Episode 112 - Being the Captain of Your Author Voyage with Tiffany Yates Martin
December 28, 2021
In this week's episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Tiffany Yates Martin talks about how she was not willing to grant rights to her non-fiction book INTUITIVE EDITING, and how that differed for her fiction work. We talk about aspects of an author career over which you may have more control than you think, and aspects over which you may have less control. We talk about the importance, if you are granting rights to your work to a third party such as a publisher, of approaching it as a commodity, not as your baby. And Tiffany advises you not to write what you think others, such as publishers, want you to write, but to write what you love and then find a market for that.
Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly thirty years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling, award-winning authors as well as newer writers. She is the author of the Amazon bestseller INTUITIVE EDITING: A CREATIVE AND PRACTICAL GUIDE TO REVISING YOUR WRITING. She's led workshops and seminars for conferences and writers' groups across the country and is a frequent contributor to writers' sites and publications. Under the pen name Phoebe Fox, she's the author of the Breakup Doctor series, including the most recent release, THE WAY WE WEREN’T.
"The business side of it is, you and your work become a commodity that is for sale, which sounds a little bit like prostitution, but let's just call it product development. But nobody wants your product unless it's a top-notch product." —Tiffany Yates Martin
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[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast, today my guest is Tiffany Yates Martin. Hey, Tiffany, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] Tiffany: Hello, my friend. Always love coming back here with you. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:10] Matty: It is my pleasure, and we're going to talk in a moment about why this is an especially good day for you. We'll just leave our listeners with a little bit of suspense about that for a moment, but to give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly 30 years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling, award-winning authors as well as newer writers.
[00:00:33] She's the author of the Amazon bestseller INTUITIVE EDITING: A CREATIVE AND PRACTICAL GUIDE TO REVISING YOUR WRITING. She leads workshops and seminars for conferences and writers’ groups across the country and is a frequent contributor to writers sites and publications. And under the pen name, Phoebe Fox, she's the author of THE BREAKUP DOCTOR series, and her really most recent release, THE WAY WE WEREN'T, which launched today!
[00:00:55] Tiffany: Today. Thank you!
[00:00:57] Matty: What were you saying, what was I thinking, scheduling a podcast recording on the day of my book launch?
[00:01:03] Tiffany: You know, here's how, and it's funny because it's sort of what I think you and I are going to talk about today, here's how I guess laid back I was about it. I forgot this was my release day when we scheduled this, and then I remembered this week and just thought, oh, you'll be fine. You'll be fine, just do it, and this is a fun way to celebrate, so thank you.
[00:01:21] Matty: You are a trouper. As you're saying, it's kind of a nice lead in into our conversation today. Before we get to that, I do want to let people know that this is your fifth appearance on the podcast.
[00:01:31] Tiffany: Dang, I'm tying the big dogs now, right? Mark Lefebvre and who else?
[00:01:36] Matty: Dale Roberts.
[00:01:37] Tiffany: All right then, I'm coming for you, Mark and Dale.
[00:01:40] Matty: You may be, I should have counted beforehand, but you were tied with them at least. So yeah, I feel like once I find a guest that I love, I do love having them back, so that's why there are repeats.
[00:01:50] Tiffany: We were just saying, the conversations go so smoothly, and we always have so much to talk about, so I get that.
[00:01:55] Matty: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So if people want to see Tiffany's other appearances, she was in Episode 53 WHAT AUTHORS CAN LEARN FROM TV AND MOVIES, 65 where we talked about X-RAYING YOUR PLOT, 88 HOW TO GIVE AND RECEIVE CRITIQUE, and she was also part of the all-star cast of Episode 74 PERSPECTIVES ON PERSONAL BRANDING.
[00:02:14] Tiffany: Look at all your podcast episodes, Matty Dalrymple! Congratulations!
[00:02:18] Matty: I know, thank you, we're getting well past the 100 and I'm also going to say that we're recording this on November 9th, 2021, and it probably isn't going to go out for a little while, so if people hear us talking about your just launched book, it won't be just launched by the time people hear this.
[00:02:33] But yeah, yeah, we're both producing things. So, we're going to be talking about that today. In fact, because of my love of the nautical metaphor, we are going to be talking about BEING THE CAPTAIN OF YOUR AUTHOR VOYAGE.
[00:02:45] Tiffany: Oh, I love that. I always say the captain of your ship, so that's a perfect metaphor.
[00:02:49] Matty: Exactly, and so I think Tiffany, a good way to start out would just be for you to give a rundown of what your publishing voyage or author voyages look like.
[00:02:59] Tiffany: It's funny this week, you and I were just talking before we started, I've been posting these sort of funny videos about the fact that this book that's coming out today, or that is out, I guess, I started that one 15 years ago. It was the first full-length fiction I ever tried. Before that I had done short stories mostly, and I was so not ready to write that book. You know, I had all this learning to do as a writer, on the business side of it, everything. So the journey has actually been really interesting and it's a perfect day to talk about that because it's so much on my mind.
[00:03:29] I have been writing since I was small, like since I knew how to write, but it's such a long process of learning how to do it, and also learning how to do, as I was saying, whichever form of the craft you want to do. And I was not familiar with novel, so that was a new thing I had to learn. And the interesting thing is, I've been an editor for, as you were saying, almost 30 years. Just because you can assess and analyze the story form, that doesn't necessarily mean you can execute it. It's still a skill you have to learn. It's interesting.
[00:04:02] So with my writing career, I started, once I finally, as I like to tell people, it took me 113 queries to find an agent. Once I was finally at the stage where I could submit, which also took a while because my first manuscripts, like most people's, when they first start out were not worth looking at. ...
[00:00:06] Tiffany: Hello, my friend. Always love coming back here with you. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:10] Matty: It is my pleasure, and we're going to talk in a moment about why this is an especially good day for you. We'll just leave our listeners with a little bit of suspense about that for a moment, but to give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly 30 years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling, award-winning authors as well as newer writers.
[00:00:33] She's the author of the Amazon bestseller INTUITIVE EDITING: A CREATIVE AND PRACTICAL GUIDE TO REVISING YOUR WRITING. She leads workshops and seminars for conferences and writers’ groups across the country and is a frequent contributor to writers sites and publications. And under the pen name, Phoebe Fox, she's the author of THE BREAKUP DOCTOR series, and her really most recent release, THE WAY WE WEREN'T, which launched today!
[00:00:55] Tiffany: Today. Thank you!
[00:00:57] Matty: What were you saying, what was I thinking, scheduling a podcast recording on the day of my book launch?
[00:01:03] Tiffany: You know, here's how, and it's funny because it's sort of what I think you and I are going to talk about today, here's how I guess laid back I was about it. I forgot this was my release day when we scheduled this, and then I remembered this week and just thought, oh, you'll be fine. You'll be fine, just do it, and this is a fun way to celebrate, so thank you.
[00:01:21] Matty: You are a trouper. As you're saying, it's kind of a nice lead in into our conversation today. Before we get to that, I do want to let people know that this is your fifth appearance on the podcast.
[00:01:31] Tiffany: Dang, I'm tying the big dogs now, right? Mark Lefebvre and who else?
[00:01:36] Matty: Dale Roberts.
[00:01:37] Tiffany: All right then, I'm coming for you, Mark and Dale.
[00:01:40] Matty: You may be, I should have counted beforehand, but you were tied with them at least. So yeah, I feel like once I find a guest that I love, I do love having them back, so that's why there are repeats.
[00:01:50] Tiffany: We were just saying, the conversations go so smoothly, and we always have so much to talk about, so I get that.
[00:01:55] Matty: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So if people want to see Tiffany's other appearances, she was in Episode 53 WHAT AUTHORS CAN LEARN FROM TV AND MOVIES, 65 where we talked about X-RAYING YOUR PLOT, 88 HOW TO GIVE AND RECEIVE CRITIQUE, and she was also part of the all-star cast of Episode 74 PERSPECTIVES ON PERSONAL BRANDING.
[00:02:14] Tiffany: Look at all your podcast episodes, Matty Dalrymple! Congratulations!
