Episode 326 - Story First, Genre Second: Lessons from Romantasy for Every Writer with Brenna Bailey-Davies
Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!
Amazon Music | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Castbox | Pocket Casts | Podbean | Player FM | TuneIn | YouTube
Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment on YouTube!
Brenna Bailey-Davies discusses STORY FIRST, GENRE SECOND: LESSONS FROM ROMANTASY FOR EVERY WRITER, including why genre works best as a marketing tool rather than a creative constraint, how to signal genre in your first chapter without over-promising on tropes, the danger of trope-stuffing and why narrative should drive genre decisions, what genre-bending fiction offers in the age of AI-generated content, the pros and cons of writing to a hot genre trend, and how editors bring a unique perspective to publishing strategy.
Brenna Bailey-Davies is an editor and writer based in Mohkínstsis (Calgary), Alberta, Canada. Through her company Bookmarten Editorial, she specializes in editing science fiction, fantasy, and romance, focusing on stories with queer representation. She also writes SFF and contemporary romance novels under the pen name Brenna Bailey.
Episode Links
Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast interview: The Creative Process Through an Editor’s Eyes - https://selfpublishingadvice.org/podcast-the-creative-process/
Jane Friedman article quote in the interview: https://janefriedman.substack.com/p/stop-obsessing-about-your-genre-subgenre
Summary & Transcript
Brenna Bailey-Davies is an editor and writer based in Mohkínstsis (Calgary), Alberta, Canada. Through her company Bookmarten Editorial, she specializes in editing science fiction, fantasy, and romance, focusing on stories with queer representation. She also writes SFF and contemporary romance novels under the pen name Brenna Bailey. In her conversation with Matty, Brenna drew on her experience as both editor and author to explore what writers in any genre can learn from the rise of romantasy and the broader trend toward genre-blending fiction.
GENRE AS MARKETING TOOL, NOT CREATIVE CONSTRAINT
The conversation opened with a timely reference to a Jane Friedman Substack post titled "Stop Obsessing about Your Genre, Sub Genre and Sub Sub Genre," which Matty had received just ninety minutes before the interview. Friedman argued that industry professionals routinely disagree about genre classifications, that boundaries between genres remain fundamentally fuzzy, and that great writers focus on producing great work rather than complying with labels. Brenna agreed and noted that genre functions best as a marketing tool—a way to help readers find books they will enjoy—rather than as a set of creative rules an author must obey.
Brenna observed that even a label as seemingly straightforward as "romantasy" conceals enormous nuance: what counts as the romance component versus the fantasy component, which books qualify as true romantasy versus fantasy with a romantic subplot, and why some books get labeled romantasy for reasons that have more to do with the author's gender than with the actual content. She cited N.K. Jemisin's BROKEN EARTH trilogy as an example of a work that contains a small romantic plotline but follows none of the structural beats of a romance—and yet has been labeled romantasy, a classification Brenna attributed in part to the fact that it was written by a woman.
THE FIRST CHAPTER AS GENRE SIGNAL
As an editor, Brenna said she asks authors about their genre during intake, but the answer matters less for how she approaches the editing than as a signal of whether the manuscript is something she wants to work on. More importantly, she argued that if a reader cannot identify the genre from the first chapter, there may be a structural problem. The opening pages should communicate tone, plot direction, and character orientation clearly enough that a reader can decide whether to continue. Editors, she said, function as reader advocates—stepping into the reader's position to assess clarity, comprehension, and whether the book delivers on its implicit promises.
TROPES VERSUS STORY
Matty asked whether authors who write across genres risk falling into a checklist mentality—feeling obligated to hit every beat of every genre they are blending. Brenna said she had not encountered this with her own clients, but she could identify it in published books: works that felt overstuffed with popular tropes, where the author appeared to be checking boxes rather than serving the narrative. She compared this to the pitfall of rigidly following any story structure framework—whether Save the Cat, Story Grid, or three-act structure—to the point where the story gets shoehorned into beats that do not suit it.
