Pub 101: How to Work With Your Publisher

Hello and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grall and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne, who has over 25 years experience as an editor. He is the creator of StoryGrid, the author of the book Storygrid, and he is helping me to figure out how to tell a story that works. This is the third part in our three part series on Publishing 101 where Shawn and I dive deep into the publishing industry and how to navigate it. In this last episode, we're going to talk about everything that happens after the contract is signed. So working with an editor, designing a cover, getting your book all the way to publishing, and dealing with marketing as well, we're going to dive into that in this episode. So hang in there for this last episode. I know you're going to love it. We're going to jump in and get started.

So Sean, in the previous episodes of this series, we've gone over your background and my background in publishing. We've talked about traditional publishing versus indie publishing and then we kind of talked about the pre contract phase agents and selling your book and how that whole process works. And so in this final part of the Publishing 101, I want to talk a little bit about what happens after the contract is signed. So say everything's gone great, your agent has gotten you a book deal, everything's been signed. Now what happens?

Well, in the major publishing houses, the process is this after the contract, actually even before the contract has been signed because sometimes it takes a while to get the legal maneuvering. But after it's definitely been signed, the publisher has probably already slotted the book for a specific month in a specific season, depending upon the level of advance and excitement in the house for the acquisition. So for example, if the book is a big, big great thriller, that would be a wonderful read for the beach, the publisher is usually going to acquire that kind of book at least nine months before that season comes to be. So if we're talking about next summer right now, or even a little bit earlier, is the time that the publishers are looking for a big acquisition that they can put at the top of the list for their summer season. So after the contract has been signed then, and the reason why they're going to go for a specific kind of title for the summer are usually those very exciting books that have some great hook, some great thing. Like the most obvious example of this is Jaws. You know, that's a great summary that, you know, back in the 70s, people read that book at the, literally at the beach, which stopped them from even going in the water.

So the publisher will plan that publication so far in advance so that they can do whatever editing is necessary on the title. And usually a publisher is not going to throw down a half a million dollars or a million dollars for an advance unless the book is primarily working. Meaning they can see that even if the editing doesn't go perfectly for them, the book has enough juice already inside of it that it will sell, you know, regardless of whether or not the author takes all of the notes from the editor, it's, etc. So today is the era where publishers aren't really in the developmental editing world anymore. They're not signing up potential books that could be great with a lot of editing and hard work. Rather, what they're signing up are books that already work that with a little tweaking and editing could even be bigger and better. So it's going to be a nine month process out usually.

Now this is different between fiction and nonfiction, right? Because isn't fiction's not usually sold unless you're an established author. Fiction's not sold unless the book is done where a lot of nonfiction is sold based on a proposal in just a couple sample chapters, is that right?

That's correct. And usually on a proposal for nonfiction, what they'll do is they'll give the writer or author 9 to 12 months to finish the manuscript to write the entire thing, and then they'll schedule it for six to nine months after the book has been delivered and accepted. And usually you know, your big non fiction titles, unless they're seasonally, it makes sense to publish them in a particular season. Like say if it's a big biography of George Washington, the publisher may say, well, this would be something that we want to publish in February to tie into Washington's birthday, February, President's Day, all that kind of stuff. So unless there's a specific time, an anniversary like, like a D Day book, you know, you're going to want to publish that around the anniversary of D Day. But unless there is something specific, they will slot that depending upon when they can foresee having a final book in house ready to go. And then six to nine months after that they'll publish it so that it gives them enough time to pre sell it into the retail outlets, get advanced quotes from big names, get a great jacket, etc. So it is a substantially long process. No matter fiction or nonfiction. For example, one of my writers is a terrific thriller writer named Matthew Quirk, and he just delivered his fourth book and they're planning on publishing it next March. So they're getting all, as they say, all their ducks in a row for the next nine months before they actually put the book on sale.

So that's been one of the criticisms of traditional publishing is that it takes so long. Why does it take, like if I come with a manuscript that's working, why is it nine months before my book is finally for sale?