[00:02:18] Matty: I know, thank you, we're getting well past the 100 and I'm also going to say that we're recording this on November 9th, 2021, and it probably isn't going to go out for a little while, so if people hear us talking about your just launched book, it won't be just launched by the time people hear this.
[00:02:33] But yeah, yeah, we're both producing things. So, we're going to be talking about that today. In fact, because of my love of the nautical metaphor, we are going to be talking about BEING THE CAPTAIN OF YOUR AUTHOR VOYAGE.
[00:02:45] Tiffany: Oh, I love that. I always say the captain of your ship, so that's a perfect metaphor.
[00:02:49] Matty: Exactly, and so I think Tiffany, a good way to start out would just be for you to give a rundown of what your publishing voyage or author voyages look like.
[00:02:59] Tiffany: It's funny this week, you and I were just talking before we started, I've been posting these sort of funny videos about the fact that this book that's coming out today, or that is out, I guess, I started that one 15 years ago. It was the first full-length fiction I ever tried. Before that I had done short stories mostly, and I was so not ready to write that book. You know, I had all this learning to do as a writer, on the business side of it, everything. So the journey has actually been really interesting and it's a perfect day to talk about that because it's so much on my mind.
[00:03:29] I have been writing since I was small, like since I knew how to write, but it's such a long process of learning how to do it, and also learning how to do, as I was saying, whichever form of the craft you want to do. And I was not familiar with novel, so that was a new thing I had to learn. And the interesting thing is, I've been an editor for, as you were saying, almost 30 years. Just because you can assess and analyze the story form, that doesn't necessarily mean you can execute it. It's still a skill you have to learn. It's interesting.
[00:04:02] So with my writing career, I started, once I finally, as I like to tell people, it took me 113 queries to find an agent. Once I was finally at the stage where I could submit, which also took a while because my first manuscripts, like most people's, when they first start out were not worth looking at. ...
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[00:04:21] Got my agent. We shopped around one manuscript that did not get bought. Shopped around a second one after that, that also did not get bought. And then I started working on, I went back to one of the older ones, and now I can't even remember the order.
[00:04:39] And I thought, you know what? I just love it. It was one of the ones that just hadn't gotten picked up by a publisher. So generally, once you've done that, you're done, right? You can't go back and re-query those people. But a couple of years had passed, and I thought, well, I love this story. This was my first one, THE BREAKUP DOCTOR, and I would really like to get it out there. So by this point, indy pub had become a big thing and I thought, I'm just going to self-publish it.
[00:05:01] So I gave it a complete overhaul, and I mentioned that to my agent and bless her, Courtney Miller Callahan of Hand Spun Lit, all hail, she said, do you mind if I give it another crack? And I said, sure, that would be great. So she shopped it around again, we got bought by a small press, they bought it as a two-book series, which then expanded to a four-book series.
[00:05:22] And then my fifth book, which was A LITTLE BIT OF GRACE, which came out last year, was supposed to come out with them as well, but at that point, my career had changed trajectories a little bit. Our goals had diverged, and I realized I wanted to do something else with that one, so I pulled that one at the 11th hour. I just felt like it wasn't doing either of us a service to move forward with that one.
[00:05:47] So at that point I thought, so I've got four books published and here I am back at square one of my career. And literally, within maybe a month, my brilliant agent starts shopping this one around. Within a month, I think we got the offer from Berkeley Penguin or PRH, and the astonishing thing about that for me was, from one day to the next, I thought my career is over, I'm back at square one, and then the next day I got what I call, one random yes. And that was everything I had wanted at the time, I wanted to be with a traditional publisher.
[00:06:21] So nothing else changed, I was the same writer, it was the same manuscript, and yet my entire outlook on it changed, which was kind of the beginning of me realizing how much of this career we actually do control, even though it doesn't seem like that, as far as our approach to it. And then, just to round out my trifecta, when I published INTUITIVE EDITING, I knew that I didn't want to sell the rights for that one, so I did self-publish that one. So I've done all three, I've done indy pub, small press, and now traditional publishing.
[00:06:55] Matty: And what was the difference between you not wanting to sell your rights for the non-fiction book versus doing that for the fiction books?
[00:07:02] Tiffany: So, you know, our work is a commodity, and that's part of the bargain that you make with this as a career, and you decide whether that's okay with you, and it is okay with me with my fiction. I'm more than happy to sell it. I couldn't be happier to be with Penguin Random, they've been wonderful, and they've given my books so much more exposure than I had before, and they know what they're doing and they're experts at marketing and packaging and all of that. Editing.
[00:07:24] And that would have been nice with INTUITIVE, but honestly, it's just too damn close to my heart. INTUITIVE EDITING is, you and I have talked about this, I identify primarily as an editor. I love writing and I'll always do it, but at heart, I am an editor to my bones and it's the work of my soul, it's the purpose that I have here on this earth, if there is such a thing. And that book was something I'd wanted to do for probably 20 years, and just didn't feel like I was ready to do it until I did it. And when I did it, honestly, it just feels like, oh, this sounds so, you know, I guess all authors say this, it just felt too much like my baby. Some of the babies, I'm perfectly fine fostering out, but this one I just wanted to keep for a lot of reasons. For business reasons of having control of what happens to the title, but also just because I could not bear to let the rights go.
[00:08:15] Matty: That's very interesting to hear that you have that feeling more for your non-fiction work than your fiction work. I would have guessed it the other way around if I didn't know the publishing paths you had taken for each of those.
[00:08:25] Tiffany: Every author I talked to who does both, is the other way around. You know, they identify first as an author and then they do whatever editorial work or book coaching or nonfiction. That's either their bread and butter, or it's just they like doing it, but it's to facilitate their fiction. I could not feel more different. But I didn't know that, until maybe 15 years ago, I was at a writers' conference as a writer, and I found that I kept going into all of the workshops that were editing workshops and they lit me up. And I remember it was Pike's Peak Writers, one of my favorite conferences, and I remember thinking, oh, okay, I get it, I know who I am. It's also very freeing.
[00:09:05] Matty: Were you already editing at that point?
[00:09:06] Tiffany: I had been doing copy editing and that's how I started in the business, as a proofreader and a copy editor, and I did that for 15 years. So at that point, that was still my main job, I was doing journalism at the time, I was working to start writing novels, what I hoped would become novels. But yeah, I had been an editor and I knew I loved it, I knew I'd always do the copy editing and proofreading, but I didn't know it was my number one thing.
[00:09:31] That may be part of where the developmental editing grew from, because I realized I love copy editing and proofreading. It's very left brain and it's a little bit nuts and bolts of grammar, punctuation, spelling, so it's kind of nerdy, word nerdy, but I really dig it. But it's not as creatively fulfilling as developmental editing. So I think that was probably the jumping off place where I realized it was time for me to make that jump.
[00:09:57] Matty: If I had guessed what you were going to answer in response to the question about why you were willing to foster out your rights for your fiction but not your nonfiction, I would've guessed that the fiction work is sort of stand-alone, and by that I mean it's an entity unto itself, as opposed to your non-fiction work about editing, which is tied to your editing business.
[00:10:18] And so, I would think the editing book and the editing business would be a package that you might not want to separate out by giving away some of that to someone else. Is any of that true?
[00:10:30] Tiffany: Absolutely. As I said, it was partly a personal decision, but it was also very much a business decision, and that's exactly what I meant by that.
[00:10:37] Matty: Yeah. So you had mentioned before about you got the random phone call, and I liked the fact that it was from Random House, right?
[00:10:47] Tiffany: I didn't even put that together, literally a random yes.
[00:10:51] Matty: Or the Penguin yes, it's the case may be. So I think it's both heartening for newer writers to hear that this is kind of random, you know, that not having your manuscript picked up does not mean it's trash. It means that it didn't meet one of the many, many, many, many criteria, independent of quality that people have to apply. But it's also a little bit discouraging because, if it's that random, you know, what can you do? So you had kind of implied that you saw that maybe it wasn't quite as random as it initially sounded. Can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:11:29] Tiffany: Well, it's not random in the sense that you still have to deliver -- for part of this conversation, we're going to sound a little crass, because we have to talk about this as a business, as well as a craft. And if you are trying to pursue a writing career, you have accepted that this is your business.
