The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory
Hosted by writer and ranter Mookie Spitz, the SFFF is where science fiction & fantasy creators, fans, and technologists transform imagination into reality. Each episode explores how writers, filmmakers, and world-builders bring their universes to life, with personal stories about turning wild ideas into finished projects that connect, inspire, and thrill. From indie authors to visionary engineers, Mookie uncovers the creative engines powering the future of sci-fi & fantasy storytelling!
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory
John F. Holmes & Cannon Publishing: Inside the Unit Behind Military Sci-Fi Success
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On this 41st episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Mookie sits down with Cannon Publishing founder and Editor-in-Chief John F. Holmes. He's a former platoon sergeant who runs his publishing outfit with the same mindset: train the talent, build the unit, execute the mission.
Cannon gives military science fiction authors a real path between doing everything yourself and waiting years for a traditional deal that may never come. You bring the manuscript, Cannon brings the machine: Editing that improves the book, covers designed to sell, full production handled without cutting corners. Distribution across the channels that matter, with no upfront costs, and a straight profit split. If the book wins, everyone wins.
Then there’s the part most writers underestimate—the team. Cannon is a working group participating in monthly sessions, shared universes, writers cross-checking each other’s work. Veterans help newer authors avoid the mistakes they already made. Holmes treats development like training.
Holmes lays out exactly what he looks for, what gets rejected immediately, and why most books never gain traction even if the writing is decent:
- Submit like a professional
Send a clean plot synopsis and your first three chapters. No rambling pitches. No half-finished ideas. - Write for story, not agenda
Strong characters and momentum win. Message-driven writing usually collapses under its own weight. - Be ready to collaborate
Expect feedback. Expect edits. Expect other authors to weigh in. If you want total control, go solo. - Show you can produce consistently
One book every ten years is a dead end. You need follow-through and output. - Build your own presence
Social media, conventions, reader interaction. If no one knows you exist, the book won’t move. - Engage like a human, not a billboard
Talk to readers. Share interests. Don’t just scream “buy my book.” - Understand the business model
It’s a partnership. Profit split. No guarantees. You’re expected to help drive sales. - Know the catalog before you pitch
Read Canon titles. If your work doesn’t fit the lane, don’t waste time forcing it. - Stay coachable
The whole point is improvement. If you fight every note, you’re done. - Bring something to the table
Talent helps. Discipline matters more. A voice, a perspective, a willingness to grind. Visibility, consistency, and personality matter. If you’re not willing to show up and engage, you disappear.
The Guest
J.F. Holmes is a retired Army Senior Noncommissioned Officer, having served for 22 years in both the Regular Army and Army National Guard. During that time, he served as everything from an artillery section leader to a member of a Division level planning staff, with tours in Cuba and Iraq, as well as responding to the terrorists attacks in NYC on 9-11. From 2010 to 2014 he wrote the immensely popular military cartoon strip, "Power Point Ranger", poking fun at military life in the tradition of Beetle Bailey and Willy & Joe.
His books range from Military Sci-Fi to Space Opera to Detective to Fantasy, with a lot in between, and in 2017 two are finalists for the prestigious Dragon Awards. In 2018, he launched Cannon Publishing, specializing in military science fiction, fantasy and thrillers, with an emphasis on works from up and coming authors.
Cannon Publishing
Hello, and welcome to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory. On the floor with me today, we've got John F. Holmes, the publisher, editor-in-chief, Grand Puba of Canon Publishing. They specialize in military science fiction. Welcome to the factory, John. Thank you. Appreciate it. Um, I've I've had a couple of your authors already on the factory floor. Al Hagan, great guy.
SPEAKER_00And Mike Morton, I am not responsible for anything that they said.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's probably good because they did talk a lot of smack about you.
SPEAKER_00They're very smart guys and they're good friends of mine, so we all try and get along.
SPEAKER_01You can tell by the company someone keeps. You guys are all awesome. Al was super fun to have. Texan, he's got his Hexen series.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01The uh Crescent City shootout just launched. I just got my copy from Amazon, so I can't wait to dive in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he's a good writer. He's a good writer. He's got another series coming out soon, too. So um we can talk about that, but enough about them. What about me?
SPEAKER_01Well, I was I was getting there. I was getting there. And then Mike, he's got his own stuff going on. I had a really good conversation with him, kind of workshopped it. He was full of ideas about giving great advice to young writers, up and coming writing writers, best practices. He does editing for you too. So you guys sound pretty professional, tip top. You started Canon back in 2018, is that right?
SPEAKER_00I did, although it didn't really pick up until like 2021 or so. I kind of started off as uh a legal device to separate me from the business side of things, right? Me as a person versus and then uh I started I have a buddy of mine, Lucas Markham, who I'm sure you should have on the podcast, who wanted to publish, and I said, Hey, I'll publish a series for you. And he wrote a great series called Valkyrie, which is about uh Metavax in the 25th century, and um that worked out pretty well. So I just kind of like, you know what, we should do this with more people, and uh, we've been picking up authors ever since. So yeah, it's last three, four years it's been going pretty well.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, so kind of in the midst of the pandemic, when people are isolated a lot of couch time, rather than just blow your brains out with Netflix, you offered a reading alternative, it sounds like, with a with a niche genre, but a really vibrant one and a very interesting one.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, yeah. Uh I've been writing, I got started off writing military sci-fi, so to speak, uh back in 2013. I was watching A Walking Dead and um complaining about where the military wasn't. You know, the guys with the guns in the organization seem to be completely absent, and um, you know, they're getting in cars and driving away, and the gas hasn't gone bad, and you know, toilet papers there and all that other stuff. And my person that lives with me, my beautiful executive vice president of happiness, said, Well, if you can do better, go for it. And uh, I started putting in, started writing short chapters and put it out online. Uh, and that series, a regular scout team one, has done very, very well for me. Uh, so I've put out myself something like six or seven different universes. Uh I wrote 11 books in that series and I realized that I probably could make more money by compressing them and actually putting them in order instead of saying, oh wait, if I go back two years, I missed a gap in the story, and I'll put another book out. Um, so yeah, I republished those, and we've got I've got personally like five or six different universes. Uh, some of them we share with everybody else. Um, but yeah, we've been doing okay. We've been doing well.
SPEAKER_01Prolific. I checked out your oove, a lot of books. And to your point, a lot of different points of view, a lot of different characters.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I found it very hard to I went to work for the government four and a half years ago, and I found it very hard to be creative since since then. Um, but by the end of the day, with my government job, I I feel just like the zombies that I used to write about. So plus I'm running the company. They doged your brain, right? Yeah, basically. Plus, I'm running the company, and that takes a lot of energy. And I really enjoy it because I'm a retired sergeant first class. I was a platoon sergeant. I really enjoy developing troops, basically, right? You know, uh taking the new writers and teaching them the things, all the mistakes I made, don't make the same thing. Uh seeing them, you know, become successful is is really what I enjoy about the company. So uh I've also learned that I gotta bring some uh established names on there too to bring something to the table. But you know, it's uh it's kind of my way of still being that platoon sergeant who's looking out for the younger guys.