The antidote, Brenna suggested, was to put marketing considerations out of mind during the writing phase and focus on whether the story works at a fundamental narrative level: whether events happen at the right time, whether character actions make sense, and whether the arc feels organic. Tropes can be incorporated, but they should serve the story rather than dominate it.
WRITING FRESH IN THE AI ERA
Both host and guest noted that the ability to blend genres in unexpected ways may become one of the qualities that most clearly distinguishes human-written fiction from AI-generated content. Matty suggested that an AI system trained to write novels would likely be fed established story structures and genre rules and told to follow them—producing formulaic results. Brenna agreed and pointed to Matthew Salesses's work on how Western narrative conventions represent only one storytelling tradition among many, arguing that embracing flexibility and resisting rigid formulas is part of what makes fiction feel genuinely human.
THE RISKS OF CHASING A HOT GENRE
The conversation turned to the practical question of whether authors should write to a trending genre mashup. Brenna acknowledged the appeal: if a genre is selling, getting in early can pay off, and trending tropes are relatively easy to identify. But she cautioned that slower writers risk finishing their manuscripts after the market has become oversaturated, at which point standing out becomes far harder. Her advice was to think about what gives a narrative staying power—what will appeal to readers not just during a trend's peak but after the trend has cooled—and to build a story that functions as an evergreen work rather than a topical one.
She also noted that authors whose genre mashup books are no longer riding a trend can revisit their marketing to emphasize different aspects of the work, potentially reaching new reader pools. The key caveat, she stressed, was honesty: shifting the marketing spotlight is fine, but misleading readers about the book's actual content will backfire.
BRIDGING EDITING AND PUBLISHING STRATEGY
Brenna closed by describing her VIP Publishing Guidance service, a five-hour intensive in which she works one-on-one with authors on tasks ranging from keyword selection and category placement to marketing plans and the mechanics of uploading a book. She emphasized that her dual perspective as both editor and self-published author gives her an understanding of what a manuscript actually delivers to a reader—an understanding that pure marketing consultants may lack. For authors at any stage of the publishing process, that combination of editorial depth and practical publishing experience represents a distinctive and valuable resource.
This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don’t review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information.
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Brenna Brenna. Hey Brenna, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] Brenna: I’m doing great. Happy to be here.
[00:00:08] Matty: I am happy to have you here, and to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you. Brenna Brenna is an editor and writer based in Mohkínstsis, or Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
And through her company Bookmarten Editorial, she specializes in editing science fiction, fantasy, and romance, focusing on stories with queer representation. And she writes SFF and contemporary romance novels under the pen name Brenna Bailey. And I met Brenna when I got a chance to talk with her for the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, talking about the creative process through an editor’s eyes.
And we had so much fun in that—at least I did—we had so much fun in that conversation that I wanted to invite her onto The Indy Author Podcast. And we’re going to be talking about blending genres on purpose, lessons from romantasy for every writer. So, as is always the case, whenever I have someone I’m talking about a particular genre, I like to say that we’re going to be looking for opportunities to make this applicable, regardless of what genre you write in.
[00:01:03] Matty: And to sort of tee that up, I’m going to share just a very brief excerpt from a newsletter I just got. Actually, this is on Jane Friedman’s Substack, and I got this literally an hour and a half before the conversation with Brenna. And Jane prefaces this newsletter saying this is Jane’s rather infrequent and more personal newsletter about her career-long ambivalence about being a professional advice giver.
And the title of this email is “Stop Obsessing about Your Genre, Sub Genre and Sub Sub Genre.” And Jane writes, new writers in particular worry about genre too much. Industry professionals disagree all the time about genres and what constitutes a genre or sub genre or category. Genre boundaries are fuzzy, new genres and sub genres emerge over time.
“Hello, romantasy.” And that is actually from Jane’s article, not an editorial comment from me. But Jane goes on to say, what do you often hear from agents and editors alike? We want genre-bending stories. We want things that defy categorization, upend our expectations. And then Jane goes on to say, because that’s what great writers do—they frankly do not give a damn about these labels because they’re trying to get to great.
