Indie Publishing: When Algorithms Tell Stories with Angie Kelly, Episode 2

In this second episode of Indie Publishing, Angie and Daniel discuss a world where algorithms pick what books are published and what books are not, how riding market trends determines more of what agents and publishers see as "good" than the quality of writing, the strength of the story, and even the purpose of story itself. 

It is stories that make us human, and the stories are many. Angie and Daniel open up about why they chose indie publishing, what they have learned from rejections and near-closes with agents, and how sales and marketing teams boisterously shape which books make it to shelves and which do not. From audiobook production shock to royalty splits that pale to pay authors what they deserve, Angie and Daniel also break down the real math of storytelling and the practical realities that every author faces.

If you’ve ever wondered whether Amazon's Kindle Unlimited helps or hurts, why preorders feel invisible, or how much a book's cover actually costs, you may enjoy this yarn! 

They also get candid about craft, discussing how hook-first culture, originated by Agents and queries, can warp a novel, forcing fireworks into page one while the middle goes slack, while the storyline tanks and even falls limp. Daniel argues for protecting slow openings, layered worlds, and voices that don’t mirror the algorithm’s taste. Then, Angie and Daniel discuss how fantasy as a genre, a genre originally constructed to explore the weird and off-shoot worlds and stories, has developed strangely into a linear story-ground: trend waves demand dragon rider and romantasy, but the new mythologies, gothic whispers, and odd structures that breathe weird breaths go missing.

Toward the end, Angie and Daniel discuss the role of Indie publishing in keeping the storytelling doors open. That intimacy and living stories turn commerce into conversation: signing paperbacks, tucking art prints into packages, and hearing what resonates directly with readers help keep the oral-storytelling human alive and healthy.

If this episode helps you on your journey, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help more humans find us.

Daniel Firth Griffith is markâko and seanchaí, a participant citizen of Earth Mother, a father, horse-friend, sacred butcher, magikal storyteller, and award-winning indie author of six books on kincentric ecology, mythology, and horror. Learn more about Daniel's work and books HERE!

Angelina Kelly is an indie author and biologist who was born and raised in Alaska and has an inherent love for nature. She now lives in British Columbia where she works as a biologist and writes epic fantasy books that weave in her reverence for wilderness and the natural world. Learn more about Angie's work and books HERE!

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Chapters

• 0:00 Indie Series Setup & Aims
• 2:00 Audiobooks, Costs, And ROI Reality
• 5:15 How Retail Platforms Slice Royalties
• 7:20 Launch Jitters, Covers, And Preorders
• 11:00 Sales Ranks, Reviews, And The Drop-Off
• 16:00 Paid Reviews, ARCs, And NetGalley Debate
• 19:08 Why Go Indie: Gatekeepers And Odds
• 23:10 Agents, Marketability, And Slow Starts
• 29:30 How Hook Culture Warps Storytelling
• 35:20 Movies, Hype Cycles, And Longevity
• 40:10 Trend Chasing Vs. Originality In Fantasy
• 46:00 Algorithms, BookTok, And Visibility
• 52:20 Reader Hunger For “Different”
• 57:40 Indie As A Home For The “Weird”
• 1:02:30 Personal Processes: Drafts, Betas, Edits
• 1:08:00 Copyediting Non‑Negotiables And Covers
• 1:13:20 Timelines: Indie Speed Vs. Trad Delays
• 1:18:00 Voice, Developmental Edits, And Fit
• 1:24:00 Printing Platforms, KU, And Going Direct
• 1:29:00 Shipping Joys, Emails, And Touchpoints
• 1:34:20 Reviews, Awards, And Worth The Cost
• 1:40:00 Formats: Paperbacks, Hardcovers, Editions
• 1:45:20 Audio‑First Storytelling And New Forms
• 1:50:00 Romance Niches, Fandoms, And Conventions

Transcript

Daniel Firth Griffith: 0:00

Hello. Welcome to the podcast. This is the second episode in the Indie Publishing series with my dear friend and found sister, Angie Kelly. Angie and I, in this episode, we talk about our own agenting journeys, our own publishing journeys, why we went indie, which is a big question her and I both receive quite often. What is our hopes for the publishing uh industry moving forward and just storytelling as a species in the age of uh denuded forms, industries, and markets taking over art forms and AI. Angie and I talk quite a quite a bit. We we we we dive into quite a bit of depth um with agents and literary agencies and the marketability of stories impacting uh both the stories that are written and how those stories are written. It's an interesting conversation, uh giving many views, some of them just now alluded to, but also in view of readership. If you're listening to this episode and you're just a reader of books, it's it's it's interesting to see from the other side. This episode is not just for authors and storytellers, but also the readers that make those stories alive. For when a writer writes, that story then becomes alive or re-eliven in the reader's mind or heart mind, if you will. And understanding the pressures on both ends, I think, is an enlivening, um, but also awakening journey for us all to endeavor uh to trek upon. And so with that, let us jump into today's episode with Angie Kelly. Did I see your audiobook is in production? Is that what I saw on Instagram today?

Angie Kelly: 2:07

No, that was kind of a secret trick. It's not. Um she she asked me for the book because she wanted to do some samples from it for her, like, I don't know, like the there's some movement thing about the real ver real voices only for like audiobook narrators doing a little thing. So she just asked me if she could record something from the new book for that.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 2:33

Got it. Got it. Well, I was excited nonetheless. It worked on me.

Angie Kelly: 2:37

Yeah, it's still cool. It sounded really good. I feel bad because she asked me to um, I don't know, she like reached out a couple times, like as I've been moving forward with releasing the book and was like, hey, like I'd love to start on book two, and like if you know, if I start now, we could release it at the same time. And I was like, uh, I'm sorry, man, like it's so expensive, and I'm just not ready to pull the trigger yet. It's like I I will let you know when I can, but just not right now.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 3:09

It it it it is so expensive. And yet I entirely agree that it should be.

Angie Kelly: 3:16

Um yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 3:18

But it's still so hard to swallow.

Angie Kelly: 3:20

I know. Like it was fine. I the price that I paid for it was good, and I think it was I think she even gave me a better rate than she normally does because she was just excited about the book. But it was still like it's yeah, it's like a big chunk. And then I don't know. I I haven't even come close to selling enough to break even on that yet. Not by a long time.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 3:43

So I think that's something that I've only really come to acknowledge recently um is like the essence of what the like so much of what an author needs to include in a project will never be paid for by the project. And the world of publishing, as we talked about last time, is so constructed to mitigate the pains of that by having a hundred authors and ninety, five of them are just complete garbage from a sales perspective. But five of them are one million, two million, three million book authors, sold book authors. And so they take all that profit, as we talked about, and move it over. Um, but in indie publishing, like you don't you don't get to have like a loss leader, or you don't get to have like all of these other things where it's just like when the audiobook costs so much, you just maybe you do it, maybe you don't. But there's no there's no like backhand way of paying for that, I guess is my point. Like publishing as an industry has a backhand way, but indie publishing does not.

Angie Kelly: 4:57

Or at least like, yeah, they have a backhand way and they have their own massive backlogs and they have cheaper ways of doing things. And like it's it's business, it's built to be profitable. So like that's what they do. But when you're starting it out on your own and you don't have that backlog or the ins with people who will give you deals or like anything at all, it it is not a small amount of money, that's for sure.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 5:22

Especially the way it's set up. I I I really want to do an episode on this. So I maybe need to watch how I say this because I think we can do two hours on this right now. Um just the nature of when people buy books, how that percolates financially back to the original source, the author or the artist, and where it's like, I mean, people will spend $20, $25 on an audiobook, or the equivalent in credits, like if you're using a caudible or something. But the author, like, I don't know how much your audiobooks make on Amazon's Audible, but it's it's worse than Kindle. I know that. I mean, it's it's minuscule, it's teeny tiny.

unknown: 6:03

I think it's not a good thing.

Angie Kelly: 6:04

Like if they spend 25.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 6:06

Did you?

Angie Kelly: 6:07

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 6:09

And it's so needed. I mean, it's like it's less than five percent. I don't I don't know what it is. I have no idea what it is. I shouldn't say. Maybe it's five to ten percent.

Angie Kelly: 6:20

It's depends on how you do it.

Speaker 3: 6:24

Well, that's the other conversation. Stupid new options now.

Angie Kelly: 6:27

Yeah. They have their very predatory program that you if you sign up for their super predatory program, you can make sixty percent royalties. And if you don't, you only make 40%.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 6:39

Oh, I always feel like maybe it's 30.

Angie Kelly: 6:44

Maybe it was 60-30.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 6:45

I think maybe it's 60-30. Regardless, though, every month that I run my finances, it's never 30. Like I just it I never get 30%. And I don't understand because I then have to acknowledge these finances to the government year-end, and then I also have to give some of that away. So it's not like they're like taking taxes out. It's like there's like a service fee. It's like they'll give you 30%, but they're gonna take 20 additional percent off that because of service fees or something. I've never understood that. Right, right, because technology is so cumbersome delivering audiobooks.

Angie Kelly: 7:20

Because their automated system that they set up to be convenient for this is so taxing. But we have to pay for that.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 7:29

Besides the the the whales and woes of audiobooks, um, how's your launch going? Because you you your your next book comes out December 12th, so like three weeks away or something like that.

Angie Kelly: 7:41

Um It's good. It's sneaking up on me. And I think I had like a I gave myself a lot of time this time, which I'm really glad that I did, because stuff always takes longer than you think it will. But then I kind of like had this weird little lag time where I didn't have to be doing a bunch of stuff, and I was waiting for my book cover to be done. And then uh I finally got my copies in a couple nights ago, and the cover is misaligned. So I had to go back to my artist to be like, please, God, fix this as fast as you can. And I actually just saw I have an email from her that I have to look at that has fixed, thank God.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 8:17

Is it truly improper or is it just like not perfect?

Angie Kelly: 8:23

It's well, it's not perfect. I think most people wouldn't notice it. Um so like if I had to order them all with this cover and ship out like the first round with this, I don't think anyone would say anything, but it's gonna bother me. So I was like, please fix this so I can launch it properly this way. Um but yeah, it's good. People, I think, I don't know, some people are excited. I've been trying to like crank out some more character art right around the same time, which is fun. Just shared one today that I just got today from this really incredible artist that I'm super excited to work with. She's doing a few pieces for me. Oh, it's so good. She's uh she does watercolor and um she paints instead of doing just digital, she like paints it physically and she ships you the physical finished like original. So yeah, I'm really excited. It looks so good. Um so yeah, it's I don't know, it's so weird because like you don't I have like my pre-orders on my website that I can see. Um but Amazon doesn't show you your pre-orders until they go, like until the day it releases. So it feels like I have none. So I'm like scared. So like what if it's like nothing when like the when it releases? What if nobody knew about this and it's just crickets? But I I think it'll be I don't know. I've been like pushing a little more on social media and actually trying to post about it. So hopefully it goes good.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 9:50

Well, it seems like you book one, The Source of Storms, right? Like it to me, I always feel like enough people read that and loved it that even if half of those people buy the next book. I don't know, I feel like it would still be quite enough. Quite quite a quite a sizable amount of people, especially in like a pre-order. I'm always jealous of you in that way. There's a lot of people that liked your books.