Well, it's an antiquated calendar and I think all those criticisms of the major publishers are valid. The reason why it takes so long is, well, this is just the way we do things here. We've found that the longer you have and the more preparation you can get before you publish a book, the better it will perform in the marketplace. It gives us enough time to pitch the long lead magazines so that we could possibly get National Review coverage before the book comes out. It gives us enough time to produce bound galleys so we can get reads across the retail chains so that their buys will be good when they come in for the pre sell, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I could give you 45 minutes of spiel that any writer has been published by a major publisher has heard before, but the reality is it doesn't require the amount of time that they take. The reason why they take that much time is because they have a very large operation. They've got systems in place at their warehouse, within the editorial department, within the publicity department. You got to remember that they're constantly, they're planning 15 to 24 months in advance. And they've, they've got this system down and they've been using this system for 50, 60 years now. And it's very difficult to get anybody to change anything. It's difficult to get me to change the brand of toothpaste that I use. So it's really difficult for a major operation to shift its systems to accommodate a book that's delivered and published within six weeks, which you and I, as our own independent publishers, we can turn a book around as quickly as necessary. Back in the day, there used to be what they called instant books back in the mass market divisions of the major houses. And an instant book was something that was a topical book that you could get out in two weeks and you would publish it in a mass market edition. An example of that would be back in the day when they had the O.J. trial, when I was at St. Martin's Press, we did an instant O.J. did he or didn't he kill his wife book? The true crime genre used to lend itself to that instant kind of publishing. And, and it was a lot of fun, you know, because you would, you would hire a writer who could get the goods as quickly as possible. They'd bang out a manuscript in two weeks. They would get the manuscript in, you would copy edit it overnight, you would design it the next day. Meanwhile, you'd be doing a cover and you would be calling all the chains and saying, hey, we have an instant book on the O.J. simpson mess. How many copies do you want? And they would look at their computers and they would say, oh, the JonBenet Ramsey book we did last year did great. So we'll take 100,000 copies. I'm talking about mass market, you know, those little mass market paperbacks that used to find in drugstores and at the airport, but today the mass market has migrated to the Internet and to self publishers. So we were talking the last time about the great big opportunities inherent and the shift of power in book publishing. And here's a perfect example. There was a massive, massive market for the instant book, true crime book, and today all of that instant stuff, the major publishers have just ceded to independence because they don't want to spend the time, they don't want to spend the expense. The mass market world is not what it once was. Wholesalers do not take 50,000 copies of the mass market book with a phone call anymore because they'll say, oh, anybody can get all that information on the New York Post website. The true crime details come out at tmz. So it's a completely different instantaneous news cycle now that prevents, you know, these once kind of pulpy books from coming out instantly.

Okay, so this was a question that we got from one of our listeners because. And it ties in, but the question was basically like, do editors usually work as closely with writers as you're working with me? I'm guessing no. But I was also. The follow up question she had was basically like, when should you get an editor involved? And you know, at what point I'm curious how the process works since you have to bring a finished manuscript to the editor, like, what role do they play then in finishing the book? And say, I was an author trying to write a book that works. Should I maybe hire an editor early on to help kind of coach me the way that you've coached me to kind of get a book to a place where I could then Sell it to a big house. Like, I'd like to hear a little bit about just the editorial process and how the writer works with the editor inside of a publisher. And maybe independently.

Okay. I'm not trying to flatter myself in any way, but essentially what you and I are doing, Tim, is something called developmental editing. And what developmental editing is, is a process by which a writer and an editor work together very closely from really the conception of the idea and try and map out a course of action for the writer to create a manuscript that's really working. That's working from almost first draft. That is a very rare thing today. And, in fact, I can't give you a list of other editors in the business who do the kind of editing work that I do. And the reason why I do the kind of editing that I do is. Is that I'm a writer myself. And I'm a frustrated storyteller. One of the great things that I love to do is to just mire myself in story structure and really get in there. I like to open up the hood of the car. I like to look at the spark plugs. You know, this. I mean, you've been through so much already.