They’re trying to do great work that transcends labels. And so Brenna, I think this is such a fun background for our conversation. And so I wanted to start out—like, any comments that you have about Jane’s thoughts on that and how, if you look back when you were entering into a more genre-bending category, how does that track with what your experience was?
[00:02:29] Brenna: Yeah, I totally agree with what Jane says there. I think genre is really useful as a marketing tool, but we can definitely get too caught up in it. Especially what she said about genres not having really clear boundaries. Like, if you think of something about romantasy—well, sure, it’s romance and fantasy put together, but there’s so much nuance there.
Like, what counts as the romance aspects? What counts as the fantasy aspects? What books actually count as romantasy, and which ones are fantasy with romance in them? And it gets really messy. So yeah, I mean, when I was writing my own work, which is romance—you have to think about what’s going to reach your readers.
And I think nowadays we rely a lot on tropes and genre conventions to do that. But the story is at the heart of it, right? That’s the important part, not the category label.
I don’t write romantasy—I just edit a lot of it. So I’m really familiar with romantasy from an editor’s perspective and a reader’s perspective, because I read a ton of it as well. But from an editor’s perspective, kind of reading romantasy and seeing how authors blend the genres and what different aspects they bring in has been really interesting and informative for my own writing as well.
[00:03:47] Matty: And when you are taking a look—do you normally have the author tell you in advance what they think their genre is? Are they coming to you because they know you specialize in that? Like, what’s the connection between how you connect with authors and the genre they perceive they’re writing in?
[00:04:06] Brenna: So I do ask as part of my onboarding—like, I have an intake form. And one of the questions that I ask is, what genre is your work? But honestly, it doesn’t really matter to me so much as it’s kind of just an indication of whether I want to work on this or not.
And oftentimes once I start looking through something, I’ll go, okay, so maybe you’re not quite sure what your genre is, or you’re not quite sure who your target audience is. And then that’s something that we end up having to kind of parse through as I edit.
[00:04:37] Matty: Yeah, I think that—I’m going to include a link to that Substack article from Jane in the show notes for this episode. And I think she is agreeing with what you’re saying about it’s more of a marketing consideration than a creative consideration. And I think that there are two ways people could get into the more genre-crossing or genre-bending sub sub genres. And that would be either because they see something going on in the market and they’re following that because they think there’s a demonstrated interest in this, or they’re just writing the book that interests them. And then in the end they step back and say, what do I have here?
Oh, it has some romance and it has some fantasy. So I guess it’s romantasy. Are you seeing one of those approaches more in your client base?
[00:05:24] Brenna: I think I mostly see the more writing-to-market type of thing. Or people know the kind of niche that they want to fit in and they go that way. But I do have people come to me, especially for—like, I offer first chapter assessments. So I’ll go through and give feedback on the first chapter.
Usually with services like that, that are more high level, authors will be like, I’m struggling with where to place this. I don’t know who my target audience is. So in that case, it’s like they’ve written the story of their heart, they don’t know how to market it, and they want some feedback on who they think their audience is, who’s going to buy the book.
[00:06:01] Matty: That’s interesting—as an editor being in the position of being kind of a marketing consultant as well as a creative consultant. And I suppose it’s the kind of thing where at the end, after the editorial process, you can step back and maybe advise them on that, or is it clear right off the bat? Like, could you provide that kind of marketing input just based on a first chapter?
[00:06:21] Brenna: Based on a first chapter, I can kind of have an idea of it generally. So from my perspective, if you can’t tell the genre in the first chapter, there might be a problem—just because in a first chapter you’re trying to indicate to readers, this is the type of book you’re getting into. So whether that’s tone, plot, character—you want to indicate something that’s going to say, this is the type of book you’re reading.
So readers can go, yes, I want to keep reading, or no I don’t.
I like to think of myself—I think editors in general are reader advocates, right? So we’re trying to step in in the place of a reader in some ways to say, can I understand this? Do I know what’s happening? Is it clear? And I think genre is part of that—just because, as much as we say labels don’t matter, they do when it comes to marketing, right?
That’s how readers find books—they look in the genre that they like because they want more of that. So it is really important in a lot of ways, even if the story is more important and more key than the genre itself.