Angie Kelly: 10:14

That's funny because I feel like I'm jealous of you in that way. Because I feel like you have more people though.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 10:19

I don't know if there's a lot of people that like my book. That's the difference. I feel like a lot of people buy your books and like them. A lot of people buy my books, but only like maybe half of that number actually might be interested in reading something else. Because, like, you know, like we talked about last time. I think it's I think it's pretty true. I think so. I think you either like it or love it or hate it.

unknown: 10:41

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 10:41

And until it's in your hands, you know. Maybe I'm wrong. I mean it. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I am jealous regardless.

Angie Kelly: 10:48

Well, it's it's probably less than it seems like, or maybe I'm just too hard on myself. I don't know. That's the other thing. It's so easy to compare yourself to be like, oh, this person has like they've hit all of these bestseller lists and they have this many different deals and whatever else is going on for them that you can see on their social media. And but like you don't really know how much they've actually sold. It's pretty easy to make it look like it's going way better than it is.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 11:15

Well, yeah. I mean, I've reached out to a lot of people who seem to be quite successful, at least in terms of Amazon sales. Or, like, you know, their book has 7,000 reviews on Amazon. And and and it's interesting because Amazon will show you the sales rank of a book, right? Like I'm sure you've looked at this quite often. I do, because it's one way of knowing how many set books you're selling, but but like so often the sales rank doesn't necessarily equate to the number of reviews. So you would think that the more reviews a book has, probably generally speaking, the better it's selling. So it's gonna be higher ranked with higher amounts of reviews. But like you look at it, and there's like seven or eight thousand reviews, and it's like ranked in the millions, like in terms of selling rank, which is like a book every couple of days. And the book's only like six to nine months out, and you're just like, how that well that math doesn't make sense.

Angie Kelly: 12:17

Maybe, but that's I do feel like that's when the drop is because I'm almost eight months out now, and my sales have almost completely stopped. To be fully honest with you, I think I sold four books so far on Amazon this this month. So and we're three weeks in. That's like by far the worst I've ever done. So I don't know that you get much beyond the six-month mark. Also, those people could be leveraging things like NetGally and like those kinds of really big arc services.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 12:51

The thing that I can't wrap my mind around though, is if in the first six months you get 7,000 reviews, but then the sales drop off, why did you work so hard to get the reviews? It just it just seems like I don't know. That's I I think I'm being a little bit nitpicky on some finer subject, but I think it just equates to like what authors spend their time trying to get. It's just so weird.

Angie Kelly: 13:20

Yes, and like what your strategy is. Because I think for some people you can push really hard. Like I have one book out, my second one's coming soon. This is gonna be a series of three. For a while, the only books I will have to talk about is this series. So like I'm gonna keep pushing it and marketing it. But like other people crank out a book every three months. Like people who are really good at this and know what they're doing and have their backlog, like those kinds of indie publishers or authors, they're they're publishing three or four books a year. So like they can finish the series in a year and then move on to the next one. So I wonder if some of that is like they're not even talking about it anymore. Like if they're not advertising that book, they're not paying. Oh, I see. You know, they're not even posting it on their socials, they're just fine with it just going dead. And then depending on that, those customers that left those reviews or whatever to go buy their next series.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 14:14

I see. That that's an interesting way of also people pay for reviews.

Speaker 3: 14:23

Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 14:24

There's a lot of those services now where you can they say it's not allowed and that all of these um different places like Goodreads and stuff will will stop you, but the honest truth is they can't catch you. So they're obvious, they can't stop you.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 14:41

And and and neither, I think, do they have the vested interest to stop you. Like it does the more reviews you have on a book on Goodreads, the potential more traffic or maybe more books sold, which would equate to more traffic to Goodreads or you know, the Amazon.

Speaker 3: 15:02

Right.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 15:03

And so I've never understood why. Yeah, like I love when I go to Amazon and I look at a book, and the review is just like, you were you were paid to put this here. Like nobody writes like this, and and maybe it's just AI or something, but it's like this is like the I don't know, they just like massive paragraphs. Like and and and some reviews are honest like that. I'm not saying that all long reviews are bad reviews or improper reviews or paid for reviews, but like you just you read through it and you're just like, wow, like that that that person was was was paid to write that or some equivalent of that, you know.

unknown: 15:40

Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 15:41

I do have some a few people that have done those style reviews on my book that I've never paid for reviews, so I know that they weren't unless someone else out there is doing that with somebody else.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 15:51

Yeah, paying for your I know that they weren't, but yeah, I don't know.

Angie Kelly: 15:55

It's those people who yeah, yeah. It does make you wonder. And also like what I don't know. I get I get those emails all the time that are like obviously I don't know if they're even real or if they're fully scams, but it's you you get those two where it's like you you know, you deserve this recognition and reviews, and here's this is our book club that they call it with like 3,000 members, and you know, it's a small fee to do whatever. I'm like, yeah, freaking right. That's a small fee. But like I do wonder like what is that? What happens?

Daniel Firth Griffith: 16:32

Yeah, what what is that?

Angie Kelly: 16:33

What happens? Like, is that how people are doing it when they pay for reviews? Are they responding to these people and being like, yeah, you know what? Let's go for it. A couple hundred bucks.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 16:40

Buy me 300 reviews or whatever it is. I do have a lot of questions like that. Yeah, I do. Or even like the um like the net galley type sites, so book beam maybe is one of them. I can't re recall all of book sirens, maybe. Book sirens is one.

Angie Kelly: 16:56

I used them.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 16:56

Book siren. I always just like I have no idea because like even on their website, it's like buying reviews is illegal, but give us money and we'll get you reviews. And it's like I I understand how you work around that. Yeah you know, because you're not promising reviews and all of those things.

Angie Kelly: 17:12

Like I and it's not the readers that are like they do have real people that sign up to their newsletter and then they can sign up for the book. So you're really just paying the newsletter. You're paying the people who run the newsletter and send the thing. Exactly and it's like 20 bucks for yeah, it's you know, and they do, I think I did the ones that do the free program. If it's your first book, they will do like 20 or 30 people for you for free.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 17:37

Yeah. I I think the thing that the thing that's interesting to me is like a lot of people see websites like let's say book sirens as like a negative thing. Like I've I've seen this talked about online. But then like all publishers use NetGalley, which is identical. It's the same thing.

Angie Kelly: 17:55

Just yeah, it's the exact same thing.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 17:56

Made for publishers. I mean, like it's the exact same system, you know? And it's just it's so easy. Far more expensive. Far more expensive. Like, like not 20, isn't like 400 to $600, depending on the I mean, it's not $20.

Speaker 3: 18:10

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 18:10

It's just it's just it yeah, it is. It's interesting. It's like when you're an indie author and you go get publisher-like resources, it seems, or at least the world sees it as a little spammy or scammy or something like that. It's like, what are you doing over there? And it's like I'm doing what everybody else is doing, including all of your favorite authors.

Angie Kelly: 18:28

Yeah. There is a weird like morality police around it. I'm like, well, what do you want us to do? Because like I can't, it's really hard to get readers to go review your book. And like I ask them to all the time.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 18:42

Yeah. Well, I think um I think so. Like you and I both get asked quite often how we go about publishing and things. And yeah, I think like you uh like you mentioned offline, I think it'll be a great episode to walk through that kind of stuff. Um, maybe, and and this is just an idea, but maybe I think an interesting question I always get first is like why indie? Like what what's your journey getting into indie publishing? Um, because we all have like agent stories or whatever it might be that like brought us into this space. Um, maybe let's start there. So, what got us into indie indie into indie publishing? Um, maybe a little bit of hope, what gets us through indie publishing? Maybe we'll stop and have some fun there. And then um just I don't know how you want to attack the last part, but like how do you indie publish? Um I think would be a really fun thing to explore, especially for authors or people who are trying to write books who listen to these podcasts.

Angie Kelly: 19:45

So um yeah, for sure.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 19:48

If you're willing, I'm happy to jump in.

Angie Kelly: 19:50

Yeah, man. Um I can go first, I guess. Please. I talked about this a bit the first podcast we did um a few months ago when my first book came out. Like why I ended up indie publishing and the short answer is that I got rejected a lot. So there is more to it. I uh I started out querying this book um fully understanding that the odds were low. I think I didn't realize how low they were. So I started out querying and I was very systematic about it. And my goal was to hit 150. It's like I'm gonna query 150 agents and then I'm gonna re-evaluate what I'm doing here. I made it to 90. Um and I gave up. So I had either 90 rejections. It was either rejections or no response at all.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 20:43

Um can I can I ask why why? Because I think this is like something that's so interesting that a lot of people, like I was in a conversation yesterday with this professor at UVA, and they just had no idea that these things happen. But like, why is your chances of getting an agent low? Like, are you like a shitty writer? Like, are you not good at telling stories? Like that because I think a lot of people hear those words and they're like, oh, Angie's books are obviously shit. Like she's not a good writer. Like, if she was a good writer, she would be published.

Angie Kelly: 21:19

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 21:19

Like we let's can we can I just like interrupt your flow for the whole podcast? At least could we talk about that for a minute?

Angie Kelly: 21:25

For sure. Um I don't think I'm a bad writer, but uh obviously I don't either, but telling people that I was like rejected that many times. Because if you don't know, you're like, oh my God, what are you doing? Like, why did you publish this at all? But that's really normal. 90 rejections is very normal. Um people get rejected hundreds of times and then go on to be New York Times bestsellers with the exact same book. Uh Harry Potter was rejected 27 times. That's an extremely low number. And people still talk about how many rejections that was. And I'm like, dude, no, now it's very normal to be in the hundreds. Yeah. Stephen King, he was rejected hundreds of times for his first one. And then he went somewhere else to see if he could do it again under a different name and got rejected a bunch too. And then eventually got in through both because he's an incredible writer. But um it's it's very normal to get rejected. And the biggest reason for that is just the sheer amount of books that these agents see every single week. They get thousands of queries in a month and they don't read them all. They don't even open them all, some of them. A lot of them will say they try to read every single cover letter, at least, every query letter, which is great, and I'm sure that they do, but or at least try to. Yeah, a lot of people just fully skip it. They it's just the sheer volume of it is way too much. And they can only take about one or two people a year. And that's if they're like doing pretty good. Some people take more, some people take even less. Um I had a response from one guy. I did have like one uh partial manuscript request, which was exciting, and then she uh decided not to go with it, obviously, and like gave me some really good feedback, which was awesome. And it was all stuff that I fully agreed with, and I was like, yes, you are right, this is not the book for you, and I understand why. Um because there's okay, I'm getting a little off track, but I did get a really great response from from this one agent in the UK. He did read it. Um he read my query letter and he read, I think I gave him three or five chapters, which is standard. He read it and uh he liked it. And he actually responded and told me that, which was really cool. Because usually you just get a form rejection. Um, but he sent me a real email from himself that was like, I liked this. I can I can see where it's going, I can see the imagination here, but I have to say no. And he was like, the reason is I don't think I can sell it. And he told me that right now in the publishing world, I think I mentioned this last time, but sales and marketing teams have more power than they ever have had before on these decisions. So his job as an agent is to bring them something they think they can sell. That's his best shot at selling the book, because that's your agent's job. Right.

