This week we start our 3 part series on authorship with interviewing author J. M. Palmer. We learn about all things in getting published. From writing query letters to understanding how to read your contract with a publisher she has loads of advice and areas for opportunity if you’re looking to publish a book!
Bekkah: We have a guest with us who we are super excited about. Ruthie’s going to give you a little bit of info about her.
Ruthie: All right we have with us Jessica who is an alumnus of Bethel undergraduate program and the graduate program. She’s obtaining a degree in music education and special education. For Jessica writing is not only a hobby but an effective method of procrastination. Her debut novel “Lost in Legend” coming in 2021 is an urban fantasy novel fans of “Supernatural” and “Twilight” will enjoy. That’s just a beautiful intro that she sent to us and that we had the privilege of reading! I’m so excited to get to pick your brain, Jessica! Thanks so much for joining us!
Jessica: You’re welcome!
Bekkah: Tell us what you do! What would you encapsulate that as?
Jessica: Oh, I mean outside of the business day, I’m an author. I’d say anyone who writes is an author and a lot goes under that title but specifically I’m an author of mostly urban fantasy. I dabble a little bit in horror and thrill thrillers.
Bekkah: Wow! Awesome?/ Why do you do it?
Jessica: It’s fun! *all laugh*
Ruthie: Fair enough!
Jessica: Growing up I was a big reader and one of my favorite things to do was just daydream about the stuff that I’d read. Eventually, I started turning my ideas into stories, and by the time I graduated college, I finished this novel. I never thought that I’d go into publishing but after I finished the novel I started to get curious about the whole process of publishing.
Ruthie: You did that all in your undergrad?
Jessica: Well, undergrad took me a good nine years to finish. So Yeah
Ruthie: That’s awesome! Good for you! Cool.
What Was The Process You Used to Become an Author?
Bekkah: The next question with that is how do you do it? What was the process when you first started and I know we’re gonna get into a ton more questions about that but where would you say you got going?
Jessica: The first thing I had to do was sit down and write. In order to start going through the publishing process, you have to have a novel and before I finish the novel I looked a little bit into publishing but I got the consensus that you have to have a novel before you start querying agents and publishers. That’s the very first step. You have to have a novel or something to publish in order to get published.
Ruthie: Makes logical sense!
Bekkah: You can’t just be like, “I got a great idea. You should really talk to me.” Okay, once you wrote it, were you going through a lot of editing all that kind of stuff before bringing it forward, or what was the process?
Jessica: Yeah. Well, after I finished the book the next step was just to go through it. I think I went through it maybe 20 times “killing off my darlings” as they call it. Going through, condensing it, taking away my favorite parts just because I wrote them for fun. Things like that, really making it a publishing-worthy novel.
What Is the First Step In Writing a Book?
Bekkah: What was your first step then after editing? Did you go straight to the publisher?
Jessica: Actually, my first step was telling my husband that I wrote a book so that was fun. *all laugh* I know!
Ruthie: No preface what-so-ever? Just, “Oh, I wrote a book!”
Jessica: No preface, yeah. Well, and you know that was the first step before I had exposed the rest of the world to my writing, give it to him and oh boy! That was nerve-wracking but he still loves me after reading it so I think we’re good.
Ruthie: What was his feedback on it?
Jessica: He would go through it. I mean, it took him a good month to go through it because he went through and he also proofread for me and he put in-depth comments on it and initial reactions to it. He’d go through it chapter by chapter. I would ask him questions about what he thought about the characters, the plot line, what he thought would need to be fixed. He’s actually a very good first read because he gave me his honest opinion.
How to Edit Your Book & Network With Other Authors
Ruthie: Okay, you’ve got this first read and then what does the rest of your editing process look like?
Jessica: Then I started to put together a critiquing group. I found other authors through social media. There’s a big annual contest called RevPit where authors can go and submit their stories to have editors review it and determine if they want to do a developmental edit on it. They make it a lot of fun. It’s through Twitter so you’re constantly meeting other authors through the Twitter platform but somebody put together some critiquing groups. You were matched with people from your genre and I actually found a couple authors who are willing to read my story as I read their stories and they gave their honest feedback. The nice thing about that was they had all done their own research and so the information they found helped me go through and edit my own book.
Bekkah: Once you were like, “Alright. This is good to go.” What are the different paths to getting your book published?
What Are The Different Paths To Publishing A Book?
Jessica: Yeah. Well, there are quite a few and it really depends on what you want to spend as far as time, research, and money.
