Bonus Episode: Inside the Debut Author Survey with Emily Zipps

We couldn't just talk about Emily Zipps' debut author survey — we had to talk to her. Krisserin and Kelton sit down with Emily herself — author of Alice Rue Evades the Truth and the forthcoming The Two Lives of Amelia Waxler (both from Dial Press) — to dig into what inspired her to survey 60 fellow debut authors, what surprised her in the results, and what she found genuinely hopeful.

Find Emily online:
Instagram & Threads: @emilyzipps
Website: emilyzipps.com
Substack (Fun Announcements and Sporadic Thoughts): emilyzipps.substack.com
Emily Zipps' Debut Author Survey: https://substack.com/home/post/p-185355080

Books: Alice Rue Evades the Truth (available now) | The Two Lives of Amelia Waxler (forthcoming 2027)

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Follow Krisserin and Kelton:
TikTok: @krisserin, @keltonwrites
Instagram: @keltonkin, @keltonwrites
Kelton's Substack: Shangrilogs
Krisserin's Substack: krisserin.substack.com

Music by Golden Hour Oasis Studios

Transcript

Krisserin 0:00

All right, listeners, we have such a treat for you today. We worked quick and DMed furiously to get Emily Zipps on the podcast to talk about her incredible debut author survey. And before we jump into that, I'm just gonna tell you a little bit about Emily. She's the author of Alice Rue Evades The Truth. And the forthcoming the two lives of Amelia Waxler, both from Dial Press. She's passionate about telling queer love stories about women, works in higher education, focusing on equity inclusion and conflict transformation, and is also a disability advocate living with ms. She's based in New Mexico with her wife and their dog, Kona, who apparently has the personality of a queen, of a small but proud nation. Emily, thank you so much for agreeing to chat with us today about your survey.

Emily Zipps 0:46

Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Krisserin 0:49

So I'm just so curious what, spawned this idea for you to ask a bunch of debut authors about their first novels. Because this is information that it feels like so intangible for, for a lot of us. So you know, rightfully so. Your survey's gotten a lot of attention, I'm just so curious, what, what spurned the idea for you to do it?

Emily Zipps 1:09

Yeah. Um, I, I'm thrilled that people have said it's really useful to them, you know, a querying folks on, so, I'm. And a lot of like 2026 debuts also have reached out and been like, thank you for this. So I'm thrilled. I do data analysis for day job and, I love putting feelings into charts. That is like my favorite thing to do. Um, so I know that this is like such an opaque industry and it is so hard to know. What is happening ever. I found there's, every year there's a group chat of people that are debuting that year and that group chat is the most valuable thing in the world. Everything from what are your timelines look like to Hey, my editors doing this thing. Is this weird? What questions do you ask in your marketing meeting? Just all kinds of valuable stuff. And so I was really active in that community and at the end I kind of wanted to be like, h how was it? Have we, what happened? So I figured I'd try it, see if anyone took this survey. I was thrilled to have 60 people take it. And yeah, I was just. Personally curious

Krisserin 2:18

Yeah.

Emily Zipps 2:18

of this stuff. And also I knew how diverse the experiences were. You know, we had people in that group that were with incredibly small presses, no agents, all the way up through lead titles at huge big fives with like massive buzz. And so it was really, it was fun to look at what's actually happening, you know, with these 60 people.

Krisserin 2:41

I love talking about money Kelton, and I like talking about money, but, I feel like a lot of people don't. So, having a place to anonymously talk about your book deal and your advances, I think it's really helpful because coming into it. People think that like, oh yeah, everyone gets this type of check. How did you feel when you found out that the average was a$50,000 advance on a two book deal?

Emily Zipps 3:05

I think that's what I expected. The big flashy deals make a lot of waves. those was like two water analogies in one. But, I know a lot of people, in the group chat who are saying things like, oh my God, my like, contract hasn't been signed yet. I'm waiting on this money for whatever. And I was like. Oh, like I, I'm not waiting on this money. This is not money that I'm paying my bills with. For me personally, like my advance is not very big and so like I knew that we had a huge range. I knew that in, there were a few people, I don't think they took the survey, but there were some debuts who were coming from like incredibly successful self pub life who like. like, oh, let me ask my PA about that. And I was like, oh, okay. We've got people who are over there and then we have people who, you know, 20% of the people who filled out the survey had a$0 advance. So we really were doing the whole gamut. So I was not surprised by that number. There were a lot of things that surprised me about, like the advanced breakdown and a lot of the other like. that we

Krisserin 4:15

Judge.