But the way it works at the major publishing houses is that you're not going to get a developmental editor. And the publisher, for very good reason, doesn't want developmental editors in their shop. And the reason why they don't want a developmental editor in their shop is they don't want Sean Coyne spending 15 months with a writer on a project that may or may not work. No, what they want is Sean Coyne to be an acquiring editor. Somebody who can recognize a book that works and doesn't work. Who can recognize an opportunity in an underserved marketplace in a genre that isn't being served very well. And who can make a recommendation to the publisher, hey, let me bring in this book. It's already working, and I can tweak it in two weeks or three weeks. And I can get it back to the writer. They can get it back to me in a month, and it's going to be good to go. So the editors that you're gonna find at the major publishing houses. And there are a lot of really talented, you know, fixers who can notice a big hole or a big problem that they can recommend a fix for pretty quickly. And these are people like Jerry Howard at Doubleday, like Reagan Arthur, who's the publisher of Little Brown. She's a fantastic editor. I can go on at Bill Thomas at Doubleday. I'M mentioning a lot of people that I know personally. Sonny Maida at Knopf, Jordan Pavlin at Knopf. Let's see, somebody at Simon and Schuster, John Karp, who's also the publisher, he's Sean Desmond at 12. I could rattle off a ton of names, but the reason why I'm just throwing off a few is that these are the kind of editors, you give them a book that works, they're going to say, this works. Now, let's take it up two notches. You've got a problem here, here, and here. And here's a 15 page memo of all the little stupid things and mistakes that you made in the manuscript itself. You fix this 15 page document, you address these three major problems, and we're good to go. And they are very, very good at doing that kind of editing. Now, they would be the first ones to admit, hey, don't come to me with your idea. Don't come to me with a third act problem. Because you know what? I don't have the time nor the inclination to dive into your problems at that level. Now, the other question that you mentioned is, what do you do? If you're a writer and you need an editor, when do you bring an editor in? And this is exactly why I wrote the story grid. Now, you and I are working. We're using the story grid to create something from whole cloth and we are using it to help you direct your story. But the way I devise storygrid is to be your own editor. So it's a way to teach you, the writer, how to switch off your writer and turn on your editor and the internal editor. We all have one, right? We all have that one, that thing inside of us that'll rip us to shreds and say, oh, these sentences are terrible. This story isn't working. This sucks. Now what I'm trying to do with the story grid is to train that nasty, cynical person inside of each of us and give them really helpful things to tell you as opposed to just ripping you apart to get you to stop. I'm trying to convert the voice of resistance in your head into actually a helpful, directive, prescriptive voice. And if you follow the principles of the story grid, you can, over time, with very direct, hard work, you can teach that person to put away all the nastiness and to actually be helpful prescribing the main problems in your story. So I don't think there's a magical elf who's going to come along as an editor. I'm not A magical elf. You and I have conflicts all the time when we go through the story stuff. It's a very complicated process. But what I do think you are learning, Tim, as a writer, is inadvertently, you're also learning how to be your own editor through this story process. So eventually in the next year, I bet in a year, you and I will be able to have very shorthand conversations where I'll be able to say, dude, the Crisis in Act 2 is really soft. You got to pump that out. You're not intersecting your external and internal genres. At the climax of the middle build, you got to do that. And you're going to go, oh, right. You're totally right. Oh, man. Yeah. Okay, now I know what to do. So this is what the story grid is about.

Look, I look forward to that day.

You're going to get there. It's really concerted, hard work. It's like becoming a really great bricklayer. Some people are born with a natural ability to do great bricklaying. Others have to smash up their hands for hour upon hour until they can get ahold of it. And that's the way I am. And I think that's the way you are, too.

Okay, so if I'm a fiction writer, I've sold the book and I've gone back and forth with my editor with that 15 page document to get the story to the point that it's working. And then if I'm a nonfiction, I've written my manuscript and I've submitted it, what happens then in that nine months between when the manuscript is done and the book is on the shelves or published?

Well, you'll be going through a process with the publisher of creating a jacket, a cover. They will have pitched the art department sort of generally what your book is about. And the art department will go to an internal meeting at the major publishing house and they will say, okay, we think we get it. Here's our concept. And they'll come in with sketches, and the publisher and the editor will review those sketches and they'll say, yeah, go in that direction. Work up a comp, meaning just a generic example of what the jacket will look like eventually. And I'll show it to the author. Now, the thing is with covers is that the author really has no say. Really? That's good. Depending upon your publisher.

You think that's good?

