of the industry, so it's hard.
Mindy: I know, believe me. And that's something that you know, every author I know. We have a love hate relationship with Amazon. We love them because they move you know, 40 to 50 to 60 even higher percentage of our books for us. We hate them because they are murdering all those mom and pop stores that we love and also, you know, they sell our books at a discount. I seriously have a moral struggle with it pretty much every day, because it's like I live in the middle of nowhere. I live in Ohio and very rurally. People are lovely, and whenever I do an event or something, people want to thank me or they want to give me a little gift and they give me Starbucks gift cards and that's super cool. And the nearest Starbucks is half on hour from me.
Shayne: Wow.
Mindy: Yeah, I know people are often shocked. That's usually what I use as the parameter for how rural I am. Starbucks is half an hour away. McDonald's is 15 minutes away.
Shayne: I live in South Florida. So it's just one city piled on top of the other, and, uh, I actually crave more of, ah, rural life. So I envy you.
Mindy: I love where I live. And then, you know, I just put the gift cards into my phone. And when I'm traveling, it's great. I'm like I'm good. I can have coffee for free for like, a year. But that's the kind of thing that I deal with when it comes to shopping. Because if I need a tweezers, a book and spaghetti sauce, me getting those things where I live, I would have to make three different stops to get those things. And, you know, Amazon. I could be like, I need these three things and they have it to me tomorrow. They're very smart and they murder you with their convenience. And you're just like, Yeah, sure, that sounds great. Yeah, point being I love hearing this. That Indie publishers and maybe even larger publishers as well. I don't know what the outlook is for them as far as sales. I do pay attention to industry numbers and things like that. I do know that generally one of the things that one of the arenas that saw a huge boost, of course was educational materials for Children suddenly blew up the same way adult coloring books did you know a couple years ago.
Something that has come about as part of this that I mourn and I hope that we see recover is the audio was really having a heyday, and audio was suddenly just becoming something that you could really count on audio sales. And you could count on people searching out that particular medium and audio is really hitting a boom time and then pandemic and people aren't commuting anymore. And I was reading the other day that audio sales have become much more sluggish and that there's been difficulty selling those rights now because we don't know how much longer working from home situations will continue. Moving and working and shaking in an industry that is entirely based mostly on creating alternate realities and things that have never happened to people that don't exist, which is my tagline for this show. But the real world has a very real and prominent effect on us every day.
Shayne: Absolutely. Yeah, I can attest to what you were saying. We saw a couple of really great months in terms of audio sales then Recently, I saw those kind of plummet a little bit, which is unfortunate. I'm like audio is my preferred way of reading. Actually, I think it's just a completely different experience. I think it's so much more immersive. So I really hope that people pick up audio books more frequently because it's just like I said, It's just so immersive. It's so much fun.
Mindy: Most of my listeners are, in fact, aspiring authors, although I'm sure I have quite a few readers out there as well. Something that has greatly impacted the publishing industry lately is a paper shortage, which sounds like the weirdest, most bizarre thing in the world. But it's true, and I don't mean toilet paper. I mean paper. It is difficult to get to printing now, and that is something that I've had to explain to people. I mean, I don't know my print run numbers for my book that's releasing in February, but I do know that they are not doing any ARCs whatsoever. Um, I don't believe they're doing any for anyone, So if you could talk a little bit about why there's a paper shortage and what the heck is going on that would you know what?
Shayne: To be honest, I personally don't even know. Um It's interesting when you had mentioned that in our email exchange back and forth, I actually had to look it up, because we right now we're still print on demand. There's a backlog. So when we're trying to order ARCs or or even just get books out to readers or out To, you know whoever, Um, it's been taking a lot longer. So, like before. If we order, let's say, a carton of, like, 50 books to print and ship. In a nutshell, it would take two weeks, and now it's taking a month or longer. So we’re experiencing that and I'm sure, KDP, Ingram press or whatever you're working with, I'm sure that that's part of the reason. And it's also partly that they just don't have the manpower. I'm sure they didn't bring back all of their employees. My husband and I are going on a camping trip. Soon and we realized there was also a bike shortage. Covid and the pandemic has affected a bunch of things in like a really weird ways.
Mindy: Basic raw materials I'm finding are just harder to come by. So I did some antique shopping at the beginning of the summer, and I have a bed with, you know, has to have a very specific size mattress because it's not a traditional bed frame. And so I had to order a special order mattress and I went in and I talked to the guy, the mattress store, and he's like, I'll put in the order and, you know, gladly take your money, but I'm telling you, it's gonna be a while. That was eight weeks ago, and I called the other day and it was just like, Hey, I'm just checking in, making sure that you didn't forget me. And he was like, No, he's like I called and I followed up on this the other day and they haven't even begun yet because they don't have the raw materials to make a freakin mattress, right?