Emily Zipps 4:16

via advance. But the fact that that was the average was that wasn't really surprising to me.

Kelton 4:22

I found it really helpful just to share this with people who are not interested in publishing at all. Like the people in my life who are like. I can't wait for you to be a huge success. And

Emily Zipps 4:31

Yeah.

Kelton 4:31

like, let me show you the reality of publishing. This is not what we're going for. But I thought one hilarious takeaway was I showed it to my husband and he was like, look, two people got huge deals that could be you. And I was like, not the takeaway.

Emily Zipps 4:46

Yeah, but it's really exciting for those two people.

Kelton 4:50

Oh yeah. Bless those two people. Um, obviously this is like really useful to people in publishing, but I imagine it's interesting to people who are not in it too. Like you say in the post, it's incredibly opaque. And so like what your outside experience of books is just like going into Barnes and Noble and being like, look at the fanfare,

Emily Zipps 5:09

Yeah.

Kelton 5:10

realizing how many shelves are in the back.

Krisserin 5:12

Yeah, what I found really interesting is the opaqueness around sales. For the actual author, we were just talking to Cait Flanders and she was saying that she doesn't, it takes months, six months to get information on royalties, and you're a data. Kelton and I work with data all the time. We're like, where's the data? Like where's the sales information? That would drive me nuts. So it's, that was really surprising to me that that isn't more transparent.

Emily Zipps 5:39

Yeah, I feel like the answer to everything is like, oh, they don't tell authors that like to everything. And it's just like, oh, okay. Like I know people who found out that they had a foreign right sale, not directly, they found out because of like a social media post or something. So it's really wild out there. The sales stuff does depend on your publisher. Like Penguin Random House has a portal. And I'm with Penha, so once the book is. Out, you can see live sales data, which I think in some ways is worse because if you check it every day, like it's just like a cool thing to be obsessed with that

Krisserin 6:18

Sure.

Emily Zipps 6:18

make you sad. My agent was like, stop looking at the portal, like, get out of there. And it's also not accurate. You know, like it scan is not accurate. Someone wrote in and was like, FYI, all authors can check their sales up to date on BookScan. And I was like, Summer child BookScan captures 10 to 70% of sales. Like, uh

Krisserin 6:42

10 to 70

Kelton 6:44

Whoa, that's.

Krisserin 6:45

10 to.

Emily Zipps 6:47

people say like. 70%. But Dalia Adler, who's a very successful longtime author, recently posted on threads that she just got a royalty statement and her book scan had been 10% her royalties. They don't capture things like libraries. They don't capture all formats. If you're doing a huge ebook, it doesn't necessarily capture that. So it's like. a guess and it's, it's what other people have access to. So when editors are doing acquisitions meetings, they're often looking at those book scan numbers, but yeah, you get realty statements from your publisher usually twice a year, and they're about four months offset. So in April, you get it for the second half of the previous year. So I haven't gotten one yet. I debuted at the end of October. So I won't get a realty statement until April. And then it will only be for two months. Um, so yeah, it's wild. That's why that question was like. do you feel sales are going? Because for anyone who debuted in the second half of the year, you literally can't know until April. And for the people who debuted in the first half, like you know, books can have a really long tail. And so like you don't know how things are going till you get that sucker.

Krisserin 8:03

Kelton liked that question actually.

Kelton 8:06

Yeah,

Krisserin 8:06

The how do you feel?

Kelton 8:08

Oh, well.'cause I think it's, it's so representative of the reality of publishing, and in ways that question is reflective of a person's personal baseline anyways about how

Emily Zipps 8:17

Yeah.

Kelton 8:18

about things. So it's like, you know, if you're generally optimistic, you might be like. Yeah, I've seen a couple reading it. I feel amazing.