[00:11:43] So the business side of it is, you and your work become a commodity that is for sale, which sounds a little bit like prostitution, but let's just call it product development. But nobody wants your product unless it's a top-notch product, and you are in a marketplace where you're competing with, literally every year, I think hundreds of thousands of manuscripts are submitted every year. I think at least tens of thousands are published. Countless more are not. And then, if you also factor in your competition as every book that has ever been published, now we're looking at millions and millions and millions. So you have to deliver something that is going to be competitive and on a par with those things.
[00:12:31] So it's not random in the sense of, woo, look at that, I won the lottery! You still have to do the work. But it's random in the sense, as you said, there are so many factors that go into deciding who gets anointed, who gets the nod. And I see it from the inside, working in this industry sort of peripherally as I do, but also as an author, from the time you submit to agents, and then to your editors at publishing houses, do they have something like this already in their list? Is your name the same as their boyfriend's ex who is stalking him, so they have a terrible connotation? Are they in a horrible mood that day? Did they just publish something very much like this, which has happened to me?
[00:13:15] And then at the publishing house, and I've seen this change over my 30 years in the business, it used to be the acquiring editor said, I love this book, they went to the department, and they said, this is the book I am putting myself behind and I want to acquire it, and pretty much it was like, okay, go get it. Now you've got to confer with the marketing department and publicity, and it goes through a committee. And if any one of those stages decides that you are not, again, let's get crass, a marketable commodity, because publisher publishing is a business, they have to try to turn a profit, otherwise they can't exist. Then that's the randomness of it, and it may be the truth that your manuscript is not marketable for the current market, or it could just be somebody's opinion about that. It's not random in the sense that there are factors that go into it that are very specifically considered, but it's random in the sense that we can't know what they are.
[00:14:16] And also, a lot of times I think I'll hear authors say, oh, you know, this sort of book is really selling right now, dystopian fiction is selling like crazy. By the time it's selling like crazy, it's too late for you to try to write that and turn it in, because you're looking at a one-to-two-year minimum turnaround when yours is going to come out. So you've already missed the boat. So this is another thing to me that feels freeing, in as if you have more control than you think you do. Quit trying to write what you think somebody else wants you to write, write what you want to write and then find the market for that.
[00:14:48] My first BREAKUP DOCTOR, one of the reasons it got turned down the first time around was that was when chick lit had tanked. Nobody wanted it. Well, it roared back. So just wait long enough and everything comes back. This book, I think we mentioned a minute ago, I started it 15 years ago. It had to wait for its time. This is a long-haul career.
[00:15:08] Matty: I do think that the question of the timing does influence the decision about trying to go traditional or going indy, because it is conceivable, I feel a little bit uncomfortable saying this, but it is conceivable that there could be like a news event that captures world attention, and that a rapid-release writer could in fact write a book that still capitalizes on that relatively short period of time. Now, I think there are other pitfalls, like quality, that you'd have to worry about, but it does mean that you're eliminating the year sometimes, between when you finished a book and publishing it.
[00:15:48] Tiffany: Yeah, absolutely. You can move a lot faster with that, for sure. And in the genres that are particularly responsive to trends, that's a great way to stay on top of it, if that's the kind of writer you are. If it's not, and you're trying to push yourself into a mold of, oh my God, I have to release a book a year, or a book every six months, you're never going to be happy, and I mean, to me, the basis of this career that we all got into it because of, was that we love the craft of it, we love telling stories. So if you're not the kind of person who wants to get on that hamster wheel and run as fast as you can, don't try to be that person. Be the person who publishes every few years. It's okay.
[00:16:25] Matty: Yeah, I'm thinking of all sorts of other episodes that would tie in nicely to this one, but one I want to make sure to mention is Episode 93, which is VALUING A CREATIVE PROCESS with Nicholas Erik. Nicholas Erik is somebody who has helped me with my Facebook ads. He's very much a data guy, we both love spreadsheets. And so when I invited him on the podcast to talk about valuing the creative process, I kind of thought that it was going to be about, how do you attach some quantitative measurement to the creative work you do, so you can make decisions about where you invest your time, where you invest your energy, is it a productive path to follow? And it really turned into much more of a, do it because you love it, because nobody wants to be doing something they hate for 40 hours a week. It was a wonderful conversation, it was a wonderful surprise, so I think that's exactly what you're saying there, a way somebody could make a living being a writer, but at what cost?
[00:17:18] Tiffany: At what costs absolutely. I mean, it may be 40 hours a week you give to it, it may be 10, it may be 5. It's all okay. Whatever you decide to commit to your writing is perfectly okay.
[00:17:31] Matty: So in the context of being the captain of your author voyage, you had mentioned some of these things that we really don't have any way of controlling, you know, whether we've named our main character the same name as the stalker.
[00:17:42] Were there things that you encountered in your work in the traditional publishing world that you found that you had more control than you would have thought over the outcome?
[00:17:54] Tiffany: Well, this is a weird, random thing that pops into my head, and it may be an adjacent answer to your question, but I just wrote about, I’m a good student, shall we say. My husband jokes that I'm Monica from FRIENDS. You know, if there's a right answer, by God, I want to find the right answer, and I want to be the A student and do it the way that will make my teacher happy. So when I got all of my publishing contracts, but particularly lately with Penguin Random, I try not to make waves. I try to go, okay, you guys are the experts, you know what you're doing. I put it in your hands. With this book, the one silly little area that I kind of did take a little more control was with the cover. They sent some cover designs and I loved, well, I loved them all, but one of them really hit, but the colors were all wrong to me, for what I had envisioned. It was beautiful. And so, I think I sent it back like three or four times, and every time I thought, oh God, they're going to get so mad at me because I keep tweaking the colors and I keep tweaking this and that and this font.
[00:18:57] And they were not only incredibly receptive to it, because they want you to love your book and what you're selling, because you're helping them sell it, commodity that you are, but also how happy I, this is the cover, besides INTUITIVE EDITING, I love this cover so much. I just am so proud to hold it up, and every time I see it appear on something, it makes me happy. So that was a good lesson for me that this is our career, and I have a friend who has had a very high-profile book release recently, and he was talking to me about the fact that when he and his coauthors pitched it to a major publisher, they said, yeah, we'd love to publish it, and here's how much we'd like to give you for it. And he said, well, we would love you to publish it, we'd like more. And he gave them another figure and they doubled the offer.
[00:19:46] And he said, so many people are afraid to ask for things like that, because I guess we think they'll change their mind. And he said, they're not going to fire you, they just said how much they want to hire you. They're already on board with you. I mean, the worst they can say is no, we're not going to do that or no, you're being a little bit of a pest. But ultimately, this is a partnership, and they want you to have input and they want you to be happy with it, and also you have to decide that this is your career, and you're not at the mercy of whatever wind blows, you get to assert something of the way you would like it to go. Even when you're with a traditional publisher.
[00:20:26] Matty: Yeah, that's great advice, and by the time this airs it will hark back to Episode 107 with Orna Ross about SELECT RIGHTS LICENSING and her advice that they expect you to negotiate, so if you're setting a bad precedent, if you accept the first offer because it's not what they expect a professional.
[00:20:43] Tiffany: My husband taught me that, he's in corporate America and every time he gets a job offer, he does that. And I panic every time, because I'm like, oh my God, dude, they're going to take it away. Of course they're not, right? Like you said, that is part of the process, and it is expected. We wouldn't think twice about it in a corporate environment and yet, for some reason, I think we're so grateful that somebody wanted to buy it. We're afraid to make waves, but they're not going to go, oh, you asked for more money, get out, we've changed our mind!
[00:21:12] Matty: So that's a great example of where you were able to be more of the captain of your voyage, than maybe other people would have expected you to be, based on the reputation that people ascribe to the traditional publishing world.
[00:21:24] Was there an area where you thought you would have more control, that you thought you'd be more of the captain of your voyage, where you had to back off a little bit?