I think that's good with a major publisher. Because I think the major publisher, even when they make very big mistakes, they're never going to be as big a mistake as somebody who's an amateur trying to do a cover. So I've been through some terrible covers with major publishers and they've been covers that I think really aren't working so great. But what they are doing is they are in genre, meaning they are targeted appropriately to the specific genre. Now the execution of the final cover is really important, but as long as it's directed to the appropriate genre. For example, when I say genre, if you've written a military thriller and there's no gun or bullet on that front cover or a helmet or anything that's connoting war or military ness, you're in big trouble. And a publisher isn't going to make that mistake. And if they do, it's going to be a rare mistake. And when I say a publisher, I'm talking about the big five. So if you go to a Little Brown or a Doubleday or St. Martin's Press or Simon and Schuster and you've written a military thriller, they're gonna put some image that will tell readers immediately this is a military themed story.

So anyway, what's happening in that nine months before publication is the generation of a book jacket or cover. A book jacket is for a hardcover book and a cover for is for, you know, a paperback book. Now they're going to be generating a cover and they're going to show you that cover. And if you absolutely hate the COVID and you have issues with it, you can make your case. And I've made cases before and this is where a great agent comes in where they can make a case for you that is convincing enough for the publisher to rethink it. And they will go back to the art department and say, look, they're bringing up some really good points here. Can you address this? And usually the art department will hem and ha, but they'll do it. One of the things an agent can do is get you edit a cover consultation on the book cover. But you'll never get approval. You know, even the biggest best selling writers, they don't even want approval at some stage because they understand that they've established a brand, the publisher is packaging them in a specific way. And they're not gonna throw down over a jacket that isn't perfect. But like if you look at a John Sanford cover, it looks like every other John Sanford cover. If you look like a John Grisham or Danielle Steele cover or James Patterson cover within his particular series, they're all gonna look really specific to that particular writer. And this is what, you know, the good thing that a major publisher does is they'll establish a cover brand for you. And this is what happens in that interim between the acceptance of your manuscript and publication. Now, the other things that are going on are copy editing and proofreading. Copy editing will take anywhere between two to three weeks. You'll get it back, you'll fix the commas, you'll go back and forth with the copy editor. Then they'll design the book. They'll have a designer who's freelance at the major publishers or who works in house who will do design that is genre specific.

What do you like? Design of the inside of the book.

Exactly. Exactly. So if you've written a novel that's a military thriller, chances are you're going to have dingbats, meaning little images in the chapter headings that are bullets or, you know, some military beret or something, I don't know. And business books look similar. If it's a big idea Malcolm Gladwell esque book, it'll have a specific kind of look to it. It'll be a small, trim size. So they're not going to reinvent the wheel on your interior design. They're going to find something that's close to what yours is that they published before and then they're going to design it based upon that. Nobody buys a book based upon the interior design unless it's absolutely horrible and then they won't buy it. But the major publisher isn't going to do a horrible interior design, nor are they going to do just an atrocious cover. But you know, somebody who self publishes, that's the problem. They fall into those traps all the time. And their books don't look real, you know, they look like your Uncle Jack, you know, was at the mimeograph machine for seven hours cranking something out.

Yeah. So I want to jump in here and give some feedback. So as I mentioned, I've always worked on the author side and I've been involved with my authors, with their publisher with some tiffs over titles and covers. And so I want to give a little advice here. I agree that just like with any relationship, you want to pick your battles. So if you are going to pick the battle of your title or your cover, make sure that it's so bad you really need to pick this battle. But how we've done this before. So I had one client in particular who their title that their publisher kept pushing was just not a good title. And so what we did is we took that title, we took a couple titles my author liked and we got some other titles from just our network So I think we ended up with seven or eight titles and we actually ran them through this service that's called pikfu P I C K F u dot com. And what it does is that you can give an A and a B option and it shows it to 50 random people who vote on which one they like. And so we ran the titles through and like did a bunch of split tests on all these different titles, saying, okay, which, which book would you buy? The one, this title or this title, this title or this title. And I actually have a walkthrough that I'll put in the show notes on how to do this. And then what you have at the end of this is you have data and you can say, hey, you know What? We polled 500 different people, according to them, this is the title that's the best. And now when you have. The problem that I found arguing about this stuff is it's all anecdotal and it's all based on experience. And the publisher is kind of whoever in your publisher who is making these decisions is doing it anecdotally off of their own feel, which in most cases is more refined than yours because they've done so many books, books, but you also know your book better than them. So for instance, like one time my author was like, okay, what color? And it was a business book, what color should the COVID be? And the answer was, well, I feel like there's not that many yellow covers out there. I think we should go with yellow. And when my client got that, he was at the airport. So he walked in an airport bookstore and took a picture of six different business books with yellow covers. And so the anecdotal I don't feel like there's many yellow covers was complete BS and not true. So what I have found is if you want to argue with your publisher on cover or title, if you can bring data to the table, it will really help swing them in your side. If you come and say, look, I understand you like that title, or I understand you like that cover. But I just ran a bunch of tests on, you know, five different cover mockups and this is the one that keeps winning. Could we do something like this? You're much more likely to get a yes, so don't get emotional about it. Just bring data to the table. And what we've done that before and actually one time we completely confirmed the publisher too. So we just, we stopped fighting. You know, we're just like, okay, nevermind, we'll let that go. But that's what I found is like, if there's any time that you want something, especially title and cover, to change, and since you don't have final approval, if you can bring data, a lot of times that will swing it in your favor.