Shayne: Exactly. I was I mean, just kind of getting back to books. I had placed an order for one of our authors. It was like she was waiting for, like, 30 copies for a signing. So, of course, like I have to go through Ingram and make sure all that happens and So, like I think two weeks had gone by or something like that was like 2.5 weeks. It was enough time to definitely like in the past, have these books printed and then shipped. You know, they should have been getting shipped off to her. And so she nudged me and she was like, Hey, I haven't heard anything about those books yet? Are they on their way? What's going on? And I looked and they were still printing. It was still in the printing phase. It has been crazy.
Mindy: The last thing that I want to talk to you about, everybody in publishing, everybody knows that holiday season is a huge boon for us. So what are we expecting for 2020 Holiday? What's on the horizon?
Shayne: I can tell you what's not on the horizon It's dystopian books. I think people are not going to pick up a dystopian fantasy for a while. I think they had enough of that so I don't think that's going to be the case. Um, personally for us, we've got a couple of really great contemporary urban fantasies that are coming out in time for the holidays, and they definitely gear more toward the fun and the funny and the whimsical. Um a book that's been getting a lot of buzz from our catalog is called The Part About the Dragon was Mostly True by Sean Gibson. That's recently got The Starred Review from Publisher's Weekly. Very funny. And I think that that's going to be the kind of thing that readers are going to look for this holiday season.
I think they're gonna look for things that boost their serotonin levels, whether it be, you know, romance or, you know, you're talking about frothy books. I think frothy books are going to do really well. They're important, you know, froth or not, Froth is important. Those and you know anything that kind of lightens the mood and brings the joy back. I think is going to do very well and also into 2021. I think they're those books. They're going to continue to do well. That's what we anticipate. But I think also what might happen is people are going to want to feel comfortable. They're gonna want that comfort in the nostalgia. So they're going to go back to what's familiar. So you're gonna see a lot of people re reading books that they've loved in the past.
Mindy: Since a lot of my listeners are in fact writers, Why don't you tell us about the submission process for Parliament?
Shayne: Absolutely. It actually changes season to season. We try to be very transparent, like I said before, very accommodating of authors from all walks of the industry. So when we open our submissions back up again, which will be sometime in the spring, we accept submissions from unagented authors. The submissions process is a little bit different than other publishing companies because we do the standard, write us a query. We put a lot of weight on your query letter and your pitch, Um, and your first three chapters, included the body of the email. So we go through that and once we find something we really love or we really think is interesting and we want to request a full, we request the full. But On top of that, we also request a video submission. That's created a little bit of a conversation among agents, particularly in the industry. I've heard some, I've gotten some interesting feedback about that and a lot of questions.
The reason why we do that is because we are a very author centric company. I try or we try To work hard with our authors to not only establish, you know, their particular titles launch for release day. But we also work hard to help our authors establish their brand and their voice like you were talking about. To lay the foundation so that as they continue to publish, they have that very distinct carved out brand. So we want to get to know you. We want to get to know what's important to you, the themes of your book, what you want your readers to take away. Um, you know, if you have a certain standpoint on any social issues, or issues that are very important right now. We want to know about that, because that's all going to come into play with your branding and who you are and how you talk to your readers and and the kind of the kind of readers you engage, right?
So we do that, and then we also utilize, you know, should we accept the manuscript for publication, then we utilize that video when we make our acquisition announcement. So just like anything else, your acquisition announcement will go through the publishers marketplace and all that good stuff. And then we'll do social posts on our various pages and I'll edit it together, and I'll make it look super fun with music and things like that and and, you know, So readers get to know the author because I think, you know, readers buy books based on a couple of different things. Obviously, if the blurb is engaging and sounds interesting to them, if the cover is really beautiful like that, that's, you know, personally, a reason for me. I'm very optics driven. So, like if I see a beautiful cover, I want it. I don't care what it's about. I just want it on my shelf.
So there's that. And then I think that readers also buy books because they buy the authors, you know, if there is an author that they love or how that has a particular message or a standpoint that they really get on with Then then I think that helps to sell your book. So that's why we do that. Right now. Our submissions is closed, um, to anything that's unsolicited or unagented. So that's just because our queue is pretty full and we're doing some things within the company and reevaluating our production queue. Working on giving a lot more time and a lot more attention to the books that we take on, particularly like the marketing and the launches beforehand, really giving ourselves a broad window to focus on those titles as much as possible. And so as we get into 2021 we're gonna have a much more established or a better idea of the steps we want to take for those new titles coming in. So we'll be opening our submissions again, Like I said in Spring of 2021 we're excited to see what comes in.
Mindy: Awesome. And lastly, why don't you tell listeners where they can find Parliament House online?
Shayne: Our headquarters is Parliament house press dot com. You can also find us on Twitter at Parliament books, and you can find us on Instagram at the Parliament Press.
Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.
