First Cup of Coffee - July 16, 2021

The importance of Platform for an author and what aspects of it are under your control and what isn't. See also: phenoms. We all want it to happen, but there are no magic formulas or handy algorithms to produce one.

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SPEAKER_00 0:03

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy, author of Fantasy Romance and Romantic Fantasy. Romance is not antimatter. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. I was noticing that I need to ring the chimes a little bit more strongly. And for winter, we will make a recording. That I can play or something. Or come out here in the snow and play it. I don't know. We'll cross that bridge. Right now, it's beautiful summer. Look at gorgeous summer behind me. My climbing uh climbing hydrangea? So the climbing hyacinth or climbing hydrangea? It's which both of which are misnomers, um, since it is truly uh a kind of clematis. And I like how my little garden path looks going up the hill under the crabapple tree. I need to uh plant some more flowering bushes along there. There are some. But wouldn't that spot underneath the lantern? That's a little candle lantern for evenings, that would be a good spot for something pretty, wouldn't it? So you all could gaze upon that if you get tired of looking at my face. Um though, how is that even possible? So let's see. Um today is say it with me, Friday! Yay! Uh July 16th. And uh there's a gnat flying around my head. Uh beautiful summer Friday morning. I got something um a couple of weeks ago from uh from the Inn of the Mount Gods, I think. No, no, it was from a casino in Las Vegas. That's right, at Casino Hotel on Las Vegas. They sent us this like two weeks ago saying um summer is coming to an end. And uh things about fall weather, and I was like, um, I'm sorry, it's like summer is not coming to an end. We just had solstice. I don't really get um the whole rushing summer to be over thing. Um I saw a tweet a while back that was um someone's hot take, as many tweets are. Um, you know, I think some people are so trying so fucking hard to be clever, you know, trying to go viral, trying to get a lot of people's attention. But anyway, this person put out this tweet saying, um, you know, basically saying that this was their hot take, you know, like they'd had this amazing idea where they were positing that the reason that we were supposed to look forward to summertime was because that was when our working class ancestors um I can't remember what the reasoning was, um, got time off or something like that. Uh now that I'm trying to recapitulate it, I I can't remember the exact reasoning. But it was something like that they got the, you know, like the reason that the summer break for school was or from school was so that we started out as an agricultural society and kids were let go from school in the U.S. to go work the farms and so forth. So it may have been connected to that idea. Um clearly this was not a great hot take, but they were saying, you know, that otherwise summer is such a shitty season that it's you know so hot and so miserable and that everybody hates it. And there's no reason for us to otherwise have this um cultural idea that summer's so great. And I declined to reply, um, which you know that discretion is the better part of valor, especially when it comes to social media and especially when it comes to Twitter. But you know, I wanted to say, um, well, you know, if you pulled your head out of your ass and realized that not everybody lives where you live. Um, no doubt they lived in New York City, and there is me passing judgment and making a sweeping generalization. But it's like, okay, guys, I know New York City is miserable in the summertime. I've been in New York City in the summertime, and I know that y'all hate it. I know y'all do your best to escape it, but you know, I realize that we have this conversation over and over, but you know, not everybody lives in New York City. You guys think it's the center of the world when you live there, um, but it ain't. And uh sure, there are some parts of the country. Um, you know, what let's just confine it to the US because right now it's it's winter on in the southern hemisphere, right? Winter in Australia. Um you know, people live in lots of places, and uh I love summer here. Summer in the Rocky Mountain West is fabulous. I'm sorry if it's not fabulous where you are. Um move, move. You could always move. But you know, these are people who are like um I always think of my friend back when uh when I was in my very first critique group when I lived in Wyoming, where summer is also beautiful, uh, and she said to me, you know, did I ever worry about um how I could become a writer and not because I didn't live in New York City? How was I going to do that? Was that something that kept me up at night? And I was like, not something that keeps me up at night. It's like, why do I need to live in New York City to be a writer? And she said, Well, but there you would be in the mid center of everything. And it's like there there's so much fallacy to to all of that logic. It's like, um, what I don't need to be in the center of everything to be a writer. I mean, don't you actually want to be uh out in your cabin in the woods in your garden in Santa Fe to to write books? Oh, I don't know. It's I I I enjoy visiting New York City. There I enjoy aspects of visiting New York City. Um, but that the tendency for New Yorkers to regard themselves as being in the center of the universe is uh perplexing and aggravating. So I don't I I didn't mean to get off on that particular rant this morning. Let's see. Writer Coffee was fun yesterday. We