I absolutely agree with that, Tim. And I will say this. Everything that you say is absolutely true. The entire industry is built upon gut instincts and experience. It's not built upon big data. And they don't have the time nor the inclination to do the tests that you're suggesting. And if you, I mean, don't throw it in their face and go, see, man, here's my data. No, just, just be like, hey, you know, for fun, me and my brother did this data test and here are the results. We thought you'd find it interesting. And, and then they'll go, oh, wow, well, let's definitely go with that. I mean, they're not stupid people. They're going to listen to a well argued argument and if you can say to them it's definitively this is the right way to go, they're probably going to listen to it. Yeah.

So once the book, and I may, I have some definite opinions and feedback on this, but once the book comes out, or like, as the book is about to come out and you're planning for it, what is the role of the publisher in the marketing and priority?

Well, this is the thing that is very controversial and I'm trying.

That's why I saved it till the end.

Yeah. And I think the best way to approach it is to assume the following. Assume that they aren't going to do anything. Assume that they are going to put the book in the marketplace and that the best thing that they're going to be able to do is, is to ship books on time. And even sometimes that gets a little wonky. But for marketing and publicity, you have to look at the point of view of the people in the marketing and publicity departments. And we all have a tendency to think that our project and our thing is so important that other people are putting as much energy into it as we are. And that is just not the case. These people are, you know, a publisher like Doubleday is publishing, you know, 200 books a year. That's almost a book a day. So you have to think, okay, there are five people in the marketing department and there's 200 books. So each one of them is getting what, 40 books a year. And 40 books a year is a lot of work. And so what they're going to do is they're going to find systems that they can create that are going to be the most convincing and interesting to writers. So they're going to say, we're going to do the following things for your marketing department. We're going to do a Goodreads giveaway. And what a Goodreads giveaway is, you give away 20 galleys at Goodreads. It sounds much more interesting than it really is.

And we're going to do a pre sell bound galley campaign to retailers on the East Coast. What that means is that their mailing department is going to get a list of labels and it's going to ship a book, you know, an early copy of your book to a store manager in Poughkeepsie who is going to put it in a pile with the 37 other books that he got that month from the same marketing kind of program. So now if you're at the top of the list, meaning you're getting a million dollars or more in advance, they're really going to try new marketing ideas. But if you're in the mid list, if you've been getting in advance of anything $100,000 and less, you're probably going to get a standard marketing publicity pitch, which is minimal. So assume the worst. I always say this to people, assume the worst. And the other thing that's a little bit frustrating, actually majorly frustrating, is once you sign that contract with a major publisher, once you cash that check, they can tell you you can't do things. So if you have a really great marketing idea, and even if you say, I'll pay for it all myself, they have to say, okay, you can do it. And if they say, no, we don't want you to do that, guess what? You can't do it. So this is one of the major things that I tell my clients in my literary agency is, hey, let's go into this relationship with the major publisher with our eyes wide open. And once we sign that contract, once we cash that check, they kind of own us. They're not mean, terrible people, but they can say no. And we have to listen to them. They have now become our parents.