[00:07:26] Matty: You had said about there being—like, true, I’ll say “true” in air quotes, romantasy, and then fantasy that has a romance aspect or romance that has a fantasy aspect. Can you talk a little bit more about how you make that assessment? And are those second and third things—are those problematic, or are they just another approach?
[00:07:46] Brenna: Yeah, so this is really interesting. I personally don’t like the label romantasy. And this is part of why—because it is so messy and unclear what it actually means. Sometimes I think that romantasy as a label is sometimes used to disparage fantasy written by women specifically because there is romance in it.
So some people will use the label romantasy to say, oh, this is not “real” fantasy, in air quotes, because it has romance in it. Because I mean, romance in general as a genre has kind of been belittled over time, like throughout history. So sometimes that label is applied to books that it shouldn’t be applied to.
So for example, N.K. Jemisin’s BROKEN EARTH trilogy—it has some romance in it, like it has a really small romantic plotline, but it does not follow romance beats. It is not a happy ending. It should not be considered romance at all in terms of genre, and yet I’ve seen it labeled romantasy, and I think that’s because it’s written by a woman.
So yeah, it’s really difficult to parse what counts and what doesn’t, and also why people are putting the label on something.
[00:09:03] Matty: I’m realizing that when you’re talking about the beats one expects from a romance, or the tropes, the happy ending—I can imagine that if you’re trying to layer on romance and fantasy, for example, and you’re now trying to hit every trope in both of those within a story that holds together, that would either take a great deal of editorial skill on the part of the editor and the writer, or it could just be a big mess.
[00:09:32] Matty: Do you find that you have clients or speak with authors who have kind of a checklist mentality and say, there are these ten beats that have to be in romance and there are these ten beats that have to be in fantasy, and so now I have to have twenty beats that I make sure I hit? Like, are people approaching it that strictly, and should they?
[00:09:50] Brenna: I haven’t run into it with my own clients, but I can tell that there are some writers who write that way—because, I mean, this kind of gets to whether tropes are important as well, and the role that tropes play. But when you read a book, sometimes you can tell, oh, they’re just stuffing it. You know what I mean?
They’re just stuffing it full of tropes that they think are really popular, that are going to make the book—like you said—check all the boxes. And that, I think, works against books. I think that is when the books become overly tropey, and readers read it and they go, okay, I see what you’re doing here. This isn’t exactly what I wanted. So I think that there is kind of a balance that you need between including the tropes that readers want and the things that readers like.
But the story—and like we’ve been saying this since the beginning with Jane Friedman’s article, right—the story is at the heart of it, not the genre.
So you don’t want to be stuffing your story full of tropes just to check the boxes that you think will make it sell. You need to have a story that works and have maybe a few tropes in there. But too much—like trying to hit every single beat for both fantasy and romance—can do you a disservice. It’s like trying to take any story structure, like Story Grid or Save the Cat or three-act structure, and trying to just shoehorn it into the beats, even if the story doesn’t quite fit. That’s going to do a disservice to your story, right? You need to do what works for you and for the actual narrative itself, rather than trying to make it fit a box that it doesn’t quite fit.
[00:11:30] Matty: Yeah, I was very pleased to see Jane’s article because I think it speaks to not only something that I think a lot of writers who aren’t writing strictly within that kind of market-driven beat format will be glad to hear, but I also think about my experience or my preferences as a reader. And I look at my enormous to-be-read pile on my bedside table.
And if someone were to look at that, I don’t think they would look at the first book in the pile and say, oh, I can guess what all the other books in the pile are. Like, I’m reading across lots of different genres. And I think that’s got to be true of most people. I mean, I know there are people who only read cozy mysteries, and if it’s not a cozy—if they open a book and the murder happens on the page—they’re not going to be happy campers.
And I can also see that every once in a while I get in the mood for—like, I want to see a locked-room mystery. Like, that’s just what I’m in the mood for. There’s like a very specific sort of trope craving I’m trying to satisfy. But that’s not the normal reason I pick a book. That’s kind of the outlier reason.