Emily Zipps 8:26

Yeah.

Kelton 8:27

pessimistic, you can be like, I was in Barnes Noble, it was on the front table and everyone walked by it. Things are bad, you know? And it's

Emily Zipps 8:34

Absolutely.

Kelton 8:36

the

Krisserin 8:36

That's like,

Kelton 8:37

wildly different experiences.

Krisserin 8:39

like me and Kelton in a nutshell.

Emily Zipps 8:42

Which,

Krisserin 8:42

Our personalities. Can you guess?

Kelton 8:45

Uh, I'm the doom and gloom.

Emily Zipps 8:47

I, um, yeah, it was so funny. I was showing this survey to my wife, like, oh, here's like what I did and. The options were a scale of one to five from bad to good. And then there was, I don't fucking know, feels bad. I don't fucking know. Feels fine and I don't fucking know. Feels good. But before she saw that, I don't fucking know. She was like, but what if you don't know? And I was like, scroll down baby. And then she was like, nice. And I do think this also one of the reasons I phrased it that way. It's hard to do a survey on publishing as a data scientist because knowing that the participants don't have the data to respond. I was like, how do I phrase these questions? But one of the factors in phrasing it that way is that. Sales are good or bad based on your advance, not based on the raw numbers of sales, right? sell 5,000 copies with a very low advance, that's exceptional. If you sell 5,000 copies with a very high advance, that's terrible. And so it's really about what expectations were set for your book based on the publisher investment, and then are you meeting those expectations? And so really, because my advance is lower, my sales can be lower and still be a very successful book. Because of that. And so obviously there are huge breakouts that had tiny advances. Recently Aiden Thomas, who wrote Cemetery Boys, posted on threads. I don't know if y'all saw this. Um, he posted a royalty statement and he shared that Cemetery Boys, which is this huge, huge, huge book, was a$10,000 advance initially and has moved like, like half a million copies or something Incredible, has been absolutely phenomenal. And so happens. And then books that have, you know, a million dollar advance, totally tank and sell, you know, fewer copies and way fewer than cemetery boys. So, I think what the advance tells you is what they expect from the book. And so then you can kind of calibrate are your sales feeling good based on that? So I think of the advance more as a metric of what the publisher is hoping will happen than the the actual money.'cause for most people, the actual money is nice and not life changing.

Krisserin 11:08

And theoretically the marketing support increases with the increase in the advance right. But I.

Emily Zipps 11:13

don't think that's theoretical. I think that's

Krisserin 11:16

Yeah, that's actual factual.

Emily Zipps 11:18

in this survey who hit the New York Times bestseller list and it was one of the people with the highest advances. Like

Krisserin 11:23

Mm-hmm.

Emily Zipps 11:24

things are, they're go hand in hand for sure.

Krisserin 11:27

I guess as a marketer I always thought that I could be in a position to market my book if I needed to once it came out. But if you don't have the data, like you can imagine like how useful geographic data would be for you if you knew, oh, actually a lot of people in this region really like my book. I should go and do an event there. But if you don't have that data, how do you support your book when so many people do say that they were disappointed in the marketing and publicity that they got. So if you get a no advance or a$10,000 advance, they're probably, they're probably just like, good luck. You're on your own. Hope you have a Instagram handle kind of a thing. Right?