So if you can't handle being a child and assuming the child in a parent child relationship, then you're going to have trouble with the major publishers. And you know, there are ways to have both things. And one of the reasons why Steven Pressfield and I started Black Irish Books was this reason. This was the primary reason why we started our own publishing company is because we're stupid and we like to do stupid things. So we'll do A stupid thing like give away 20,000 books because we're crazy. And we think if 20,000 people read a book that we think is great, they might tell somebody to buy it even though they read it for free. Or even better, they might buy it two copies themselves and give them to their friends. So we believe our books market themselves. But a major publisher is never going to give away a book for free. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, because they need to earn back their advance money as soon as possible. So we talked about this probably at the very beginning of this entire series. But the major publishers, once you sign up, you have to assume that the marketing and publicity departments are going to not generate much. Am I wrong?

No, I've been. This is the part of the publishing process I have the most experience with. So I'm going to just kind of talk for a little bit on it. I agree with most of what you say. I'm going to come back to the point of asking your publisher for permission, but I agree. So what you're facing is there's been huge layoffs in everything inside of publishing as they've consolidated more and more. And like Sean said, the person that's been assigned to your book has been assigned to 50 other books. And, and my favorite story on this, I was on a conference call with one of my authors with their publicist inside of the publisher and their publicist asked the author if they were going to hire a publicist. And he was like, you're my publicist. And she's like, well, you should probably hire an outside publicist. And so yes, and we talked probably six or eight weeks ago about the three groups of books and you kind of alluded to that where if you're over a million dollar advance, you're going to be in the group A and group A is going to get 90% of the time attention and money of the marketing department. If you're in group B, which is a six figure advance, you're going to be splitting up that last 10%. And if you're group A, which means you got less than $100,000 advance, you're pretty much on your own. And I have been involved with, with book launches in each of those segments. And what I found is even when the publisher is very engaged, they don't know what they're doing in general because they just don't understand the way that marketing works outside of getting your books placed in Barnes and Noble or airport bookstores. And so what I encourage my authors to do is look at their publisher as if they were an assistant. So if you hire an assistant for you inside of your company or to help you with something, you don't assume that they're going to be laying awake at night thinking of new ideas. You don't assume they're going to be driving anything, but they will support you in what you're doing. And that's where I found you get the most out of your publisher is if you come up with a plan, you come up with a launch plan or a marketing plan, or you come up with examples what you're going to do and you ask your publisher for assistance. They're much more likely to be helpful because if you need them to do X, Y or Z, or send books to this address or reach out to this person for you and you give them exact directives on what to do, they'll probably do that. But you have to drive it. If you're sitting at home thinking, oh, I'm so happy that my publisher is taking care of my marketing for me. They haven't thought about your book in the last month. And so that's how I. If you kind of switch your thinking from my publisher is going to drive my marketing for me versus no, no, no, I'm in charge, but they'll help me. You'll one, be less frustrated and two, you'll get more out of your publisher. So a couple examples would be several of my authors have wanted to do signed book plates, which are these little stickers that if you pre order their book, they'll send you in the mail and then you can put a sticker on it and it has the author's signature. So now you have a signed copy of the book. And if we had waited for the publisher to come up with that idea, it would have never happened. But we went to the publisher and said, look, we're going to buy the stickers, we're going to sign them, we're going to do the whole promotion and we're going to get an Excel spreadsheet. Of all the people that we owe these stickers to, if we give you that spreadsheet and the signed stickers, will you mail them for us? And across the board we've gotten a yes, because they'll get some intern in house to do that for you so you don't have to take care of it. And that takes a big load off of you, but you are the one driving it. So that's the first thing I talk about with publishers, is look at them that way and you'll be much more likely to get their help because you're the one driving what they should be doing. The second is kind of a baby step to that, which is ask, ask, ask, be the squeaky wheel. Your marketing people, your PR person has 50 other books. As we've already said, you have to stay top of mind and that is your job. You don't have to be a jerk, but you should be emailing them, you should be calling them. If they say they're going to do something, say okay, when are you going to do it? And if they say okay, by next Tuesday, they need to hear from you next Wednesday following up to see if they did it. So make sure that you are being the squeaky wheel, that you are the one that's staying top of mind with your book. You're asking follow up questions. If they say they're going to do something, do not assume they're going to do it. Stay again as if they were an assistant. The other thing that I kind of want to push back on you, Sean, is what I have found is do not ask your publisher for permission to do anything.