[00:21:32] Tiffany: I haven't had that happen. I think I went into traditional publishing very open-eyed, because I've been in the business for so long, and even though I started in small press, and then with indy pub with INTUITIVE EDITING. Had I not had that experience, that might've been the case. For example, when I first started with Berkeley, with my first four, when I was with a small press, I hired a publicist and I did a lot on my end of it, because I figured they don't have the resources to dedicate to each author that a big publisher would. So I knew enough about publishing to know that big publishers also appreciate if you are contributing heavily to your own marketing and public relations, so I'm on board for that. So I said to them right away, I will be happy to hire a publicist, tell me what to do. And they kept saying, we got this, don't worry about it, we got this.
[00:22:23] That was surprising in a great way, but it's also, I'm a little bit, and I think a lot of us who indy publish are a little bit controlling. You know, there's a certain way that I want my career to go, and I am used to having my fingers on most of the things, so it was a little bit hard for me to go, okay, you've got this, and just take a little step back. It's not to say I'm not doing all of those, not all of them, I did not hire a publicist. I'm still doing things on my end, but I am trusting that this business partnership we have, they are doing what they are great at, and I am doing the part that I am good at.
[00:22:58] Matty: It's an interesting change. I've spoken with a number of authors who have experience in both the indy and traditional worlds, about the idea that traditionally published authors are expected to do more for themselves than would have been the case, I don't know, 10 years ago or something like that.
[00:23:13] And I'm wondering if, for something like publicity, do you have any right of approval over what they choose to do?
[00:23:23] Tiffany: Yes, you get, I think they call it, meaningful consultation, which I joke, is a meaningless expression, because it has no firm legal basis. If you have a good relationship with your publisher and your editor, and hopefully you will, almost all of them really will be receptive.
[00:23:40] You know, when I work with publishers as an editor, the holy grail of every editorial letter I turn in, every edit note we offer to authors is, this is your story, so if anything we're saying is not resonating with your vision and your intentions for the story, then discard it, or let's talk about ways to achieve what you envision in a way that will be as effective as possible for your readers.
[00:24:08] So I think most publishers want authors to feel that sense of authorship and ownership and that it is a partnership. Unless you're dealing with a disreputable or, you know, small press is a mixed bag, it's a blessing in many ways, and then you also have to buyer beware and do your due diligence, just like with editors, just like with book coaches. It's on you as the consumer in all those cases and a business partner to make sure you know what you're getting into, and that you are working with people who will be receptive to the fact that this is your career. Ultimately, it's your name on the cover of that book. But yes, your publisher always has the right to go, you know what, we don't think that that is going to sell books, what you want to do on the cover, so we're going to try something else.
[00:24:56] Matty: What are some lessons you can share based on your experience, both with a small press publisher and with a larger publisher, in what ways have those experiences differed? And if someone is trying to consider which route to take, what should the considerations be for them?
[00:25:11] Tiffany: Traditional publishing is going to give you a much wider marketplace, obviously. It's going to amplify your voice, it's going to get you places you might want to be, like some of the top trade review publications, like libraries and bookstores. You can also do a lot of that on your own as a published author and some small presses can do that. Traditional publishing has great rafts of support, like I have a marketing team, I have a PR team, I have my editorial team and then you also have your agent, so that's all great. It's all like, Team Tiffany, which feels terrific.
[00:25:44] But also there you lose some of that sense of piloting the ship, as you said, because they're good at their thing, and you have to step back a little bit and go, okay, you take the wheel here.
[00:25:54] And ultimately, I think we can't lose sight of the fact that with traditional publishing and small press, usually most small press, when you sign that contract, what you are signing over is the rights to your story. So make sure that's something you want to do. It is no longer your story, at that point, it belongs to them forever and ever and amen.
[00:26:15] So that's one reason I held onto INTUITIVE EDITING, because that just made me want to die. But with my fiction, it's lovely, to me it's a trade-off and it's one that I value, and so I'm willing to do that. With small press, as I said, do your due diligence, make sure they have a track record, make sure they operate professionally, make sure that the terms are fair. I have yet to sign a contract I haven't hired an IP lawyer to go over, because I want to know exactly what I'm signing. And my agent is a contract agent, she's sharp as a tack, but she's not a lawyer. And I want to know exactly what I'm signing.
[00:26:51] Matty: How do you go about finding the lawyer that you hired to do that?
[00:26:55] Tiffany: I checked with friends, I have a very wonderful group of media-affiliated friends here in Austin, and generally, they can offer me the best recommendations of anyone, but you can also check with author friends. You can check on author Facebook pages or just put it out there because somebody knows somebody, and if not, you can get on, oh, I don't even remember what the site is, but there's like The Law Review something, I don't know what it is, but they have reference pages where you can put in what state you're in and what you're looking for and they'll offer names. And then again, do your due diligence, have they worked in your field? Like I found somebody who had worked almost exclusively in film and publishing, so it's great, like knowing IP is terrific, but knowing IP in our industry, as fast as it's changing too, is even better. And it's a little bit pricey but not compared to what it could cost you if you sign something you don't realize you're signing.
[00:28:28] Matty: Here's a very tactical question, so it's a Tuesday as we're recording this, you had a launch date. I think Tuesday is sort of the traditional day of the week.
[00:28:35] Tiffany: Yes, the sacred holy day of book release.
[00:28:39] Matty: Why is that? And is there any impetus for people to carry that forward into indy published books?
[00:28:45] Tiffany: I do see a lot of indy pub people following that, and I don't know why. I have no idea, that's a great question and I'm going to ask editors. I will tell you when I get the answer, because now you've made me curious. I'm writing that down.
[00:28:58] Matty: Yeah. I always determined my launch dates based on various things, people's birthdays and things like that, but I always figure that something near a weekend is good because you have people who might engage more, if they're free over the weekends, engage more in launch activities and things like that, but
[00:29:14] Tiffany: I have to assume publishers have studied this to death and there's a reason for it, but I would love to know what it is, what a great question!
[00:29:22] Matty: You just wonder when the last study was done, because it seems to me, what I hear is it's always been like that, so it was one of those things, like, did grandma cut the turkey in half because her oven was too small or was it that was there actually a reason?
[00:29:35] I just pictured that, well it's because the horse and buggy would come through on Monday and deliver whatever.
[00:29:40] Tiffany: I desperately love publishing, but I will say it is not, in my experience, it is not an industry that embraces the latest, greatest right away. It takes publishing a minute. I remember when electronic everything, manuscripts, submission, everything, first started electronic copy editing, when I was copy editing at the time. Until then it was hard pages and a red pencil and go to the library and fact-check. And when things started to go electronic, there was one major publisher, I shall not name them, the head of the publisher said, we're not doing electronic, that we're just not doing that, it's a fad. And I thought, at this point I was doing it with every other publisher, and I just wanted to go, excuse me, it is not.
[00:30:21] Matty: I think it is interesting to see that some of the things that indy authors sort of trailblazed, use of BookBub for example, are now being picked up by traditional publishers.
[00:30:30] Tiffany: Picked up and carried away.
[00:30:31] Matty: Picked up and carried away, yeah, because if you're up against now Charlaine Harris or Jeffery Deaver or whoever to get your books in there, it's tougher, but it does mean that you think the indy authors are always having to be a step ahead and trailblaze whatever the next thing is. So learnings can go both ways. Obviously indy authors are learning a lot from the traditional publishing world, but I see the opposite happening as well.
[00:30:52] Tiffany: I mean, the music industry went that way and film went that way. Every time the indy people start trailblazing new ways to do it, the industry comes along after, but they're not set up really to take chances. The structure of a big publisher is that a few really big selling authors kind of carry the weight of all the mid-list and below authors.
[00:31:14] Matty: You had talked earlier about how, in your heart of hearts, you're an editor. What was the experience like working with your editor as the author?
[00:31:23] Tiffany: So I try to tell authors this all the time, because everybody gets their editorial letter and their edit notes back, and the first reaction is always, you don't know what you're talking about, and I hate you. And then deep depression, you go into the pit of despair and then you let it sit for a day or two and they start to coalesce, and even though I'm an editor and I've done this all of my entire working career, every time I get an editorial letter, I go, ah, they don't know what they're talking about, and I hate them.