And I do think about this a lot, because one of my series is sort of supernatural but not real supernatural. And I’m always complaining to my listeners that I don’t think it’s supernatural enough for people who are specifically looking for supernatural, but it’s a little too supernatural for people who want none of it. But I do kind of feel like those readers that have very strict rules about what they’re going to read are the minority, and that there are other ways we can make our work appealing to them without making promises about the beats they’re going to encounter that we then have to shoehorn in order to achieve.
[00:13:13] Brenna: I agree.
[00:13:15] Brenna: I think specifically in romance, people look for tropes more, because that’s probably the most tropey genre. And it’s very easy for people to rule out—like, oh, I don’t like age gaps, so I’m not going to read that. Or I don’t like ice queens, so I’m not going to read that. Or I love enemies to lovers, so I’m going to gravitate towards those.
Those kinds of things I think are super easy to pinpoint in romance. I think other genres are less tied to tropes, so there’s a little bit more freedom in that. But like you said, there are other ways that we can indicate to readers what they will or will not like in something, right? Even something as simple as your book cover design or your blurb, or whatever your hook is—what’s the hook on the back cover?
Or on the Amazon listing that draws readers in. I mean, for me—and this might be a little bit weird—but I only read the hooks. I don’t tend to read the full blurb. I’ll just read the hook and go, yeah, that sounds great. And then I’ll pick it up without even reading the rest of the blurb. Like, if the cover looks good and the hook is good, I’m sold.
So there are other things that readers look at. And you can think about this as like a marketing whole—you want to try to cover as many bases as you can to draw those readers in, because people will be paying attention to different things.
[00:14:32] Matty: So do you have tips—maybe specific to romantasy, but ideally that might be generalizable to other genre-crossing books—about some characteristics of when an author is doing it right and they’re blending them in the best possible way?
[00:14:51] Brenna: Yeah, so I think this just comes back to what serves the narrative versus trying to trope-stuff a book, right? Think about—basically put the marketing stuff out of your mind while you’re actually writing and see if the story is working just on a basic story level. Like, does it make sense for things to happen when they happen?
Does it make sense for characters to act the way that they’re acting? And make sure you get that feedback from your beta readers and your editor. And make sure that the story is following the narrative arc that you want it to follow. And then you can think about—I mean, some people do it the opposite way. They’ll think about tropes first and then plan the story based on it. But don’t get too in the weeds with it, would be my advice, because that’s when you start to hit walls.
[00:15:42] Matty: Yeah, I can imagine that this sort of “don’t pay too much attention to the genres” is also well-timed because of the whole concern about AI going to be writing all the books. And I think that if I were developing an AI system to write books, then I would first load in Save the Cat and Story Grid and all the—my friend Jennie Trop and say, okay, here are the rules you have to follow.
Go follow them. And I’m not suggesting that any of those people are asking for their works to be used, even outside the AI world, as a strict rule. But I do think that the idea of combining different genres in this way, in unexpected ways or fresh ways, is going to be one of the last bastions that an AI can’t do.
And it makes that idea of not complying with rules and coming up with something fresh and new even more important than it might have been a couple of years ago.
[00:16:42] Brenna: That’s a really good point. I think it’s really easy for new writers to kind of fall into, oh, I have to follow this exactly to a T—like, this story structure, or Save the Cat gives like percentages, and they’ll be like, oh, if this doesn’t fall at exactly 25 percent, like, it’s a failure. Like, no, that’s not true.
There is no one correct way to write a book. Matthew Salesses actually has a book—it’s basically about how in the Western world, we have a specific narrative that we follow generally when we’re storytelling, but in other cultures there are other storytelling narratives that are just as highly lauded, right?
So there is no one correct way to write a book, and we have to kind of embrace that flexibility and not stick too closely—because yeah, we don’t want to sound like robots. We are human. And like you said, that is what differentiates us from something that is written by an AI.
[00:17:44] Matty: I think that a lot of people—there’s a small group of people who are coming up with these combinations of genres that hit really big, like romantasy. And then I think that there are a lot of people who see that in the market and see how popular it is and decide to follow that.