Speaker 2: 24:22

And the only way they make money.

Angie Kelly: 24:23

Yes, exactly. Your agent's job is to take your book and to sell it for you and to get you a good deal and get themselves a good deal on them in doing so. So if they don't think they can sell it, they're not gonna take it, even if they like it, which is what he's doing.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 24:36

Which is which is from a business perspective, entirely logical. But in my opinion, from a book perspective, to be read by readers is a very interesting way of looking at books, in my opinion. Like the whole industry, let alone like the art form, the story, regardless if it's high art, low art, whatever. Like George Orwell, he had he has two classifications for book for books, good, bad books and good, good books. And like the good, good books are the ones that are hard to read and maybe no fun. And the good, bad books are the really good books that are easy to read and maybe a lot of fun and still teach you a little bit too. Like so either way, it doesn't matter what kind of book it is if they can't sell enough of it. Nobody wants it.

Angie Kelly: 25:24

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 25:25

Which is crazy though, because if you look at every single author that published maybe before the 1980s, every single one of them, including J.R.R. Tolkien, has sold less books when they were alive than after the fact. Like more books have been sold of Lord of the Rings after 2001 when the movies came out than 1964, I think is when the first book came out.

Angie Kelly: 25:50

Wow.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 25:50

2001.

Angie Kelly: 25:52

Huh. I did not know that. It makes sense. Because you have to like long dead.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 25:58

Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 25:58

You know, like you need to hit those like multiple streams of media to really like launch it into outer space, you know, like for it to become a piece of culture to achieve that level. Like it was the same with Harry Potter.

Speaker 3: 26:10

Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 26:11

Um, we're seeing the same thing with Alchemized, the book I mentioned before, that like that one is just getting shot through the roof because I think a big part of that is because it came with that movie deal really early on.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 26:22

Yeah. They have to. They have to make it successful.

unknown: 26:25

Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 26:25

Which is they're gonna push it, which is great.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 26:29

That's it's great for her. It's really strange from an industry perspective.

Angie Kelly: 26:34

You know, I imagine it would be a crazy experience as a writer. Something I would love to achieve someday, you know, to just be on that whirlwr whirlwind ride to have the publisher be like, all right, it's you, you're it. We pick you. Here's your movie deal. Here we fucking go.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 26:47

But it but it it's so I mean, like you you know you're a good writer. So like I interrupted in your flow of telling your agent story, but just like to be very clear, it's like you know you're a good writer. I I think you're a good writer. Thank you. So at least try to do that. But every single time, like again, yesterday, I was uh building a house for this guy, and he would we were talking and turned out, you know, whatever I mentioned that what I do for fun on the side. And and he was like, Wow, so like who do you publish with? And I was like, I'm self-published. And like the very first second of that was like oh, you know, and then you know, we healed from there, I think. I I hope. But the first 10 seconds is really awkward. You're like, you know, with the the face that they have is just like, oh, you're one of those kids that like wanted to be an author, wrote a really shitty book, pitched it, failed, and then just like self-published it on the side. You know, you've sold five books out of the back of your car. Like that's the face that they have. And when in reality, just like you, I've had conversations with agents in the nonfiction side where I was trying to query a book back in, I think, 2023, maybe. And um, and I I got a hold of an agent like via email, you know, and they actually applied. And they, I mean, they told me things that I'll never forget in my life, they said. We get, I think it was 750 queries or proposals a day. And they were like a good UK-based mass, you know, whatever. And uh we we every day we strive to read 25 of them. And out of those 25, we we accept five new authors every year. And so if what I don't know what 700 per day, let's say five days a week, let's say 50 weeks out of the year, I don't know, maybe 40 weeks out of the year, depending on holidays and things. I don't know. But the point is it's like, I don't know what 700 times 40 is, but even that number is exponentially larger than the 25 they say they read of the 700. But out of that 700 times five times 40, you still only do five.

Speaker 3: 28:57

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 28:57

And so I asked them, and I asked them, and I it this part changed my life. I said, what happens if like the next top book in this space, you know, whatever that might be, like what if the next like Victor Frankel's Man Search for Meaning is just literally in your inbox and you never see it? And they responded very simply. They said, that's part of the business.

Angie Kelly: 29:20

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 29:21

But Victor Frankel, like people, for I'm just using Victor Frankel as an I as an example, but like I'd pick any good author like that sells, like Rebecca Yarros, like just get off of all genres, just like Rebecca Yarros is an obvious success today. There is a Rebecca Yarros worth of book sales dying in an inbox to some agent place, agent, you know, world. And like that author is building a house for somebody and they're getting mocked because they're not a good author. But they could be, if given light, literally be millions of book sales year over year over year.

Angie Kelly: 29:58

Oh, you're back.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 29:59

Am I back?

Angie Kelly: 30:00

I lost you for a sec. Yeah. You're Yeah, you're very blurry.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 30:08

Huh.

Angie Kelly: 30:11

There we go. Yeah. I don't know if it caught everything you said, but I can hear you now.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 30:17

It might not be uh that important. Well but uh the point is good authors are dying in in the uh email graves and agents are okay with this, which is fine for them. That's fine, but it's an interesting thing from an author's perspective.

Angie Kelly: 30:32

I also think a lot of those authors are going indie. Like um I hope so. Rebecca Yaris, for example, this that was not her first book. She published, I don't remember how many, but she was with a publisher before that, I think. And she had published quite a few other books. They were all contemporary romance. She never went fantasy. Um and I I believe or maybe she was indie published. I can't remember. I think she was just with a small publisher um before this finally blew up. Uh Callie Hart is another great example of that. She wrote Quicksilver. The second one just came out a couple days ago. Huge, wildly popular blew up everywhere. That was like her 40th or 50th book. And she indie published romance for a really long time before that one finally blew up. So, like, I think they are taking it elsewhere and and doing things with it anyway. And I also think not every book belongs in the traditionally published world. And I will say that talking about my own book. Um not because it's bad. I do think it would have done uh I don't know. I think I think it would have done fine, but I fully understand why no agent wanted to take it. And it it's because it has a slow start. And when you're an agent, all you're reading is the maybe the first chapter or three if you're lucky. You know, that's if you get past the query letter.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 32:03

Which also needs to be sorry, let me interrupt you again. But like that also needs to be examined, though, which is that's what what an interesting thing that an entire book's marketability comes down. And and by the way, I totally understand it. You get 700, you try to read 25, you can't even read a full book of 25 a day. Like there's obvious time limitations. But it yet at the same time, they're judging a book literally by its cover, the first couple of pages, which is changing the nature of writing. Yeah, but it's changing the nature of writing. Like it has actual effects where you pick up a modern, well-published book, the first page, for good or ill, the second page too, maybe, is written in a different language than the rest of the book. Because they spent untold time editing that and perfecting that and making it gripping. But the rest of the book is not gripping, right? But it the beginning is well written. The less the rest of the book is, oh, I actually have to find 150,000 other words. I can't spend two months on a page.

unknown: 33:11

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 33:11

You know, and so it changes the essence of the book.

Angie Kelly: 33:14

It does happen. I do. I have been reading a lot lately that feel like there is a whole lot of nothing in the middle. That it's the it's the beginning and then it's nothing and then it's the end. And you're like, I think we could have just skipped to that, and that would have been fine in the novella. But you know, sometimes there that doesn't happen. But um, it definitely happened with mine because I did you can you can feel it if you read the first book. You can I had my brother-in-law actually reached out to me when he finished it and he he read it really fast, and he's awesome and loves fantasy, and he had a lot of things to say about it. And uh he was like, I could tell when you let go and really just let yourself start writing. And then that's when it really started. And it was that same point. It was, I can't remember exactly what chapter, but it's a few chapters in where I stopped over-editing and I just kind of let it rip. But it was that first those first chapters that I just went over over and over and over again because I was like, this is my only shot. This is all they're gonna read. I have to make this perfect. And it does read quite differently than the rest of the book. I think the rest of the book gets better because I think I overdid it on the first bit. And I also think that like just the structure of my story and where I wanted to start with my character was not, I know it's not what agents were looking for looking back now, because what they need is a hook. They need a hook that they can sell because that's all that they get to read, and then it's all that the publisher gets to read when they sell them the book. So they need you to do that heavy lifting and that selling. And my first chapters, they are good, but they are not your typical like fantasy start. They're very personal. You start out just with the main character alone, and you get into her head and her situation right away, which is what I wanted, but it doesn't really like immediately launch you on a ride. It's kind of like a weird, slow, like almost mythology feeling beginning.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 35:11

Yeah, I was gonna I was gonna say the first couple chapters I I think feels a little bit more like historical fiction with more like mythological writing, but like it's not gripping fantasy. And and I don't I say that actually positive. Like I I hear what you're saying. I I whatever. I guess your book gets better after that. But at the same, like, I think the whole I think the whole essence of storytelling being constructed upon the first couple of pages being gripping is really doing a large disservice to the storytelling authorship artful, soul-filled community. Like I think it's it's actually quite bad. Yeah, because you read good books. When I say good books, what I mean is like books that have stand or stood the test of time over many different cultures, many different periods of thought, whatever. I don't know what those books would be offhand, but like um like I'm reading uh Lonesome Dove right now, because everybody's reading Lonesome Dove right now. And it's just I have problems with it from another perspective. But like the story is about a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, and I'm on page like 300, and we still haven't left Texas. Like so slow. But it but that's that's it's beautiful.

Angie Kelly: 36:36

You're building it, right? And you get to know the characters and you know everything that is at stake for them when they finally go, and like what they're leaving behind and how hard that exactly.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 36:45

But like I don't think Larry McMurtry, I think that's the author's name, could publish that book as a debut, no name, no history author today. The first chapter is these like old, very racist dudes sitting on a porch of this Texas ranch watching a pig eat a rattlesnake, and they're just like and there's like there's nothing on the line. There's some seriously problematic things said that just could not get published today. Um, you know, the writing is very it's almost bland, it's almost like you're sweating in the Texas sun, kind of bland. Like in Larry McGurtry's an amazing writer, but he wrote it as if I think you were literally there in the Texas sun in the 18 like 90s, sweating, watching a pig eat a rattlesnake and you had nothing else to do. And and and and so it's it's it's really well done, but it's not marketable. Like that's that's it doesn't get good, you know, from a oh my god, what's gonna happen until like they're crossing the Rio Grande or whatever, whatever river they're crossing. I think the first one they cross is just at the Texas border, so maybe the Rio Grande, and like snakes are coming out and they're eating people, you know, because they're just attacking whatever. And it's just like it's it's it's it's riveting. But it's 300 pages of lead up. And so like if we wouldn't publish Lonesome Dove today, like if that book was coming onto the agenting market and that book was being queried, if we wouldn't publish it, then we're losing the lonesome dove dove equivalents today. Right. If we're missing those books, which I hope they then turn to indie publishing. Like I think that's yours and I style. It's like tell the story if you have to tell it, no matter whether or not you whatever get through agenting or not. But like that is going to change the nature of authorship and storytelling, but also the nature of reading. Because if every single book that tore or orbit the top science fiction and fantasy II publishers out there, the second that they stop publishing books with slow beginnings, the entire essence of fantasy changes. So, like if you look at all of the fantasy books that have built fantasy, Tolkien, of course, right? Like the first, like, I don't know, eight chapters, nothing, or maybe six chapters, nothing happens. There's just a bunch of hobbits running around. Like, you know nothing about like the real power of the ring or like the elves or the dwarves. Like, you know, nothing. It's just like a bunch of hobbits running around. Like um, Tad Williams, the Dragonbone Chair, which I've never really gotten through because like it's even longer than that. It's like the first 400 pages, there's nothing going on. Um, like uh Gene Wolf, or I mean I can just keep going on. The point is, like a lot of the cornerstones of fantasy are we have a big world. The cornerstone authors and tales of fantasy is we have a big world to explore, but we have to do it slowly because there's a lot going on. There's a lot of feels to feel, yeah. Or something like this. But a lot of modern fantasy.