[00:31:56] And then days go on you know, a day or two, that's all you need. Just let it percolate for a minute and get the distance from your little baby that you feel like just got attacked and remind yourself that like every other thing on the planet, you don't always get up at bat and hit the home run, and people are willing to help you learn to do better and make it perfect or not perfect, but as perfect as it can be.
[00:32:21] So take advantage of that. It is not a statement on your talent or ability, it is people simply holding up the mirror and helping you find, partly a big part of it is helping you find the disconnect between what's going on in your head, all the rich stuff that you know, that you mentally are filling in and you think is on the page, and them having the objectivity of saying, it's not quite coming across yet.
[00:32:48] So sometimes it's just they're pointing out that disconnect. Sometimes it isn't quite there yet, and that's okay. I tell authors all the time, when I was an actor, this is how acting works. When I did theater, you get the script, you sit down and you read it at a table and then slowly get it on its feet, and then weeks go by during which you rehearse this thing, before you get it on its feet. And even after you get it on its feet and it's in performance, it will continue to evolve. You'll get reviews back and they'll call out something that wasn't quite working, and so you'll reconvene and workshop through it and fix it. It's no different from that. It's a process and this is part of the process.
[00:33:30] Matty: There's another great episode I can recommend, and that is Episode 88 HOW TO GIVE AND RECEIVE CRITIQUE with Tiffany Yates Martin.
[00:33:37] Tiffany: Can I call out an episode? It's not relevant to this particular question, but it was relevant earlier and I didn't say it, but I don't know the number, but you recently had Mark Lefebvre on, and he was talking about THE RELAXED AUTHOR.
[00:33:48] Matty: Yes, that was 100.
[00:33:50] Tiffany: Oh, that's right, episode magical episode 100. That is as close to a life philosophy of a writing career as I can imagine, and I've just loved it. I got the book immediately after hearing that episode and it encapsulates everything I believe about taking ownership of your own career. Make it what you want it to be and don't let it eat you up.
[00:34:12] Oh my God, I talk to so many authors. I do a monthly feature on my blog called HOW WRITERS REVISE, and it started as a way for me to pull back the curtain on a process that is generally pretty opaque, like a lot of writers talk about their writing process, but we don't often hear about their editing and revision process. And I wanted to share that with authors because I think part of what makes it daunting and difficult is they don't get to hear about how every author on the planet does that, before this wonderful thing that you have fallen in love with on the printed page came into existence.
[00:34:44] And I can't tell you how many of these people I interview say something to the effect of, the happiest they have ever been as a writer, was either before they got signed for a contract, after they lost an editor and lost a publishing contract, when they lost an agent or between agents, and the common thread is not, oh, failure is so much fun, it's once you start to, "succeed" in this career, that also comes with a lot of things like deadlines, market expectations, input from other people, pressure, self-doubt, sales pressure that you don't have at those other times.
[00:35:23] And that's when you get back in touch with the reason, most of us got into this in the first place, which is the love of the craft, the creative impulse of it. So while you are in a position of having that, why do we forget that so easily? We have this idea in our head of what the holy grail is, and we forget to relish all the wonder of being able to just do this thing.
[00:35:47] When I was an actor, if you decided you wanted to act, you had to go find a bunch of people to act with. You know, you can sit there and do a monologue, but how fun is that? When you're a writer, if you decide you have a story that you want to bring to life, you can just sit down and do it. It's amazing. And maybe someday it will get published and maybe you'll get a publisher or an editor or an agent or whatever it is you hope to get out of it, thousands of readers. But right there at that moment, you are immediately gratifying that creative spark in you. And what else can you say that about?
[00:36:21] Matty: Well, what an absolutely lovely way to wrap up a conversation about being the captain of your author voyage. Tiffany, thank you so much. This has been so great. Congratulations again on the launch today on November 9th, 2020, one of THE WAY WE WEREN'T, and please let the listeners know where they can go to find that and all your other work online.
[00:36:41] Tiffany: Thank you. First of all, thank you for having me. I always love talking to you and I lose track of time. I do, and then it's over and I'm like, dang, that was fast! So the book, THE WAY WE WEREN'T is written under my pen name, Phoebe Fox, and you can find her at phoebefoxauthor.com, probably the best place to find everything, socials and links and all my other books.
[00:37:02] And then you can find me, Tiffany Yates Martin the editor, at foxprinteditorial.com. You can sign up for the feature I was just telling you about, HOW WRITERS REVISE is on my weekly newsletter. That comes once a month. And then of course, I've got a ton of resources on there for authors, most of them are free.
[00:37:18] I've got downloadable things like my, GET IT EDITED guide or a self-editing checklist, and there's lots of references to great podcasts. Yours is on there. Writers, publications, where you can get more craft information and dig in deeper and how to query and submit, and you name it. It's on there, go to the Resources page.
[00:37:39] Matty: Great. Well, Tiffany, thank you again. This has been as always so much fun.
[00:37:43] Tiffany: Thank you so much, my friend, it's great to see you.
[00:04:39] And I thought, you know what? I just love it. It was one of the ones that just hadn't gotten picked up by a publisher. So generally, once you've done that, you're done, right? You can't go back and re-query those people. But a couple of years had passed, and I thought, well, I love this story. This was my first one, THE BREAKUP DOCTOR, and I would really like to get it out there. So by this point, indy pub had become a big thing and I thought, I'm just going to self-publish it.
[00:05:01] So I gave it a complete overhaul, and I mentioned that to my agent and bless her, Courtney Miller Callahan of Hand Spun Lit, all hail, she said, do you mind if I give it another crack? And I said, sure, that would be great. So she shopped it around again, we got bought by a small press, they bought it as a two-book series, which then expanded to a four-book series.
[00:05:22] And then my fifth book, which was A LITTLE BIT OF GRACE, which came out last year, was supposed to come out with them as well, but at that point, my career had changed trajectories a little bit. Our goals had diverged, and I realized I wanted to do something else with that one, so I pulled that one at the 11th hour. I just felt like it wasn't doing either of us a service to move forward with that one.
[00:05:47] So at that point I thought, so I've got four books published and here I am back at square one of my career. And literally, within maybe a month, my brilliant agent starts shopping this one around. Within a month, I think we got the offer from Berkeley Penguin or PRH, and the astonishing thing about that for me was, from one day to the next, I thought my career is over, I'm back at square one, and then the next day I got what I call, one random yes. And that was everything I had wanted at the time, I wanted to be with a traditional publisher.
[00:06:21] So nothing else changed, I was the same writer, it was the same manuscript, and yet my entire outlook on it changed, which was kind of the beginning of me realizing how much of this career we actually do control, even though it doesn't seem like that, as far as our approach to it. And then, just to round out my trifecta, when I published INTUITIVE EDITING, I knew that I didn't want to sell the rights for that one, so I did self-publish that one. So I've done all three, I've done indy pub, small press, and now traditional publishing.
[00:06:55] Matty: And what was the difference between you not wanting to sell your rights for the non-fiction book versus doing that for the fiction books?
[00:07:02] Tiffany: So, you know, our work is a commodity, and that's part of the bargain that you make with this as a career, and you decide whether that's okay with you, and it is okay with me with my fiction. I'm more than happy to sell it. I couldn't be happier to be with Penguin Random, they've been wonderful, and they've given my books so much more exposure than I had before, and they know what they're doing and they're experts at marketing and packaging and all of that. Editing.
[00:07:24] And that would have been nice with INTUITIVE, but honestly, it's just too damn close to my heart. INTUITIVE EDITING is, you and I have talked about this, I identify primarily as an editor. I love writing and I'll always do it, but at heart, I am an editor to my bones and it's the work of my soul, it's the purpose that I have here on this earth, if there is such a thing. And that book was something I'd wanted to do for probably 20 years, and just didn't feel like I was ready to do it until I did it. And when I did it, honestly, it just feels like, oh, this sounds so, you know, I guess all authors say this, it just felt too much like my baby. Some of the babies, I'm perfectly fine fostering out, but this one I just wanted to keep for a lot of reasons. For business reasons of having control of what happens to the title, but also just because I could not bear to let the rights go.
[00:08:15] Matty: That's very interesting to hear that you have that feeling more for your non-fiction work than your fiction work. I would have guessed it the other way around if I didn't know the publishing paths you had taken for each of those.