SPEAKER_01I got that feeling from Al and Mike. There's a lot of affection, there's a lot of mutual respect, there's a lot of talent. Yeah, and there's a lot of reinforcement, so that team spirit, you guys listen to each other.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we we um we have monthly meetings where we zoom meetings where I do uh professional development classes, and we all go around and talk about what we're working on and stuff. We have chats that people can ask questions of each other, bounce ideas off of. Um, just things that weren't possible before, social media and you know the internet. Um so yeah, it is kind of a team thing.
SPEAKER_01It really is. Pandemic silver lining, Skype, and then Zoom. And now we realize that we don't need to commute for 10 hours a week to actually be in the rooms together. We can get get stuff done.
SPEAKER_00So we'll get me started. I got sent back to the office about a year ago, and I do not like it. So um, but I'm gonna be retiring soon, and then I'll have much more time to focus on my writing and everything else.
SPEAKER_01And then uh the the publishing can further flourish. You also have a new press that you've started in fantasy.
SPEAKER_00Yep, it's uh I was at New York Comic-Con in October, and I had my table set up with our stuff, and uh I was surrounded by people who wrote fantasy and romanticy and YA books, and those books were flying off the shelf, and mine were not. Uh yeah, I sold some books, but New York City is not exactly the military crowd, but um man, they were selling out, and I'm like, you know what? I gotta get in on that. So uh a friend of mine who I've known for a long time uh decided, you know, volunteered to be the editor, and my awesome production person, uh Haley, is gonna help out with that too. And I hired another line editor. Uh so we're gonna try and crack that market too. You can't let the grass grow under your feet. I mean, we're all gonna be out of work in two years because of AI anyway. So make the money while we can, right? You know, make the best the best buggy whip that you can.
SPEAKER_01That's right. We'll just be directing our agents to uh, you know, write write the book of their dreams. Yeah, well, you know, we'll see, right? Yeah, it's complicated right now. Some people are freaking out, some people are rejoicing, some people are using the tools and uh enjoying it and getting benefit. Other people are taking advantage of them to publish a book a day of garbage.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it is a very fine line, it's very controversial. Um, I do use some AI book cover generation, like just for images, uh on people that I don't know if I'm gonna make any money off of them or not. And I can't afford to just sink a thousand dollars into a book cover if you know, but uh more established series. I hire artists and things like that, and I do all that production stuff myself. I make all the covers myself, the lettering, all those other things. So uh in the and the science fiction people seem to be okay with that. I've never had any complaints from anybody because I think they're a little more forward-looking. But the fantasy people, I'm finding out if you put an AI cover on there, they're gonna come at you with pitchforks and torches, and so we're we're going straight artist, you know, for that. So it's uh it's an interesting business.
SPEAKER_01It's really, really tricky and it's genre focused and it's personality-based. I had Don Aguilio on the podcast a little while ago. He does Superman, Aquaman. He hand draws the next iteration of these superheroes for the studio.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And he's not too happy about this AI business because it it undercuts his own skills and his own opportunities, and that's in comics. And the comic people are very, very sensitive about this, not only the artists, but the readership too.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's funny because on the flip side, I don't let any of my guys use AI for any writing stuff, right? Now I can sort of justify my conscience by saying I'm not an artist and I have to keep my cost down, right? If an artist wants to go be a writer and try using AI to be a good writer, go for it, okay? But you're not a writer. If my guys are writers and they're writing things, I don't want them to use an AI because I want them to be good writers. That's what they're setting out to be. Right? I'm not setting out to be an artist, okay? I'm trying to run a company, but I want these guys to be writers and learn their craft. You know, I do a lot of photography, and people are like, hey, you're a really good photographer. I'm like, well, I grew up in the era of you had to think about the picture that we were shooting because we used to have to take the roller film down to the little place and drop it in the box and get it.
SPEAKER_01I took my film away. Remember, you had 24 or 36. You had a little plastic container so it wouldn't get exposed. And then he used that plastic container for your weeds, so we used to call weed film back in the day.
SPEAKER_00I mean, some people did, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm not naming names, I'm just saying that it was a whole different culture back then with analog physical media.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah. You had to learn how to shoot, right? And I and I want my guys to learn how to to write. You know, I want them to be good writers, and I think they'll always be better than AI because of that.
SPEAKER_01Amen to that. It's lived experience, character-driven, a great bar to have precedent to set. And uh makes people sweat it out. That's what makes good writing. I love sweating it out. That's the whole point.
SPEAKER_00My my grammar was atrocious, as I was told by my wife. And I was like, well, you know what? I tell a good story, but that's not good enough. You have to learn how to do it right. And I got so many comments from people. I love the story. I got those two-star reviews, right? You know, three-star reviews. I love the story, but needs a better editor. Okay, now I have a better editor and I learned how to write better, right? You know, so you learn, and that makes you a better writer. And that's what I want the people at Canon.
SPEAKER_01Ease of use is the big scourge. Everyone expects, or many people, especially younger people, expect things to be easy. If it's not easy, then it's not worth it. But the things that are most worth it are the most difficult to do. And if you can get over that curve, then uh you're you're flying. Yeah. How do you find talent? Now you got your new press. I've got one writer I want to send you who just is gonna self-publish uh fantasy books. She's busting out from science fiction, pretty well known in the indie community, award-winning and going for it. Uh, how does it work in terms of you recruiting talent as part one? And part two, how do you market?
SPEAKER_00How do you get attention in this insane oversupply of books and authors and scams and you tell me, and I'll be happy to listen to you how you how we can do that. Uh no, first off, um, word of mouth and reputation is is what brings writers to the table, right? Uh, I go to conventions, you know, and I I meet people. I mean, I'm notorious for grabbing people in the middle of the hallway and say, hey, you want to write a book for us? Right. Um, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But but and then now it's become because we've been around for a little while, it's word of mouth. You know, people want to submit to us, right? Because we have a good reputation. Um, I'm a professional recruiter in my day job, so I'm really good at running my mouth at people. And now I have people who know our books, know about us. They submit to us, and I've actually, you know, I've had to turn some good stuff away. We just don't have room for it in my production schedule. Um, we have a lot of communication between the other indie authors. Uh, so for example, Three Ravens Publishing with uh Hillbilly Roberts, um Ian from Rackantor, and Kyle from Jumpmaster. We're all good friends and we all talk amongst each other. And we might be like, hey, this doesn't really fit for me. Uh you know, why don't you take a look at it, right? We'll pass people around stuff. Um, likewise, we all talk about people that pissed us off. Don't deal with this guy, right?
SPEAKER_01It's a small world. It's interesting that you don't look at it as a zero-sum game. So all you there's there's a there's plenty of readers. There's actually more readers than writers. It seems like a content glut, but quality content is hard to find, and it's hard to match good content with the reader most in tune with with what that stuff is all about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, there's more than enough people out there to help. I could probably send to sell 10 times as more books, all of us could, and we still would not make a huge debt in the market, right? You know, there's no reason to be backstabbing each other or fighting each other or anything like that. Um maybe someday, I don't know. I'm a little bit younger than Ian, but he was an ex-cop, so we could probably vote my boy. Hill Billy's a hillbilly, so um, and Kyle's you know airborne, so he's Mr. Tucker.
SPEAKER_01So things get out of control. There's ask kit.