Angie Kelly: 39:53

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 39:54

Yeah. You need to give your Rachel Gillick is a fine example, in my opinion, because I know we share interest in this author, of somebody who I feel like somehow published a book that doesn't start that riveting.

Angie Kelly: 40:09

Mm-hmm. I think it was because she had such uh unique ideas. That's interesting. Um, one dark window and two twisted crowns. And those were short books, both of those. I think that helped to get in the door. Shorter is easier to get a publisher to swallow. So I think that helps. But yeah, the beginning of that book was a little slow.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 40:31

It is slow. R I think RF RF Kwang um obviously self-published The Sword of Kaigen, um, which is a pretty good selling fantasy book. And then she self-published Um Blood Over Brighthaven, which has become something of a sensation in the fantasy space. Maybe it's major, maybe it's minor, I don't know, but to some degree it's it's well received. But that book was self-published at first. I think that yeah. It was it was bought after the fact by Tor or Orbit or whoever bought it. I think the reason that it it well, I don't know, I'm not an agent in any way, so it's only speculation, and it's a lot of speculation, which I should limit, but the first chapter of that book is entirely dissimilar. Have you read it? It's entirely dissimilar to the rest of the book. So, I mean, this is in the book's description, so I'm not rooting anything, but the whole book takes place in this globe-like structure that surrounds the habitable earth. The first chapter is outside of that. Just, I mean, like the very first word is outside of that. The whole first chapter is outside of that, and the rest of the book is inside of it. And it's just so different that I mean, I can see somebody sitting there being like, no, like this is obviously not where the story begins or something like this. It's not marketable. And so it was self-published, and then as soon as it showed via indie publishing that it really could carry its weight, it's now, I think it was picked up by Orb, but could have that wrong, but yeah, and that's the other path that people are taking, right?

Angie Kelly: 42:03

Like it's because so much of it is marketing, and and and that is up to you can do that yourself as hard as it is. Like if you really want to push it that way, you can go that way and then try to leverage the sales you already have for a bigger deal.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 42:19

But with in view that, even again, taking Tolkien, like all of this changes the essence of storytelling because even in the great um books of the last human age, the last two or three generations, like Tolkien is still selling more books after the movie franchise than before. Right? And so, like to some degree, while RF Kwang self-published, got the market, and then traditionally published it from there, like proving it, that also doesn't work when like for your books, right? Let's pretend your books are world-changing. I mean, I think they're really good, but like let's pretend they're also like world-changing. Like there's like these massive compendiums of like future generations are gonna like I don't know, wear how you're costumes on Halloween or something like this. I wish. Right. But if you're not a good marketer, or if you didn't have the money to do the marketing, it's it's not going to be that.

Angie Kelly: 43:26

Yeah. No one will ever know about it.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 43:28

Right. And then that's weird, right? So it's like it's not like we're both capitalists being like the best product will win. Well, it's like, no, no, no, it it it's not that.

Angie Kelly: 43:39

It's the best product for the game that you're playing.

unknown: 43:42

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 43:42

And it's just a different game. That's really interesting.

Angie Kelly: 43:45

It's just a different game. Like I do believe a lot of traditionally published books are very good. Most of what I read are traditionally published books. That's right. I don't know. Because I don't get a ton of time to read, and that's what I know about and enjoy, and the authors that I like to I do read indie too. But um, yeah, they have you end up with, like you were saying, kind of almost a formula, or like uh they have a specific thing that they're looking for, and that's what makes it through. And it doesn't mean that they're bad or that they're only publishing garbage or whatever. No, they're publishing really excellent books. It's just that, like, especially now with the amount of pressure that there is to sell, I think we talked about this before, but like it's a risk to deviate from their formula. It's a risk to step away from what they know is really popular. And when you have books like Court of Thorns and Roses and um Fourth Wing blowing up to the level that they have, like, why would you want to risk it and do something different? Like, maybe with like a $6,000 deal for someone who you're not too worried about, you know, but like you're you're gonna want to be stacking your your uh lists with things that you know will sell and that will sell like that. And and so they do all end up kind of feeling the same. And I have heard from like I talk to readers a lot, which you mentioned one of the things about like having hope or or things we like about indie publishing. One of my favorite things is that I get to do whatever I want and I get to talk to my readers all the time and like just send them shit. I just send people books, just like, here you want one, here you go. Like, let's talk about it. And it's really fun. Um, and we talk about other people's books, and it's cool. Um, but I have talked to a few people lately that are like, man, it feels like everything in this genre is the exact same book. Like every like nothing is different. I do feel like Rachel Gillig is really different. That's why I love her, and she's such a good writer. Um, and I've read some other ones recently that did feel really cool and really different and very uh like more mythology feeling, a little heavier reading, which I loved. But like, oh, I think a lot of it is like the same thing. And even in indie, people are doing that too, right? Like they see what's selling and they try to mirror that because like if you want to keep doing this, you do have to figure out how to make money doing it, or uh some other job that will support your publishing hobby, which is me, right?

Daniel Firth Griffith: 46:07

Like the dragon bros. There's so many indie dragon, like indie books about young boy finds dragon egg.

Angie Kelly: 46:15

Really?

Daniel Firth Griffith: 46:16

Oh my god. There's hundreds. I mean, I I that's probably an exaggeration, but I I know of dozens. How's that? Which which it and and that's not to say it's it's it's it's bad in any way. It's just yeah, it's it's it's fun and it works. Yeah, you know, so like even in indie, that which makes traditional publishing successful is also what's making indie successful.

Angie Kelly: 46:42

Yeah, it's the same thing. Yeah, like they're gonna they're gonna follow the same trends and mirror the same stuff. And to some degree, like that is just also what people want. And that's not a bad thing. Like I love a lot of these books too.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 46:59

I think the real interesting thing though is I think if a lot of readers understood that by in in showing their want for that, the system is interpreting that as not wanting other things, which the human spirit automatically understands is that's not true. Like just because I want water doesn't mean I don't want milk tomorrow. Right. And so that that's a weird thing about this like industrial publishing world in the modern day of high technology and globalism and things like this, that really it's like the last maybe 20 years have been born into. It's it's so interesting where like let's have the dragon rider fantasy and let's have the romanticy or epic fantasy romance, but like let's have the weird ones too. Like you might have these genre masters, but we also need that space for what I'm just calling the weird books, like the ones that don't maybe fit into that.

Speaker 3: 48:03

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 48:03

And and I and I think that publishing traditionally, sorry, traditional publishing traditionally has had room for that. But I think unlike past eras, the rise of certain authors, by no evil of their own, just the rise of certain authors, have commandeered the space so completely that if it's not a Dragon Rider fantasy, it might actually not get published at all. Like there's agents I know that are literally looking for only these things. Yeah. And it's not like a BIPOC or a you know diversity and inclusion thing, like because there's some agents obviously doing that sort of thing. Yeah, it's really just like we we only want fantasy romance. Like that that's that's all we want right now because that's what's in.

Angie Kelly: 48:56

And you have all of the like it's a very specific type of fantasy romance.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 49:00

That's true. It's all heterosexual. Not that this whole conversation needs to go that way, but like it's not, dude.

Angie Kelly: 49:08

When I was querying, I had quite a few agents that only wanted queer stories, wouldn't even accept anything else.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 49:14

I know, but is there any popular like do you know of any popular queer romanticy? TJ Clear. Like if you can name five romantic authors that are at the top, it's all heterosexual.

Angie Kelly: 49:31

Oh, yeah. Well, all the big ones at the top are for sure. But there is there are a lot of other other ones on the rise. Like, give me the weird stuff.

unknown: 49:39

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 49:40

Like I once had a mentor of mine was like, write books that a hundred years from now, this old guy with his wife will walk into the last bookshop on earth, pick up your book, and be like, what the hell is this?

Angie Kelly: 49:51

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 49:51

Like that's the books we need to write. Like I want those books.

Angie Kelly: 49:55

I do think part of that, to go back to what you were saying, is like it's not just like these. It's not just that they're they're choosing what people want and only that and disregarding everything else because that's what they choose to do. I think it's also one thing is profit margins. All of these companies, the big five, are publicly traded companies, they have to make more money this year than they did last year. So they have to choose what sells, and they're all everything in the world is getting more expensive to run every day. These are businesses that are kind of getting squeezed. And also, I think we live in this era of algorithms and that kind of has had an influence on our whole public psychology, if you will. Like the algorithm mindset of like, I will show you only things that you like to the point where you don't know that anything else exists. Because if this one post didn't do well, no one will see it. So if these books aren't popular, nobody even knows about them because they're not like the big main thing that everyone is screaming and waving their hands about.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 51:05

If that makes sense, the little things that's what you said.

Angie Kelly: 51:15

And it it doesn't leave a whole lot of space for yeah, the weird stuff or anything that's different. It it has to be only what is popular and not at all. And some of that I think like comes from TikTok and Bookstagram and places where it's like people are trying to keep up with these trends, like I said last time. Like they they need to be reading what is popular and talking about what is popular. And I do think a lot of them want stuff that is different. All the time, people that I talk to are saying that too. Like they're looking for things that don't feel like all the mainstream stuff and that feel different and unique. And I think that's a really great space that indie publishers can fill. But uh at the same time, a lot of these big accounts, like, or not even big accounts, big and small, everyone that's on the internet doing this is kind of playing that game of like trying to get their own numbers up and like get their own followers and have their own little ecosystem that they're doing. So they want to talk about what is popular too. And it's kind of like getting funneled into this thing by these algorithms where pretty soon the popular stuff is the only thing that exists. Which is not necessarily true. But it's easy to like view things that way, you know? Like we were talking about last time.

Speaker 3: 52:29

Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 52:29

These popular authors, like when they have a book release, it is the only book I will see on Bookstagram for that week, at least. It's like every single account that I follow is reading this book right now and posting the cover. And oh look, I got it on release week two, and here's the here's my copy, and here's this special edition. And like that's cool and fun. And I think it's it's also that almost like tribal mindset of like doing the same thing that your friends are doing and like being part of the crew, you know, that's important to people too. And that's there's nothing wrong with that. I think that's nice. Um and it does have that nice effect of supporting these authors, right? Like, there are so many people that are published or that are making money as indie authors because of BookTalk and Bookstagram, and that's really cool. Like it has made reading itself so much more popular, which is awesome. But I do think it's still stuck kind of following those trends.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 53:25

Yeah, it does feel like the human, the the the modern human proclivity to lose all nuance and complexity and like chaotic middle ground anything seems to permeate this indie and traditional publishing question. Like if we could only just hold a little bit of nuance, like I feel like we would all be so much happier. And the feeling is very strong if you know, like it's just uh because like everybody loves that. Like like um Rebecca Roanhorst. Um I don't know the nation she's from, but she's an indigenous author to like the Southwest, I think, of the United States. But her book, um I can only think of the first book in her series, it just won the Hugo Award for the best series. Um I can't remember the series name, but this first book is Black Sun. It's a it's a fantasy book um based in like the indigenous Central American myth. But her main character it's really it is, it's actually a really I've I've read Black Sun the first book and I really enjoyed it. I just finished it a couple months ago. Um but the the main character is a two-spirit. I mean, I don't know maybe um I don't know which what's the modern terminology for that. Like it has another any a two-spirit. Trans, I guess, yeah.