[00:08:25] Tiffany: Every author I talked to who does both, is the other way around. You know, they identify first as an author and then they do whatever editorial work or book coaching or nonfiction. That's either their bread and butter, or it's just they like doing it, but it's to facilitate their fiction. I could not feel more different. But I didn't know that, until maybe 15 years ago, I was at a writers' conference as a writer, and I found that I kept going into all of the workshops that were editing workshops and they lit me up. And I remember it was Pike's Peak Writers, one of my favorite conferences, and I remember thinking, oh, okay, I get it, I know who I am. It's also very freeing.
[00:09:05] Matty: Were you already editing at that point?
[00:09:06] Tiffany: I had been doing copy editing and that's how I started in the business, as a proofreader and a copy editor, and I did that for 15 years. So at that point, that was still my main job, I was doing journalism at the time, I was working to start writing novels, what I hoped would become novels. But yeah, I had been an editor and I knew I loved it, I knew I'd always do the copy editing and proofreading, but I didn't know it was my number one thing.
[00:09:31] That may be part of where the developmental editing grew from, because I realized I love copy editing and proofreading. It's very left brain and it's a little bit nuts and bolts of grammar, punctuation, spelling, so it's kind of nerdy, word nerdy, but I really dig it. But it's not as creatively fulfilling as developmental editing. So I think that was probably the jumping off place where I realized it was time for me to make that jump.
[00:09:57] Matty: If I had guessed what you were going to answer in response to the question about why you were willing to foster out your rights for your fiction but not your nonfiction, I would've guessed that the fiction work is sort of stand-alone, and by that I mean it's an entity unto itself, as opposed to your non-fiction work about editing, which is tied to your editing business.
[00:10:18] And so, I would think the editing book and the editing business would be a package that you might not want to separate out by giving away some of that to someone else. Is any of that true?
[00:10:30] Tiffany: Absolutely. As I said, it was partly a personal decision, but it was also very much a business decision, and that's exactly what I meant by that.
[00:10:37] Matty: Yeah. So you had mentioned before about you got the random phone call, and I liked the fact that it was from Random House, right?
[00:10:47] Tiffany: I didn't even put that together, literally a random yes.
[00:10:51] Matty: Or the Penguin yes, it's the case may be. So I think it's both heartening for newer writers to hear that this is kind of random, you know, that not having your manuscript picked up does not mean it's trash. It means that it didn't meet one of the many, many, many, many criteria, independent of quality that people have to apply. But it's also a little bit discouraging because, if it's that random, you know, what can you do? So you had kind of implied that you saw that maybe it wasn't quite as random as it initially sounded. Can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:11:29] Tiffany: Well, it's not random in the sense that you still have to deliver -- for part of this conversation, we're going to sound a little crass, because we have to talk about this as a business, as well as a craft. And if you are trying to pursue a writing career, you have accepted that this is your business.
[00:11:43] So the business side of it is, you and your work become a commodity that is for sale, which sounds a little bit like prostitution, but let's just call it product development. But nobody wants your product unless it's a top-notch product, and you are in a marketplace where you're competing with, literally every year, I think hundreds of thousands of manuscripts are submitted every year. I think at least tens of thousands are published. Countless more are not. And then, if you also factor in your competition as every book that has ever been published, now we're looking at millions and millions and millions. So you have to deliver something that is going to be competitive and on a par with those things.
[00:12:31] So it's not random in the sense of, woo, look at that, I won the lottery! You still have to do the work. But it's random in the sense, as you said, there are so many factors that go into deciding who gets anointed, who gets the nod. And I see it from the inside, working in this industry sort of peripherally as I do, but also as an author, from the time you submit to agents, and then to your editors at publishing houses, do they have something like this already in their list? Is your name the same as their boyfriend's ex who is stalking him, so they have a terrible connotation? Are they in a horrible mood that day? Did they just publish something very much like this, which has happened to me?
[00:13:15] And then at the publishing house, and I've seen this change over my 30 years in the business, it used to be the acquiring editor said, I love this book, they went to the department, and they said, this is the book I am putting myself behind and I want to acquire it, and pretty much it was like, okay, go get it. Now you've got to confer with the marketing department and publicity, and it goes through a committee. And if any one of those stages decides that you are not, again, let's get crass, a marketable commodity, because publisher publishing is a business, they have to try to turn a profit, otherwise they can't exist. Then that's the randomness of it, and it may be the truth that your manuscript is not marketable for the current market, or it could just be somebody's opinion about that. It's not random in the sense that there are factors that go into it that are very specifically considered, but it's random in the sense that we can't know what they are.
[00:14:16] And also, a lot of times I think I'll hear authors say, oh, you know, this sort of book is really selling right now, dystopian fiction is selling like crazy. By the time it's selling like crazy, it's too late for you to try to write that and turn it in, because you're looking at a one-to-two-year minimum turnaround when yours is going to come out. So you've already missed the boat. So this is another thing to me that feels freeing, in as if you have more control than you think you do. Quit trying to write what you think somebody else wants you to write, write what you want to write and then find the market for that.
[00:14:48] My first BREAKUP DOCTOR, one of the reasons it got turned down the first time around was that was when chick lit had tanked. Nobody wanted it. Well, it roared back. So just wait long enough and everything comes back. This book, I think we mentioned a minute ago, I started it 15 years ago. It had to wait for its time. This is a long-haul career.
[00:15:08] Matty: I do think that the question of the timing does influence the decision about trying to go traditional or going indy, because it is conceivable, I feel a little bit uncomfortable saying this, but it is conceivable that there could be like a news event that captures world attention, and that a rapid-release writer could in fact write a book that still capitalizes on that relatively short period of time. Now, I think there are other pitfalls, like quality, that you'd have to worry about, but it does mean that you're eliminating the year sometimes, between when you finished a book and publishing it.
[00:15:48] Tiffany: Yeah, absolutely. You can move a lot faster with that, for sure. And in the genres that are particularly responsive to trends, that's a great way to stay on top of it, if that's the kind of writer you are. If it's not, and you're trying to push yourself into a mold of, oh my God, I have to release a book a year, or a book every six months, you're never going to be happy, and I mean, to me, the basis of this career that we all got into it because of, was that we love the craft of it, we love telling stories. So if you're not the kind of person who wants to get on that hamster wheel and run as fast as you can, don't try to be that person. Be the person who publishes every few years. It's okay.
[00:16:25] Matty: Yeah, I'm thinking of all sorts of other episodes that would tie in nicely to this one, but one I want to make sure to mention is Episode 93, which is VALUING A CREATIVE PROCESS with Nicholas Erik. Nicholas Erik is somebody who has helped me with my Facebook ads. He's very much a data guy, we both love spreadsheets. And so when I invited him on the podcast to talk about valuing the creative process, I kind of thought that it was going to be about, how do you attach some quantitative measurement to the creative work you do, so you can make decisions about where you invest your time, where you invest your energy, is it a productive path to follow? And it really turned into much more of a, do it because you love it, because nobody wants to be doing something they hate for 40 hours a week. It was a wonderful conversation, it was a wonderful surprise, so I think that's exactly what you're saying there, a way somebody could make a living being a writer, but at what cost?
[00:17:18] Tiffany: At what costs absolutely. I mean, it may be 40 hours a week you give to it, it may be 10, it may be 5. It's all okay. Whatever you decide to commit to your writing is perfectly okay.
[00:17:31] Matty: So in the context of being the captain of your author voyage, you had mentioned some of these things that we really don't have any way of controlling, you know, whether we've named our main character the same name as the stalker.
[00:17:42] Were there things that you encountered in your work in the traditional publishing world that you found that you had more control than you would have thought over the outcome?
[00:17:54] Tiffany: Well, this is a weird, random thing that pops into my head, and it may be an adjacent answer to your question, but I just wrote about, I’m a good student, shall we say. My husband jokes that I'm Monica from FRIENDS. You know, if there's a right answer, by God, I want to find the right answer, and I want to be the A student and do it the way that will make my teacher happy. So when I got all of my publishing contracts, but particularly lately with Penguin Random, I try not to make waves. I try to go, okay, you guys are the experts, you know what you're doing. I put it in your hands. With this book, the one silly little area that I kind of did take a little more control was with the cover. They sent some cover designs and I loved, well, I loved them all, but one of them really hit, but the colors were all wrong to me, for what I had envisioned. It was beautiful. And so, I think I sent it back like three or four times, and every time I thought, oh God, they're going to get so mad at me because I keep tweaking the colors and I keep tweaking this and that and this font.