So there's lots of reasons for this. Now I have to put a caveat here, which is read your contract. I'm not a lawyer. So if I tell you to do something that gets you in legal trouble, that's not my responsibility. But that said, the problem inside of publishing right now is everybody is scared of losing their job and they don't want to. Most people inside of publishing, they're obviously great people, but they're not interested in being the one that does something crazy like you said. And if you go to them and say, hey, I have this crazy idea, can I do it? And they say yes and it blows up, they're losing their job. And so their bent is to default to no. So if you ask them anything that is even a little bit unordinary, they will default to the answer no. And I have some just crazy stories about this. And so what I have found is it's much better to ask for forgiveness than permission because all your publisher cares about is that you sell books.

So if you go out and do.

Something crazy and it sells a bunch of books, they don't care. You will not even hear from them except, hey, great, your book selling. And so what I stopped doing is asking their permission to do anything. And so if we wanted to, and this is the part that could get hairy when it comes to like the lawyer stuff, but we've given away like half the book without asking just to drive sales and since it did drive sales, nobody minded. But if that had blown up and I had asked somebody inside the publisher and they give me permission, I might have just cost somebody their job and they would have just said no from the beginning anyway. So that's kind of my advice for working with your publisher that I've seen work the best is to just, if you come up with an idea, just do it and ask for forgiveness if they get mad. And look for opportunities where if you come up with ideas, invite them in if it's not a crazy idea and say, hey, I'm doing this. Can you do this, like, menial task? Or can you cover the bill on this thing? Or can you do this? As long as you're driving the bus, they're much more likely to get on and help you.

I think that's good advice. And yeah, it's. It's a hairy thing, because if you're not giving away the entire book and you're giving an excerpt away, here's the problem that I've kind of found. And it's more of a. It's more of a marketing problem than it is a publishing problem. And that is, once some marketer figures out something that works, then it becomes so ubiquitous that it loses meaning. So it used to be great. Like, we will give you a reader's guide for free, which are really wonderful, you know, little mini books that will walk you and your readers group through a discussion about the book. And publishers started to do this about, you know, 30 years ago. Now every book has a reading guide, like the reading guide to a reading guide. And so it lost all of its power. And it's the same thing with excerpts. And I'll send you the first chapter of my book for free. So I think you're right. The bottom line is everybody wants word of mouth. How do you generate word of mouth? That's really what sells just about anything, but especially books. You hear about a great book from a friend or somebody you trust, you'll buy the book. You don't really care if Don DeLillo gave it a quote anymore. You don't care if the New York Times Book Review gave it a rave. If somebody close to you says, this thing is incredible and you should really read it, it changed my life. You go out and you buy it. And so how do you get those conversations going is really the key to marketing pretty much anything. So I think you're right, Tim. If you come up with something unique and fresh, that's going to get people to try your book. Try it and if it blows up, apologize, because it's very rare. I can't even maybe. There are five times when a publisher has gotten so angry at a writer for doing something off the reservation that they've actually sued them. Usually the publisher will say, oh, man, don't do that, don't do that again, please.

Yeah, I mean, and I've never had an issue with. I've had a publisher ask us to stop doing something, but never had it blow up into anything. And usually we don't give away. What we have found is things like what I'm always asking is, okay, a book by definition is words on a page. So what could I do around this book to add value and entertainment beyond just words on a page? So we do things like for one book, it was one of these pop science books, I had my author go back and do hour long interviews with three of the researchers whose research was covered in the book. And we gave those away with the book. We've done like study guides or workbooks. We've done a series of videos we took and basically just constantly looked for ways to add value. And that's the kind of stuff that you would get to know if you asked a publisher, if you said, hey, can I go and like, talk deeply about the research based on the book with the researcher? They'd say, well, I don't know, you might be giving away too much that's in the book. We'd rather you not do something like that. But if you don't ask and just do it, well, one is probably nobody will even notice because they're working on the other 50 books they have on their desk. And then if they do notice, they'll be like, oh, okay, like, it won't even be a thing. And so that's what I mean is not so much giving away the book. I didn't want to focus too much on that as much as just, this is your baby, just go crazy, you know, Pull out all the stops. Do everything you possibly can to get this book out into the world. And if you get an email from your publisher asking you to stop doing something, just say, okay, I'm sorry, and stop doing it.