Emily Zipps 12:05

Yeah, I think it really depends imprint to imprint on publisher. Sure. The people with the highest level of satisfaction were at mid-size publishers, in this survey. And I think a lot of that is expectation setting. You know, going in, if you're not going big five, that there's going to be differences. But I think the lowest satisfaction, I think was, with small. Independent publishers and then big five and then midsize. So I think a lot of it is about expectation, and I think a lot of it is about like your individual Like I feel I was super supported by my imprint. Like sure could there have been more marketing and publicity. Yeah. But I wasn't a lead title. I knew that going in, I knew when I signed that contract, I knew what I was getting. It's incredibly satisfied. I know people who were incredibly dissatisfied. It was one of the big things that was pulled out in the survey was that marketing and publicity was. what people had hoped. I think it's really hard, like we go into this because we like to write books and the skill of writing books and marketing are, you know, a Venn diagram with only some overlap. I consider myself someone who is not in that overlap category. It's not a skill of mine, it's not something I've really researched. It's not like a particular interest. And so yeah, I'm just like, I have a Canvas subscription and all. I do my best, you know, but like it's, it's not necessarily something that I'm great at. Other people in my daily group are literally publicists for their day jobs, and so they obviously have a lot more skills and knowledge coming in. Something that I've heard, which I not my experience because I am not a self-published author previously, but. When you're self-published, you do have access to all that data, right? You can run an ad on Facebook and know within a day if that ad was successful or not, and then you can tweak it and do that every day until you find one that works and roll with that until it doesn't. And that level of like granular data is what helps self-publish. Authors get so big if they're really paying attention and they know what they're doing, and also their books are good. They can do stuff with that level of data. And in trad pub, like if you're going trad you just really have to be okay with letting go. And a lot of people, some people higher PR firms, higher marketing firms,

Krisserin 14:28

Right.

Emily Zipps 14:29

like sort of like invest part of their advance into that, which I think makes a lot of sense if that's something you wanna do. Because I do think that. Many big five imprints. They have a boilerplate that then they customize for you. But it's not, the boilerplate is not changing as quickly as social media is changing. And I think that's really important. One thing that really drew me to my editor and to accepting this offer from dial press. Was that like my, my book is queer. My editor works exclusively with queer books. My imprint puts out a lot of queer books, and my editor was like, listen. I know the queer booksellers. I know the queer book reviewers, like I know the publications, I know the places that we're gonna go. They know me, I know them. This is gonna work. And when I walk into a bookstore, I always see books from my imprint. I have not walked into a bookstore in the last two years where I haven't seen a book from my imprint. So I know they have those connections, they're getting them in bookstores and bookstores still move a lot of copies. And so that's something I didn't, I'm not at all involved in what bookstores are stocking my book. And so I think there's also a lot of marketing and publicity that happens that we don't see and only kind of results in, does someone tag you that they saw your book in this random bookstore?

Krisserin 15:48

Mm-hmm.

Emily Zipps 15:49

like your book's on a table at the Strand in New York, and I was like. That's amazing. I didn't know that. You know, because like I would tell you, like all the, you know, hundreds of Andie bookstores across the country that have your book and that's the marketing and publicity departments, right? That's doing that, that's the distribution, that's the trust in the press. And so I think there's a lot that we don't see. And then I also think there are a lot of authors who are disappointed and so it's complicated.

Krisserin 16:17

It's complicated.

Kelton 16:19

inevitably comes'cause everyone's sort of going in with this hope that their book will just catch, like wildfire.

Krisserin 16:24

Change their lives.

Kelton 16:25

one of, yeah, it'll be

Krisserin 16:26

Yeah.

Kelton 16:27

success stories that goes viral on TikTok and you're just like, there's no reason it can't be me.

Emily Zipps 16:33

Yeah.

Kelton 16:33

to, going back to that, the thing you said about the mid-level is with the best expectations, it's'cause they have mid expectations. I think you still have that underdog hope when you go small and you have the outsized expectations when you go big. Um, so it makes, it makes sense to me that when you're right in the middle, you're Goldilocks in your expectations.

Emily Zipps 16:52

Yeah, for sure. And I, I think interestingly, when I looked at our satisfaction metrics by advance, with the middle advances were the least satisfied. The 50 to a hundred K per book were the least satisfied group of any of the groupings. And it, it was like not linear. The people with, 2000 to 10,000 per book were above the average satisfaction. and so I think also it's like, much pressure are you putting on this book? If this

Krisserin 17:25

Yeah.

Emily Zipps 17:26

supposed to pay all your bills, that's really scary. this is your debut. If this book is paying your bills, will the next book pay your bills? Like I, people without a day job or other source of income, were also the least satisfied. And those are, I assume, people with high advances, you know, like how else are you living? and that excludes like people with partner income, this was just writing as your sole income and they were the least

Krisserin 17:51

Mm-hmm.

Emily Zipps 17:52

And I think that pressure is really. Scary

Krisserin 17:56

Yeah.