had a good conversation uh with the new manager of um Beastly Books. Uh he came and joined us, Twig, and uh it was fun chatting with Twig about possibilities for author events and reading series going forward. Um I did not get much written on Dragon's Daughter yesterday. By the time I got back from writer's coffee, I was feeling um kind of drained. You know, it could be the effect of trying to do this Kindle Vella book at the same time, which I knew that that was a potential hazard. But I um I did rework my schedule as I was uh indicating that I might um because I do have room and I was trying not to pack things in too tightly. Uh Grace and I talked some yesterday too, uh which was really nice. It was um we actually had like a a pretty much day-long conversation off and on on uh Facebook Messenger, so that was really nice because we got to uh catch up on some things and exchange opinions on stuff, which is which is always fun. Um you know, it's uh one of the best pieces of advice I can can give you all, uh which I realize is not an easy piece of advice to follow, but uh, you know, get you some author friends that you can talk to because it really does make a big difference. Just even talking about minor things about the industry. It's uh it's just great to get someone else's perspective. So we were just talking about our Kindle Bella books and how things were looking, and you know, like the new KDP dashboard and talking about the interesting thing. So Amazon is testing a new uh beta testing a new KDP dashboard, which shows the Kindle Bella um statistics on it. So that's part of it. That's a new hummingbird, a rust-colored one. Um and it's got a lot of more snazzy functions. But one thing that it shows is you can see uh which of your books is just right there, it shows it ranks your books in order of sales of which ones are selling best. And it's something that I track anyway, but it was it's really great to be able to snapshot it on Amazon, and they show it uh graphically, and you can look at lifetime sales, you can look at this month, last month, um, you know, for all of the books that you have published through Amazon. So it it is snazzy, I do like it. Um, it's definitely a value add. Uh and for me, I mean it was no surprise that um my top seller is right familiar right now. Second is Dark Wizard, but it's interesting to see once I go a few down um what else they are. Now I have a mosquito floating around here. Summer is terrible. Um, you know, so we were just comparing, and you know, and it's funny because Grace's top-selling book is I asked her what it is, and she said, yes, and I said Radiance, and she said, Yep. Uh you know, Radiance is, I she said it's her workhorse, and I said, No, it's a sparkle pony. And she said, but she was gonna steal that. And I said, and that she would quote me, and I said, You are absolutely allowed to. It's funny because sparkle ponies came up and at Writer Coffee yesterday. Uh Emily and I were joking about sparkle ponies and whether or not Cefa could give every offer author a sparkle pony. And Jack, who I interviewed on here, he said, I keep seeing the sparkle pony thing come up and I don't get it. What are you guys talking about? And and I'm not sure exactly if uh if I got it from somewhere else, but I know that what one of my very early crit partners, when we were submitting books uh and getting our first publications, that one of the things we talked about was how when you're a new writer, you think that getting published is going to come with a sparkle pony, that you are going to, you know, have the magical sparkle pony, and it's going to be awesome. And and it turns out that you actually, you know, even if you do get a pony, and we were all riffing on this, and Twig was was pretty funny. He's like, Yeah, a lot of times you you might get the pony, but it's it's dusty and its hooves are split. And it's like, yeah, you know, it's like maybe every writer does deserve a sparkle pony, but almost none of us actually get a sparkle pony. We deserve it. We don't always get what we deserve, right? But Radiance is Grace's sparkle pony. Um, and it's one of those things I've mentioned on here before, and it's something that she and I revisit. You know, she's like, I wish I could write another Radiance. Um, because even she doesn't know why that book did so well and continues to do so well. And one thing I really love is um Lexi Chantal is part of our SFF7 group. Hi, Lexi. I interviewed her on here too. Um, she wrote the um the Mars Strain audiobook. But Lexi captures the my podcast posts and puts them on Instagram. And I love her summations of of what I talk about. They they amuse me. Uh and I can't remember what made me think of that now. What was I gonna say, Lexi? Sparkle ponies? Was it sparkle ponies? Grace. Well, there was there was something that she said on yesterday's that was funny. I might think of it, yep. But, you know, the the whole idea of oh, oh, she did, she captured something that I'd said and she put it in a good way, and I'm not gonna be able to think of it now, but it's um you know that that there is no formula, there is no there's no instruction book. There's you can follow all the advice out there, and you will not be able to create a phenomenon. And radiance is a phenomenon for Grace. Uh, you know, it might not be a phenomenon on the level of 50 Shades of Grey or Twilight or um Harry Potter or that sort of thing. Um, but for her, I mean, it is still her number one seller, and she does nothing, nothing to market that book, you guys. All of you who are talking about spending money on ads and how you need to do this thing or that thing, Grace does none of those things. Um, that book is