I think the path of least resistance would be self-publishing but if you want a good quality product you’re probably going to be spending a lot more of your own money. If you think there are four editing passes that you typically want to do on a novel that could run you up $5,000+ not to mention the cover, the typesetting, stuff like that. I didn’t have the money for that so I went down the road of traditional publishing. With traditional publishing you can either submit to small presses and medium presses individually or you could look for a literary agent who would submit to the medium and larger presses on your behalf.
Bekkah: Which one did you decide to do?
Jessica: I tried both routes, actually. I looked for an agent and I queried small and medium-sized presses. I was leaning towards having an agent just because an agent knows the publishing industry. It’s their job to go through contracts and point out red flags things that you really have to watch out for and they negotiate on your behalf. But I actually ended up finding a small publisher who was willing to publish my work and that just meant that I had to do all the research myself.
What Is a Vanity Publisher?
Bekkah: Okay, so how did you avoid vanity publishers through that process and could you also give us a definition of what a vanity publisher is?
Jessica: A vanity publisher is a publisher that you would pay. They do all the steps for self publishing for you. You don’t have to worry about that. They hire the editors. They make the cover for you. Vanity publishing isn’t necessarily bad but because it’s a big, money-centered publishing route there are a lot of scams.
You just have to be very careful if you’re signing on with a vanity publisher. I personally didn’t have any submissions to vanity publishers but there are resources that you can use to determine whether a place is trustworthy or not.
Ruthie: Okay so you’ve got the literary agents, traditional publishing, you also talked about vanity publishers, and then self-publishing. Are those the four areas of self-publishing a book?
Jessica: Self-publishing, vanity, and then traditional publishing.
How Long Does Does the Query Process Take for a Book?
Bekkah: I was reading a little bit about this and it seems like there’s a lot of work in the query so how many letters did you write?
Jessica: Well, I initially started with just the one. You just have one and you just tailor it to every publisher and agent you’re querying but I submitted it to I think I counted 32.
Ruthie: Wow!
Jessica: Publishers and agents so that’s where I totaled. I mean, depending on the market you could be doing it longer. It’s not necessarily determining whether you have a good novel just whether the market is ready for your novel.
Ruthie: I think that’s a really good way to put that. I like that. And I love how I’m just laughing about this because this sounds like you have done a ton of work on this and then to be like, “Oh, I should probably tell my husband about this.” After you told him then you sent out these 32 letters?
Jessica: Yep.
What Is The Process Like to Work With a Publisher?
Bekkah: When you were going through that process and you had somebody that said, “Yep, we want to publish your book.” How did that look?
Jessica: Oh, I think the day that I got that letter was the most exciting. I was in the middle of working. I was teaching a class and then I got the interest letter. The first couple hours was just freaking out and then telling everyone that I saw that my manuscript finally got some interest but then after that it was just going through, “Okay, now is this publisher serious?” So it was me talking with the publisher seeing how long they’ve been in the industry. With small publishers, they say that the life of small publishers is about five years and so if they’ve been in the game for about four years maybe you want to question what their business strategies are and how they plan to stay in business.
Ruthie: I think that’s also really valuable! I’m learning a lot from you right now! That’s a little nugget of being able to see if they’re a credible company and if you should go with them. I think that’s really good that you just said that because I wouldn’t have thought of that!
How to Make Sure a Publisher Isn’t a Scam
Jessica: Then with publishers, you always want to just check to make sure it’s not a scam. You can always type their name and then add “scam” to it when you’re doing your search for them. Usually, the first couple things that pop up will tell you if it’s a scam.
Ruthie: Another good thing to do!
Bekkah: How did that process go? You got the letter and then how did you contact them further and what did that look like? Did they set up a meeting with you to give you feedback on it or was it just like, “Nope, we want to do this. Just send us your further stuff”? What are the next steps?
Jessica: We emailed back and forth and they’d been in the business long enough so they passed that check. Then my next thing was I went and bought an e-book from them and I bought a published book so I could review the quality. Now if it’s chock-full of errors and things that would create other red flags then that’s another telltale sign that you probably don’t want to go with that publisher but their e-books checked out. Their hard-copy books checked out. They were high quality. Then I went and I talked to a couple of other authors who had worked with the publisher to see how satisfied they were.
How to Reach Out to Other Authors Who Work With The Publisher You Are Reviewing
Ruthie: How did you know those people?
Jessica: In the author community it’s common for you to follow a small-sized author or a not as well-known author and they would follow you back if they see the author in your title.
Ruthie: Okay.
Jessica: You see a lot of that on Twitter and Instagram and so once they accept you as a friend that kind of opens up an avenue of communication.
Ruthie: Then you found out that they also went with that publisher?