Emily Zipps 17:57

And you know, publishing is luck. You have to be really talented and put out a really good book, but there are a lot more really good books than there are book deals. And so there's a huge element of luck in it. And I think if, your whole life is riding on that luck happening and then continuing to happen, that's gonna be really stressful.

Krisserin 18:17

Okay. What about the survey made you hopeful?

Emily Zipps 18:21

Oh, I would a lot, a lot about the survey made me hopeful. Um,

Krisserin 18:25

talk about that.

Emily Zipps 18:26

In general, people were really happy. Like the satisfaction metrics are all high. It was a scale of one to five. All three metrics were over a four on average, I think. so, you know, that's really good. People were especially satisfied with their editors and so I think that editorial relationship is so important. Even if the editor satisfaction was a little higher than the general publishing experience satisfaction, which I do think that gap is typically the marketing and publicity gap, and maybe some sales in there. But your editor is your person. And so it was so great to see that really high level there. I was really encouraged by the number of people who did have big advances, especially, and I mean the sample sizes get really small as we get into demographics, but folks of color had big advances in this sample. Neurodivergent people had big advances in this sample. Some queer people had big advances in this sample, and so all of that was really exciting. All that can be a lot better. And there's a lot to be said about who even is debuting in these categories. but I, I think there was a lot in it that was really. Great. And also just for me, like I, I found the information really helpful. But yeah, I mean, I know so many people who are like, me, you know, it took me a long time. I had three books signed on submission before my debut got bought. And so just the act of being here, being able to say I'm a published author. My debut came out like. Uh, people were writing in about just the feeling of being able to say, like, my book is out there in the world. Strangers are reading it, it's in bookstores. I'm being tagged in these things. I reviewers are reviewing the book and people are saying nice things about it. It's being on these lists or whatever. It's been I would say in general, I've seen a lot of stress and worry and freak out in the group chat, but also just so much joy and so much pride and happiness and the community has been really wonderful. So I think it's, um, it's, it's been really great and I think that's reflected in a lot of the survey also.

Kelton 20:34

Yeah, I've never clicked anything so. Asked in my life, so

Krisserin 20:39

Yeah, I guess

Kelton 20:39

Zips for your service.

Krisserin 20:41

that's right.

Emily Zipps 20:42

was like, just refreshing those results, you know, I was like, what's gonna happen? And I thought like maybe 15 people were gonna take it. And so the fact that I got 60, which is small in the grand scheme of things, but big in the scheme of like. Hey group chat that

Krisserin 20:57

Okay.

Emily Zipps 20:57

people are no longer checking because your book came out eight months ago. Like, do you wanna fill out this survey? I was really thrilled with that number. And, you know, not a lot of stuff was statistically significant, but some was. And I was like, I was hyped about that.

Krisserin 21:11

Yeah. Well it begs the question, is there gonna be a 2026 debut author survey?

Emily Zipps 21:17

I'd love to, you know, if they're down, I'm down. Absolutely.

Krisserin 21:21

Well, I hope to be in it.

Emily Zipps 21:23

Great. Great. Yes, yes. Good luck on submission

Krisserin 21:27

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Emily Zipps 21:29

submission really sucks. I, I hope that you have a very fast and easy sub process. Mine was tough, but, um, you know, it, it, it worked out in the end. Yeah.

Krisserin 21:42

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on so quickly and talking to us about your survey and for doing the survey. It was so useful. And I know we get kind of caught up on the money, but it's so nice to hear that there are things about the process and, you know, we, we write books because we wanna write books and I think we all think the money is great if it comes. But it's nice to know that there are things that make all of the pain worth the while. I'd love to have you back when your, second book comes out and we can talk about that whole process and have a longer conversation. But Emily, tell our listeners where they can find you.

Emily Zipps 22:14

You can find me much everywhere with just Emily Zips, at Emily Zips on Instagram and threads. My website, emily zips.com. You can find how to buy my book there, info about the second book and my substack is also just Emily zips, so find me there. It's called Fun Announcements and Sporadic Thoughts, I think. And it's deeply sporadic, so I'll not be spamming you.

Krisserin 22:38

Love it. All right. Thank you Emily so much.