Angie Kelly: 54:52

Maybe I think it depends on the person.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 54:56

Yeah, I don't know. Two spirit. She identifies in the book as two spirit. Yeah, it's like a it's like it's it's it's so cool to see.

Angie Kelly: 55:02

That is the modern, by the way. I think people still use that.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 55:06

What two spirit?

Angie Kelly: 55:07

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 55:08

Yeah. I know it's uh I don't yeah, okay. I I have no idea how because I think it's birthed in some native customs. And I I can't, I never remember which way it goes. It doesn't matter. The point is the main character identifies as something very different than most main characters in fantasy books. And it's just it's so awesome and it it it just it changes the story structure. And I don't I don't know, it's just really cool to like dive into that Central American Native culture for a long period of time in this fantasy work, and it it's so cool to see that as a reader, especially being like, you know, an Irishman living in the Northeast. Like that's that's pretty cool. And and I think books have that unbelievable ability to pull us into those strange places, strange to our own customs, right? Own cultural customs or language customs because even Rebecca Roanhorse's language, um it's just it's it's so different than the way you and I would construct an English sentence. Um Tony Morrison is another great example. Um she writes in it in an English that is just not white person English, and it's so cool to see, and obviously she's long dead now, but Octavia Butler is the same thing. Um, anyways, I can keep going. The point being, like, it's so unbelievably pivotal and important to the storytelling process to be um exposing something there to places that never really get to feel that or see that. It's kind of like the point of fantasy, right? Like again, like the world that you constructed might be very similar to like Northwest Europe, but like that place also doesn't exist. And so we as people who've never been to Northwest Europe get to explore that and be in that, and we get to learn from that. And so it it seems like anything that authors and readers and the in-between publishers or indies or agents or editors or whatever can do to like thread those people together, right? The people in your book that think very differently than the people who live in Southwest Arizona, obviously. Like I think that's a positive step forward for not just like humanity, but just like the entire art of storytelling. And so I think that's what is really uh exciting, I think, for Indy becoming a little bit more popular and okay. Um, because obviously it hasn't been. It's like that avenue for readers to reach into other worlds that like maybe the market doesn't care about currently. Maybe the agent just never got to read, you know. It's like we're keeping that very like hearth-based oral approach of just a small number of people around a fire listening to a a storyteller tell some interesting story, maybe not interesting story, but the story nonetheless. And so it's like it's it's it's still so powerful, I think. Um but you were in the in the process of saying how the agent um said thanks, but no thanks. Yeah, that was about an hour. I don't know how long it was. That was quite a period of time.

Angie Kelly: 58:25

Whatever. We we're back.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 58:27

So the agent said that your book was awesome, but not for you.

Angie Kelly: 58:31

Uh yeah, he yeah, he was just like, I can't sell this, and that's fine. And he told me that um I think one of his favorite writers that he represents right now, he had um four books, four times he queried him before he finally accepted him. And he was like his favorite writer. So it's it's tough, man. It's competitive, and they are looking for something really specific, as I think our last 45 minutes just explained. But it it is a specific thing that they that they have to do. And it also like it's a risk for them, too. Like, they don't want to take someone on and fail to sell their book. That would feel like shit. So I get it, and I also get why mine wasn't a good fit. And at the same time that I was going through this um and querying, I was learning a lot more about like the publishing world and the indie world and and the things that go on in each and like how the publishing world works. And I was like, you know, I'm pretty sure I can do this. Like I I I'm good at project management. Like I've done some tough things in my life. Like I I know how to finish it, I know how to like work hard. So I was like, I'm just gonna figure this out and and publish it myself because I wasn't I knew that it wasn't a good fit for the traditional published worlds, but I wasn't ready to let it go. I didn't want to give up on like I had the whole vision. For the series, I knew where all three books were gonna go. I was like, I don't want to just abandon this and start something else, so um Yeah, so I decided to to anti-publish. I think after just a few months of querying, kinda let it go pretty fast.

Speaker 3: 1:00:18

That's interesting. It does it does feel like accessible.

Angie Kelly: 1:00:29

It it is. It's not like you can do it really cheap too. I know we were talking about how expensive it is. If you really wanted to, you don't have to dump many thousands of dollars into this. Like you can get a decent book cover for a few hundred bucks. Um I'm losing you again. Uh-oh. Are you back?

Speaker 3: 1:00:58

Oh, I'm back now.

Angie Kelly: 1:00:59

Hopefully it didn't cut out. Whatever. Um yeah, you can get a a decent cover for a few hundred bucks. You can get, I would say to back up a little bit, um my process that I do is I uh I write my first few drafts until I d until I hate looking at it, pretty much, which doesn't take that long because usually only takes me like three drafts before I'm like, fuck this, I don't want to look at this again ever. And then I uh um recruit some beta readers so far. I've relied on mostly friends and like a combo of of other readers from the internet. You can pay for beta readers, which I would recommend because a lot of times your friends will say that they'll do it, and then they'll be like, I just didn't have time. And you're like, well, okay, I needed you to do that. A lot of them are really awesome and do it. Um so definitely get beta readers. I don't do developmental edits. Um, at least I haven't for this series. I think that is something that would have been beneficial for my first one. I think I learned the hard way and I worked out a lot of the kinks myself. Um so you can get a developmental editor. I just go straight to copy editing after I get the beta feedback and make those changes. Um copy editing is important. I would say if you're gonna skip anything in the process, do not skip an editor. Just get an editor, save money, pay someone to do it. It doesn't have to be more than like I don't know, $2,000. You can get a decent edit, I think, for that much. Um I would suggest doing that, and then uh Yeah. Proofread. That's the next step. That's the next and final step for me. Um I would also recommend getting a very good book cover. Get the best cover that you can reasonably afford. It is worth it. Especially if you were just starting out. My book cover, I have had quite a few people tell me that they bought my book based on the cover alone. Lots of people. So it is it is your best piece of marketing for sure. If you can get a good cover, definitely do that. And then it will make the rest of marketing it a whole lot easier. Because like you can just post a nice photo of your book and people are like, wow, that looks so cool. And I'm like, Yeah, thanks. I have a good artist. Um yeah, so that's the process. And then uh I do, I have like my own um good enough like social media and uh newsletter network of people now that I get arc readers through that. So I I post uh a call for for applications for ARCs and then I send those out. Um usually what I try to do now is if you a couple months before I release. Most people in like the traditional publishing world, they will do like four to six months before the book releases. They will start pushing ARC stuff. Um I don't as an indie author, you don't really have the luxury of working on those kinds of timelines because you can't like float a book for that long.

unknown: 1:04:16

Right.

Angie Kelly: 1:04:17

If that makes sense, like you're putting all of this money into it to produce it, and then you kind of need to just get it out there and get it selling. Um, so it's really hard to hold that gap of time of it not being profitable and just sitting waiting to release. Um yeah, so that's like all my prep, all my prep stuff for the most part. And then I use I publish through Amazon, obviously, because that's like a requirement. Um, that's I my book is in Kindle Unlimited. I have a lot of feelings about Kindle Unlimited, and I kind of wish that it didn't have to be in there. Um someday when I am more successful, I very much hope to be able to pull my books out of it. But right now that's just not really smart, I think, for me. So they're they're in there, or book two will be in there. Um, and then I also print through a service called Book Vault. They're their quality is really awesome. I just gave a friend uh one of my early copies of of Book Two a couple nights ago, and she just messaged me today and she was like, this book is so nice. Like the pages feel amazing, the cover is beautiful and like soft, and it just they make really nice books. Um and they print in like tons of different countries now. They print in Canada, which is really cool because Ingram Spark doesn't. So if I were to order my books for Ingram Spark, I would have to pay duties to import them to Canada to myself. Um so I go through Book Vault, they're really great. And that you can also drop ship with them, which is cool. Um that's a whole other side of the business that we don't need to get into. Uh yeah, that's a very brief rundown of my process. I know that yours is a little bit different though, and and you've had you've also published a lot more than me.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:06:03

Yeah, not not that different. I think it's uh um it it it is interesting, like when you compare what you just went through with what a traditionally published author goes through. Like it's laughable to some degree. Like the lack of lack of steps. Like I have a friend who's um about to submit the final manuscript to the publisher because it's already sold and you know, it's kind of like at the end of that process. And I asked them, I said, when is your book coming out? And they were like, Um, I think it's coming out summer of twenty-seven. And I was just like, Okay. Um wow, that's that's uh that's a long time. Um yeah, and and so I think part of the indie process that you're describing that's exciting to me is the speed in which something can come out. And and I don't necessarily mean that like I think people who can write three books a year are unbelievable people, right? But like they're not diving very deep. Like you're there's just no way in a story you can dive too deeply and still write three books a year. Unless they're like novellas and they're all short and they're just like unbelievable intense studies.

Angie Kelly: 1:07:20

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:07:21

Right.

Angie Kelly: 1:07:22

Like there's there's just a it depends on the amount of editing you do, I would say. Because like if you I don't know, I also think this is just a very different process for a lot of people. Um I write pretty fast, which is nice. I also tend to, when I write my first draft, I tend to write very completely, if that makes sense. Like I I try to make it as full and finished as I can in my first round. Like I don't leave gaps to fill in later. I try not to leave things very sloppy for myself to clean up. I try to get it really good. And then of course you go back through it again and you're like, this is garbage. But like if if you push it as much as you can and try really hard, it it does speed up the process. Um so I do wonder if people are like, yeah, I know what you mean. Like you can't you can't go that deep if you're only spending three months on a book. Like there's only so far you can dive into it and so in touch with those characters that you can get. Um you do have to spend that time in your own world and with those own characters and spend time listening to them and letting them talk to you and and know their whole story, a lot of which never makes it into the final book if you're really taking your time with it.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:08:48

Um the space that occurs between final manuscript and book being out is I think so beneficial in the indie space, right? Where like while it's still alive to the author, it's alive to the reader. Like while it's fresh and loved and recent, and as I said, alive, it's also alive, fresh, recent for the readers. And there can be that like communion there, even if it's only digital. Like that to me is so exciting. Like I couldn't imagine being my friend writing a book, being done with it, and then a year and a year and a half from now, it finally coming out. Like as an author, I might have written two other books by then.

Speaker 3: 1:09:36

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:09:36

Like I'm I'm I'm not even anywhere close. Hopefully, I'm not even anywhere close to that same brain space, heart space, dream world. Like I've moved on. And so there's a like a sense of like livingness.