SPEAKER_00But no, we when we're at conventions together, we go to lunch and we talk about things and you know figure out how we can help each other out. Um and then there are a lot of prospective writer groups on Facebook and other places uh that I will put out a call. Say, hey, we've got a hole in the publishing schedule if anybody wants to submit to us. We do an anthology anthology once a year uh called the High Caliber Awards, Canon High Caliber, right? Uh is for people who haven't been published before in novel form, and I asked them to write a novella. So they may have written a bunch of short stories, if and I figure if you can write a novella, you can write a novel, right? So it's got to be 12,000 words, and you can stretch that out to a novel. And actually, we've published two people from there. Uh Steve Vickers with Troll Hunter. Sam Robb's book is coming out next month uh through Celine. That is a sense of murder. It's a fantasy book. And we have two, we have another book in development that's post-apocalyptic from last year's winter, right? So we use that to kind of mind for a little bit. Uh with Celine, it's been a little tougher because we've put out a call. You know, we do the same thing. We hit up the fantasy groups and stuff like that. It's an unknown entity right now, it's so it's kind of hard for people to we're trying to keep it separate because it's a different audience, very different audience.
SPEAKER_01Branding schizophrenia, right?
SPEAKER_00Right. So we're trying, and it's tough. We don't have a big reach yet, so I can't really drag in the big authors. And uh the people that I do have an author uh reader base for, they don't really want to read fantasy. Some some parts of fantasy, they don't want to read romanticy, certainly, right? Um, but the market's there, so I just have to figure out how to build it. So it's a constant struggle to get to part two. Um advertising, you have to pay money for advertising. I got lucky when I started because I had a cartoon strip uh online, a military cartoon cartoon strip called PowerPoint Ranger, right? I did that about 15 years ago, and I had like 80,000 people following. So when I started putting chapters for my books online, people, you know, I gained a f a good following from there, all right. Um, I don't have that advantage anymore because now you have to pay for everything. Like even on my I turned the PowerPoint Ranger into Canon Publishing page. I used to get 30,000, 40,000 people see my cartoons. Now, unless I pay, I'll have a hundred people see an advertisement for a book or something like that.
SPEAKER_01You're throttled, they know that that they can get you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I don't have an Instagram or or TikTok face. Okay, all right. Um, but even so, we have to work on that. That's something we have to do. I was actually on Fiverr, uh, which is a freelancer site, looking for marketing person today, you know. So uh it's tough, it really is. You gotta spend money to make money. And fortunately, we've been profitable the whole time, but you know, it it gets harder and harder every year. It really does. And now the market is flooded, like you said, with AI books. Um it it's I don't know that we're gonna last the next two or three years. I really don't. Things are changing, and we're gonna do the best we can. Uh but I always I try and roll with the changes.
SPEAKER_01Where are most of the sales? Is it in the ebooks? Is it print? Is there a channel preference among the sci-fi military crowd that keeps you afloat?
SPEAKER_00Most uh I run about 50, 40, 10, right? So 50% of our money comes from Kindle Unlimited, right? 40% comes from people who are purchasing the book on Kindle, and only 10% comes through paperbacks, right? People don't buy a lot of paperbacks off Amazon. For fantasy, it's almost opposite. Uh it's more like 50-50, you know, ebook sales versus paper, right? That that's just a genre preference. Um, we're working on getting our books out into bookstores, but it's tough. It's it's really hard to figure out. Ingram could be a huge pain in the ass, right? Um, but we have to do that in order to uh reach the genre that we're we want to be in. You have to adapt yourself to the market, right? Uh but yeah, most of our stuff comes electronically. Uh 10%, like I said, 10% of our sales are paperbacks, and they're cool. I mean, you know, it's nice to go to a convention and sell some books too, right?
SPEAKER_01Physical. I'm going to the LA Times Festival of Books this weekend.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's what you do. That's actually one of the best parts of being an author. Yeah. Yeah. Like I was at New York City Comic-Con, and I had a guy come up to me and he's like, Hey, the regular scout team won, you're Nick Agasty. I'm like, no, I'm not the main character, I'm the author, okay? Or, you know, uh, first of all, Nick's in better shape than I am, and probably better looking. And uh, but you know, it it's cool. Somebody even in New York City Comic-Con, I had a fan come up to me, a couple of fans, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, absolutely. I mean, you got Staten Island. Yeah, well, it's funny. We got a whole borough that are ready to deploy on a moment's notice. So it's New York isn't all uh woke.
SPEAKER_00No, it's funny. Thursday and Friday during the day, hardly anybody talked to us. Saturday, the guys came rolling in, they're like, hey, you know, I'm done with my plumbing job, or uh, you know, I finished my shift at the police off. And you know, they they bought more books. I sold more books on Saturday than they did on you know Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So but uh yeah, you just gotta reach your fan base. Um a lot of my guys do well by going to uh sometimes like gun shows, and uh it depends on the person, too. One of the hardest things that I deal with as a publisher, my authors, and I'm knocking anybody, you have to put yourself out there. You gotta build a brand, right? You people know me as JF Holmes, right? Uh people know you as Mookie Spitz. That's your is that your author name, right? Yeah, I have a hard time sometimes getting the guys to do what needs to be done in order to build their brand, right? Uh, you know, well, you're the publisher, sell my book for me. Well, nobody cares, nobody gives a crap. Who is Stephen King's publisher? Most people do not know. Do not care. Who is George R.R. Martin's publisher? You know, uh, but if you're George R.R. Martin and you're walking down the street, somebody's gonna be like, oh, I love your books, all right. You know, um, so a lot of what we do is try and push people to build that brand, right? You know, and and there's several people who've been pretty successful. Al Hagan has a good following. Dan Kemp. Uh Dan, I met Dan on a gun range, right? You know, down at LibertyCon. We're we'd go shooting uh before we go to the convention. And there's a guy standing there and he's like, Hey, you're a publisher, I got a book. I'm like, Yeah, I'm a publisher, send me your book, right? And Dan has done pretty well for himself. Um, puts out one book a year, right? But he's very interactive with the people in his fan group. He talks about whiskey and guns and military stuff, and it it doesn't have to be all about your book all the time.
SPEAKER_01That's the personality and and and being a fan. Yeah. And to your point, Creating your brand. There's a tendency on writers that you know you're in a basement sitting there slaving over your book. And then once you do all the heavy lifting of the actual writing, you just let it out into the world and everyone's got to kiss your ass. And it's just not the case. It never was the case. If you look at really famous authors from Dostoevsky to Joyce, they self-promoted too. And now it's acute. To what extent, though, do you do that handoff? So if if you get a writer, tacitly assuming they've got a social media presence, they've got a personality more interesting than a doorknob and are able to self-promote, they've got good content and and they're competent and they they got a good story. How much promotion do you do from Canon in terms of your brand, your infrastructure, your marketing engine? And how much do you rely on them to take what you in a sense kick off to sustain and build a career? It's got to be about half and half, right?