Jessica: Yeah.
Ruthie: That’s cool! Sorry, I disjointed your progression of what you went through.
Jessica: Oh, that’s fine! So I went through and talked to other authors and they gave the publisher very good marks. Then the next step was actually reading through the contract and negotiating which rights I kept for myself and I just Googled my way through that as well.
What You Need to Know About Publishing Contracts
Bekkah: What would you say your key takeaways that anybody should really pay attention to?
Jessica: As far as contracts, just make sure you know how you’re going to get paid and when you’re going to get paid. For bigger size publishers you would get something called an “advance”. As a debut author, you can expect that advance to be much smaller. Someone like Stephen King might make six figures. Whereas, a new author you might make four figures. With smaller publishers, there aren’t typically advanced so you want to watch the wording in the contract making sure that after the book is published are you getting paid gross royalties or net royalties and whether that’s going to be after production costs or not. I think typically you want to steer away from after the production costs.
Bekkah: When you’re saying, “They’re gonna take your work and you have a contract with them,” do they then go about that process of promoting it for you or do you still kind of have to do that?
Jessica: A lot of that is left to the author. Larger size publishers will do a little bit more for marketing but small-sized, it’s up to the author to do all that marketing. Now the publisher themselves do have a presence that they’ve established over time so they will help because it’s in their best interest for them to make money and recoup the costs of publishing the book. But the brunt of it is left up to the author.
Understanding Rights, Royalties, and Profitability for Publishing & Self Publishing
Bekkah: I’m just gonna circle back to profitability, is there a difference between the rights and royalties which you have when you go with a publisher versus doing self-publish?
Jessica: Yes. Self-publishing you’ll get to keep almost all of the royalties minus the production costs. I think when you self-publish through Amazon which is the big, self-publishing platform, they keep like 10% to 20% of the royalties so that they can make a profit off of it but you get to keep most of it. You get to determine what you do with those royalties. Whether it’s spending it on marketing, putting it towards your next book, or just keeping it. With traditional publishing, you typically get less of the royalties. You get about 60% ish so it’s like 40% to 60%. Then the publisher gets the rest and then again it depends on your contract. With advances, if you’re with a bigger publisher the advances are just that. they’re in advance. So you might not see royalties for a while if you get a big advance.
Bekkah: One of the reasons why we love talking with people who are super organized is because when they send us notes and we have so many things to talk about.
Ruthie: This Google Doc is stunning!
How to Write a Golden Pitch for Your Book
Bekkah: I know that we had already talked a little bit about that Query letter but one of the things I’m noticing here is you need to really come up with a grabby, short pitch for your book to put in your query letter. How did you go about that and how did you know that this is the pitch that’s gonna be golden?
Jessica: Well, again research and finding good pitches. I was constantly on the Mad Pitches Contests on Twitter where authors would just pitch their books on Twitter in hopes of getting an agent or a publisher interested. Reading through those top ones and finding what’s grabby for the agents and publishers and then bouncing those off my critiquing partners. We worked together on developing our pitches and we’d help each other fix it. Of course, for Twitter, it has to be so many words. So which words can you chop and which words do you need to add to make it grabby?
Ruthie: Then did you get any feedback at all from publishers that you are submitting stuff to?
Jessica: Not really, they go through hundreds of novels a day at the least so they don’t have a whole lot of time to give authors feedback. It’s nice when they do. Same with agents it’s nice when they do but it’s not to be expected. I think the best feedback was when I did get the interest from publishers and agents that said that I’m hitting the mark and my pitch is catchy enough.
Bekkah: What other places did you go to for information to know what should be in your cover letter and book submission? Were there any resources that were helpful in that?
Jessica: Yeah, the pitch wars that I participated in pitchwars.org/pitmad is a good stop to developing your pitch. It tells you exactly what you need.
Then I mean if you just Google “query letter” you can find a ton of resources.
Tips & Resources For Authors Trying to Get Published
Bekkah: Okay. Do you have any other recommendations on tools or anything like that or places to find people to edit your stuff that you found helpful throughout the process?
Jessica: When looking for agents and publishers manuscriptwishlist.com is a great place to research agents. They typically post their dream novels or their dream submissions on that website. I mean, this is something that you can do even as you’re writing your novel. Then following those agents on social media is also a good idea. There’s one agent that I follow, she’s constantly putting the things that she rejected that day and why she rejected them. It’s a great way to make sure you’re not making any of those errors.