continues to sell at an excellent level entirely by it's it's just word of mouth and and organic discovery or um algorithmic discovery, but it's not an algorithm that she's feeding in any way. And and I know that I've seen other writers talk about this this particular syndrome, you know, like people who have had very, very successful books, and they say, you know, that yeah, it would be nice to replicate that same success, but they don't know how because they don't know how why it did the first time. And I just feel like I I feel like I'm hammering this point, but I think it's so important because I think on a fundamental level, people don't believe me when I say this, because they think, well, surely there's something I can do, some way I can control this. But you know, witness that J.K. Rowling, you know, and granted she's not our favorite person since she's a TERF, but sh, you know, she writes the the mystery series under the pseudonym because she wants to write books. That's not a phenomenon like Harry Potter was, you know, and if she could recreate the phenomenon, she would. Stephanie Meyer, she has not recreated the phenomenon that Twilight was. She probably would if she could. Um that's the thing about that's why we call it a phenomenon, is um because it is something that happens outside of our um control and understanding. It's you know, I think that's why we, you know, are fascinated by the idea of the deal with the devil. Because the, you know, it's like some supernatural force came in and uh made a thing happen. And it can be frustrating because I was talking with Agent Sarah, emailing with Agent Sarah some yesterday, and we were talking about some possibilities, and uh she was just a couple of the things she was saying that she was, you know, conversations she'd had with editors, they were saying this is doing well. Um, you know, they bought this kind of thing, um, author with a platform. And that came up like three different times, author with a platform. And so, like Grace, Grace counts as an author with a platform. Um, I do not count as an author with a platform, at least by that definition, because even though I have all of you and you are lovely people, and I I have a platform, but I don't have a huge platform. And so that's why, you know, like yesterday I was laughing, and and I did that was kind of how the conversation got started with Grace, because I had to leave her this instant message saying, How can you put up your fourth Instagram post ever and have, you know, by the time I looked at it, it was like eight hours old and she had 150 likes on it. It's like, I hate you, I hate you so much. You know, and she's like, Oh, she said, you know, I always forget to do Instagram because I don't like doing stuff on my phone. I should go, look at that. You know, it's a good thing I love her because I hate her. Um, but that's part of what having a platform will do for you. Is I mean, she and I might have an equivalent number of followers on Instagram, but hers are these passionate rabbit followers who are dying to hear anything from her and to get something new from her. Um, you know, and how do you get that? There's all these things, right? All these people doing this. Oh, let's do the newsletter swaps, you know, I'll follow you, you follow me, all this stuff. That doesn't give you a platform. You know, the platform comes from hitting a certain level of fame. And you trip over that threshold and it begins to grow itself. Um, you know, and it's frustrating because, you know, like when you have these conversations with your agent, if you have one, or if you're still trying to get an agent, or you know, with editors, or if you're trying to push your stuff self-publishing and you're putting money into ads and all that kind of thing, it's like, well, how do I get a platform if if I can't get my book out there? You know, it's like uh it it's it's the catch 22, right? You can't get a platform until you've built a platform, and you can't build a platform until you have a platform. And all I can say is that you just have to keep working on it. But my best advice is make it organic. Don't don't go for the shortcuts because any of those things where you're just adding followers, um you know, there's all these people who will make you promises about how that works, and it's not real. It's it doesn't really work that way. You know, and and they the mark of it is um if it did work, they would they would be doing it. Right. Let's do earrings. This may be our last set of earrings until I fix some others. Maybe I'll fix them this weekend. You never know. Could happen. These are some little cowrie shells. I like them because they're sort of a tear box teardrop shape with a swoop. I've had these forever. I bought them myself in like high school, I think. I maybe at like a craft fair even. I almost never wear them mainly because I forget about them. Um they're also kind of small, but I still I've still haven't gotten rid of them. Haven't parted with them. So, um, hopefully I'll get some more words today. Uh I'm I am trying to be to be zen about it. I don't know when I'm going to add an episode to the uh Wedded to Darkness, but I need to be thinking about that too. Uh and I got in the paper copies of Bright Familiar. They arrived yesterday, so I am going to get those shipped out. Uh so I'm going to get things shipped out. I really need to get things shipped out. All right. I will remind you all that first cup of coffee is part of the Frolic Media Podcast Network, and you will find more podcasts you love at frolic.media slash podcasts. Hummingbird Wars. I'll you all have a wonderful weekend, and I will talk to you on Monday. You all take care. Bye-bye.