SPEAKER_00You know, when a book drops, we'll do our all our promotional stuff. We will send out our newsletters, all that kind of stuff. Uh but then you have to that only lasts like Amazon only has like what does a book sell for two, three months and then you know, on to the next thing, right? Um that yeah, that personal interaction has to be ongoing from the author nonstop, right? You know, that that's something that just has to continually continually has to happen, right? You know, um, so I can't do that for them. I as much as we have our fan groups and stuff like that, I I can only do the official marketing things, like you know, post on our fake Facebook page, Instagram, TikTok, right? Um, and then I only have time to do so much because we put out two books a month, basically, right? So you're gonna get that spotlight for a month, uh but in the meantime, I'm trying to pre-sell the next book, and then you know, it's it's a tough cycle, it really is. Uh we're thinking of going to maybe quarterly instead of monthly, because you know, but then I have to put out three, yeah, like six books in one shot, right? So then I'm marketing six different books. Uh it's it's always a game to figure out what works. And then the individual authors have to take their book um and do their part too. And and again, a lot of it is not just the book, it is interacting with the fans, right? You know, to get them excited about stuff. Like uh we have Jason Kyle writes Arthurian fiction, right? Um and half the time what he's talking about is, you know, uh new discoveries in archaeology based on, you know, he has a great character, um, Parador, who is uh a young cavalryman in Arthur's cavalry, right? So it's not about Arthur, it's about this trooper. And he'll he'll draw a link between, hey, look, in my book, I had them go to this place, and there's new archaeological discoveries, so maybe, right? You know, um, kind of thing, right? That's the kind of thing that keeps people interested in going on stuff. Um, I don't know if that answered your question.
SPEAKER_01Completely. So if if you're an up-and-coming author, if you're uh an established indie author doing your thing for a while and want a backing of a publishing company, then it's potentially viable in the sense that you've got initiative, you've got a social media presence, you've got your own brand, you're producing content, you're professional in the sense that you just get it done. And it's a potentially good partnership with the tacit understanding that it is 50-50, that they need to do a lot of the heavy lifting, and that you do the vetting. And I'm assuming some of the editorial massaging. You've got your own standards, your own style in the canon.
SPEAKER_00I'm assuming. Uh the idea is this um you write and you promote, right? We do covers, we do all the production, we have a line editor, we have a story editor that works with you if you need it. Um, you know, we provide all the back end stuff, right? And we we we don't charge anybody anything, it's this 50-50 split on profits, right? So if you're making money, we're making money, and vice versa, right? Um, so in theory, if if you came to me and said, hey, I got this great book idea, I think it's gonna be awesome. We're gonna take a look at it and say, okay, cool, it's good, right? And we'll we'll look at the book and say, hey, you mean to tighten this up a little bit. I might ask one of the other authors to partner up with you, like um Al and Dan. Al's writing a spin-off from Dan's Athenaeum series, right? And they've collaborated on it to see which direction it wants to go in, right? So I may assign somebody to work with you on those kind of things. Or uh Charlie Cox wrote Fay Wars on the Northwest Front, right? Great book. She writes differently than I do. That's something I've had to learn. Don't beat people over the head with my writing style, right? Um, and she told a story about a young girl set in our Fay Wars universe, and then I had another author, um, Ro, who took over one of my characters and wrote a spin-off novel. And I said, Hey, Ro, Charlie has already written in Fay Wars. Go talk to Charlie. And the two of them work together on stuff, right? So we provide that kind of support so that you have a better product and you don't have to worry about, you know, are my line edits done? Am I gonna have a good cover? And it's a collaborative thing, right? I'll I'll come up with an idea or say, hey, Mookie, what do you want on the cover? Give me a good scene from your book, right? Um, and then we'll go from there. If you work in one of our shared universes, we've got Fallen Empire, Fay Wars, a regular scout team one. Um can't remember if we have any other shared universes. Anyway, so you know, if you're working one of those, obviously we have uh a Bible, right? What the story is, and you have to kind of adhere to the big picture, right? So we have to make sure that you're doing that, right? And it's a support network, and the goal is to sell books, obviously, but to make you feel successful too. Does it always work? Yep. I mean, sometimes we have books fall flat on their faces. I wrote a sword and sorcery book that I love. I mean, it was straight up Dungeons and Dragons stuff, right? And uh fell flat out's face, right? And I'm a pretty good selling author, you know. I do pretty well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, maybe it could work with your fantasy press now, right? That it might have just been a branding issue, then probably a content issue.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, now I'll switch it over, you know. But then and then not everything always works out between us and authors. I mean, you know, we all have personalities, sometimes we disagree about things and the other thing is that I'm not like one of the big Hollywood Hollywood studios from the 1930s. Nobody's contracted to me, right? You know, it's like Mookie, you gotta make 10 pictures for me before you go do anything else for anybody else, right? I've got guys I own your ass. Yeah, no, I've got hell. My operations manager, Haley, writes for Chris Kennedy Publishing, right? She hasn't done any books with me, you know. Um, guys might write a book for us for Fallen Empire and then go do something else. Like my sci-fi editor, Dave Hensley. He just put out a book from Fallen Empire. He's writing a trilogy, but he's also got a Car Wars book with Hillbilly, right? So it it's a very mixed up, mashed up world, right?
SPEAKER_01Non-exclusivity is built into the contract. Kind of, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, pisses me off a little bit sometimes, but you know, because everybody's committed to other projects, you know, so it's hard to do it. Yeah, you can't you can't get someone's undivided attention. The only person who gives undivided attention to Canon is me, right? Because, you know, I'm not saying that the guys that work for me aren't very loyal. I mean, they are, they're good people, and some of them just write exclusively for me, but they're always free to go do whatever they want to. Okay. Um, I encourage that sometimes. I tell them, go write short stories, you know, like uh Rackantor Press puts out a lot of anthologies. Go write for Rack and Tour, go put some short stories together. It'll make you a better writer to go out and do other things than what you're experiencing, right? It's like go date five women at a time. You'll find out lots of things about yourself.
SPEAKER_0115% all for one style, one book, one obsession, right? Keep it, keep it free, keep it loose, keep it flex. Sounds like a dream come true for a lot of writers who are struggling with common shared issues. The one is this idea of collaboration, they feel they need to hire an editor, they're terrified. The other one is the cover business, they're expensive if they go the art route, they feel they're lambasted if they're if they do AI. Promotion, self-promotion is a big unknown and is freaking a lot of people out. And I hang out with writers on Substack. There's a little group of sci-fi writers, speculative fiction writers, and there's a lot of swirl. And there's a a lot of clutching at straws and trying to figure out what really can work. And behind it all is this lack of community, this lack of real support. So it's interesting that the backbone of what you're doing too is this sense of team, teamwork, camaraderie, being in it together, which is something writers crave.
SPEAKER_00I'll be honest, I got lucky because I got into this business 15 years ago. If I was a brand new writer right now, I'd be freaking terrified, you know, that how do you crack this thing, you know? And you do it by writing good books. And like I said, being a presence, you know, that that's it's what it is. You just gotta be yourself and be out there, you know.