Angie Kelly: 1:09:50

Hopefully, almost that was something I've been noticing because I'm proofreading book two right now, very last minute, uh, because I hate proofreading, and I was like, fuck it, I'm just not gonna do this. And I'm like, no, I have to do this. Not allowed to skip that part, even though my copy editor did an incredible job. I probably could, but um, anyway, I'm reading it and I'm reading the very first chapters of book two, which were the first chapters that I wrote of it, and I'm like, God, like, I am better than this. I don't like this very much. I do like it, and it's it's fine, it is what it is. And I also think it's it's cool to look back at those things and be like, that is where I was, and that was true to this moment, and that was true to these characters, and the way that I wrote it was that way for a reason. But it's funny to look back at it and be like, man, I uh this is not my this is not the level that I'm writing at right now because I'm working on book three right now. I'm I'm already noticing, especially being like early-ish in my career, I am I'm noticing that level up as I go. And it would be so hard to sit on a book for a year and a half and have written another book that is way better and then watch that one debut and be like, God damn it, like this is not this is not very good.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:11:06

Right.

Angie Kelly: 1:11:07

It's not what I am capable of now. Like that would be really frustrating.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:11:11

Totally. I think the spirit in in books is real too, and it the spirit to some degree starts to like weather as the author gets further away from the text.

unknown: 1:11:23

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:11:23

And as that spirit weathers, it just seems like the book is less alive to even people who've never met the author. And I don't know, I just I think the the the pace in which you are able to publish, that is to say take a final manuscript, which might have taken some people 10 years to write, and go from that final manuscript to book in hand to readers can be actually very small. I mean, it could be a two-week space if you want. It doesn't have to be a year.

Angie Kelly: 1:11:48

If you wanted. I mean, you did yours, but I did.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:11:51

I didn't mind. I did mine because I'll talk about my process, I guess. And it's it's it's just atrocious. Typically I write books very quickly. And um, when I got into writing fiction, um something that's very important to me when I write, at least fiction, is I don't I think a lot of authors share this too, but uh I don't I don't really know where their story is going. And I feel like one of the things that gets me up in the morning, because that's when I usually write, is this overwhelming excitement of finding out where the story is going.

Speaker 3: 1:12:23

Yes.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:12:24

Like I think I think I like the act of writing. I think generally speaking, I like the act of it, but I really like when I write and I get to see the story.

Speaker 3: 1:12:35

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:12:36

And and um I don't know, I I in the acknowledgments, my most recent book, I I made the comment that sometimes I feel like as an author, I'm just walking down this old fence row and there's like split barbed wire fencing, or like there's peels back in it, or like it's rotted away in some places, and I can like just see through to the other side, but like the fence is still kind of in the way, and I'm just getting the glimpses of the story, and it's like every day I write, I get a new little glimpse of like seeing over the fence line to that field beyond or the forest beyond or whatever it is. And I get to like pull little tendrils from that other world into the store, and I love that. Um I have no idea. I appreciate but I have no idea where the story is going. So, for instance, like I never could have traditionally published my series that I'm currently in the middle of because I wrote book one, understanding that I wanted there to be three books, but I also understood that in the writing of book one, I have no idea what book two or book three could even look like. Like I had zero ideas, and I was comfortable with that. Like that's really what I wanted to do. That's like the purpose of what I was trying to do. I was trying to um, I was doing a lot of dream work with a couple of um brothers and sisters of mine in and I wanted to just like explore that space. Anyways, the point is that's I wanted to be open. But then at the end of writing book one, I realized that I didn't really have an ending. Like the ending that I had wasn't the end. And I was actually taking a shower and I had this idea. I came out. It's always running down time, hey. It's always a shower.

Speaker 3: 1:14:09

Well, yeah, yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:14:10

But I came running down, shower and walking. Yeah, walking too. I came running down. I was completely naked, and I just like ran into, I was just I just ran out of the shower because I had to write it down, you know? And I have this little leather journal that I write. I mean, like I have probably 50 leather journals by now because they're small, and I put them in my pocket, and they all of my books are written in these little journals. And I just immediately started writing the ending, just like literally butt naked in our little library office thing in the house. And uh our kids are very young, you know, like still being potty trainer and diapers, and so it kind of worked. But anyways, the point is I'm just like flow, I'm just like flow writing this thing, pen and paper, the ending. And the ending, not to spoil it, has like it's a very shocking ending. Um it's shocking in the sense, uh, when I say it's shocking, I it might be shocking to the readers. I've I've I've heard some readers say it's shocking, but it's shocking to the writing of it because it's it's just weird. What what happens at the end is is really weird. And um it brings off a a new potential for book two that is also really weird. And so when I started writing book two, I saw it as this dual narrative where we were going to be going back and forth, and there was different timelines, different POVs, and and I wrote it, and then I realized that it wasn't book two, but it was book two and three. Like I I had finished the trilogy without really meaning to. And so then I took it apart, and that was hell. And back, I encourage anybody, everybody, like do not do not cut a novel in half. Like, don't, don't, don't do that. That was that was horrible, horrible, horrible.

Angie Kelly: 1:15:49

You can only imagine.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:15:50

And and then when I wrote book two, like, so I had, let's say, a hundred thousand words for book two that I had pulled out, but it wasn't a book. It was just one point of view to a greater story that doesn't exist anymore. Because I, anyways, so then I had to like rewrite it, right? And in the rewriting of it, I realized that what I thought it was, it wasn't, and it became its own new thing. And then now that I'm writing book three, which is already written, like I already have way too many words for book three, because it was once book two combined. Um, it also now needs to bear all of the things that were born during the rewriting of book two. So, like my process for writing novels is just a pile of garbage. Like right now, it is no good. I I encourage nobody to do this. Um, but historically speaking, historically speaking, um after the first couple drafts, and I agree with you, I think some people really are fearful of words on page. Like, I don't know how I'm gonna get to 100,000 or 60,000, whatever the goal is, 200,000. You know, because they have this like college paper in their head. Like, how am I gonna write a 2,000-word paper? And and I think they fear that. And so they they fear the how am I gonna get 100,000 words? And so they just get through first the first draft with a lot of holes and errors and whatever. I I think that's to some degree the people I've met who go that I I I don't go that way. I can't do it. Like every day I edit and write, like I can't move on to the next section without at least polishing up the previous, which sounds like that's your all like your process as well.

Angie Kelly: 1:17:26

I to some degree I try really hard not to do that. Um I because I know it's inefficient, my least favorite word in the whole world. Um I work in consulting in my day job for this nobody knows me. That's what I do. I don't just say for those who don't know, like no, you don't know. Um and the fucking efficiency is the name of the game in consulting. It's just always efficiency, efficiency. And I um I abhor that in my my life, my real life, and in my writing life. Um, but I do try to be somewhat fast and efficient, and so I try to not edit as I'm writing. I try to just get it down, but I will like so I won't like go back right away and go through full a full chapter at once. Um but I do have ADD, so I can't go in order super well. So I will often jump back and forward and back and forward, or I will just like micro edit like the very sentence that I'm on. Like I won't finish that sentence until it's clean, or at least clean enough for for draft one. Um, and then often what happens is that like I will have ideas for themes or scenes or or like uh imagery or like some, you know, like motifs or things that I want to pull through, those will come to me sometimes later, and then I'll be like, oh, if I drop this in trap in chapter two, it's gonna hit really hard in chapter 20. And then I'll go back and I'll like rework chapter two so that it's in there. So like when people ask how many drafts I do, I don't know. I don't have a clean, I never have a clean break between drafts. Draft one is also draft two, and draft two usually blends into three, and then three becomes three and a half, and then sometimes I save a new version that's like four, and then there's another version that's like final, but it's also like four and five, and like it is like it's never, it's never a clean, a clean break, but I try to keep it stepwise in that way. And I also think that that will help the temptation to over-edit. Over-editing is something that I did in book one, especially I talked about that earlier, especially in the first half, because that's what agents were gonna see. I I overworked it to death. And uh it's fine. It it came out fine. It just isn't as I don't know. I think it took some of the some of the emotion and like not some of the emotion, it's a very emotional beginning. The first half of the book is like very personal and emotional, but it did, it kind of took some of the uh a little bit of like the the natural life out of it, I think, that like stays in there if I don't edit too hard.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:20:13

Yeah, that's it it it that's interesting. It it editing it, you're right though. Editing, at least for me, it sounds like for you, is a different like dream frequency. Like when I'm writing, like flow state, whatever you want to call it. Yeah like you're in it, right? When you're editing, you're not as much in the story as when you're writing.

Speaker 3: 1:20:31

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:20:32

I had a a forestry mentor, because we do a lot of forest work, that once told me, never walk in the woods with a paint can and a chainsaw. Walk in the woods with a paint can and then walk in the woods with a chainsaw. Because when you walk in the woods with a paint can, and you have to look at the tree and you have to say you're the one to go, it's quiet, it's not rushed, um, there's no loud engines, you have no ability to act on the decision, and so you you have to let the weight of that decision really hit you. He says forestry becomes just taking, right? When you walk in the forest with a paint canon. I think the same thing goes for like editing and writing, which also is why I really believe I've did this a lot with my nonfiction work, and so far it's worked with my fiction work, although I'm less practiced there, is writing the first draft and then leaving it for a while. I've really enjoyed that that practice. And then you come back to it and you're like, wow, I didn't I didn't remember this part of the story, and it's like real life to you, you know? Yeah. Because it's word 20,000 and you wrote 200,000. It's just like, you know, you can't remember everything. At least my mind can. And so I like I like sitting on that. Um, there's a certain period that that has to be I reading is something very interesting and needed to me. Um that's a big part of my process is reading. I don't I don't I don't know what about it, but there's if I'm not reading enough, and I don't I don't find like what I write is solid. It's like I I want to be like, it's almost like I want like a I want to sit in like a bath water of words and then start writing. Like that's the way I see it for some reason.

Speaker 2: 1:22:09

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:22:10

Um so I I I read a lot and and reading a lot as you're sitting on a draft, I feel like is a really good time to do such things. Um, because you're really like open again, but you're open to like then massage the story back into like a draft two or draft three shape. So like you're not necessarily like dreaming into the dark waters of like pulling a story and like molding it, but like it's there already, and now you can dream on like how to beautify it. Or maybe you're reading a book and you're like, I I really don't like this. And the this might be a fast beginning. And because we're indie publishing, fast beginnings aren't required. And so you go into your book and you're like, oh, but mine has a fast beginning, right? And you can, I don't I don't know, you can just like I don't know, taste the end result in another person's book and kind of get your feels for it. Cause yeah, I I think if if you're if the author's feel is is negative to his own work or to their own work, I think I don't know. At least they're not gonna be happy with that. I think the reader's feeling might also echo that as well. So I sit on it. Um I I have a strange opinion of developmental editing because I agree 100% with what you said, and I also don't do it. I don't yeah, I don't do developmental editing. Um a lot of my books in the past have been developmentally edited. I wrote one nonfiction book that had to go through a peer review process at the University of Colorado in Utah. Um, and that that was what it was. But something interesting to me about the novel process is so much of developmental editing for me today and the way I write is changing the nature of what I write. And I realize the ramification of that maybe is a less polished manuscript. But I write um vocally. So like there's never a sentence on a page that wasn't dictated by my mouth first.