Yeah.

And if you kind of lean that way, you're gonna get a lot more done. It's kind of like, I just hired a consultant for my own company. And he kept asking me like, okay, can I, should I do this? And I was like, yes. And then he's like, well, can you approve this? And I was like, yes. And then I stopped him and Said, okay, here's the thing. I'm gonna say yes to everything. And I'd rather just correct you 1 out of 20 times than approve something 19 out of 20 times. And it holds up the process. And I kind of think that way is I'm just gonna do whatever I want to do. And the one time out of 50 that the publisher tells me to stop is not worth me risking and wasting time on the 49 times that I would have gotten a yes anyway. So I'm just going to do it.

That's a good strategy. Really is.

So, okay, so as we wrap up this publishing 101 series, is there anything, you know, we've kind of tried to hit all of the major points. Is there anything that you would want to that we didn't hit or didn't talk about or something you want to reiterate to people that are looking to wade into this publishing world for the first time?

Yes, there's just one thing that I'm going to recommend everybody do, and that is to read more. And when I say read more, a lot of people come up to me and they ask me my advice and they haven't read anything. And I'll say, well, did you read the following 10 titles in the genre that you want to, you know, get into?

No.

I've been meaning to though, man. But anyway, can you tell me how I can get a really good agent? And the most important thing, it's like anything, if you're not well versed in the universe that you want to live in, if you don't know where the 711 is to get a thing of milk in the middle of the night, and then you're not going to be able to get any milk, right? So you've got to read. If you want to be a writer, you must read. You must read all the time. If you are not compelled to read, then you should really think about why you want to be a writer. Because it's probably not out of a love of writing and the craft. It's probably something psychologically suspect.

You might have some deep seated need for validation that you think you're going to get by writing a book. Now, you're not going to get validation in the way that you think you will. The only thing that you can do is if you want to be a writer, you know it and you need to read as much and within. It's fun. You got to see it as fun. So that's my big advice for anybody who wants to get into publishing is read, read the stuff that you want to be a part of and learn from it. Learn from the masters, learn from the people who have written stuff before. And this is in business, this is, you know, this is nonfiction, fiction, whatever. Read the classics, read the best stuff and you will be inspired to make your work better.

All right, I'll give my parting thoughts too here. So my advice, just from working with so many authors is to to be extremely pragmatic and unemotional as you possibly can about the process. Especially if you're in the process of trying to find an agent, trying to sell a book, trying to do these things. The last thing you can do is walk around getting your feelings hurt all the time. I find. Assume the best of people. If you email an agent and you never hear back from them, assume that they are too busy and have better things to do and that's okay and you can move on with your life. You know, don't hold grudges. Assume that the advice you're getting from experts is correct instead of assuming that everybody's an idiot but you. And be just extremely pragmatic. Understand it's a business. Understand people are trying to make money. People are in this business for business, not to satisfy your goals of being an author. And if you can enter in with a humble learning attitude, you will have people that will help you. And I've seen this with authors, I've worked with both sides of the table with authors and the ones that come in humble looking to help other people want to learn and are willing to kind of stumble and make the mistakes and keep learning. They move so much faster and they somehow are always the ones that the doors keep opening for. So that's my advice, is to be unemotional, be learning and look at everything as an experiment and really try to just be the type of person that people want to work with. And you'll be surprised how far you go even if your writing isn't as good as other people's. So that's true. So that's my advice.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast. As always, you can get everything StoryGrid related@storygrid.com if you missed any of the previous publishing 101 episodes or the special 2 part series we did with Steve Pressfield or any past episodes. All of that is@storygrid.com podcast next week we are back to our regularly scheduled programming as Sean and I dive back into the editing process as I'm working on the the second draft of my book. And you can continue to follow along as I stumble through that process. Thanks, as always, for continuing to listen to the show and share it with your friends. If you haven't yet left a review or rating on itunes, please go and do that. It helps us continue to share the show with other people. So thanks for listening and we will see you next week.