SPEAKER_01Throw it out there. I've got a a TikTok channel where I rant every day, and actually, probably because of the algorithm, especially older one, I've done better, let's say, than on Instagram and and YouTube. But I've built up like 17, 18,000 followers, and that daily experience of outreach with my ideas and my writing. And I'm, if anything else, an overshare. I'm just cranking stuff out constantly to the point where it might even too much. Yeah, you can tell I can't shut the hell up. So uh so having a conduit, I think, is important, and then collaborating is important. It's just finding the right mix, it's finding the right partnership. It's like everything in life. It's really dependent on the personalities involved, setting up a framework that's viable for both, and then being in a position where you where you're able to compromise and and work together.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and one of one of the good things about our shared universe series is that I mean, there's a fan base for it already, right? You know, so you're you don't have to take that leap so much. And like Brian Gifford has a book, uh, it's up for pre-sale right now, Darkbringer, right? He brought that, he no pun intended, he brought that to me a couple years ago, right? Um, and said, Hey, you know, are you interested in this? And I was like, eh, you know, generic post-apocalyptic military stuff. Um, not generic, it's a good book. Uh, but uh he I felt he could use a little more uh practice as a writer. So I said, listen, uh write me a short story for the Fay Wars anthology comes up and uh he came up with an idea of an orc who joins a biker gang, right? A perfect fit, right? I mean, you know, culture-wise and everything, right? And uh kind of sets up his own little territory in Wichita, Kansas, and tells the elves to go piss off, right? And in the in the short story, in novella, whatever, uh, he kills the orc falls in love with his old lady, right? He he falls in love with a human woman who's super tough, right? And she becomes his old lady, right? And she dies at the end of the short story. Like, no, no, no, that's not gonna work, all right? Nobody wants to see her die after all this. So uh he's like, all right, I'll change it. He's kind of grumpy about it, but hey, my my universe, my rules, right? What that's set up for was him to write a book called Vendetta, which is a follow-through book, and he wrote an entire novel off of it and did pretty well, right? So now I'm publishing his Darkbringer book, which is four Navy SEALs versus the universe, kind of right.
SPEAKER_01I bet you Navy SEALs win.
SPEAKER_00Oh, of course they do.
SPEAKER_01I mean, even if they don't, they'll tell everybody about it, right? You know, so um they're gonna come back and you know, there's gonna be a party.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and they'll get a book contract out of it, right? So um, you know, it's for those of you who aren't military, that's kind of an inside joke because SEALs always tell everybody about what they're doing. Um, us army guys don't. So uh so yeah, so now Brian's got Dark Bring around, he's got a little bit of a fan base, he's got more experience. He went re-went back and rewrote the book based on what he experienced, uh, you know, learning-wise, right? Um, so yeah, that that whole kind of shared thing is a is a big deal, right? And like Charlie wrote uh Northwest Front, and she's writing the sequel to Northwest Front, and I'm ripping it apart with my red pen because I feel that Charlie can be a great author. She writes well, but one of the things I've always learned, or I've learned over the years, is you can always do better, right? You can always get better at what you're doing. Um, I have a problem myself as a writer. My stories are always too short, right? They'll they'll clock in at 40 or 50,000 words, maybe even 30,000 words, because I tell a story. And if that's where the story ends, that's where the story ends. I don't know how to stretch it out to 80,000 words. So if you go back and look at my first zombie killer books, the regular scout teams, what there's part one and part two, and they're two different stories. I mean, there's an overall, you know, story, but there really are two, because I don't know how to write long books like that. Very, very few of the books I've written are completely 80,000 word books. You know, I have a hard time with that, and I work on it and I try and learn. So, you know, there you go.
SPEAKER_01Well, you get to it. The point you make, though, is meaningful, especially for writers who are trying to crack it and think it's them against the universe, when almost every success story I've heard has to do with this early and deep collaboration. So I had C.S.D. CUNY on. Uh, she wrote a book called Saint Death's Daughter a few years ago. It's a monster, it's about 600 plus pages, and it won the Fantasy Award of the Year, the number one fantasy book of the year. And it was almost a 10-year process of an editor agent reaching out to her, seeing her other writing, and saying, I think, I think you got a spark, something's going on. Do you want to work with me? Do you want to work together? And she had an early draft of this same book, and it went back and forth and back and forth, and they worked it through and they talked it through. And he combined his expertise, his knowledge of the audience base, the fantasy world, with her enthusiasm and her talent. And it culminated in an enormous critical and financial success for both of them, but it took collaboration, it took effort, and it wasn't like she was toiling in a basement for 10 years. She was engaged, she was active, she goes to the cons. Yeah, she's a personality out there. You see her on Instagram, she goes to writers' groups, she beta tests it. It's the whole deal. It's she treats it almost but not quite like a business because she's bubbly and cheerful and and carefree in that creative sense, but she's serious about it and she collaborates, which is a good thing to know, right?
SPEAKER_00On the other hand, to that point, you can overwrite a book, right? You can I've run into especially fantasy authors, I've run into this. I've got this world Bible that's bigger than the actual book, right? And oh, I need to fix this plot point. And two years later, I'm like, where's the book? You know, oh I I I added something, I added this character, but now I have to rewrite this whole book because I gotta put the new character in there, right? I'm like, dude, I publish pulp fiction, okay? If I'm gonna write a book, it's gonna take me three months and be like, I'm done with it. Cool, it's it's out there, go.
SPEAKER_01If people say it sucks, your readers don't give a shit. They don't want, you know, Silmarilin 2.0, they don't want a thousand-page world-building expose about something, something. They want characters, they want action, they want resolution and satisfaction and move on to the next one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And the other thing is uh the other mistake I see people make, uh, and may not be a mistake, it's a matter of style, is the characters are what sells the book. People read because they want to see characters. You can have the most gorgeous world building setting, but if your characters aren't likable or you know, you don't want to cheer them on, you know, you know, geez, when I kill off some of my characters, people will send me hate mail. You know, it's like, how could you do that, right? I'm like, well, because war's tough and people die, right? So, you know, uh, but they're invested in the characters. Characters, Game of Thrones, yeah, World of Fire and Ice is cool, but everybody knows who the characters are there, right?
SPEAKER_01They're they're they're they never killed the dwarf. Peter, Peter Dinklage had job security through that.
SPEAKER_00But he's such an awesome character, right?
SPEAKER_01They're all dropping like flies around him, and that was part of the thrill, because to your point, they fall in love with the characters that they kill, and you're in shock for a season. But as long as you got is you got the dwarf, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Don't overplay that. So, yeah, and then the other thing is um I I hate information drops. If you send me a book that's just straight up this happened, that happened, I'm gonna be like, no, sorry, not tell tell the story through action, conversation, reaction. Um, so I get a lot of that, and then also because I'm a dinosaur, I cannot stand present tense first person stuff. I can't stand present tense in the first place. But if you send me a submission, and I've been wrong, people have gone on and I I said thank you, but we don't publish that, and they've gone in and uh done pretty well, you know, with their book. Maybe I'm just a dinosaur, like I said, but I like to read things a certain way, you know. So I'm gonna have to change that tune when we start publishing YA because that's uh a lot of stuff is written that way.