And it seems like the romantasy thing has been going on for quite a while. I mean, long enough so that early in the—like Rebecca Yarros, or whatever—early in her popularity, if someone saw that, they could have cranked out a book sort of in that style. So they might be able to hit that window where it’s still popular.
But I think that the danger is that some other out-of-the-box thinking creative comes up with another combination, and that suddenly romantasy isn’t as popular as it has been. Can you just comment on the pros and cons of jumping on a hot genre-crossing approach?
[00:18:37] Brenna: Yeah, so I mean, you’ve already touched on the pros there, right? Like, if you know that a genre is selling, if you can get in there fast enough and write to market basically fast enough, then you can capitalize on that. And it becomes fairly clear, I think, fairly quickly what tropes are working, what readers are looking for.
And then that makes it easier to write to market. But then the cons of that are, you don’t know how long that genre will stay hot, right? You don’t know how long that’s going to be the most popular thing. So if you’re a slower writer who’s trying to write to market, by the time you get the book out, it might not do as well, or the market’s going to be oversaturated by that time.
And then you have to work harder to make your book stand out and say, this is my book and it’s different from these books because such-and-such. But you’ll still like it because it’s romantasy. Like, that just becomes harder when the market is absolutely flooded. I think if you want to write a romantasy book or another cross-genre book that is popular—or it doesn’t even have to be cross-genre, right? It could be like hockey romance, which is big right now. If you want to write hockey romance or something like that—think about what makes the narrative have staying power and how you can market it that way.
So what will appeal to readers now, but also what is going to appeal about that story to readers in the future? So how can you pull those pieces out and make it kind of an evergreen story rather than just a top-of-the-market thing that’s going to fall off when the genre’s no longer super popular.
[00:20:09] Matty: If a certain combination of genres is sort of losing its pull in the market, but the author is still interested in getting word out about it—is there a way that they can take a look at aspects of it that, you know, now they want to be emphasizing more of one aspect than the other?
Like, if they then start advertising their romantasy book as just romance—what is the danger that somebody who doesn’t like fantasy accidentally picks it up and is disappointed? I mean, I think some of that goes back to what you were saying before about things like blurb and cover design. You need to be signaling those things. But maybe just in marketing copy or the expectations set for readers—any thoughts about that?
[00:20:50] Brenna: I think it’s just dependent on what gets emphasized. But like you said, you don’t want to mislead your readers, because what if they start reading it thinking it’s just purely romance and then suddenly there’s magic? They might be really taken aback by that. So you still have to be honest about what the book is, but what you shine a spotlight on can change.
[00:21:13] Matty: Yeah, that would be an interesting way to sort of reinvigorate a backlist—just look at a different aspect of your work that maybe you haven’t been emphasizing in your marketing materials, and make sure that your book actually meets the new expectation that you may be setting for it. And maybe be able to tap into a new pool of fans.
[00:21:32] Brenna: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:21:35] Matty: Do you see any other cross-genre books coming down the path? Do you see anything that’s kind of like the sports-plus-romance kind of cross?
[00:21:46] Brenna: Yeah, to be honest, I mostly exist in the romance world, so that’s kind of where my view is. But something that I’m seeing more of is science fiction romance. Like, I’ve been seeing more sci-fi romance on the market, which I really enjoy. I would love to see more of that. And also these kind of—I mean, okay, this might not be new, but it’s new to me—but I’m dipping my foot into comedic horror, which I think is really great.
And I’m also seeing more of that. Maybe just because of my own viewpoint widening, but I think that’s a fantastic genre mashup.
[00:22:22] Matty: Yeah, like Grady Hendrix—do I have his name right? I’ve enjoyed his books. But yeah, that is funny. Those are two genres that you wouldn’t think would be easily combined.
[00:22:33] Brenna: Yeah, but they work so well. Like, Rachel Harrison’s CACKLE is one of my favorites. And then T. Kingfisher—just in general—writes so many books that are really creepy and eerie and send tingles up your spine. But they’re also laugh-out-loud funny.
[00:22:48] Matty: I wonder if that’s successful because they’re so different. Like, I can imagine that it would be—I mean, they would all be different kinds of creative challenges. But if you have two genres that have really different beats, then maybe it’s actually easier to combine those than if you have ones that have kind of overlapping beats.