Speaker 3: 1:24:11

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:24:12

And that creates a particular style which some people like, some people love, some people abhor and detest, and that's fine. Um and so developmental editing is is always very hard for me. I think the essence of developmental editing, as you know too, like all of my published friends, the editor, that is to say, the developmental editor and the author are really, really connected. They're really knowledgeable about each other, they know each other, they're deeply entwined in each other's artistry, things like this. The developmental editor is trying to take that person's voice and clean it.

unknown: 1:24:51

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:24:52

Make it a little bit more beautiful. Whereas a lot of the developmental editors I've had, like, I don't know them, they don't know me, we have no standing relationship. Um, they're just trying to make it dramatically or thoughtfully or from a story structure perspective a little bit more coherent or something like this. And that's fine. And and there might be cause for it. Um, but typically that that is maybe one thing that I skip. And then copy editing is very important. Yeah, don't, don't, don't skip that because it's easy. I'm also dyslexic, and so like every chapter has like 30 typos, yeah, and I don't see any of them. And so that's you know, then proofreading and everything else. I I it's interesting. This this process, so I've I mean I've published with Amazon, Ingram, and when I say published, I mean printed the books. Amazon, Ingram Spark, Book Vault, Book Baby, or whatever it's called. Like I've tried a lot of them. Um and every time he's a little different. And I've also tried to like have an ARC team and have my books on Amazon, or like sometimes I didn't have a book on Amazon. Like it's always been different. I think the rhythm that I found to work well for my audience, which I think is a a key factor, like when you were talking about Kindle Kindle Unlimited for your books, like to some degree that's like an audience thing.

Speaker 3: 1:26:12

Yes.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:26:13

If if that makes sense. Like it is, you have to find where your audience is is is purchasing your books. Yeah. Yeah. And although we write in similar genres, or we we really write in the same genre, we write at like opposite ends of that genre.

Angie Kelly: 1:26:27

Yes.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:26:28

If that makes sense. Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 1:26:31

It's like a really big room and we're on either sides.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:26:35

Yeah. I g I guess so. I guess so. But also close to each other because the room is also a globe, you know? Like we're I feel like we have a lot of similarities.

Angie Kelly: 1:26:46

We're in the same room in a very big mansion, but we're on opposite sides of the room.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:26:50

I love it. That's I love it. That's exactly what it is. And and what I found is this like because my I had a uh The Plane of Pillars, my first book in the Wimwalker series. I had that on Kindle Unlimited, and it was for sale for uh I think I want to say $9.99, the highest amount. There's like a $2.99 and $9.99 threshold that you can like price your book at a certain level. Anyways, there's like a there's a weird point in there. I think it was priced at $9.99. And I don't think for the first two or three months, I I probably had a hundred pages read on Kindle Unlimited, like none. And I sold hundreds of copies. Like people wanted to pay $9.99 to read my book, but they didn't want to have Kindle Unlimited. So I realized like my entire audience doesn't have Kindle Unlimited.

Angie Kelly: 1:27:38

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:27:38

Right. And so I got I got out of Kindle Unlimited as fast as I could. I mean, as fast as they let you, because you know, yeah, you have that tether. And I think that's really key. Like when indie authors think about indie publishing or self-publishing, I think regardless of your own personal or political or social mores, whether or not you like buying on Amazon or not, you really just have to find like where does your audience buy books?

unknown: 1:28:06

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:28:06

Like for me, it is direct and not on Amazon. Like none of the people who want to read my books for someone.

Angie Kelly: 1:28:14

So lucky.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:28:15

Well, I don't know if that's lucky. I have to deal with shipping problems all the time. You know, true. I ship so many books personally, which is uh one of the greatest pleasures of my life. I also have to deal with emails. Pretty much every day I get an email. Hey, the book arrived. You know, all beat up from the USPS or whatever.

Angie Kelly: 1:28:35

No. Or like that's my greatest fear.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:28:38

Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 1:28:39

Just because I have a lot of other bigger fears than that, but I am worried about it.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:28:42

It's it's good because it's like I didn't do anything wrong. You know, I don't know why your book got screwed up, some you know, jackass in the process, obviously. But like we get to make this right together. So as long as they're nice, like if you buy my book and you're meeting like whatever. But if like as long as they're nice, like we get to work together on it. I'm fine with that, you know.

Angie Kelly: 1:29:03

It's so fun shipping books.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:29:06

It is. I mean, you get to put a little bit of like spirit juice in every box, you know. It's just like, oh, a little dose for you.

Angie Kelly: 1:29:13

I have little bookmarks that I've made. One of them is some character art that I drew, and the other one is some character art that a real artist did. And I I so I get to put a little personal bookmark in them. That's awesome. And I usually, I mean, I sign them all, I will dedicate them to if people want me to. And then I have like a I have little note cards, so I like often will write a little extra like thank you note. And it's very fun.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:29:35

Yeah, it's like this individual touch point, yeah. Which I th I you know, so that that's generally the process. Morgan, my wife, is a really good copy editor. Um, so the last maybe three books I've written, I've just hired her, I guess, to copy edit. And so far it's worked.

Angie Kelly: 1:29:54

Um That's awesome.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:29:55

So I guess I'm a little bit spoiled in that a lot of bit spoiled in that way. She also Has the ability to read it and then just start yelling at me.

Angie Kelly: 1:30:03

Um in the moment, yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:30:05

Yeah, just like right across the way. Like, Daniel, how dare you say something like this? Like, that's that that is it. This is not even cognate, you know. Like who who came up with whatever. Daniel, this is a joke and it's not funny. Like, you need to understand that nobody's gonna think this is funny. Like, yeah, your your humor, your humor is shit, or something like this. So that that's that's I'm quite lucky in that way. And then awards, um awards, literary reviews, and things, that is a whole space. I I can't understand. Like it just it's it's a really weird space where, for instance, if you don't get a Kirkus review, like you you're the only book on Amazon that doesn't have a Kirkus review. And yet it costs six or eight hundred dollars or whatever it is, and nobody cares to read your Kirkus review.

Speaker 3: 1:30:58

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:30:58

Well, maybe a couple people did. But if you sold a hundred books a month, maybe it's one or two people. And like, how many books do you have to sell to make an $800 profit to pay off the Kirkus review? And a lot of the times the reviews are so bland. Like, I got a review on my most recent book, Bloodless We Go Buried, that you and I talked about offline. That is just like in the book, there's two POVs, and they're so in book two, there's two POVs, and they're so different from each other that well, let's just say they couldn't be more separate from each other. I can't ruin the book. I as an author, all I want to do is talk to like I just want to ruin the book for everybody because it's like would everybody read it and we can have fun together understanding these things. I'm sure you feel the same way, but like there's two different points of view in the in the in the literary review, didn't even mention an entire POV. Like all it did was summarize the one POV, and it's not even the bigger POV. It's just like I don't know what that they read. They didn't, I don't know. I should, I have no idea. They didn't they didn't read the book well. Maybe they didn't finish it. Something like this. And so you have to like, you gotta really like I don't know, I think that review cost $200 or something like this. $250, I have no idea what it costs. At least a lot is the problem. And so like I think you dabble in those things, but if you can like if you could sell books without getting into awards or spending thousands of dollars in literary reviews, like by God, sell the books. You know? And so I don't know. That part that part's hard.

Angie Kelly: 1:32:31

I wonder how many people do literary reviews. I don't know a ton of other people that self-publish. I I submit for literary reviews. I haven't done that for book two yet. Um partially because I'm not sure if that's okay to do, because it is a series and it's so book two is so dependent on book one that if you jump straight into book two, you'd be like, what in the fuck is going on? This doesn't make any sense at all. So I guess I'm gonna have to reach out to them and be like, hey, can you get the same person? Because like this, you will interest if you try. Yeah, because I don't really know. My books don't do that.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:33:08

Well, I have I've no I have not thought about this because my books, it it they they should be read as a series, but they don't have to be. Like you could just jump in and read book two and jump out, and you never have to read one or two, one or three.

Speaker 3: 1:33:20

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:33:21

So I just I just move forward with that. But I know I've never thought about that. I can't, I can't even think about how you would I need to figure it out. It'd have to be the same person, really.

Angie Kelly: 1:33:31

I might just reach out to them and ask. Just be like, hey, sorry, I have no one else I can ask about this, but what what is the appropriate thing to do? Because maybe I don't even need to. That's the other thing. That I'm like, should I even do it for books two and three? The problem is book two is way better than book one, um, because I got better. And so I want that. But my reviews for book one were all stellar, they were all really, really good. So I don't feel like I need to correct anything. I just am like, could I have more of that, please? Yeah, can you praise me more? But not really, because it's like 400 bucks.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:34:06

I I think there's this strange social norm that a book has to be certain things, has to bear certain qualities. And I think what a lot of indie publishing is challenging is what is it's not whether or not that list exists, but like what needs to be on that list.

Angie Kelly: 1:34:24

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:34:24

You know, so like Kirkus or high amounts of literary reviews, is that's a very traditionally published social norm that is like a construct created there. Right. But like does it have to come over to indie publishing? Awards. Awards is another thing to be questioned. Certain editing processes, um, different formats of the book. I think that's a really interesting thing that a lot of indie authors are realizing. Where like when they first come out, they'll have like an ebook, an audiobook, a paperback, a mass market paperback, and a hardback. And it's just like, why why did you spend like that's that's a lot of different options.

Angie Kelly: 1:35:04

Yes.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:35:05

You know, I do. And even traditional publishers don't even do that. Like they just came out with a hardcover and they sit that for a year, so they make all the money and then they go to paperback.

Angie Kelly: 1:35:15

Which is a great idea if you can pay for that off the top. I did it the other way around. Um, just as we're covering our basis of the process. I published only a paperback first um for my first two, and then I'm in the early stages of a process of putting together a special edition for book one, which will be hardcover, uh, which I'm really excited about because I got a super dope author to do the cover, or not author, artist to do the cover, and then I'm working on doing the end papers myself and getting another uh artist to do the like interior design stuff. So cool. Yeah, it's gonna be really cool. But um that will be my only hard. I don't have like a standard hardcover. I think that'll be the only hardcover I do. Maybe someday when the series is done, I'll go back through and I'll do another release of all of them. But also, maybe by then I will have moved on.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:36:12

So like Yeah. I I think regardless of how you approach it, I think like the theme though that is so exciting is with indie publishing, you're able to so like with traditional publishers, they have to look into the market, see what has sold, see what might sell, and then try their best. But as they try their best, they have so disconnected the reader from the author or like the story listener to the storyteller that it's all just guesswork. And sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. But it's definitely separating. Like all the pieces are just separate. With indie authorship or indie publishing, I feel like it's like and and maybe this could also be seen as a negative, as an ill, but it's so the opposite. Meaning that you don't have to carry the same baggage that a traditional publisher, and I just mean things in the bag that a traditional publisher has to have, because it is so separatist. Like that they're selling the books to the bookstores who sell the books to the readers, and it's just it's it's just you know all lacking fluidity there. But within the authorship, it's just like put out a paperback. And then if people are like, we want a hardback, print a hardback. And then if people are like, hey, there's a couple typos in your book, then you're like, cool, we'll fix it. Like, no big problem. Or if it, you know, you don't have a warehouse of you know 30,000 books sitting around that you're like, well, there's a couple typos, what are we gonna do?