SPEAKER_01That's a whole different ball of publishing wax, the whole YA. But it's also a ginormous audience, and uh you got tons of potential there if you can bust into it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we'll see. And and the other thing is uh sometimes I I overextend myself, you know. It's um I'm only one person, and that's one of the curses of uh you know. I was talking to Ian from Rackantor Press today, and like, how many people you got working for you? He's like, a lot more than you. Okay, man, cool. You know, um it's building a company is hard, and that that goes for any business. I've run construction companies, you know, find the right people, the right place, uh, you know, being able to pay them. Some people are worth more than their weight in gold. This the team that I have right now, uh Haley, um I'm not gonna say she's brilliant, but she's super smart, right? Charlie works with me. Uh, you know, I uh she works, she does the books for me, but she's at every meeting throwing stuff in there, right? Uh, my associate editor for Celine Press, Tiffany, I've known her for 25 years. We were in the military together, right? And she's got a mind like a trap. And she I hand her a fantasy book and she's like, All right, cool. We're gonna do this one, we're not gonna do this one, right? And she is hits it out of the park. And finding those quality people there, Dave Hensley, I say, Dave, tell me what you tell think of this submission. This one, and he's like, he'll write back, he's like, take these two, don't take this one. I said, All right, cool. You write to them. He works with them for like he looks over their books for a week or two and says, fix this, fix this, fix this, and has great suggestions. And they go fix it, it comes back, we do another read-through, you know, maybe a little more correction stuff, but they're a good team. That's the most important part, right? My line editor for uh Celine, kid's in college, and he's getting an English degree, but um he even though he's in college, he delivers on time. I say, Jay, I need a book by April 15th. He's like, Okay, cool, I'll do it, right? You know, that's the kind of stuff that it takes to build a company. Um, you know, and is it perfect? No. Sometimes we argue about stuff. Uh, I let myself get overruled far too many times for everybody else's good.
SPEAKER_01Having a having a command personality.
SPEAKER_00I I've learned that I'm not as smart as I think I am.
SPEAKER_01Well, you're smart enough to know that, which is pretty bold. Most people don't get that far.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, if knowing's half the battle, not knowing is the other half of the battle.
SPEAKER_01You know how many books do you have in play? How many books are are published, how many are in the pipeline? You don't have to give like detailed info into your inner canon workings, but just to give viewers and listeners an idea as to the depth and breadth of your of your portfolio.
SPEAKER_00So I would say we have. 30 something books published by Canon, right? Like Fay Wars alone has 11, I think 11 books, maybe 12 now. Uh, and we're starting to spin off side series. We have a great series set in England. Uh Fay Wars, for those who don't know, is my buddy Lucas and I. Lucas calls me up one day. He's like, I hate Tolkien's L's. I'm like, I love them. I think they're cool. I love Tolkien. I'm gonna I'll start talking about him forever, right? And he's like, nah, they're a bunch of butt heads, so it's not the word he used, but Lucas is a major in the Army reserves, right? And uh he's like he goes, I have an idea, like what if we fought them? And he's like, I picture uh an army national guard unit caught in a time loop, and everybody outside of it can see it, but they're fighting the same battle over and over. So I got this, right? So I went and wrote Onslaught, which is the first Fey Wars book, which starts out with an invasion of the Fey all over the world. But my character's a special forces guy who happens to be in Manhattan doing things with his team, and portals open up at Central Park, and dragons and orcs and everything come through, and it's on, right? Um, so we set that up that other people can write where they are, right? So he wrote the next book in Pennsylvania, The Invasion, right? Another guy did it in California, right? And you know, they're set in various different parts of the country. Now we have a guy who, Chris Thornendike, who's gonna drop very soon a three-book series set in England, where hey, who's gonna save England from the Fae? Come on, King Arthur, right? So Arthur returns in it in the time of England. They're medieval stuff after all, right? Yeah, so you know, um, once in Future King, right? And Chris is he's rocking it. So uh 12 of those, five or six in in Fallen Empire, regular Scout team one has five books. Uh The Line is three books by Shane Grice. He's writing another one right now. Jonathan Sugar is um Vareen, who is writing in my zombie universe. He's got two out. Uh, he's actually doing a Fay Wars book right now. Dan Kemp's got three, and he's got another one coming out in June, hopefully. Al's got five. Oh, we're pushing 30 or 40 books. I can't remember off the top of my head. Me personally, I have uh five, six, I probably like 15 or so. Uh but I haven't written much in four years anyway. Uh just too busy running the company and everything.
SPEAKER_01Different parts of the brain. It's hard when you're when you're activated like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and then um, yeah, I'm getting older too. I'm not the same person I was 15 years ago, right? Uh and then Celine, we have two books that are dropping next month. They're gonna be up for pre-sale in a day or two. We've got another five in the pipeline. Uh as far as Canon, what's in the pipeline? Uh I would say at least a half a dozen right now, maybe more. Uh so yeah, you just gotta keep putting product down because unfortunately, the nature of the internet, you don't write, you disappear, you know. So yeah, so we're we're trying, we're putting them out there. Uh, some of them are great quality, some my writing is is pretty good. It's okay. Um you know. So uh I've got some really great writers that turn out some really, really awesome product. I wish even they even did better because they are really great books, and sometimes you just can't figure out why they don't take off, you know. So sorry, I'm running my mouth again. You got me in recruiter mode.
SPEAKER_01That's the whole damn point. We want to hear about your empire, what you got going on, how you welcome in new authors, and then uh what's it like really publishing in this crazy, uh crazy time?
SPEAKER_00A lot of our books uh we're doing pretty well in audiobooks, too. We've got some great narrators.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna ask you about that. You led the led the witness here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's uh it's actually doing pretty well. Um, some books better than others, but like our series, because audiobook people like to have series, right? They like the bigger books because they want their money's worth. Um we pull in probably 10 to 20, maybe 30 percent of our income from audiobooks too now. So that's that's actually been creeping up. And uh it's hard to keep up with that because we gotta have the finished manuscript and published and everything. And then I then I go to an audio narrator. I'm like, hey, you know, keep going. Assuming human and not AI for the narrator. We tried AI for one book that just wasn't selling very well anyway. So I was like, let's see what let's see what it sounds like, right? And um the AI narration is like 70% there, and that other 30% just throws things off, and it didn't sell very well at all. So um, and then the sucky part of the business is sometimes you have to tell authors, hey, listen, um, you can have your book back, it didn't do too well, right? Yeah, you might as well keep all the money because obviously why should you be splitting 50-50 with me if we're not able to, you know, get your book to sell, right? You know, good luck, keep your own money. Um that's not fun, right? Because you want everybody to succeed. Uh you know, and sometimes employees come and go, you know, it depends on style and needs and things like that. And uh running a business is is an interesting experience. Uh, right now I'm getting a pissing match with New York State over estimated sales tax. You know, it's the crap that goes on in the background.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's it's terrible. It drives me nuts. Tomorrow's tax day, and of course I've deferred, and then I have my consulting business that I do, and then I got these incremental things, and then you sell some books here and there, and it's a big old mess on the spreadsheet.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, and then they're like, Well, last year you made a million dollars, so based off of that, you owe us tax this quarter, right? I'm like, no, but you're assuming that I actually sold paperback books in New York State, which I didn't, so go piss off, right? You know, just because I have a sales license, right? So, you know, you got to get an accountant and and all that other stuff, and then it's uh, you know, is what it is, right?
SPEAKER_01That's the hassles that a lot of, frankly, a lot of writers don't want to put themselves through because they're an artist.
SPEAKER_00Well, in that case, come right for me, and you'll get half of the profits and the 1099 at the end of the year.
SPEAKER_01You handle all that, you'll keep the uh the IRS and uh the FBI and the NSA away, right?