Ruthie: That’d be really scary if you submitted something to her and then it showed up on her social media! *laugh*
Jessica: Yeah. Well, she’s general enough to make it seem like it happens all the time. Breezy.com is a great platform if you’re interested in taking the self-publishing route. You can find editors and cover designers through Reedsy and you can also typeset your book on that platform as well and that’s free. If you want to turn your work into an ebook all you have to do is add the chapters to that platform and then you hit a button and it’s typeset. It’s not perfect.
The Definition of Typeset
Ruthie: What does typeset mean?
Jessica: Typeset, so you know how when you read a book everything’s just kind of beautiful inside that book? You open it up and they’re pretty paragraphs, all the words fit on one page, there aren’t any weird gaps, chapters are right at the top all the time with the same spacing, it’s very uniform.
Ruthie: It just does that for you?
Jessica: It just does that for you so you can automatically make your work an ebook which is actually a lot of fun. I’ve done that several times with my reader magnet. Going through adding it, editing it, retype setting, then setting it up to be an ebook that I could distribute through Story Origin.
What Is a Reader Magnet?
Bekkah: Okay, you’re gonna have to tell us what a reader magnet is.
Jessica: A reader magnet is actually a great way to market yourself as an author and build a following before you even put out your first debut novel. For my reader magnet I actually took a side story and I made a side story for a character. I just did like an eight chapter novella. Something that I think my base reader, my base audience would enjoy. I wrote it. I edited it and then I gave it out for free. In getting that for free, they actually agree to be a part of my newsletter.
Ruthie: Do they have to read your book first for it to make sense or its own standalone?
Jessica: With a good reader magnet you do want it to be a stand-alone. Something where they don’t have to read the main one to get it but just a side story that they would enjoy. You don’t want the main novel to be dependent on it either, just stand-alone. From doing that I think I built my newsletter to about – I think I’m at 4,900.
Bekkah: Wow! That’s impressive!
Ruthie: Oh! Look at you! That’s awesome!
Jessica: I would say that it’s been less than a year that I’ve had that. It’s a really good tool for building your base platform.
Ruthie: Then what do you do when they sign up for your newsletter? What do you produce in your newsletter?
Jessica: Through Story Origin you can join group promotions where other reader magnets or other review copies are put into big groups and you can essentially give away free books that aren’t yours in agreeing to promote these other authors. I mean it’s constant so I do that. You can do contests if you want. Audiences typically like more personalized emails not just, “Hey, here’s free stuff. Enjoy.” And they like to be given purpose for newsletters so a big part is what they can do for the artist community, whether it’s handmade crafts or books or artists I like to promote all those features as.
How to Stay Motivated Through Query Rejections
Ruthie: Well, this sounds like you’ve done so many different things here! How did you stay motivated throughout all of that, because you sent out 32 of these letters! That’s a lot!
Jessica: Yeah, it was and I think every rejection I got actually I had to face this, “Okay, am I gonna quit or am I gonna change something and try again?” I think that was just a personal battle that I had to fight every time. In the end, I think it made me a stronger person learning that I can change and then I can be better. I think the biggest step for me, by the time I was getting more interest in my novel I had just recently submitted my first three chapters to an editor to really help me work out what’s going on with the story, why isn’t it grabbing the attention that I want, and then taking her feedback and changing basically my whole process. In working with an editor I was able to actually learn quite a few things and improve my writing for a low cost of like fifty dollars. It was fifty dollars well spent. I was able to move my hook up in my novel, Typically you want that within the first five pages. So I moved my hook up and I smoothed out the first couple chapters and after I started submitting at that point, that’s when I started to get interested in my story. My last three submissions I received full manuscript requests so that was exciting!
Bekkah: so, normally you send the first three chapters and if they want more they’ll ask you for the whole thing?
Jessica: Yeah and that varies from agent to publisher. Some agents they just want to see the query letter and then some publishers might want to see the first 10 pages. Some do the standard first three chapters so you really want to make sure the first chunk is really well edited.
Bekkah: Awesome! Well, thank you so much for giving us all this information!
Ruthie: I’m so bummed! You have so much more we can talk about I feel like!
Bekkah: There’s so much more we could talk about!
Ruthie: I know! We’re getting close to time and I’m sitting here like, “No, just let’s just ask! Let’s ask another one!”
Bekkah: How about you tell us where people can find you!
Jessica: You can visit my website at jessempalmer.com so that’s j-e-s-s-e-m-palmer.com or you can find me on Twitter @palmerjessica22 and then jessempalmer on Instagram if you’re interested. If you have any questions that you’d like to ask me personally about publishing or about my experience you can get my email from my website.
If you enjoyed this episode, you should think about sending it to a friend who could benefit from Jessica’s advice!