Angie Kelly: 1:37:39

How am I gonna sell these? Or or even like you also don't even have to do a hard, a physical copy of any kind if you don't want to. Some people just do fully ebooks and they just and that is so cheap and it's so easy. And like you can do that, you can just crank those out and and let Amazon sell those, and that's fine. People, people do that all the time.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:38:03

All the time. Same thing with audiobooks. I know people who are just putting out audiobooks.

Angie Kelly: 1:38:10

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:38:11

It's just like uh it's like almost like they're writing plays. Yeah, like that's that's almost what it's gravitating into. It's just like go. Like that's what I'm saying. When you when I when I say like what indie authorship is really cool at achieving is like it's just creating that this like weird place, even if like the weird is like not, as we said, Rebecca Ronhoor's two spirit, but it's just weird in the sense where it's like, no, we're not even gonna publish words, like it's just gonna be audiobooks, almost like a podcast, but like a play meets audiobook podcast, and you're just dreaming into these new ways of storytelling. Whereas with publishing houses, it's like, you know.

Angie Kelly: 1:38:50

I love that because that brings me right back to like the oral storytelling tradition. It would be so cool to write a book just meant for audio. That would be really fun to do. Because even the way you'd write it would be so different. You should do that.

Speaker 2: 1:39:00

You kind of do. You did do that. That's my problem. That's that's what I did without doing it.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:39:06

This is my problem. If you read in in the beginning of every book, I say this. I say, if you read this out loud, you might enjoy it. If you read it quietly, you might not. And it's because it was written out loud, it was uh written to be read out loud. I I read out loud, I can't read quietly. Like that's just my maybe it's a hurdle, but my reality is creating the reality of the books. I get that, for positive or negative reasons. But like it it allows you to build a market around a book that needs to be read out loud, whereas I think a publisher who obviously has little interest in that. Because the market is smaller, not because the market isn't there, it's just the market is small and hard to find. And so there's no there's no welcoming spirit for that. But like it's there, right? And as you and the readers commune, you know, like you can actually have those points of touch.

Angie Kelly: 1:40:03

Yeah. That's that's what's so nice about it, is you don't have to you get to decide whatever you want to do with it. You don't have to like make it your soul career and put a ton of pressure on yourself and like achieve these huge things and become a bestseller. Like, if you want to just write books for audiobooks and and find a really good narrator that you work with or narrate them yourself, like you can do that. That's super cool. Or if you want to just like write some really weird, super specific monster romance just doing. People are really into that. I can't say that that's a small niche because that is actually secretly a huge one that I didn't know about until I started publishing.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:40:47

I didn't know this.

Angie Kelly: 1:40:49

Wild. It's the the romance world. I am barely in the romance world. I have like cracked open the door and reached one hand through with my book. They're ravenous, they're crazy in there. That room of that mansion, insane. Just so they're so funny. They're so fun. They have like if you can imagine a genre of romance, it exists and it has a very rabid fan base. Like that's just what that world is, which is really fun. Um so if you want to get into publishing romance for anybody, go for it. Because it's it's a cool little world in itself. Um that I'm not really a part of. But I I went to a romance uh book convention recently, and that was it was just fun to see like everybody there and all the different genres of romance there are in the world. Um why did I start talking about this? Oh, yeah. It was Monster Road. Yeah, you can do whatever you want. That was that was my example.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:41:50

Yeah, and then like do it, which I think is a huge call. Like, I think a lot of people might be excited that you can do whatever you want, and then they do what everybody else does. Which is a little bit a little bit my growing up, I read in middle school and high school, um Christopher Pollone, I think that's how you pronounce pronounce his last name, his uh series Aragon. Did you read that? Or be around?

Angie Kelly: 1:42:20

I never did, but I I I I don't know why I never did. It just kept missing me, but I was I know which one.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:42:26

That was like the first the I don't know if it was the first ever, but it was definitely the first successful boy meets dragon.

Angie Kelly: 1:42:35

Yes. I was thinking of it earlier when you were talking about that because I was like, that's why. Because we were all kids when that came out, and that is why it's coming back around now. And that so deeply affected me.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:42:47

Yes, but then it's like we still have people writing boy finds egg fantasy series. You know, now he's a dragon rider, and it's just like, well, I mean, like Christopher Polone, I think that's how you pronounce his last name, Paolini, or something like this. It's not Poloni. I don't know. It's Paolini, I think. Like he doesn't own boys finding dragon eggs, right? But it's just like some it's just like you, you know, when you sit down with a blank sheet of paper in front of you on a screen, on physical world, whatever it is, like you can do whatever. So why are we all doing that? And I and I and I'm not saying that we shouldn't do that, not at all. I think we could have a hundred different boy finds dragon eggs and they could all be amazing. But I think what indie authorship is allowing people to do is those who don't want to do that has the ability to then don't do that. Like it's it's a truly diverse space, and I don't mean that in any modern sense. I just mean diverse in the sense where like you could write a book where boy meets dragon and dragon eats boy, and the rest of the story is just this carnivorous dragon eating boy. Like you could do that if you want. Like you totally reverse the narrative. Which right? But but I also think that's what a lot of really interesting, and they're not all self-published, but really interesting authors today have done, like Rachel Gillick. Like, name one romantic fantasy magic system book like that.

Speaker 3: 1:44:17

Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:44:18

None, zero, a hundred I I don't know. I I can't think of anything similar to that. It's like middle-age authorian type feel, but also the opposite, you know, and it's like romantic fantasy, but also the opposite. And it's like monsters. But at the same time, so many gothic ro or gothic fantasy books, or gothic horror books, or just the gothic genre in general, the master genre over so many subclasses, I guess. It's it's like the haunted house genre. You know, it's like kids visit house in Appalachia that turns out to be haunted, or child returns home after growing up and leaving the house, realizing that her childhood house is haunted and has things to say. Like so many haunted house books are just the identical storylines played over and over again. And I think Gothic is very similar in that way. Like it always has the same feel, in my opinion, of the books that I've read, but not Gilligs. Like Rachel Gilliggs is gothic, but not that kind. Like it's like a new take on Gothic, and it's a new take on fantasy romance, and it's a new take on a hard magic system, and it's a new take on just the fantasy genre as it is. Like you're reading it and it's fantasy, but it's not like with all due respect to the elders of the fantasy genre, like it's not middle-age white dude European armor with swords fantasy. Like that, that's so much of the fan, and like Rachel Gillig did not do that. Like, there's parts of it, yeah, true, but like it's still different. And like that space to me is the most interesting. Like, write a story that is similar, because it needs to be, but then it's just like a whole new fresh take, which I think is also similar to your stuff in your writings. Like it's fantasy romance, but it's definitely epic fantasy. But also, like the romance is there and it's respected and seen, and it's not like it doesn't feel like an additive quality that you just like chucked in afterwards to meet some sort of like social marketable trend of like fan. Like, I don't know, it's just like be free to play with it. Like, that's what being an author, I feel like is like when you're looking through that fence line that I alluded to earlier. Like what you see is little slivers of light. And we all know slivers of light are like could be a billion different things, you know, how you see it and the perspectives and the colors and the rays and the time and like what the slivers are showing dust or pollen or flowers or grass. Like it's just everything could be different, and like running down that as fast and as hard and as like joyously and like almost crazily, like when you're writing, like how crazy can this get? You know? Yeah, not like how crazy can get somebody. Yeah, yeah.

Angie Kelly: 1:47:04

Like I'm literally just listening to characters in my mind that I honest to God are real. I swear to you, they live somewhere. I'm not even fucking kidding. Yeah, they live somewhere and they communicate to me. Yeah, they're there. I don't know where it is. I know that they're there.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:47:20

My favorite modern author, I've heard in an interview, say the reason that he writes shorter books is because when he writes books, his characters are living and he needs to kill them. Like he need, like he he's just like, I'll be at the grocery store with my wife, and like, you know, there's you know, whoever one of his characters in the book is a really good one of his books is named Goodstab. And he's like, I'm in the grocery store and there's frickin' Goodstab just staring at me. Like, I need to finish this book so Goodstab can die because my wife needs me.

Angie Kelly: 1:47:53

Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:47:54

Like I need to be present for my wife, and and it's like that's that's so true.

Angie Kelly: 1:47:58

So true. It's yeah, and that's really good. And it's fun, and like it, yeah, that's what's so cool about it, is like, and that is what I don't want people to get trapped in with writing to an agent or writing to a genre or to a publisher because that is a narrow road, that is a specific thing that they are looking for, and it might not be your book, and that is fine. What you need to do is write your book, write the thing that you are obsessed with that won't leave you alone, that you see every night when you close your eyes, that you run out of the shower naked to write stuff. I do that all the time too, by the way. That happens to me very frequently that I'm in the shower and then I'm like, I gotta get this line down, and I will just straight to keep repeating it until you get out is sometimes. I will do that. It will cause I'm so scared to lose it, especially having ADD. I'm like, if I think about anything else, I will lose this. Yeah. I have to get it down.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:48:51

Yeah. Yeah.

Angie Kelly: 1:48:52

Yeah, that's all you gotta do.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:48:54

I I think, you know, at the very end of this episode, I guess, to have such a summary is interesting. But to me, it it I think a lot of people can listen to this and think that you and I both think quite negatively of traditional publishing or agents and things. And while we might have some negative opinions on some small particulars, I think the thing that drives you and I both into conversations like this is the problem of the current market or world or industry of authorship is that people are telling stories only in certain ways or through certain ways so they can get to that narrow passageway, if you will. And and they're leaving all of the beauty behind, trying to, you know, write that riveting scene at the beginning of the novel so that it gets published. But like that scene is not even supposed to be in the novel.

Angie Kelly: 1:49:50

Right. And it's just like it just doesn't have to start there.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:49:54

Yeah, maybe exactly right. Maybe exactly right. And so like that that opening up that dream world or the potential or the craziness or the fun or the excitement or the shower, you know, epiphanies, like that to me is like the spirit of what we're trying to accomplish. It needs to be marketable, right? And in that sense, like I get what publishers are saying. Like we need to be able to sell this book because we can't all just sit around writing for no reason. But no more, you know, marketable reason, no financial reason. We need that part. And yet at the same time, it also has to be held in check to like what the story, like what you actually saw through the fence line, like what the story wants to be. And some books can do that in a traditional publishing way, and some books can't. And and that is awesome. Like I I cannot wait for a world where somebody hears that I'm self-published, and the first response isn't, oh, I'm sorry. Like that we gotta get to that world. Like that's what I'm looking for.

Angie Kelly: 1:50:53

I think it's come I think it is, I don't know. I it's coming if it's not already here. I think a lot of people I talk to are like, especially in my genre, people are hungry for indie books. Like, there's been a huge push to to support indie authors and get more into that world. So I think that's coming. That revolution, that renaissance that we need.

Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:51:16

Well, we got somewhere, and uh we did.

Angie Kelly: 1:51:21

So it wasn't what we said we were gonna do at the beginning, but we I just I just feel like we circled around it a bunch of times, and then we got a lot of time.