SPEAKER_00I'm just gonna give you a 1099 and some money, and then you gotta go figure that out, all right? So um, you know, but and it's it is what it is, you know, and and hopefully half of half of this is having fun, right? You know, we we get together at conventions, we have a great time. You know, we we everybody sees us in our Canon publishing t-shirts, which no, they're not for sale to the public. Um, but you know, they see us and like, hey, there's the Canon guys, right? And we, you know, I'm like, guys, stop drinking at the table, right? At least wait till after nine o'clock, right? Um, we we have a good time and we meet a lot of really cool and interesting people that way.
SPEAKER_01See, you you fulfill a need which is right in between. So on the one extreme, you've got indie writers, and it's all on them, right? You take your PDF and you upload it in the KDP, you go to you go to the website, you get an ISBN, and in like four days, you have the book sitting on your desk. And it's very fulfilling. Like, I'm a published author, my dream has come true, and then within five seconds, you're like, now what? Now now what do I do? And then you realize it's on you. Do you want to do advertising? Then you look at the stats. To your point, you got to pay to play, that kind of stuff. The other extreme is going the trad route, which is it takes you three years to find an agent, and then you find an agent, and then you vet the manuscript, and then it goes through all these layers. So if you want the immediacy of seeing yourself in print, it's all on you. And if you want Simon and Schuster or St. Martin's on the front of your book, then it might take you five years, and you're a completely different book than what you started. So you're a nice middle ground, a guy in an office with a team, and then you vet your own stuff, and then you get a publisher, but you don't get the hassle, and then you make the decision pretty quick, right? You don't dick around for three years trying to look at the treatment and figuring it out. It's like I like the book or I don't. You seem to display confidence or you don't, and uh you have something of a brand online, yes or no, and then you go for it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and the good thing is we're not uh a vanity publisher or anything like that. But I've run into so many people that are like, hey, I got my book and I spent ten thousand dollars to get it published, and I've never got any profits from it or royalties. And I'm like, well, do you have the rights to it? I don't I don't know, I don't think so. Sorry, man, I can't help you.
SPEAKER_01That's the other one. I didn't mention the shams. There's a ton of scams out there, which is they just put some imprint on the back, they'll take all your money, they won't promote you at all. And uh they probably went to Amazon too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, probably. That's why my business model is we just do royalty split, and if you're making money, we're making money. You know, we're we're we're investing it in you and us, basically.
SPEAKER_01So, how does it work? So let's say somebody solicits you, they hear about you, they watch this podcast, and you know, I got viewers who are in exactly this situation. They go, hey, this John guy looks cool. I'm either military sci-fi or I'm close enough. And uh I might want to get published with canon. How how does this work? What do they send you? What do you look at to make at least the initial decision of go no go?
SPEAKER_00Okay, so um a couple of things. First, somebody when somebody says that you know, what what would you like? I want a plot synopsis and I want the first three chapters of your book. Okay. I mean, I can literally tell even within a page or two whether you're a decent writer. All right. And and you know that you you've been around too. But I want to see the first three chapters, see how things develop, maybe there's things that we can fix because the story's great otherwise, right? Um, and you send that to me, uh contact at CanonPublishing.us, two ends, and we'll get back to you. Uh or I'll forget. And you just bug me a month later, and I'll be like, oh yeah, yeah, sorry about that, right? Um and we'll say, Okay, cool, send us the rest of the manuscript, right? And then it's weird in the fantasy genre with Celine, everybody wants a contract right away, right? With with the sci-fi stuff, they're like, Yeah, we'll do the contract once the book's all produced and everything like that. Because, you know, hey, uh, maybe you change your mind and we'll see what happens, right? Um, and then I'll talk about, you know, when can we publish this? How long it's gonna be until we can fit it in the publishing schedule, that kind of stuff. The other thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go stalk your social media, all right. If you are an engaging person on social media, uh that's cool, right? Uh, if you think you're gonna sell controversy, it's gonna sell your books for you. That may be true also. It's not gonna work with us. I highly discourage my authors, even though I'm guilty of it myself, to stay out of politics online, right?
SPEAKER_01I was I was gonna pitch my book, and then you're gonna go to my uh TikTok and be like Well, I mean, if you bring something to the table, but I yeah, I really see it as your I'm a libertarian, so I think you might like at least half, at least half of what I'm ranting about.
SPEAKER_00Well, uh depending on the day, I'm either a communist from New York or a right-wing military veteran butthead, right? You know, I always get it. Then you'll love me. You'll love me. I'll take it back. You know what? I got a lot of fans, so I do what my rank can handle, right? You know, if you're a new writer starting out, it's not it's not a plan, right? You know, um and also don't send me books that are are agenda focused. I I want good stories, I want good characters, right? Don't be trying to sell a political message um or a cultural message.
SPEAKER_01Those usually suck anyway. They suck in theater, in movies, and books. You can tell almost right away when someone's got an axe to grind, and they use the store, the story as an allegory for their politics, and it almost always sucks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I don't care what gender your characters are, orientation, any of that other stuff, make them good characters, right? You know, don't try and preach. Don't send me gun porn. I don't want five pages of hand loaded uh 5,000 feet per second, torn 23 grained bullets that the main character uses to shoot somebody's eye out from 15 miles away with their calibrated Leopold scope. All right, there is a market for that, okay? But make sure you have a good character. Don't make the characters the guns, make sure the people are the characters, right? Um and you know, that's know what we're looking for. Read our stuff, you know, go go kind of read what we're looking for before you waste your time or not waste your time, all right. I I recommend that for any publishing company. We all have our different flavors and styles, right? Um, if you are writing uh, I don't know, if you're gonna write uh a fantasy book, submit to Celine. Don't sell it to to Canon, right? If you're going to um if it's not our book, our style, I'll politely say, hey, we're not interested. Right. Uh and then we'll take it from there. We have we have planning sessions, we you know meet on a regular basis, we'll talk about the books, we'll work with you to come up with a cover, do all the things I said we do before, right? And then we'll tell you, hey, we're you're gonna drop in September or something like that, right? So if you really want to get submitted, if you really want to get in with us, get to know the people, get to know we're all out there, right? You know we're part of a team, right? Get approach one of the other authors of my team and be like, hey, is John gonna actually look at my stuff, right? Because he seems like a jerk online. And you know, it depends on who you talk to, like, yeah, he is a jerk, right? You know, um, yeah, but like Dan Kemp, Dan's great guy, right? And sometimes people will say to him, Hey, or Mike Morton, or you know, uh Dave Hensley, they're like, Hey, how do I submit to you guys? And they'll be like, Well, send it to me, I'll take a look at it, right? And if it works good, I'll send over to John, right? Um or if you're at a convention, you see me walking around, and um well, if I'm talking to a hot woman, it's usually it's my wife, right? So uh but don't interrupt me there, right? Or if I'm in the middle of a sale or something like that. But if you see me at a table or something, you know, just grab me be like, hey, I can I pitch a book to you, and absolutely I'll I'll sit there and and listen to your pitch. All right. So that's pretty much it. Or send me a message on Facebook. I j.f. alms. I'm there. That's what's great about social media. You can't just send a message to Stephen King and be like, hey, Steve, you know, take a look at my manuscript. You can send me a message and a frame request and be like, I know you're old because you're on Facebook, but you know, hey, um just you know, what do you think of this? So I'm gonna send me send it to me. Give me a pitch.