[00:18:57] And they were not only incredibly receptive to it, because they want you to love your book and what you're selling, because you're helping them sell it, commodity that you are, but also how happy I, this is the cover, besides INTUITIVE EDITING, I love this cover so much. I just am so proud to hold it up, and every time I see it appear on something, it makes me happy. So that was a good lesson for me that this is our career, and I have a friend who has had a very high-profile book release recently, and he was talking to me about the fact that when he and his coauthors pitched it to a major publisher, they said, yeah, we'd love to publish it, and here's how much we'd like to give you for it. And he said, well, we would love you to publish it, we'd like more. And he gave them another figure and they doubled the offer.
[00:19:46] And he said, so many people are afraid to ask for things like that, because I guess we think they'll change their mind. And he said, they're not going to fire you, they just said how much they want to hire you. They're already on board with you. I mean, the worst they can say is no, we're not going to do that or no, you're being a little bit of a pest. But ultimately, this is a partnership, and they want you to have input and they want you to be happy with it, and also you have to decide that this is your career, and you're not at the mercy of whatever wind blows, you get to assert something of the way you would like it to go. Even when you're with a traditional publisher.
[00:20:26] Matty: Yeah, that's great advice, and by the time this airs it will hark back to Episode 107 with Orna Ross about SELECT RIGHTS LICENSING and her advice that they expect you to negotiate, so if you're setting a bad precedent, if you accept the first offer because it's not what they expect a professional.
[00:20:43] Tiffany: My husband taught me that, he's in corporate America and every time he gets a job offer, he does that. And I panic every time, because I'm like, oh my God, dude, they're going to take it away. Of course they're not, right? Like you said, that is part of the process, and it is expected. We wouldn't think twice about it in a corporate environment and yet, for some reason, I think we're so grateful that somebody wanted to buy it. We're afraid to make waves, but they're not going to go, oh, you asked for more money, get out, we've changed our mind!
[00:21:12] Matty: So that's a great example of where you were able to be more of the captain of your voyage, than maybe other people would have expected you to be, based on the reputation that people ascribe to the traditional publishing world.
[00:21:24] Was there an area where you thought you would have more control, that you thought you'd be more of the captain of your voyage, where you had to back off a little bit?
[00:21:32] Tiffany: I haven't had that happen. I think I went into traditional publishing very open-eyed, because I've been in the business for so long, and even though I started in small press, and then with indy pub with INTUITIVE EDITING. Had I not had that experience, that might've been the case. For example, when I first started with Berkeley, with my first four, when I was with a small press, I hired a publicist and I did a lot on my end of it, because I figured they don't have the resources to dedicate to each author that a big publisher would. So I knew enough about publishing to know that big publishers also appreciate if you are contributing heavily to your own marketing and public relations, so I'm on board for that. So I said to them right away, I will be happy to hire a publicist, tell me what to do. And they kept saying, we got this, don't worry about it, we got this.
[00:22:23] That was surprising in a great way, but it's also, I'm a little bit, and I think a lot of us who indy publish are a little bit controlling. You know, there's a certain way that I want my career to go, and I am used to having my fingers on most of the things, so it was a little bit hard for me to go, okay, you've got this, and just take a little step back. It's not to say I'm not doing all of those, not all of them, I did not hire a publicist. I'm still doing things on my end, but I am trusting that this business partnership we have, they are doing what they are great at, and I am doing the part that I am good at.
[00:22:58] Matty: It's an interesting change. I've spoken with a number of authors who have experience in both the indy and traditional worlds, about the idea that traditionally published authors are expected to do more for themselves than would have been the case, I don't know, 10 years ago or something like that.
[00:23:13] And I'm wondering if, for something like publicity, do you have any right of approval over what they choose to do?
[00:23:23] Tiffany: Yes, you get, I think they call it, meaningful consultation, which I joke, is a meaningless expression, because it has no firm legal basis. If you have a good relationship with your publisher and your editor, and hopefully you will, almost all of them really will be receptive.
[00:23:40] You know, when I work with publishers as an editor, the holy grail of every editorial letter I turn in, every edit note we offer to authors is, this is your story, so if anything we're saying is not resonating with your vision and your intentions for the story, then discard it, or let's talk about ways to achieve what you envision in a way that will be as effective as possible for your readers.
[00:24:08] So I think most publishers want authors to feel that sense of authorship and ownership and that it is a partnership. Unless you're dealing with a disreputable or, you know, small press is a mixed bag, it's a blessing in many ways, and then you also have to buyer beware and do your due diligence, just like with editors, just like with book coaches. It's on you as the consumer in all those cases and a business partner to make sure you know what you're getting into, and that you are working with people who will be receptive to the fact that this is your career. Ultimately, it's your name on the cover of that book. But yes, your publisher always has the right to go, you know what, we don't think that that is going to sell books, what you want to do on the cover, so we're going to try something else.
[00:24:56] Matty: What are some lessons you can share based on your experience, both with a small press publisher and with a larger publisher, in what ways have those experiences differed? And if someone is trying to consider which route to take, what should the considerations be for them?
[00:25:11] Tiffany: Traditional publishing is going to give you a much wider marketplace, obviously. It's going to amplify your voice, it's going to get you places you might want to be, like some of the top trade review publications, like libraries and bookstores. You can also do a lot of that on your own as a published author and some small presses can do that. Traditional publishing has great rafts of support, like I have a marketing team, I have a PR team, I have my editorial team and then you also have your agent, so that's all great. It's all like, Team Tiffany, which feels terrific.
[00:25:44] But also there you lose some of that sense of piloting the ship, as you said, because they're good at their thing, and you have to step back a little bit and go, okay, you take the wheel here.
[00:25:54] And ultimately, I think we can't lose sight of the fact that with traditional publishing and small press, usually most small press, when you sign that contract, what you are signing over is the rights to your story. So make sure that's something you want to do. It is no longer your story, at that point, it belongs to them forever and ever and amen.
[00:26:15] So that's one reason I held onto INTUITIVE EDITING, because that just made me want to die. But with my fiction, it's lovely, to me it's a trade-off and it's one that I value, and so I'm willing to do that. With small press, as I said, do your due diligence, make sure they have a track record, make sure they operate professionally, make sure that the terms are fair. I have yet to sign a contract I haven't hired an IP lawyer to go over, because I want to know exactly what I'm signing. And my agent is a contract agent, she's sharp as a tack, but she's not a lawyer. And I want to know exactly what I'm signing.
[00:26:51] Matty: How do you go about finding the lawyer that you hired to do that?
[00:26:55] Tiffany: I checked with friends, I have a very wonderful group of media-affiliated friends here in Austin, and generally, they can offer me the best recommendations of anyone, but you can also check with author friends. You can check on author Facebook pages or just put it out there because somebody knows somebody, and if not, you can get on, oh, I don't even remember what the site is, but there's like The Law Review something, I don't know what it is, but they have reference pages where you can put in what state you're in and what you're looking for and they'll offer names. And then again, do your due diligence, have they worked in your field? Like I found somebody who had worked almost exclusively in film and publishing, so it's great, like knowing IP is terrific, but knowing IP in our industry, as fast as it's changing too, is even better. And it's a little bit pricey but not compared to what it could cost you if you sign something you don't realize you're signing.
[00:28:28] Matty: Here's a very tactical question, so it's a Tuesday as we're recording this, you had a launch date. I think Tuesday is sort of the traditional day of the week.
[00:28:35] Tiffany: Yes, the sacred holy day of book release.
[00:28:39] Matty: Why is that? And is there any impetus for people to carry that forward into indy published books?
[00:28:45] Tiffany: I do see a lot of indy pub people following that, and I don't know why. I have no idea, that's a great question and I'm going to ask editors. I will tell you when I get the answer, because now you've made me curious. I'm writing that down.