And so you’re not sending the reader a clear message at any point about which of those genres you’re leaning into.
[00:23:18] Brenna: Possibly. I think comedy and horror too work really well together because the comedy works to relieve the fear. So those two, even though they’re complete opposites, they mesh really well.
[00:23:31] Matty: Well, I’ve probably mentioned this example on the podcast before, but it works here. So I remember when I first watched PULP FICTION—and PULP FICTION is not the kind of movie that I would normally watch, but everybody was raving about it. So I thought, oh, I should watch PULP FICTION. And I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as hard as when the guy in the backseat of the car gets shot.
And I don’t like saying that to people who haven’t seen the movie because then they think I’m a freak. But it is true, because you have all this tension built up from the horror and then you have an opportunity to release it in laughter. And it might be kind of manic laughter, but it’s laughter nonetheless.
Like, cathartic.
Yes, yes, exactly. I can see why that would support those being a good combination of genres. Well, I know we’re jumping around a little bit. It probably would have been better if I had been able to read Jane’s article not literally an hour before we hopped on the call, because I did spend the entire ensuing hour trying to sort through my thoughts that were being triggered both by our topic and by Jane’s article.
[00:24:31] Matty: The other thing that I did want to ask you about, because I think this is such a great offering, is that you have a service called VIP Publishing Guidance. And I think this is pretty unique among the people I’ve spoken to who offer services. And I would just love to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit more about what that is and what you do for authors with that service.
[00:24:52] Brenna: Oh sure. So with VIP Publishing Guidance, it’s basically—you get all of my expertise as an editor and an author to yourself for five hours. So I can help you walk through all kinds of things. Like, if you are at the point where you’re ready to upload your book but you kind of need a coworker who knows what they’re doing to help you do that—I can do that. We can look up stuff like what keywords you should be using, what categories you should put your book in, which ties to genre. I can go over marketing plans with you, all kinds of things. It’s called VIP because it is tailored to you as the author and what you need to go through. But it’s kind of an intensive because we will work for those five hours very closely together to basically knock out as much work as we possibly can.
[00:25:40] Matty: That is a great offering, and I think that maybe before our conversation I didn’t fully appreciate the extent to which someone who’s offering editorial services maybe has a unique perspective into the marketing side that someone who’s just focusing on marketing doesn’t necessarily have, because you’re—
I recognize that this is not a requirement of taking advantage of the VIP Publishing Guidance, but for your clients you have this very, very deep understanding of what’s going to be delivered to a reader and can help direct them on how to find those readers that are going to be happiest about it.
[00:26:12] Brenna: Exactly. Yeah. And I think it helps too that I’ve self-published my own books, so I have been through the process. I know how difficult and confusing it can be. So that’s kind of why I made the service—so I could help people who were in the position I was in before I published and felt very clueless.
[00:26:30] Matty: Yeah, I think that—you’re somebody who’s cranking out a book every three months or something like that. Even going back, let’s say once a year—I mean, I’m kind of on, for my fiction, more or less a once-a-year schedule. And even in that year, I can pull up a page on KDP or Draft2Digital or something and say, oh, what’s this? I’ve never seen this before—even though I know I have.
And making notes about those kinds of things can be very helpful. And then having somebody like you to walk authors through that can be even more helpful. So I really like that offering, and I just wanted to give folks a chance to hear a little bit more about that.
[00:27:02] Matty: So thank you so much for joining me, and for being patient with my rambling questions as inspired by our topic and by Jane’s article. It was a great conversation.
[00:27:14] Brenna: Yeah, really fun.
[00:27:14] Matty: Brenna, please let everyone know about the other services you offer and where people can find out more about that online.
[00:27:20] Brenna: Yeah, so I offer copyediting, proofreading, and sensitivity reading services at BookmartenEditorial.com. And if you’re interested in my sci-fi romances, you can go to BrennaBailey.com for those.
[00:27:31] Matty: Great.
[00:27:33] Brenna: Thank you.