SPEAKER_01That's what's wild about social media. I mean, even to this day, you could uh you could tweet Elon Musk, and if he likes your meme, he's gonna respond. So these barriers that used to exist between people in authority and everyone else have dissolved. It's become more and more transparent and immediate for better and for worse. We've got both, but to your point, this idea that you know you're toiling away writing your dream book and the stakes are high, and every touch point is like such a big deal. Just kind of get over yourself. Your book isn't all that, and whomever you're talking to is uh a ticket to ride, but it should be collaborative, it should be fun, and uh just get your ass out there, right?
SPEAKER_00We don't owe you anything because you spent 10 years writing. Yeah, no one no one gives a shit. Well, I mean, I respect that. I respect the toil. I really do, right? And hopefully it resulted in a great book. But we also have to produce product, right? Don't bring me a great book and I'll say, well, can you have the next one six months from now or three months from now? And well, it took me 10 years to write this one. Or when I say, hey, you wrote a 30,000 or 300,000 word book, I'm gonna break it up into four different books. Understand that we're a publishing company. We publish things, you know. We we don't we have our reasons for what we do, and they're based on experience. So I asked them, would you rather have one book of 300,000 words that we charge 499 for? Would you rather have four books of uh hundred thousand words each that we charge 499 for each one, right? You know, so it's a business. Understand that. That is the other thing. This is a business, it's not it's not a rent fair, okay? It is a business. All right, we're living in a reality and we're here to make money.
SPEAKER_01So absolutely. And and the successful authors that I've had on, I've had a full range of authors and artists on the pod. Yeah, and uh they all they all exemplify that attitude. Either they started that way or they picked it up pretty fast in order to be successful and do their thing. You could be a nebula award finalist, but uh at the end of the day, a business. You need to to have connections in the magazines who review you. You need to get reviewed, you need to get on podcasts, you need to be on social media talking about your book. It's not just hiding like Thomas Pynchon behind the words. You see the point you made earlier. Be a personality, get out there, connect with people in every way you can.
SPEAKER_00And honestly, to me, that's one of the funnest parts of this job. I love going to convention. I agree, I agree, I love it.
SPEAKER_01Like this off weekend going out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I will we're going up to Vermont in uh weekend after next for the Vermont Vermont sci-fi and horror convention. And it could be a complete dud. I have no idea, but you know what? If it's a complete dud, that that hundred people that show up, I'll have that much more time to talk to them, right? And it's the first convention that my editor from Celine's going to as part of the publishing process. And she's gonna learn. I mean, I'm gonna use that convention to teach her how to sell books and talk to people and everything, right? So you make whatever you can out of it. Um, you know, New York City Comic-Con, I didn't stop moving or shut up for two, three days, you know, because you can't. There's like 200,000 people there, right? So you take what you can from from each place that you go to.
SPEAKER_01I'm really looking forward to this weekend. It's gonna be like 150,000 people they're anticipating at LA Festival of Books. And it's it's obviously multi-genre. These people who just like reading like books, so we are the sci-fi little table or island that we've set up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01A group of four authors, all indie authors, and went to Pasadena Comic-Con, LA Comic-Con before that. And to your point, like my face hurt from just just bullshitting non-stop. And it's a terrific experience to someone pick up your book, you're pitching your book, you're interacting with someone. It's not just trying to convince them to buy something they don't want, it's sharing the enthusiasm in a way you otherwise can't do.
SPEAKER_00Have a conversation. Do not try and sell a book, all right? Have a conversation. There's nothing more annoying than like you're browsing through and a guy's like, hey, buy the book, buy the book, buy the book, buy the book, buy the book. And you know, like, hey, what's who's your favorite science fiction author? Yeah, have a conversation with people.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. And then you rope them in too, which is funny. Hey, you like science fiction? Well, that's fun too. No, no, and then you say, Well, today's today's the day, buddy. Come on over. Well then I've got fantasy for you over here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just you just get get that rolling, and you don't need to get the sale, you just need to get the interaction and the satisfaction of being out there connecting with people in ways you otherwise couldn't and wouldn't.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Makes you a better writer. It does, it does. Because those people that you talk to are going to be characters in your book later on, too.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna pitch my book for you too. I have a spin-off idea for you. Absolutely. We'll see if we can uh continue the conversation that way. Like, comment, share, subscribe, everybody. John Holmes from Canon Publishing. And what's the name of your fantasy outfit? Which press? Celine Press?
SPEAKER_00Celine. S-E-L-E-N-E. Press like the moon.
SPEAKER_01Yes, like Celine Press. So, authors, if you're out there and you've been listening, contact this guy. First, read some damn books from Canon Publishing to his point. Like, know what style they have, know what you're getting into, and know what they expect. And if you think you got the cojones and the talent, then go for it. And what you expect is a plot summary and three chapters, right? Yeah, basically. And then go for it, see what happens. And and if you aren't already, get online, go to conferences, crawl out of your shell. No one cares what a genius you are unless you go out there and share it. Can I share my screen real quick?
SPEAKER_00So this is Canon, right? You know, you can reach out to us through here. Uh as you can see, we we I love the covers. I love making covers. I love you know the it's exciting stuff, right? And we've got some good series, you know, Fay Wars, most of this stuff is on audio. Um and then Celine is uh I don't know if you can see that one. Did that change over to Celine?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we see the video, and I'm gonna have overlays in the the YouTube. If you're on audio, folks, this is the tough shit part. I'm gonna put the link in the description. So click on that, check it out for yourself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so um, so it's contact at canon publishing, two ends, canon, c a n o n publishing.us. All right, and then um submissions at Selene S-E-L-E-N-E-Press.com.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the the hot links will be in the description, both on YouTube and on your favorite podcast platform. So just click on that to reach out direct.
SPEAKER_00If you want somebody else, I will send you some of my guys and you can ask me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's the other thing. Send send more. I'd love to talk to more authors, dive in deep, like I did with Alan Mike. Yeah. And uh, you know, we can we can we can help the cause. And I am going to pitch you my uh my sidebar character from my debut science fiction. I think you'll like her, the mercenary minx. It's like Fox Force Five with aliens and the multiverse.
SPEAKER_00I actually rings a bell, Fox Force Five.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, that's from Pulp Fiction. That's right. Group of five Foxy chicks, and they each have a specialty. My Mercenary Minx has 275 billion brothers and sisters, and she's the martial arts expert. Okay, I mean, hey, whatever.
SPEAKER_00It sells, right?
SPEAKER_01And weapons expert. I'm like, she's a character in my book, and you guys are military science fiction. I think your your readers would eat her up. I hope so.
SPEAKER_00Uh I'll make you a nice cover for it.
SPEAKER_01All right. And hot. I've already I've already done an AI treatment. I could send that to you, dude. She's gorgeous, like silhouette figure. Uh Jamie Lee Curtis, kitty cat kind of face, two years, and she is vicious and lethal and cynical and funny. Okay. All right, cool, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity. Thanks, John. Really appreciate it. Send me more of your guys. We'll be in touch. And uh, expect more canon folks on the podcast series. Stay tuned. Subscribe, Mofos, and you'll you'll get all the canon writers.
SPEAKER_00Um, make sure you send me a link to your stuff so I can promote it too.
SPEAKER_01All right, absolutely. See how that works, everybody? Right? It's quid pro quo. Yep. But in a fun way. The best thing I heard is you're not networking, you're making friends. Yes, that's right. All right. Have fun on at your book.