[00:28:58] Matty: Yeah. I always determined my launch dates based on various things, people's birthdays and things like that, but I always figure that something near a weekend is good because you have people who might engage more, if they're free over the weekends, engage more in launch activities and things like that, but
[00:29:14] Tiffany: I have to assume publishers have studied this to death and there's a reason for it, but I would love to know what it is, what a great question!
[00:29:22] Matty: You just wonder when the last study was done, because it seems to me, what I hear is it's always been like that, so it was one of those things, like, did grandma cut the turkey in half because her oven was too small or was it that was there actually a reason?
[00:29:35] I just pictured that, well it's because the horse and buggy would come through on Monday and deliver whatever.
[00:29:40] Tiffany: I desperately love publishing, but I will say it is not, in my experience, it is not an industry that embraces the latest, greatest right away. It takes publishing a minute. I remember when electronic everything, manuscripts, submission, everything, first started electronic copy editing, when I was copy editing at the time. Until then it was hard pages and a red pencil and go to the library and fact-check. And when things started to go electronic, there was one major publisher, I shall not name them, the head of the publisher said, we're not doing electronic, that we're just not doing that, it's a fad. And I thought, at this point I was doing it with every other publisher, and I just wanted to go, excuse me, it is not.
[00:30:21] Matty: I think it is interesting to see that some of the things that indy authors sort of trailblazed, use of BookBub for example, are now being picked up by traditional publishers.
[00:30:30] Tiffany: Picked up and carried away.
[00:30:31] Matty: Picked up and carried away, yeah, because if you're up against now Charlaine Harris or Jeffery Deaver or whoever to get your books in there, it's tougher, but it does mean that you think the indy authors are always having to be a step ahead and trailblaze whatever the next thing is. So learnings can go both ways. Obviously indy authors are learning a lot from the traditional publishing world, but I see the opposite happening as well.
[00:30:52] Tiffany: I mean, the music industry went that way and film went that way. Every time the indy people start trailblazing new ways to do it, the industry comes along after, but they're not set up really to take chances. The structure of a big publisher is that a few really big selling authors kind of carry the weight of all the mid-list and below authors.
[00:31:14] Matty: You had talked earlier about how, in your heart of hearts, you're an editor. What was the experience like working with your editor as the author?
[00:31:23] Tiffany: So I try to tell authors this all the time, because everybody gets their editorial letter and their edit notes back, and the first reaction is always, you don't know what you're talking about, and I hate you. And then deep depression, you go into the pit of despair and then you let it sit for a day or two and they start to coalesce, and even though I'm an editor and I've done this all of my entire working career, every time I get an editorial letter, I go, ah, they don't know what they're talking about, and I hate them.
[00:31:56] And then days go on you know, a day or two, that's all you need. Just let it percolate for a minute and get the distance from your little baby that you feel like just got attacked and remind yourself that like every other thing on the planet, you don't always get up at bat and hit the home run, and people are willing to help you learn to do better and make it perfect or not perfect, but as perfect as it can be.
[00:32:21] So take advantage of that. It is not a statement on your talent or ability, it is people simply holding up the mirror and helping you find, partly a big part of it is helping you find the disconnect between what's going on in your head, all the rich stuff that you know, that you mentally are filling in and you think is on the page, and them having the objectivity of saying, it's not quite coming across yet.
[00:32:48] So sometimes it's just they're pointing out that disconnect. Sometimes it isn't quite there yet, and that's okay. I tell authors all the time, when I was an actor, this is how acting works. When I did theater, you get the script, you sit down and you read it at a table and then slowly get it on its feet, and then weeks go by during which you rehearse this thing, before you get it on its feet. And even after you get it on its feet and it's in performance, it will continue to evolve. You'll get reviews back and they'll call out something that wasn't quite working, and so you'll reconvene and workshop through it and fix it. It's no different from that. It's a process and this is part of the process.
[00:33:30] Matty: There's another great episode I can recommend, and that is Episode 88 HOW TO GIVE AND RECEIVE CRITIQUE with Tiffany Yates Martin.
[00:33:37] Tiffany: Can I call out an episode? It's not relevant to this particular question, but it was relevant earlier and I didn't say it, but I don't know the number, but you recently had Mark Lefebvre on, and he was talking about THE RELAXED AUTHOR.
[00:33:48] Matty: Yes, that was 100.
[00:33:50] Tiffany: Oh, that's right, episode magical episode 100. That is as close to a life philosophy of a writing career as I can imagine, and I've just loved it. I got the book immediately after hearing that episode and it encapsulates everything I believe about taking ownership of your own career. Make it what you want it to be and don't let it eat you up.
[00:34:12] Oh my God, I talk to so many authors. I do a monthly feature on my blog called HOW WRITERS REVISE, and it started as a way for me to pull back the curtain on a process that is generally pretty opaque, like a lot of writers talk about their writing process, but we don't often hear about their editing and revision process. And I wanted to share that with authors because I think part of what makes it daunting and difficult is they don't get to hear about how every author on the planet does that, before this wonderful thing that you have fallen in love with on the printed page came into existence.
[00:34:44] And I can't tell you how many of these people I interview say something to the effect of, the happiest they have ever been as a writer, was either before they got signed for a contract, after they lost an editor and lost a publishing contract, when they lost an agent or between agents, and the common thread is not, oh, failure is so much fun, it's once you start to, "succeed" in this career, that also comes with a lot of things like deadlines, market expectations, input from other people, pressure, self-doubt, sales pressure that you don't have at those other times.
[00:35:23] And that's when you get back in touch with the reason, most of us got into this in the first place, which is the love of the craft, the creative impulse of it. So while you are in a position of having that, why do we forget that so easily? We have this idea in our head of what the holy grail is, and we forget to relish all the wonder of being able to just do this thing.
[00:35:47] When I was an actor, if you decided you wanted to act, you had to go find a bunch of people to act with. You know, you can sit there and do a monologue, but how fun is that? When you're a writer, if you decide you have a story that you want to bring to life, you can just sit down and do it. It's amazing. And maybe someday it will get published and maybe you'll get a publisher or an editor or an agent or whatever it is you hope to get out of it, thousands of readers. But right there at that moment, you are immediately gratifying that creative spark in you. And what else can you say that about?
[00:36:21] Matty: Well, what an absolutely lovely way to wrap up a conversation about being the captain of your author voyage. Tiffany, thank you so much. This has been so great. Congratulations again on the launch today on November 9th, 2020, one of THE WAY WE WEREN'T, and please let the listeners know where they can go to find that and all your other work online.
[00:36:41] Tiffany: Thank you. First of all, thank you for having me. I always love talking to you and I lose track of time. I do, and then it's over and I'm like, dang, that was fast! So the book, THE WAY WE WEREN'T is written under my pen name, Phoebe Fox, and you can find her at phoebefoxauthor.com, probably the best place to find everything, socials and links and all my other books.
[00:37:02] And then you can find me, Tiffany Yates Martin the editor, at foxprinteditorial.com. You can sign up for the feature I was just telling you about, HOW WRITERS REVISE is on my weekly newsletter. That comes once a month. And then of course, I've got a ton of resources on there for authors, most of them are free.
[00:37:18] I've got downloadable things like my, GET IT EDITED guide or a self-editing checklist, and there's lots of references to great podcasts. Yours is on there. Writers, publications, where you can get more craft information and dig in deeper and how to query and submit, and you name it. It's on there, go to the Resources page.
[00:37:39] Matty: Great. Well, Tiffany, thank you again. This has been as always so much fun.
[00:37:43] Tiffany: Thank you so much, my friend, it's great to see you.
Links
https://foxprinteditorial.com/
Episode 088 - How to Receive and Give Critique with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 065 - X-raying Your Plot with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 053 - What Authors Can Learn from TV and Movies with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 100 - Becoming the Relaxed Author with Mark Leslie Lefebvre
Episode 088 - How to Receive and Give Critique with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 065 - X-raying Your Plot with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 053 - What Authors Can Learn from TV and Movies with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 100 - Becoming the Relaxed Author with Mark Leslie Lefebvre
For links to Matty's upcoming and recent events, click here.
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